Sixteen years ago, Barb started Black Eyed Susan — her store of hard-to-find garden and home accessories — to fulfill her passion, to have a positive impact on a community, and to enjoy a lifestyle of freedom.
Today, Barb may close the doors on what she loves to do.
In an already difficult environment for small business, government-augmented uncertainty threatens to raise the cost of Barb’s retail business to unbearable levels.
Barb’s story is Part 2 of our documentary series “The Story of Business,” a joint project of Public Notice and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council.
Below, check out Part 1, “Moving forward in uncertain times,” a story about a limestone crushing business’s future amidst the possibility of rising costs and ever-changing rules. And don’t miss our comedic take on the uncertainty problem, “Wait and See.”
Tags: Black Eyed Susan, economic uncertainty, Government Spending, SBE, SBE Council, the story of business, uncertainty, Wait and See, when costs compete with passion
A sad commentary, but one which many of those Obama supporters who are behind him “for better or worse” would never hope to grasp because their eyes, their ears and — truely — their HEARTS are closed shut and cold as stone.
So the world is not better for what he he has done, no matter how you want to spin it. He has taken joy and beauty out of his woman’s life and the lives of many other good and hard working, but cheerfully working people. To him and his minions, we are “chattel” which is another word for property — slaves to the state. To him and like minded individuals, the state is not there to serve us, we are there to serve the state!
I am sorry, but I don’t share the Statist dreams of Obama or his quest for even a more obscene amount of power. The Federal Government needs to be cut down to size, or eventually it will collapse with a thunderous crash, and those dependant upon it for survival will simply die in droves — and it is not their fault, it is the fault of Obama and those people who support him. They ALL collectively make this horrible evil possible!
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I meant to say *this* woman’s life. I don’t know anything about him taking the joy out of *his* woman’s life, although give him a cigar and a willing intern, and who knows?
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America is getting like a third world country, GREED in our government has taken this once strong country to the brink of total collapse. If our leaders had to part with thier income like most americans, they would mangage our country much better. But I’m sure most of you have heard the phrase: easy come easy go? well thats what GOVERNMENT is doing with our HARD EARNED MONEY! Its not thiers so they dont care where it goes how its used or who STEALS it. ITS NOT THIERS! If they were made to collectively pay for these mistakes with thier personal income or thier jobs we would not have a deficit. I dont know about you but if I was loosing my company money year after year I would get fired, and I damn sure would not be getting a six or seven figure income to do it. So what gives OUR government the right to waste our hard earned and very few dollars, sink our country, and still get a salary to continue to do it?? ONLY IN AMERICA. We need to remind OUR government they work for us. NOT the other way around!! LETS TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!
What we as “the people” need to do: unite as a powerful group, tea party like, across the nation, sending our representatives in DC our ultimatums. Establish their pay scales, establish their health care, establish their limits for receiving retirement from the government after serving only one term in office. They have abused the positions they were elected to and have not upheld the constitution which they swore to do. If it didn’t allow for what they wanted to do, they would write vague laws that skirted the boundries of the constution, appoint judges and justices that would uphold the laws that were poorly written. Without an uprising from the public or enough dissention, the laws remain in place.
Look where our indifference and lack of attention have led us. The country and all it has accomplished is in jeopardy of becoming like some european countries, in serious debt without a long enough ladder to climb out of the hole we let the politicians put us in.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, U.S.Postal Service (self supporting supposedly, recently posted ? billions short fall), TSA and the recently approved Medical Prescription program, all require tax dollars to function. Not to mention all of the government department and offices not mentioned require those same tax dollars to make them work. If the income taxes are dwindling, unemployment rising, where are the tax dollars going to come from to support a bloating government that derives its money to operate from the tax payers? It would seem to me that the 545 people in charge of our government have lost touch with reality and are putting our country in jeopardy without regard to the consequences.
Less small businesses, more power will be concentrated in a few big businesses which will “invest” more money lobbying Congress for earmarks and subsidies and opt-outs giving politicians more power to control our lives. Why do big govt politicians hate small businesses? They are unruly, they don’t contribute (i.e. not give bribes) to their campaigns, nor hire them as lobbyists and sit on their Boards when they retire.
This is the result of electing people with no business experience and no experience outside of government of being a lawyer. These people just have no sense of how the real world works and so they make it not work so well. I, and probably everyone else, could right an essay on how the government creates more problems that it solves.
The worst part is Congress exempts itself from so many of its laws. Look at ObamaCare. it does not apply to congress. We let them get away with that. Insider trading laws do not apply to Congress. They can profit from laws they are passing. All this is unethical, immoral, and unfair to their constituents. When there is pushback, these guys hide from us by not scheduling open town meetings. It is all a shell game where we are supposed to find the shell that shows who is profiting from our government. But, it is all sleight of hand. There is no pea under th
Well, it’s all very simple. We just need to cut the gov’t at all levels. STARTING WITH 33% in year 1. All departments at all levels. If the bureaucrats cut the services we need first, they’re fired.
Unless we act radically now, there’ll be no more chances.
This woman speaks the truth but there is so much more to it. I am a freelance designer and these last few years have just been brutal for my clients and myself. Killed my marriage to boot. Businesses are just demoralized to the point of fear to do anything. Every other word out of the mouths of our “leaders” is anti business. Profit is now a dirty word. What you do legally now could come back to haunt you next year (or next) with a visit from who knows what government agency.
When I found out that that President Obama’s cabinet had not one person ever connected with private enterprise it all made sense to me at that point. It’s just crazy. The country is withering.
I can’t wait for the adults to start running DC again.
[...] for the body politic. At Instapundit today, Glenn Reynolds links to this sobering video from “Bankrupting America.” Watch it. Then wonder why Nov 2nd wasn’t even more of a victory for the tea [...]
These people don’t get it: the intent is NOT to get business moving again–especially not small business that hasn’t made pacts with and paid tribute to the federal government and the politicians that live off it.
Wake up! This president spent his fornative years being nurtured, educated, and indoctrinated by the Midwest Academy, the Democratic Socialists of America, IPAC and others. He was explifictly chosen by Alice Palmer (a declared socialist) as her successor in the Illinois legislature. In the U.S. Senate, he voted further to the left than the Senate’s openly avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders of Vermont. WTF else do you need to know after what he has done with GM, ObamaCare, Financial Reform and what he has attempted to do with the Dream Act, Cap & Tax, Card Check and every other hare-brained scheme he has pushed? He is attempting to undermine what is left of our free market capitalist economy. Barack Obama is a closet SOCIALIST. He seeks to ‘fundamentally change’ the United States. He cloaks his policy predilections. His primary techniques are obfuscation and outright mendacity. He thinks you will not notice–or if you notice that you will not believe that a man elected president of the United States could actively seek its destruction.
Obama is a socialist. Obama is a liar. He needs to be defied for two years and then destroyed electorally along with every Democrat that supported his agenda by installing Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. They must all go in 2012. They are a cancer on this country and society and it is long past time for political chemotherapy.
[...] Bankrupting America [...]
[...] for the body politic. At Instapundit today, Glenn Reynolds links to this sobering video from “Bankrupting America.” Watch it. Then wonder why Nov 2nd wasn’t even more of a victory for the tea [...]