de-regulation

This week Capital Hill hosted the NFIB 2012 Summit. For those of you not in the know, the NFIB, or "the voice of small business," is a lobbying group with offices in all 50 state capitals as well as in the District of Columbia. On its website, the National Federation of Independent Business, claims to be "a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization" that "represents the consensus views of its members." Unfortunately for the 350,000 small business members of NFIB, the lobbying group seems to be most interested in using the clout of the United States' small business community to manipulate legislation on behalf of de-regulation for large corporate interests and the republican conservative agenda. Make no mistake, the considerable clout wielded by NFIB comes from the fact that small business is an acknowledged powerhouse of the U.S. economy, producing 50% of Gross Domestic Product, and employing 60% of the american workforce.

A major sponsor of 2012's NFIB summit, was Sam's Club, owned and operated by Walmart, a trojan horse of the U.S. economy. It is ironic that this corporate giant was a major corporate sponsor of the summit (along with American Express, Bloomfied Government, ALGA, Intuit and others). Sam Walton grew his business upon the principle "american made goods for the american public." It is general public knowledge that the Walmart Corporation and its subsidiaries now summarily force small businesses into closure and bankruptcy by moving into small towns with their super stores undercutting prices of local business with their shelves stocked in chinese manufactured goods, which local business can not compete with. Sure, NFIB is "the voice of of small business," and perhaps having the Walmart corporation visibly present via Sam's Club, during the NFIB 2012 summit in Washington, was just to add a dash of irony to the event?