by David Safier
[Note: While the Gatewood goes to people who would make Henry Gatewood, the embezzling banker from John Ford's 1939 "Stagecoach" proud, the anti-Gatewood goes to those stand Gatewood's maxims on their head and prefer honesty over self-serving lies and thievery.]
Today's anti-Gatewood goes to small business owners who say, No, we're not being stranged by regulations and Yes, the rich should pay higher taxes.
A McClatchy article titled Regulations, taxes aren't killing small business, owners say, is chock full of examples of small business owners talking sense rather than the party line.
"Government regulations are not 'choking' our business, the hospitality business," Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. "In order to do business in today's environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order."
[snip]
McClatchy reached out to owners of small businesses, many of them mom-and-pop operations, to find out whether they indeed were being choked by regulation, whether uncertainty over taxes affected their hiring plans and whether the health care overhaul was helping or hurting their business.
Their response was surprising.
None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.
[snip]
The answer from Rick Douglas — the owner of Minit Maids, a cleaning service with 17 employees in Charlotte, N.C. — was more blunt.
"I think the rich have to be taxed, sorry," Douglas said. He added that he isn't facing a sea of new regulations but that he does struggle with an old issue, workers' compensation claims.
Some people interviewed for the article mentioned insurance costs and Small Business Administration bureaucracy as problems. But it's great to hear the "job creators" talking about the need for regulation and higher taxes for the rich.