Business for Shared Prosperity

By Ilana DeBare
San Francisco Chronicle, 12/26/07

Q: My husband and I own a small S corporation in California with net revenue of less than $50,000 per year. We struggle each year to buy minimal but outrageously costly health insurance for the two of us. If my reading of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new health insurance proposal is correct, we will be taxed an additional 6.5 percent of our payroll to pay for uninsured citizens. I think maybe small businesses are going to be the losers in this new plan. Am I reading it correctly?

Scared in Santa Cruz

By John Arensmeyer
San Jose Mercury News, 12/03/2007

The prospect of relief from the crushing health care burden faced by small businesses has moved closer to reality in the past two weeks, as California's top legislators submitted a compromise health care reform proposal, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger responded with a counterproposal of his own.

Letter to the Editor by John Arensmeyer
San Francisco Chronicle, 11/28/07

Small businesses care

Editor - Your cartoon published on Nov. 24, showing small business turkeys being sacrificed by the Democrats to obtain health care coverage for California's uninsured, completely misrepresents the health care needs of small businesses.

By Robert Kuttner
Boston Globe, 11/21/07

LAST WEEK, superinvestor Warren Buffett, America's second richest man, testified before the Senate Finance Committee on the subject of why people like him can well afford to pay taxes. In fact, Buffett is ceasing to be among the very wealthiest because he is giving most of his fortune away to philanthropies while he is still alive.

By Chuck Collins
AlterNet, 11/19/07

Billionaire Warren Buffett testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday in defense of the federal estate tax, the nation's only tax on inherited wealth.

By Rebekah Gordon
Stateline.org, 11/19/07

LOS ANGELES – Dr. Edward Newton doesn’t bother wondering whether his patients in the emergency room at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center have health insurance. He just assumes they all don’t.

By Bill Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins
The Politico, 11/14/07

Congress finally has a chance to have a sober discussion about how to responsibly reform the estate tax.

After a decade of false accusations and innuendo, Wednesday’s hearing at the Senate Finance Committee provides the first opportunity to set the record straight as to who pays the estate tax, how much revenue it generates and why we should retain it.

Advocates of repealing the tax still claim that it puts small farmers out of business — but most of the world now knows this is disingenuous.

Washington Business Journal (Washington DC), 11/12/07
By Kent Hoover

The presidential election is a year away, but it is already clear that overhauling the nation's health care system will top the domestic to-do list of any new president.

Every major candidate already has announced a plan for extending insurance coverage to more citizens and making health care more affordable and efficient. While some proposals are mere generalizations, others reveal an unusual level of detail for this early in the race.

By John Arensmeyer and Michael Russo
San Francisco Chronicle, 11/9/07

Almost two months into the special session on health care reform, it has seemed at times as if hopes for change this year were slim, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state Legislature put out different proposals, and critics concentrated on figuring out whom to blame for slow progress. But while the public controversy has thrown out lots of heat, it has shed little light. Now, California's legislative leaders have offered a significant compromise proposal - one that demands a thoughtful response from the governor.

By Corinne Ramey
DMI Blog, 10/31/07

What do the US Women's Chamber of Commerce, the CEOs of Costco, Addus Healthcare, and ABC Home, and small business owners across the country have in common? They all supported an increase in the minimum wage. Perhaps Jim Sinegal, Costco's CEO, said it best. "The more people make, the better lives they're going to have and the better consumers they're going to be," Sinegal told the Washington Post. "It's going to provide better jobs and better wages."