With independent small businesses at risk, no use looking to a panic-stricken City Hall for help.

Always remember -- and never forget -- that in the case of New Albany, even if we're able to struggle back to our feet at any point this year, INDOT is waiting to cave our skulls in a second time with years upon years of Sherman Minton Bridge traffic dislocation.

As the mayor's captive council lackeys only now begin to fathom that they'll be the ones to take the fall for budget catastrophes in the wake of COVID, freeing Jeff Gahan to continue his own hallowed tradition of narcissistic pay-to-play campaign finance monetizing, it's clear that a Democratic-controlled legislative body will be of little help during the coming hard times.

Urban Enterprise Association? It's been annexed and gutted, existing only symbolically.

Develop New Albany? It's theoretically possible, although the organization's umbrella will have to get much bigger and its sad ongoing dependence on Gahan's political needs accordingly smaller.

City Hall as presently configured possesses no experience in dealing with a crisis. The rest of us will have to figure it out ourselves, and DNA needs to be a part of this solution. Exactly how is yet to be seen.

The Hyperlocal Support Small Businesses Need to Recover, by Patrice Frey (Governing)

It may be tempting, in coping with revenue losses brought on by the pandemic, for governments to reduce funding for community economic-development organizations, but it would be short-sighted.

With the recent replenishment of the Paycheck Protection Program, Congress and the Trump administration hope to avert a massive and catastrophic closure of small businesses amid the economic devastation of the COVID-19 crisis. But while the additional funds for the PPP are desperately needed, a successful rebound will require more than a one-time infusion of cash.

State and local elected officials will soon find that they are the next — and last — line of defense in protecting their communities (and tax rolls) from a failure of small businesses at a scale unlike any ever seen in this country. A recent study by our organization found that as many as 7.5 million small businesses are at risk in the coming months, especially those employing fewer than 20 people.

These businesses urgently need hyperlocal support systems that link businesses to resources that will aid them through the next 18 to 24 months. Fortunately, such support systems already exist in thousands of cities and neighborhoods across the country in the form of Main Street Programs, Business Improvement District associations and other kinds of downtown organizations. The local economic-development leaders who head these organizations are typically well known in their communities as trusted sources of information and as "connectors" to business support resources. They are also extremely knowledgeable about their communities' business environments and the local "players," which is invaluable in helping to broker creative solutions to get businesses through challenging times ahead.

And creative solutions will be in high demand. Small-businesses that survive stay-at-home orders, whether aided by the PPP or not, face a long and difficult recovery. Dramatic unemployment figures suggest that many Americans simply won't have the spending power they did before the crisis. Even where consumers are able to spend, their behavior is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic norms anytime soon. After stay-at-home orders are lifted, residual concerns regarding coronavirus transmission are likely to slow the recovery of the restaurants and retail and service businesses that are the heart of communities.

Business owners are likely to encounter a confusing patchwork of local, state, federal and philanthropic funding sources, and they are going to need help identifying suitable programs and navigating often-cumbersome application processes. They will also need advocates in their corner to work with property owners and negotiate lower or deferred rents, and they'll need assistance, where feasible, in transitioning some of their business to e-commerce. On this latter point, our research indicates that approximately two-thirds of small businesses have no online presence, a troubling figure given that online sales are likely to be a lifeline in the coming months.

The risk as state and local leaders look to trim budgets in the coming weeks and months is that they will cut any program that is not directly tied to health, human services and education. We've seen this before, post-Great Recession, when governments reduced or eliminated dollars for local business-support efforts. Such moves are short-sighted and have painful consequences, largely in the form of lost jobs and reductions to state and local revenue from taxes and fees. Ultimately, elected officials in many places elected to restart these programs, acknowledging that aid to local economic-development programs has a return on investment that far exceeds their cost.

In coming budget negotiations, elected officials will be wise to recognize that they are playing the long game in bringing their communities back from COVID-19. We can coax that recovery to a faster and stronger outcome if we can keep the focus of our support as hyperlocal as possible and if we can maintain the connector organizations that help small business on the ground, community by community. Ultimately, modest expenditures to support local economic-development organizations now will deliver a healthier and more stable tax base in the months and years to come.

I feel a rant coming on: No, national chain restaurant franchises are not local mom 'n' pop shops.

On more than one occasion the past week there have been reminders from the local owners of national chain restaurant franchises that they’re mom and pop shops, too.

Jeeebus, this gets tiring. For background see the charts above and below, and then allow me to pound the desktop for a moment.

Taco Bell, Burger King, Culver’s, McDonald's -- whichever, whatever -- are not chains, they yell, because they’re franchises, and because the franchises are locally owned they’re not chains at all, and therefore, this 1,298th location cut from the same template is no different from Aladdin or Lady Tron’s.

We're locals just like you indies! We're mom and pop!

By the same mangled logic, the 2009 Ford Fusion that I inherited from my mother, which I believe was manufactured in Sonora (Mexico), magically becomes a “local” New Albanian automobile because I drive and operate it locally ... and because of this, I can take credit for building it by hand.

Uh huh. Look, you substituted money for creativity and bought a fully developed restaurant designed and programmed by others. You cannot change the menu on whim by substituting Frito Bandito Hot Browns for Roadkill Chalupas, but you’re quite happy to reap the benefits from national saturation advertising and sponsorship campaigns of the sort almost never available to genuine indie innovators.

Yes, it’s true that you must have enough money to buy the franchise and sufficient moxie to run it, but I’m guessing that bankers are far more cooperative with proven franchise financing than start-ups from scratch, and of course the entire point of franchising is to adjust the risk factor downward compared with start-ups by applying the sheer weight of huge and bland pervasiveness.

Which the public adores, even those who ought to know better.

It's ever harder to discuss matters like this without unleashing f-bombs. Franchisees are almost as annoying as those wealthy kids born on third base, convinced they hit a triple. It’s more like paying the umpire for a base on balls, trotting to first, and claiming to have been hit in the face by a pitch.

And, as a side note, genuine independent local small business owners know exactly what being hit in the face by a pitch feels like; it's how we learn, daily, without a safety net extended lovingly by a multinational.

All in it together? In terms of the pandemic, yes. But as it pertains to this idiocy about franchises being local, no, not really. Think you might stop pretending?

Economic extraction: Wait, do you mean big box "dark" stores want property tax breaks that aren't available to indie businesses? I'm shocked. SHOCKED.

You know, principles and shit.

I've arranged Stacy Mitchell's tweets in essay format. As Mitchell notes, the discussion goes back several years, and here's one of ours on the topic; it was another fruitless attempt to convince Develop New Albany to lead discussions that actually matter to local independent business owners.

Challenges for independent local businesses include one-way streets and Big Box tax evasion.

It's always worth re-examining the consequences of civic and corporate greed colliding.

---

Big-box retailers like Walmart & Target are not economic development. They’re a form of economic extraction. Always have been. Now they’re engaged in a new phase of extraction that’s costing communities even more.

In 21 states, big-box retailers are contesting their property values — claiming their busy buildings are obsolete & thus worth very little. They’re getting their taxes slashed & often winning huge refunds for previous payments.

This tactic is crippling the finances of many local governments, forcing homeowners & small businesses to pay higher tax bills.

In Texas, for example, the state’s comptroller says cities and schools will lose $2.6 billion in revenue per year because of big retailers' “dark store” property tax claims.

(As an aside: this has been strangely slow to get media notice. We wrote the first national story way back in 2015 … Finally @CityLab and the @nytimes have done in-depth pieces recently.) 

I have mixed reactions on who to blame. On the one hand, the mega-retailers are nasty. They came in promising lots of tax revenue to these towns. But their goal has always been to extract as much as possible & leave as little money behind as they could.

On the other hand, many city officials have been so stupid about big-box stores. There was plenty of evidence 10-20 years ago that approving these stores was a bad idea.

Big-box stores drove massive consolidation in the retail sector. About 100k local retailers disappeared in a decade. More jobs were lost than created. Civic and social networks deteriorated as Main Street did.

This was all known at the time. There were published studies on the net job losses, for example. I wrote a book in 2006 called Big-Box Swindle. People like @SprawlBusters went around the country explaining the consequences of saying yes to Walmart’s store proposals.

Some places got it. Vermont said no to big-box retail in a sweeping way. Today VT has more small businesses per capita than any other state. And not a lot of vacant retail.

But most cities and towns, often over the objections of their residents, said yes, yes, yes to the big boxes. The main reason was all that tax revenue.

You don’t have to be expert in city finances to see why this was so dumb. Just think about it. First, sprawl is super expensive. Big box stores cost local governments a lot more in services, like road maintenance & police, than compact “Main Street” style districts do.

Second, even when they’re new, big-box stores generate far less tax revenue per acre than downtown and neighborhood business districts do. This is because parking lots have little value and their buildings are cheap too.

Walmart, Home Depot, Target – they all presented a very different picture to cities about how this was durable economic development. But city officials should have known better. It was not hard to see the truth. 

So this whole push the mega-retailers are making today to have their stores reassessed as basically worthless is them doing the big reveal on what was true all along. 

Well-built, multi-story, mixed used business districts can endure for centuries. They are durable, flexible, adaptable as things change. They are great habitat for incubating new entrepreneurs. They are great at nurturing social & civic engagement. 

More towns and cities should have defended these districts rather than handing over their future to big-box sprawl. 

But – and this is important – I want to be clear about what should happen now. As stupid as city officials were, communities should not be paying the price for Walmart’s wealth and dominance.

The “dark store” tactic these companies are using to slash their property taxes should be outlawed by state legislatures. There are bills in these states to do so. And then cities should pass a special tax on big-box stores to make up for all the additional costs they impose.

Finally, cities need to get wise to the fact that not all development is actually economic development. If it furthers the power of the biggest companies, it’s often extractive. 
‏
Here’s your first test, cities: Amazon. Extractive or additive? Should you give it subsidies? Should you shift your procurement to Amazon? Or should you call for vigorous antitrust action to check its power? 

In New Albany and the world: "Systemic, collaborative localization is ultimately the most effective antidote to authoritarianism."

It's a solid long read for a sultry Sunday.

Localization: a Strategic Alternative to Globalized Authoritarianism, by Helena Norberg-Hodge, (Resilience -- originally published by Local Futures)

For those who care about peace, equality and the future of the planet, the global political swing to the right over the past few years is deeply worrying. It has us asking ourselves, how did this happen? How did populism turn into such a divisive and destructive force? How did authoritarianism take over the political scene once again?

From my 40 years of experience working in both industrialized and land-based cultures, I believe the primary reason is globalization. When I say globalization, I mean the global economic system in which most of us now live – a system driven by continual corporate deregulation and shaped by neoliberal, capitalist ideologies. But globalization goes deeper than politics and the economy. It has profoundly personal impacts.

Under globalization, competition has increased dramatically, job security has become a thing of the past, and most people find it increasingly difficult to earn a livable wage. At the same time, identity is under threat as cultural diversity is replaced by a consumer monoculture worldwide. Under these conditions it’s not surprising that people become increasingly insecure. As advertisers know from nearly a century of experience, insecurity leaves people easier to exploit. But people today are targeted by more than just marketing campaigns for deodorants and tooth polish: insecurity leaves them highly vulnerable to propaganda that encourages them to blame the cultural “other” for their plight.

Let me illustrate how this happened in Ladakh, or Little Tibet, where I first visited as a young woman and where I have worked for over four decades ...

snip

 ... To reverse this trend, neither a politics of identity, nor of conventional ‘left’ versus ‘right’ politics, is sufficient. Instead, we need to fundamentally change the structural economic forces at the root of the problem. Those forces have been unleashed by the deregulation of global banks and corporations, and reversing that process is our best hope for peace and stability.

In order to see how corporate deregulation has led to a breakdown of democracy, to increasing fundamentalism and violence, and to the rise of far-right political leaders, it is vitally important that we see the broader connections that mainstream analyses generally ignore.

snip

The rise of authoritarianism is just one of many interrelated impacts of economic globalization. Today’s global economy heightens economic insecurity, fractures communities, and undermines individual and cultural identity – thereby creating conditions that are ripe for the rise of authoritarian leaders. If globalization’s environmental costs – climate change, desertification, flooding – are allowed to rise, we can expect ever larger waves of refugees that will further destabilize nation-states while straining their willingness, as well as their ability, to act humanely.

The most strategic way to address all of these crises is to immediately begin scaling down and decentralizing economic activity, giving communities and local economies the ability to meet as many of their own needs as possible, including the human need for connection.

The movement for economic localization will require many facets of strategic change-making: the spread of awareness, dynamic political campaigning, enlightened grassroots action and international collaboration. This may seem inadequate to the scale of the crises we face, but the banner of localization has the potential to engage huge numbers of people from both sides of the traditional political spectrum, and to bring together hundreds of single-issue campaigns. It enables us to move past the “blame game” and the antagonistic divisions caused by confusion and fear-mongering, instead uniting us in a common cause underpinned by big picture understanding of the common roots of our many crises. In this way, systemic, collaborative localization is ultimately the most effective antidote to authoritarianism.

This is for you, self-styled local 'progressives': "To Find Alternatives to Capitalism, Think Small."

It's a long read, but worth the effort.

To Find Alternatives to Capitalism, Think Small, by David Bollier (The Nation)

Why co-ops, regional currencies, and hackerspaces are pointing the way toward a new economic vision.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shocking election victory, a shattered Democratic Party and dazed progressives agree on at least one thing: Democrats must replace Republicans in Congress as quickly as possible. As usual, however, the quest to recapture power is focused on tactical concerns and political optics, and not on the need for the deeper conversation that the 2016 election should have provoked us to have: How can we overcome the structural pathologies of our rigged economy and toxic political culture, and galvanize new movements capable of building functional alternatives?

Since at least the 1980s, Democrats have accepted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the free-market “progress” narrative—the idea that constant economic growth with minimal government involvement is the only reliable way to advance freedom and improve well-being. Dependent on contributions from Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Big Pharma, the Democratic Party remains incapable of recognizing our current political economy as fundamentally extractive and predatory. The party’s commitment to serious change is halfhearted, at best.

While the mainstream resistance to Trump is angry, spirited, and widespread, its implicit agenda, at least on economic matters, is more to restore a bygone liberal normalcy than to forge a new vision for the future. The impressive grassroots resistance to Trump may prove to be an ambiguous gift. While inspiring fierce mobilizations, the politicization of ordinary people, and unity among an otherwise fractious left, it has thus far failed to produce a much-needed paradigm shift in progressive thought.

This search for a new paradigm is crucial as the world grapples with some profound existential questions: Is continued economic growth compatible with efforts to address the urgent dangers of climate change? If not, what does this mean for restructuring capitalism and reorienting our lives? How can we reap the benefits of digital technologies and artificial intelligence without exacerbating unemployment, inequality, and social marginalization? And how shall we deal with the threats posed by global capital and right-wing nationalism to liberal democracy itself?

Or, what most self-styled local "progressives" aren't doing as they emphasize gestures over content.

Instead of trying to reassemble the broken pieces of the old order, progressives would be better off developing a new vision more suited to our times. There are already a number of projects that dare to imagine what a fairer, eco-friendly, post-growth economy might look like. But these valuable inquiries often remain confined within progressive and intellectual circles. Perhaps more to the point, they are too often treated as thought experiments for someone else to implement. “Action causes more trouble than thought,” the artist Jenny Holzer has noted. What is needed now are bold projects that attempt to demonstrate, rather than merely conceptualize, effective solutions.

THE BEER BEAT: Indie, not craft, because "There is absolutely NOTHING 'independent' about AB/InBev."

It gladdens this curmudgeon's heart to see another principled columnist -- in this case, The Pour Fool -- embrace a personal change in terminology.

I haven't gone cold turkey on the "craft" descriptor, and find myself using the word here and there (usually in quotation marks, as intended to emphasis the escalating irony), but zero tolerance is a worthy goal to which we might aspire.

As an aside: My current desire to get back into the pub business is being predicated toward what I consider to be "better" beer -- much of it "indie," some "craft"; some retro chic and classics.

At any rate, Pour Fool rocks.

“INDIE BEER”: Change is the Best Weapon, by stevefoolbody (The Pour Fool)

... But the term “indie” – short, of course, for “independent” – is a claim that AB/InBev and the BudMillerCoors brands they now control can never plausibly make. There is absolutely NOTHING “independent” about AB/InBev. They’ll work out a rationalization for it eventually, of course; something along the lines of “Hey, we’re independent! Nobody owns any part of our company but us!” But that claim is so patently ridiculous that you’d have to have the IQ of lawn trimmings to even consider it. “Craft” does, in fact, describe the process at Bud’s breweries; maybe not in the same sense as at Dogfish and Stone and Jolly Pumpkin and Lawson’s, but it is inarguable that brewing is a “craft” and that AB does practice that craft, even if it is in a fucked-up, mechanized, soulless, billion-gallon batch, freakazoid manner. “Indie” means what it says: A small, independent, self-perpetuating business enterprise that relies on no corporate sugar-daddy for its survival. It is certainly true that not all of us involved in the “craft beer culture” can agree on what a “craft brewery” is but one thing about which there is NO argument is that a craft brewery is NOT a subsidiary of any larger corporate entity, being kept afloat by their owners’ deep pockets. It’s about the pride in ownership and creativity that has been the hallmark of America’s craft breweries since the whole phenomenon started. It is about not having business and aesthetic decisions influenced by board rooms full of gabardine-clad, Windsor-knotted, bean-countin’ shit-weasels, as is absolutely the case with AB.

A little more than a year ago (February 16, 2016), I was on much the same tangent.

---

Craft Beer is dead. Long live Indie Beer. It's about "supporting local small business rather than a global entity."

To me, "craft" beer's conceptual basis always has been, and should remain, localism.

The inevitable rejoinder: "You're not using local ingredients, therefore you're not local." However, just as there are many styles of beer, there are differing ways of principled thinking.

The finished value of any product can be the result of individualized local creativity rather than widespread, industrialized production; accordingly, a substantial local component is present even if local hops are not. After all, beer doesn't often brew itself.

This isn't the most important point, because an independently-owned local brewery is an independently-owned local business, and the positive economic factors for independent local businesses in their communities are one and the same.

Sorry, but if you're buying Goose Island at Wal-Mart, you might be missing the point in multiple areas. Let's work to make shift happen -- indie breweries, indie middlemen.

Often I've pointed to organizations like AMIBA and BALLE, and asked skeptics to visit their web sites and consider the information therein. My impression is this seldom happens, probably because it takes less time to post a selfie with Bourbon County than read a few pages of economic facts.

Bizarrely, unfamiliarity with the economic realities of independent local business might be expected of consumers in general, but often it's something not understood by folks who own their own small businesses. Must we cut our own throats?

Meanwhile, I like this vibe coming out of San Diego. May it take root, and convince readers to go back to first principles.

Craft is dead. Now we drink Indie Beer: As Big Beer creeps into town, locals want to change the lingo, by Ian Anderson (San Diego Reader)

The term Craft Beer may be in need of a makeover. The Union-Tribune reported this week that Bend, Oregon's 10 Barrel Brewing Co. has proposed a 10,000-square-foot brewpub in East Village. In response, local beer industry podcasters have doubled down on a push to describe independently owned breweries as Indie Beer companies, rather than craft.

A couple of individuals have tried to coin the term Indie Beer before, but they had different reasons.

Not because 10 Barrel hails from Oregon but because in 2014 the company was purchased by AB InBev, the conglomerate responsible for one-third of the planet's beer supply, including core brands Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois. It owns 10 Barrel brewpubs in Oregon and Idaho and recently announced plans for one in Denver.

The podcasters' believe consumers who patronize 10 Barrel brewpubs mistakenly believe they are supporting small business rather than a global entity ...

Challenges for independent local businesses include one-way streets and Big Box tax evasion.

Break the chains, build local power.

On the eve of another monthly merchant meeting (Tuesday morning, 8:30 a.m., Cafe 157 at the corner of Main and Bank), here's a look back at a discussion starter from February.

Thursday Must Read Part 1: Upsides and downsides in a national independent business survey.

 ... Public policy challenges, eh?

In New Albany, one virulent 800-lb public policy gorilla is downtown's one-way street grid, which study after study has proven to be harmful to the interests of small, local, independently-owned businesses.

And yet, more than a few business owners in New Albany either don't wish to "rock" the boat, or worse, to take the time to understand the issues involved.

Think about it: If one-way streets hurt businesses like yours, then they do so 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Conversely, reversion to two-way would help your business -- 24 hours a day, every day of the year. You're fighting a battle with one arm tied behind your back -- by the city itself. The fact that the likes of Bob Caesar lobbies against reform should be the clearest possible indication that reform is both correct and necessary.

In addition, coming on the heels of today's previous post ("The dirty little secret of big box development – and it’s really not a secret – is that the buildings are designed to be abandoned"), here's another look at the big-box tail wagging the dog.

For Cities, Big-Box Stores Are Becoming Even More of a Terrible Deal, by Olivia LaVecchia (Institute for Local Self-Reliance)

Big-box retailers’ new tactic to slash their taxes is the latest example of why cities are better off saying no to the boxes and cultivating Main Streets instead.

... Marquette has been hit hard by a tactic that the country’s biggest retailers are using to slash their property taxes. Known as the “dark store” method, it exemplifies the systematic way that these chains extract money from local governments. It’s also the latest example of the way that, even as local governments across the country continue to bend over backwards to attract and accommodate big-box development, these stores are consistently a terrible deal for the towns and cities where they locate.

Because ... without principles and a system of values prefacing independent small business ownership, why work so damned hard?

Shouldn't local government be helping, not pushing back?

"If globalization is the hallmark of today’s mainstream economy, relocalization is the hallmark of the alternative."

Photo credit: Community Matters

"The plan to build better, more connected, flourishing communities is here—and it won’t require putting a Starbucks on every block."

It's funny the authors should mention Starbucks, seeing as I'd just mentioned the coffee giant on social media.

Rather than becoming aesthetically outraged by the cookie cutter chains (Starbucks hates Jesus, Chick-fil-A is anti-gay) why not ignore the distractions and come to the point: They're bad for your community economically. Follow the money, not the matador's cape. Independent local businesses are better for the local economy. More money stays here and recirculates. When you shift spending to the local economy, you're making a genuine difference. To repeat: Follow the money ... and death to chains. Enjoy your Monday.

A good discussion followed, which did not neglect oft-noted expressions of dissent, with varying degrees of relevance: "But I like chains," and "big companies create jobs and give back, too," and "localism is the new mercantilism."

Subsequently, Jeff G helpfully pointed to the following article, which outlines the parameters of a localist's alternative. It's what I was saying throughout the mayoral campaign, albeit nowhere near as clearly as stated here. It's what we've discussed for years in the context of organizations like AMIBA and writers such as Michael Shuman.

Excerpts are provided below, but PLEASE CLICK THROUGH AND READ THE ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY, especially if you're an independent local business owner. Nothing can be done to change the fact that we've just now re-elected a cadre of politicians and functionaries willfully ignorant of these principles, but even they cannot impede our progress at a grassroots level if -- it's a big "if" -- we decide to unify, organize and bypass them.

I've underlined a few key passages.

7 Paths to Development That Bring Neighborhoods Wealth, Not Gentrification, by Marjorie Kelly and Sarah McKinley (Yes Magazine)

In cities across the nation, a few enjoy rising affluence while many struggle to get by.

An August 2015 study by The Century Foundation reported that—after a dramatic decline in concentrated poverty between 1990 and 2000—poverty has since reconcentrated. Nationwide, the number of people living in high-poverty ghettos and slums has nearly doubled since 2000. This situation is created in part by the practices of traditional economic development, which prioritize corporate subsidy after corporate subsidy over the needs of the local economy. Current trends threaten to worsen, unless we can answer the design challenge before us.

Can we create an economic system—beginning at the local level—that builds the wealth and prosperity of everyone?

Economic development professionals and mayors are working in partnership with foundations, anchor institutions, unions, community organizations, progressive business networks, workers, and community residents. What’s emerging is a systems approach to creating an inclusive, sustainable economy where all can thrive. The work is place-based, fed by the power of anchor institutions, and built on locally rooted and broadly held ownership. It’s about building community wealth across the United States—in more places than most would imagine, a new kind of economy is beginning to appear. It’s an economy that, because of its fundamental design, tends naturally to create inclusion and prosperity for many, not simply for the few.

1. Place
2. Ownership
3. Multipliers
4. Collaboration
5. Inclusion
6. Workforce
7. System

The seven drivers of community wealth building work together. Starting with a devotion to a place, this approach builds on local assets of many kinds. At the heart of it all is an inclusive focus on the needs of low-income families, people of color, and those with barriers to employment. The end goal is a new system that helps broadly held community wealth to flourish.

The feds aren't alone in punishing small business, and locally, shift needs to happen.

Photo credit: Thought Pollution

Updated: Full text now reprinted below.

There is a persistent fallacy that small, local, independent business owners walk the earth with palms upturned, in search of easy handouts from government. It isn't true, and they don't -- although try to find larger corporations who'll be willing to even consider operating locally without the usual lush panoply of tax abatements and incentives.

In my experience, the vast majority of small, local, independent business operators seek only a level playing field, and for local government to maintain it. That's why we have police and fire departments. It's why using city streets to support grassroots economic development (the Speck plan) makes more sense than their continued existence as high-speed, pass-through routes. It's why the way we calculate sewer rates actually matters.

As it stands, New Albany's policies toward economic development sadly mirror Mitchell's central theme: They favor the bigger and more powerful, to the general exclusion of the smaller and more entrepreneurial.

Not a single Resch, Chalfant or Carter has received sewer tap-in waivers as they've invested millions in property rehabilitation, but one Indianapolis company has been given more than 150 waivers as incentive to build on the former Coyle site.

This isn't a level playing field. Not at all.

Conversely, economic localization reflects a commitment to self-sufficiency and sustainability, while also leveraging the community's chief assets in terms of talent and effort. It reinforces what makes us special, and what works right here, on the ground. It's another example of shift happening, and begs for encouragement.

When I'm mayor, you'll be seeing considerably more of it.

How Washington Punishes Small Business, by Stacy Mitchell and Fred Clements (Wall Street Journal)

Lawmakers love to talk about the little guy, but their policies routinely favor the big and powerful.

... Small businesses hold a special place in the American political imagination for reasons that go far beyond their ability to create jobs and nurture healthy neighborhoods. Two centuries ago, our forefathers and mothers dumped thousands of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor to protest British policies that gave the powerful East India Company an advantage over local tea merchants.

Ever since then we’ve rightly viewed independent businesses as essential to liberty and democracy, a safeguard against the tyranny of concentrated power. It’s time that lawmakers reflect that value, not only in their rhetoric, but in their actions.

Following is the full text of Mitchell's opinion.

Small business looms large in American political rhetoric. From the campaign trail to the floor of the U.S. House and Senate, members of Congress love to evoke the diner and dry cleaner, the neighborhood grocer and local hardware store. Ensuring the well-being of Main Street, we might easily assume, is one of their central policy aims.

The legislative track record tells another story. It is one in which the interests of big corporations are dominant, and many laws and regulations seem designed to bend the marketplace in their favor and put small, independent businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

Since the late 1990s, the overall market share of firms with fewer than 100 employees has fallen from 33% to 28%, according to U.S. Census data. There are nearly 80,000 fewer small retailers today than in 1999. Starting a new business also appears to have become harder. Despite their prominence in our tech-fueled imagination, the number of startups created annually fell by about 20% between the 1970s and the 2000s, Census data shows.

Dismissing these trends as merely the product of market forces misses the powerful way that government policy has tilted the playing field.

A report last month by the research organization Good Jobs First, for example, found that two-thirds of the $68 billion in business grants and special tax credits awarded by the federal government over the past 15 years went to big corporations. State and local economic development incentives are similarly skewed. While the members our business associations—mostly independent retailers—must finance their own growth, one of their biggest competitors, Amazon, has received $330 million in tax breaks and other subsidies to fund its new warehouses. Indiana, for example, gave the company a $5 million tax credit to open a distribution center in 2009.

Multinational companies also benefit from a host of tax loopholes. A local pharmacy or bike shop cannot stash profits in a Bermuda shell company or undertake a foreign “inversion.” The result is that small businesses pay an effective federal tax rate that is several points higher on average than that paid by big companies, according to a Small Business Administrationstudy from 2009.

At a time when price competition is fierce and margins razor thin, these cost differences have a real impact on the ability of small businesses to survive. Yet efforts to reform corporate subsidies and close tax loopholes have gone nowhere.

Congress’s tacit support for further consolidation in the banking system is also undermining small independent businesses. From our perspective, local community banks are the most important part of the financial system, because they supply the lion’s share of small business loans. Yet Congress hasn’t lifted a finger as more than 500 have collapsed since 2008, according to federal data, swept away by the aftermath of a financial crisis they didn’t create.

Our members are feeling these losses. When we surveyed them earlier this year, of those looking to grow, nearly one in three reported being unable to secure a loan.

Rather than addressing this shortage of credit, and the decline of local banks at its root, the House passed a bill in January rolling back Dodd-Frank restrictions on Wall Street’s ability to hold collateralized loan obligations and trade derivatives outside of clearinghouses. The title of the bill, believe it or not, is the “Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act.”

Even the Small Business Administration doesn’t seem to have the backs of small businesses these days. The agency has steadily expanded its definition of “small” in a way that has shifted its support away from the businesses that are truly small. While the agency’s overall loan portfolio has grown, the number of small-dollar business loans backed by the agency—those under $150,000—fell by two-thirds between 2005 and 2013, from 74,000 loans to just 25,000.

During this time the SBA guaranteed thousands of loans to low-wage fast-food franchises, often with high failure rates. Over the last decade, the agency backed loans to 1,969 Quiznos sandwich outlets, 787 Cold Stone Creamery stores, and 129 Blimpie sub shops. Altogether more than 40% of these outlets failed. The only winners in these deals were the big franchise parent companies, which earned fees from each of these new outlets without incurring any risk or liability when the franchisees failed and defaulted on their loans.

Small businesses hold a special place in the American political imagination for reasons that go far beyond their ability to create jobs and nurture healthy neighborhoods. Two centuries ago, our forefathers and mothers dumped thousands of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor to protest British policies that gave the powerful East India Company an advantage over local tea merchants.

Ever since then we’ve rightly viewed independent businesses as essential to liberty and democracy, a safeguard against the tyranny of concentrated power. It’s time that lawmakers reflect that value, not only in their rhetoric, but in their actions.

Ms. Mitchell is co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and coordinates the Advocates for Independent Business (AIB), a coalition of 15 national small business organizations. Mr. Clements is executive director of the National Bicycle Dealers Association, a founding member of AIB.

Word: "Modern corporate capitalism is anything but natural."

Relating Atkins' eloquently simple reminder to the local scene, it's an election year.

Among the likely candidates for mayor, both hopefuls running as Democrats -- Jeff "Corporate Welfare" Gahan and David "My Career in Big Biz" White -- adhere to the "natural economy" myth punctured here.

The eventual chosen Republican, whether Dale Bagshaw or Steve Burks or Mark Seabrook (maybe he's calculating odds again, maybe not) will accept the inevitability of "natural market forces" as holy writ; in Burks' case, it'll be so tightly wrapped with scripture that Jesus will be swaddled in Armani.

In short: They're all conservatives, differing only by tiny incremental degrees.

Then there's me. I've never been much for "if you can't beat them, join them." Insofar as possible, I'd rather shift toward playing by different, localized rules. If we accept New Albany as a construct personifying "wonderfully and delightfully us," then I favor keeping our resources here as often as possible, and seeing just how wonderful and delightful we can be.

Corporations are Artificial, Too, by David Atkins ("Political Animal" blog at Washington Monthly)

... But there’s another key lie in the conservative “natural economy” story, which is that modern corporate capitalism is anything but natural. It’s an artificial system encoded arbitrarily into law and interpreted in a specific way that tends to give maximum advantage to executive and shareholders at the expense of society.

ON THE AVENUES: Pardon me as I hoist this middle finger in the general direction of anti-local “craft” beer unconsciousness.

ON THE AVENUES: Pardon me as I hoist this middle finger in the general direction of anti-local “craft” beer unconsciousness.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

After a dozen years of stasis, the Southern Indiana brewing community is rapidly expanding.

In Jeffersonville, Red Yeti’s fermenters are being filled, and Flat12’s taproom on the riverfront is coming soon, with the Indianapolis-based company’s on-site brewery to follow in 2015.

New Albany’s Donum Dei near NABC on Grant Line Road should be open any minute, and the Wrecker project on Market Street is somewhere on the horizon. NABC’s two breweries are separately licensed by the state of Indiana, and so Floyd and Clark counties (population 190,000 combined) might soon have six breweries, which is fairly significant on a per capita basis.

This welcomed growth spurt revives an old question: Has “craft” (or “better”) beer actually changed the consciousness of America’s beer-drinking mainstream?” Note that it isn’t clear whether mainstream consciousness ever should be the desired outcome in any such consideration, much less one involving beer.

Overall, certain aspects of elevated better beer consciousness can be easily verified. Availability is wider than ever before, and most Americans live in close proximity to a post-1980s generation brewer, even if the average measurement is skewed by bountiful Michigan as compared to threadbare Mississippi.

Tellingly, America’s copycat multinational brewers are quite conscious of “craft” beer’s escalating popularity. By means of imitation and outright, unrepentant piracy – these being the only recourse for corporate regimes cruelly deprived of any semblance of a creative gene – mass-market mockrobrews (Blue Moon, Shock Top) and zombie craft beers absorptions like Goose Island, Blue Point and 10 Barrel now are routinely positioned to distract and obfuscate.

Obviously, there is much work left to be done in fostering better beer consciousness, particularly given the persistent examples of cognitive dissonance in the “craft” beer consciousness we have now.

A prime example of this incongruity is the unwillingness of so many self-credentialed craft beer enthusiasts to differentiate between "craft and crafty." The emerging cult of solipsistic beer narcissism cravenly averts its eyes from Trojan Goose’s shelf-space-seeking zombie drone strategy even though it ranks as the most patently obvious bait-and-switch maneuver since door-to-door driveway resealing, and exists only to shift money from the delusional to faraway corporate shareholders.

The solution is localized better beer consciousness, which is nearer than Leuven to home.

---

To me, the most disquieting aspect of consumer behavior as it pertains to better beer, and the phenomenon that Southern Indiana’s newcomers soon will face, is what I like to call anti-local “craft” beer unconsciousness.

Spitefulness of this magnitude is doubly annoying given my core daily interest in situating the better beer movement as a component of economic localization, thereby reorienting the beer revolution to its genuine founding point of origin.

Better beer hardly exists in a vacuum. An understanding of localism in non-beer terms comes first, and is the foundation upon which the local “craft” beer ethos rests. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this principled bedrock foundation is one of constant movement, because shift happens.

Shift is perhaps the single, fundamental tenet of emerging local economies. In my own household, having acknowledged the efficacy of buying local as factually measured by indices proving that localism keeps more money in one’s community, we practice an ongoing, incremental shift toward local sources of goods and services, whenever it is practical.

Shift is a process, not an all-or-nothing religious crusade, and when it comes time to have a beer, the concept of shift means putting this principle into liquid practice by patronizing local and regional breweries as often as possible. And yet, for some consumers, “local” and “inferior” remain synonymous terms. Why is this the case?

Interestingly, quite apart from local beer, there is a contrasting reaction to “buying local” when we speak of the retail sector: Hardware, groceries, clothing, floral arrangements and the like. I hear it often:

"But wait: You cannot compel me to spend more money than I wish to spend."

Sorry, but this dog won’t hunt. Numerous studies have addressed the perception that buying local entails higher expense to the consumer. Price variances typically are not as profound as imagined, if they exist at all. What doubters probably mean to say is that they cannot be compelled to surrender the big box, exurban shopping ease of finding all consumables under one roof – and that’s a far different topic, one falling outside my parameters.

However, when it comes to beer, independent small brewers seldom hear objections about price. “Craft” beer enthusiasts of all stripes usually grasp the fiscal implications of high quality ingredients, smaller economies of scale, and artisanal methods. Rather, a different and far less readily explicable form of pushback occurs in the context of local beer and brewing.

How about some locally brewed beer, guys?

“No, because you cannot compel me to drink poor quality beer. Only the best for me, you know."

This reply never fails to befuddle me. I’m a trained BJCP beer judge, and after thirty years in the beer business, I’ve been around the block a few times – just ask my liver.

My beers of choice these days invariably are drawn from “everyday” beers as made by small, local breweries, and I’m invariably reminded of their tasty suitability. On those rare occasions when there is a quality problem, I’m constructively honest in identifying it, and if possible, proposing a solution. Without dialogue, there cannot be a community.

Without community, very little about “craft” beer interests me, because better beer consciousness isn’t me against the world.

It’s us against the world.

Unfortunately, the quality of local beer is never quite enough for the cult of solipsistic beer narcissism. Localism by definition cannot ever be “sexy” enough to justify a variant of devotion sated only through insularity, exclusivity and the next greatest adrenalin rush. Local beer is attacked on the basis of poor quality, but in reality, it is being damned for being a provincial affront to a faux cosmopolitan, masturbatory values system.

No straw men are being erected here.

Beer snobbery is a self-inflicted malady and a debilitating influence, from which I continue to recover, every single day. I used to be just as bad as them. Happily, consciousness is subject to evolution, and so is conscience. When I look back at my career in beer, I see periodic epochs of the same self-indulgence I’m freely skewering here, but narcissism never was my gig, and beer expertise isn’t about hoarding.

Rather, it’s about sharing, teaching and community-building.

The glib and disdainful attitude that local beer cannot ever be good enough represents both misplaced elitism and condescending snobbery. Beer as we know it does not exist outside societal, historical or ethical contexts. Better beer consciousness exists within a place and a community, and if we wish our community – any community -- to prosper, we must begin by acknowledging its locality.

Southern Indiana’s growing brewing community makes us different, but it also helps us to define ourselves. They’re not competition; they’re brethren, and I’ve got their backs. When the solipsistic narcissists talk their inevitable smack, I’ll be right here to answer it.

That's because deeply-held principles are punk-proof.

Denver localism: "I'm not a beer snob. I just prefer to drink good beer."

It's worth noting that the Mile High Business Alliance in Denver is not an organization strictly dedicated to locally brewed beer. It merely sees locally brewed beer as an apt expression of localism in a more comprehensive sense ... and it is.

While politicians and pundits trade theories on how to stimulate the economy, the folks at Mile High Business Alliance are digging in and doing it.

The Alliance maintains that every dollar spent locally circulates at least three times more than one spent with a non-locally owned corporation or chain. Through programs such as the Colorado Local First Campaign and Local Flavor Guides, which celebrate the character of neighborhoods such as LoHi and SoBo. MHBA encourages everyone to direct at least 10 percent of their spending to businesses that sprout from Colorado soil.

The organization also maintains a user-friendly online guide to Colorado businesses. True, MHBA doesn't yet represent all 500,000 of the locally owned businesses in Colorado. But their clever campaigns ("My local coffee shop can kick your corporate coffee shop's ass," reads one MHBA-produced poster) spread awareness about the power of how and where we spend our dollars.

It perfectly encapsulates my viewpoint as to the marriage of localism and better beer.

The competitive advantage of localism.

"As seen on TV"

Just yesterday I was contemplating the yearly cost of a 1950s-era sidewalk spread out over six decades.

ON THE AVENUES: You actually can get something for nothing.

The point I’m making is that from an economic development standpoint, the city of New Albany has leveraged its blessed downtown indie “renaissance” on virtually nothing, compared with what it routinely spends on industrial park space and chain retail enfluffment.

Okay, true; "enfluffment" isn't a real word. It sounds good, though. What's it like, anyway?

Opinion: The competitive advantage of local, by Michael H. Shuman (The Vancouver Sun)

 ... Despite endless hype about the wonders of the global economy, non-local businesses in North America have not increased their relative presence or power.

The performance by local businesses is remarkable, given that public officials and economic developers essentially tried to kill them. The vast majority of economic-development spending in North America, for example, is to “attract and retain” global companies. The impact of these subsidies, if not the intent, is to make small business less competitive.

Even if foolish public policies remain in place, there are deeper trends in the global economy that actually are increasing the competitiveness of small, local business.

The Potable Curmudgeon at LouisvilleBeer.com: "Getting Our Shift Together."

If you're just tuning in, I'm still writing beer columns: Twice monthly for LouisvilleBeer.com, and quarterly for Food and Dining Magazine.

When it comes to craft beer, the implications of economic localization and shift are increasingly obvious.

You needn’t digest them all at once. Little sips work just fine.

Getting Our Shift Together

Political stump speeches differ very little from religious sermons, and that’s probably why we call it a bully pulpit, not a milk crate.

However, a soapbox might be useful, or better yet, a couple cases of Bud Light in tall cans, because if the pet shampoo is too disgusting to drink, at least you can stand atop it and preach.

(By the way, President Theodore Roosevelt was the originator of the “bully pulpit” usage. Roosevelt was one of the last and best examples of a species now extinct, the progressive Republican)

During these past few years at the bully pulpit, I’ve endeavored to echo two important, recurring themes – economic localization and shift – because both notions should be of interest to the well-informed craft beer drinker, even if their foundations are rooted elsewhere.

Worth remembering: "Top 10 Reasons to Support Locally Owned Businesses."

We've been there before, so let's go there again.

Institute for Local Self Reliance

1. Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.

3. Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.

5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

7. Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

8. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

9. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

10. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

Why buy local? LIBA provides a helpful and timely answer.

(From LIBA)

Why Buy Local?

TO KEEP IT WEIRD: Locally-owned businesses are one-of-a-kind enterprises that are vital to the unique character of the Louisville Metro community.

TO KEEP YOUR $ LOCAL:

Read the rest of the story here.

Get your shift together.

For the principles behind the message, visit the American Independent Business Alliance website, and get your shift together.

Plaid Friday 2: "Holidays test Indiana woman's 'buy local' strategy."

Seems like we were here just yesterday. We wuz ... we wuz here yesterday: "Buy thoughtfully and support our entrepreneurs and community businesses."

There's thoughtful, and then there's ...

But let's go back to thoughtful. Kate's in the newspaper.

Holidays test Indiana woman's 'buy local' strategy, by Jere Downs (Courier-Journal)

In June, Kate Caufield traded her routine of shopping at Kohl’s, Target and Kroger with meals at Subway or McDonald’s for a “buy local” habit. Christmas shopping, however, has tested that mission while she strives to find gifts first from homegrown sources in and around New Albany.

Locally owned food sources include Rainbow Blossom. Clothing has been purchased from Mariposa Fine Consignments on Pearl Street, while coffee comes from Quills on Market Street. Salon Strandz is nearby on Vincennes Street for hair care and makeup.

Then the holidays arrived, which has been an extra challenge with two children, ages 6 and 9, and family members not invested in the idea of meeting all their needs via local merchants.

New Albany's inaugural Indie Fest was a blast with a message about localism.

Big thanks to PC Home Center, which performed a last-minute chair delivery for Lloyd's Landing. It was our first occasion to use the new and evolving outdoor area, and early returns look positive.

Brendan Zubrowski of Crossroad Vintners offered samples from the Willett line of bourbon and rye. He went non-stop from 2 - 5 p.m., after which Chef Matt executed a stupendous Willett Bourbon Dinner.

Weather was ideal, and a very small number of volunteers pulled off a first-year event with the minimum of support from the city. Pardon me for editorializing, but it would have been nice for a few elected officials to observe the principles of localism put into practice in an event like this one, but in the end, New Albany's indie businesses will continue to walk the walk even if the CM CeeSaws of our city can't grasp that it applies to them, too.

I'm proud to be associated with NA First, and if you are an indie businessperson in New Albany, it is time to get with the localism program, so that just maybe we can progress through the exercise of collective action in a manner seldom possible through supposedly rugged individualism.

Folks, that's not socialism. If you're an independent small business owner, it's just plain common sense.

“The major policy recommendation from the report was that the city require an economic impact study [for large formula businesses].”

I have a recurring fantasy, in which each city council member must read an article like this one and provide a cogent summary in real English words without resorting to memes or crayons.

We all know who'd be up to the task, who'd skip class (redevelopment meetings, anyone?) and which household's dogs would be fed the homework along with the usual kibbles and bits.

But hey, what's another Wal-Mart among non-Democrat Democrats and exurban-envying Republicans?

How San Francisco is Dealing With Chains, by Stacy Mitchell (Institute for Local Self-Reliance)

No other large American city has done as much to check the spread of chain stores as San Francisco. Under a city law enacted in 2006, a “formula” retail store or restaurant cannot open in any of the city’s neighborhood commercial districts unless it undergoes a public hearing and obtains special approval from the Planning Commission.

The restrictions have helped San Francisco maintain a relatively vibrant independent retail sector. The city has twice as many independent bookstores per capita as New York. It is home to some 80 local hardware stores. It also boasts more than 900 independent retailers selling fresh food, including more than 50 locally owned grocery stores of at least 5,000 square feet.

But San Francisco’s policy has major gaps ...