It has been encouraging to see how many people, regardless of party affiliation, have decided to prefer a discussion of the issues over mud-slinging and scare tactics.

It has been even more encouraging to see a large majority of Americans rendered uncomfortable by negative injections of the toxic issue of race into this campaign.

All of which bode well for the end result.

But, of course, none of this encouraging stuff will matter unless all of us now perform the act that signifies how we choose to ring down the curtain on this interminable political season. And, really, the least you can do after being subjected to this campaign for such a long time, is to step to center stage and respond to your cue.

Last week, the Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy released a working paper with the highly descriptive title “Looking Ahead: Opportunities and Challenges for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Owners,” by Advocacy Chief Economist and Director of Research Chad Moutray. In the paper, Moutray identifies five challenges and five opportunities for small businesses that could be [...]

Lest anyone forget that there is a presidential campaign going on in the midst of the economic melodrama playing itself out on the Hill and on the Street, a new policy paper from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation serves as a timely reminder. The ITIF is a Washington-based tech policy think tank headed up [...]

In spite of all the talk we’ve been hearing about “change” during this campaign, neither presidential candidate offers much that is strikingly new in the way of health insurance proposals. Basically, Republican candidate John McCain wants to bring down health insurance costs by using the free market to increase competition. Democratic candidate Barack Obama wants [...]

It looks like Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama has made his proposal to exempt small businesses and startups from capital gains taxes into a centerpiece of his small business policy. It certainly sounds good and might be a pretty nifty idea for the small businesses and startups that actually do pay capital gains taxes now. [...]

We’re not going to pretend that we don’t have major party nominees for the 2008 presidential election, even if the party conventions that will make those nominees “official” haven’t happened yet. So, we’ll just say that presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have both put forth tax plans with which to woo voters. If [...]

It’s almost over.
After six mind-numbing months, it looks like the Democratic presidential primary will finally wind down with tomorrow’s contests in South Dakota and Montana — although the campaigning and positioning and posturing actually started something like a year before the first primary vote was cast.
Even for an avowed political junkie like yours truly, it’s [...]

The uber-critical 2008 presidential campaign is already a year old and Election Day is still about nine months away. Candidates past and present have spent all this time talking and offering downloadable policy briefs and engaging in spirited debate. And yet, all the noise is clearly punctuated by everybody’s relative silence on one important subject: [...]