NASA and the SBA

To Charles Bolden and NASA, for the successful launch of the ARES I. The $445 million Ares I is the first new design developed since the space shuttle in 1981. This design is one of several being considered to replace the space shuttles that NASA will be retiring in the near future. Space flight, unmanned and human, are currently under review by the Obama Administration, but NASA's Administrator is making sure that NASA's core mission, space exploration, is re-energized. NASA is coming out swinging and showing the nation and the world that they still have the right stuff.

JEERS

To Karen Mills and the Small Business Administration (SBA) for the latest 8(a) rules submitted for review to the Federal Register last week. Hopes were high that the abuses and unjustifiable preferences for Alaskan Native Companies would finally get dialed back. But the SBA decided to go in a completely different direction and, as incredible as it may seem, they elected to expand the worst aspects of the 8(a) rules for government procurement, and give Hawaiian native firms that same sort of unrestricted preferences that now flow to Alaskan native companies. (Of course, SBA offers no explanation why other minority businesses are not given the same preferences.) As a result of the SBA's stupidity, companies founded by wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may lose out to Alaskan or Hawaiian tribal companies, that employ few native Alaskans or Hawaiians, but instead, have been created for the sole purpose of taking advantage of poorly drafted federal procurement policies.

Small businesses once looked to the SBA to level the playing field for all small and minority businesses, not just for those favored, special interests of certain legislators and Administration officials. Karen Mills, Administrator of the SBA, is failing in advancing the SBA's core mission.