Tag Archives: Michael S. Johnson

Small Business Engine Stalled

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON        

Reprinted in part from washingtonexaminer.com

            “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

            In the 20 years I’ve known him, Jeff has never uttered words like that about the wholesale-distributor business he built from scratch over the past 25 years in Maryland, D.C. and Delaware. He’s had ups and downs like every small business, but he’s always seemed to know instinctively what to do, either to sustain existing business, or, in good times, expand into new areas and new brands.

            We were talking about the frustrations of small business, his and others like it all across the country, that can’t hire, invest and expand because there is so much uncertainty about what the future holds.

            Jeff ticked off just a few of his concerns: health care mandates; new and higher taxes and fees; the cost to the consumer of new financial services regulations; new workplace rules, and new rules and regulations that may come from environment and energy reform. The list goes on.

            There is always uncertainty in times of recession, but this time it’s different.  The uncertainty is rooted in politics as well as economics.

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McChrystal Story Still Untold

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

 The flash from the explosion–and implosion–of General Stanley McChrystal has faded and his story is already old news.  Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson and Rod Blagojevich are back in the headlines. 

 That’s too bad.   If there is any good to come of the McChrystal tragedy, if we as a society are to learn from the experience, then we need to sift through the rubble again and see if we can’t find out more about the right and the wrong,  who did what to whom, why it happened and how, and what has changed or will change as a result.  It’s important. 

 General McChrystal, as you will recall, was the U.S. commander in Afghanistan brought down by a story in Rolling Stone Magazine. McChrystal and his aides were quoted as speaking derogatorily and crudely of the civilian chain of command from Washington to Kabul.

 The story caused serious direct and collateral damage.  The coverage for a brief time was thorough, but there is a lot more for serious journalists to cover. 

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Victims and Villains: A Dangerous Game

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

            The oil spill catastrophe has set off a new round of finger pointing. Oil company executives were crawling over each other a week ago to place blame on each other. 

            And, the President is doing what he does extremely well, branding oil company executives as villains and the rest of us as victims of their villainous behavior.  

    Who knows where the blame will ultimately lie.  There will be plenty to go around. 

    I have no interest in, or sympathy for, British Petroleum.  They ought to pay out of the wazzoo.

            My concern is with the politics of the blame game, especially during these times when nerves are shot, the public nerves are on edge already and people are just looking for an excuse to get mad.  Also of concern is the more profound impact on the civility of our political dialogue. 
            Throughout the campaign, while candidate Obama was promising to be a healer and a uniter, he was engaged in a sophisticated strategy to divide, to create victims and villains in American politics, identifying for his supporters at whom they should be mad and for whom they should show pity.  That is par for the course in political campaigns.  But to my surprise, the strategy was intensified after he became President.  Over the past two years he has created the false imagery of a society in which you’re either a victim or a villain.  In a constant display of high dexterity finger pointing he has made villains of lobbyists, Wall Street firms, doctors, insurance companies, auto executives, talk radio celebrities, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Fox News, bankers, tea partiers, Republicans, conservatives, gun owners, the entire state of Arizona, and now, for a repeat performance, oil company executives.

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