It is easy to see why Delawarean Sher Valenzeula was asked to speak on the RNC’s “We Built This” theme night in Tampa. She is a successful latina small business person who built her business all alone without any government support whatsoever. Her story is a real rebuke to President Obama’s take on capitalism.
Or… her story would be a rebuke to the President If she built her business “all alone without any government help whatsoever.” In fact, she built her business with millions in SBA loans, economic development incentives, ARRA stimulus money, a steady stream of millions of dollars worth of no bid government contracts and progressive policies that give a leg up to women and minority owned businesses. If Sher Valenzeula’s business history rebukes anything, it rebukes the entire theme of the Republican convention’s small business theme night.
On Tuesday night, one of the RNC’s featured speakers will either have to expicitly thank Delawarean and American taxpayers for her success, or she will be lying her ass off. For her speech to make any sense and for her business to be considered a great example of the RNC’s “we built this” theme, the media covering the event will need to utterly ignore all of the millions of dollar taxpayer dollars Valenzeula has leveraged over the years.
On paper she looks good…candidate for lieutenant governor of Delaware, and a small businesswoman who, along with her husband, “Started an upholstery business that makes padding for baseball umpires and military vests worn by members of the Israeli military,” according to a Fox News report.
The only hitch is, she built her entire business on a foundation of taxpayer funded grants, subsidies and loan programs. Here is a list of what First State Manufacturing has received:
*Federal $650,000 Small Business Administration (SBA) 504 loan.
*Federally funded Service Corp of Retired Executives (SCORE)
*Federal and Delaware funded Small Business Technology and Development Center
*Federal $20,000 Express loan
*U.S. DoD and the Delaware Economic Development Office funded Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC)
*$96,500 SBA backed 7(a) loan
Without the government getting her business off the ground, it is not clear she would be where she is today. But that is just the beginning. Sher jumped on the real tax money gravy train when she started taking down huge no bid contracts. All told she collected, $30 million in government contracts over 11 years, nearly 70% of which were awarded without competition.
These are the First State Manufacturing Government Contracts Statistics:
Amount Obligated by the Federal Government $15,175,502.75
Total Value of All Contracts $30,016,836.27
Number of Contracts 147
Number of Contracts Awarded Without Competition 102
Percent Awarded Without Competition 69%
Inclusive dates (from) 6/15/2001
Inclusive dates (through) 5/18/2012
One final bit of irony, when she rails about Barack Obama and “the government” interfering with small businesses, she will be doing so knowing that she grabbed ARRA stimulus money when it was available… $301,000 worth of ARRA stimulus money to be exact.
Finally, she is a success story, and the government support she had is one reason why the government made her the SBA person of the year, but her success is the success that comes with our ability to collectively support entrepreneurial drive for the betterment of society. Her story doesn’t illustrate the mythological rugged individualism that the GOP will pretend that it does. It actually illustrates the purpose of government: enabling persons to live in civilization.
If she goes off on a typical Republican rant about the evils of government, and we have any remnant of an objective media left in this country, this speech should really blow up in the RNC’s face. When she tries to claim private success and deny her abundant public support, everyone should end up wondering who the hell vetted Sher Valenzeula to speak?