Above is a link to AAA/Auto Club of NY re: Driver Training Offerings

(Make sure to scroll to bottom to take part in my poll)

My industry is that of providing safe, quality transportation to clients that book with that expectation. The ability to provide, what I feel is the key component “Safe” transportation, is determined by a number of factors. Most of these factors hinge upon the ability of the driver of their (the customer’s) car and the other drivers on the road at the moment). While my company and most other transportation providers require a “standard of safety”, which includes driver capability, testing, training and monitoring, unfortunately that requirement only impacts roughly 10% of the vehicles on the road, that is “professional” drivers whom are licensed as such. Our industry standards do not have impact on the greater majority of other drivers on the roads daily. While I have faith that almost everyone on the road means well and has the intention of moving between their destinations in a safe manner, it is their skill as a driver (or a higher power) that actually dictates most outcomes of driver travel. That most important skill set, which includes knowledge that isn’t being given proper and necessary attention, after a driver completes their involuntary 5 hour driver education during the process of getting their driver’s license for the 1st time. While this is truth in fact, I do not blame the average driver themself, I place that blame solely upon the shoulders of each state that issues and regulates driver licenses. Its my opinion that each agency should make continued driver education and remedial training a necessity for every individual to maintain a valid driver license. I know those reading this are already thinking “so I’m going to have to pay more to keep driving?” or “who is going to pay for this?”. Actually, we are already paying for it by the fees we pay to the DMV to maintain our driver licenses everyday and the insurance fees to keep our vehicles on the road. Each state agency has its own standard requirement on the fees it collects, Driver Education if offered by the local DMV’s – Dept. of Motor Vehicles could and would be at no cost to each driver (again as a standard requirement) . When we consider the cost for, increasing insurance premiums as a result of more unskilled drivers on the road having accidents, downtime for repairs when a vehicle is damaged in an accident and possible personal downtime due to injury or loss of life, the trade-off of requiring & providing education on the rules of the road and defensive driving techniques just makes sense!

In closing, how many times have those that are “good drivers” asked the question “what the heck is that person doing, do they know how to drive?” While forming your opinion on this posting consider how many times you’ve said that and/or how many times you may have avoided an accident due to the un-skilled driving of someone else. Our roadways are seeing more and more volume every day; safety & driver education/re-education needs to increase right along with the number of vehicles on the road!

Let me know what you think??  Take Our Poll

For more go to The Poughkeepsie Journal web-site link: http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120104/NEWS01/120104014/Cuomo-Investment-economic-development-tourism-key-2012?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|PoughkeepsieJournal.com

limomangary’s thoughts on the article and subject:

of course newt gingrich is going to make such a “radical statement” that pres. obama has failed. anyone that thinks this headline is a truly shocking statement has not been paying attention for the last 10 – 12 months. the republican party ran poor campaigns (presidency, senate, house) and got their heads handed to them in a clean sweep; their constituents (republican voters) are not in a good mood so now there must be a bombardment of ‘out-for-blood’ negative sentiment in order to regain trust that they plan to do something about it. in thinking more about the overall feelings about and within the republican party, let’s also not forget the choice by longtime GOP senator arlen spector, an Independent by thought and nature, to switch parties to democratic. remember you can be Independent on either side of the major party lines but his switch was one that is symbolic of the trouble within the republican party. while they’re making changes behind the scenes, fundamental changes and establishing the new faces of the party for 2010 and beyond, their political front has to posture like this! bare in mind ‘big politics’ is one of sentiment and trust, and if the constituency feels they can not trust their party leaders to do the job (tow the party line) then they either leave the party (following mr. spector) or don’t support the party as a whole. also don’t forget that immediately after the presidential election there were statements from the party about gaining the young vote and the necessity to step up such efforts. one of the greatest tools of catching the eye of young voters, on either side of party lines, is ‘shock and awe’. the younger generation rides the coat-tails of topics that energize them, having shock value (look no further than the success of reality t.v. shows, in mass droves, over the last 10 years their appeal to specifically the 18 - 30 year olds). don’t take this personally if this pertains to you as it is meant as a statement of generality; old & stodgy methodical ways once considered the backbone of politics no longer wins elections or support. it seems that the republican party is finally catching on in that matter. i am less concerned and interested in comments by gingrich and others like him and more concerned and interested in the behind the scenes activity i mentioned previously and the eventual ‘bringing to light’ of the newly formed republican party and the faces of the party in the next 2 years. eventually there will be the anti-obama from the ‘republican right’ that will stand toe-to-toe, the question is whether president obama and the democratic left will be prepared for a matching whirl-wind like the one they created in 2008.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/21/smallbusiness/banks_wary_of_arc_loans.smb/index.htm

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Small Business Administration plans to begin dispersing funds in mid-June for a new, highly anticipated emergency lending program, but don’t race off to the bank to fill out an application just yet. Many lenders are still sitting on the sidelines, waiting for more details from the SBA before they decide whether or not to participate.

“What is the economic incentive for banks to make these loans?” asked Arne Monson, president of Holtmeyer & Monson, a consulting firm that works with small business lenders.

That’s a question many potential participants are asking right now as they await formal guidelines from the SBA for the “America’s Recovery Capital” program. Created as part of the stimulus bill, the initiative aims to bring temporary relief to established small business suffering through the recession.

Borrowers can apply for interest-free loans of up to $35,000 to help cover their payments for six months on existing debt, with no repayment due on the ARC loan for 12 months. The loans will come from banks and other authorized lenders, but the SBA will offer those lenders a 100% guarantee on the loans – meaning that if the business owner defaults, the government foots the bill.

That’s great in theory, but potential lenders are wary of how it will play out. Banks have spent years wrangling with the SBA over the bureaucracy of collecting on the agency’s loan guarantees. ARC loans are intended to go to businesses that are “viable” but also suffering “financial hardship,” and until the SBA offers more specifics, bank officials say they are leery about making the correct call on which applicants they should green-light for loans.

“If there is a faulty closing or process at the bank level and SBA voids the guarantee – which has higher likelihood in this program – the bank will face a total loss at that point,” Monson noted.

Another concern for bankers: ARC loans are intended to be interest-free for borrowers, who will only have to repay the principal. That caused much grumbling in an online comment forum hosted by Coleman Publishing, a trade publisher for SBA lenders.

“‘Interest free to the borrower?’ Why would we do that?,” wrote one commenter.

“There needs to be greater clarification on what will motivate the banks to make these loans. We have scarce resources,” another banker wrote.

SBA officials say they expect lenders’ doubts to disappear as the agency finishes working out, and releases, more details on how the ARC loans will work. For example, while the SBA doesn’t yet know what interest rate it will pay banks for ARC loans, that amount won’t be zero. The agency will subsidize every loan, making some sort of interest payment to the banks on the borrower’s behalf.

Some banks will join the ARC program simply for the civic value of helping small business customers, but others say they won’t participate unless it’s in their financial interests to do so. One official at a major SBA lender, who declined to speak publicly, said that the loans’ small size and bureaucratic overhead mean they probably won’t be a “profitable, effective solution” for his bank.

Potential borrowers are also clamoring for specifics. The SBA hasn’t said yet said precisely which businesses and what kinds of debt will qualify for ARC loan relief, though it has begun filling in the outlines of its plan. This week the agency said it considers a “viable” small business to be one that has been profitable in at least one of the past three years. ARC loans can be used to pay down a line of credit, a credit card, or a bank loan, but the stimulus bill’s rules forbid the loans from being used to make payments on SBA-backed loans made before February of this year.

More details will be communicated to banks by June 8, according to SBA officials. The agency expects ARC loans to be available to borrowers by June 15.

That date can’t come soon enough for some potential applicants. “There’s no question this loan is a big issue for us,” said Jay Cullimore, president of Tropical Lights Inc., an online lighting retailer. “It’s been effort to stay alive and grow.”

After six years in business, Cullimore took out $20,000 line of credit in mid-2008 for his Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based business. Now, nearly a year later, his sales are down 50%, he’s had to lay off four employees, and the interest rate on his credit line has zoomed from 7% to 25%.

Cullimore approached his bank, which participates in the SBA’s loan-guarantee programs, for more details on ARC loans, but the bank was unable to give him any guidance on when or how he might be able to apply.

“I can’t believe any bank would be unhappy that I’d be able to pay down the line, but it feels like the SBA is an insider job,” Cullimore said. “If you don’t know people who are connected, you won’t get it.”

Borrowers can apply for an ARC loan from any lender that certified for participation in the SBA’s programs. If his own bank doesn’t get on board, Cullimore plans to seek a loan from another.

In the stimulus bill, Congress allocated $255 million to support the ARC loan program. That money covers only the program’s subsidies, for interest payments and defaults, allowing the money to stretch to support a larger dollar-volume of lending. The SBA is still calculating how much the program will be able to lend, but it forecasts that the ARC loans will be available to 10,000 small businesses.

“We believe the lenders are ready to go,” said Eric Zarnikow, the SBA’s associate administrator for capital access. “We believe many have been looking at portfolios and customers and good candidates for ARC loans already. We have the expectation they’ve already thought about it.”

Some have. At Webster Bankin Waterbury, Conn., Bob Polito is anxious to start making loans. He trusts the SBA to draw up reasonable policies, and he’s willing to settle for whatever interest rate the agency sets for the loans.

“We want to make sure [the ARC loans] are beneficial to us, but there’s also the goodwill aspect of just helping our borrowers,” said Polito, Webster Bank’s director of government-guaranteed lending. Come June 15, when the SBA begins backing ARC loans, he plans to pounce.

“I’ll be at my computer signed into the server at midnight to make sure we get those funds to borrowers who will benefit,” he said. “The only concern I have is that the funds will go too quickly.” 

limomangary’s thought and response on this article:

as i read this article i saw obvious points in which my level of confidence, in the possibility of this money reaching the hands of SBO’s (small business owner’s) most in need, grew smaller and smaller. the article reads of bankers, most but not all, that are not interested in offering bailout assistance to the SBO level of borrower. take a look at some of the quotes: the 1st two are from the blog & banker comments mentioned in this article

1. “‘Interest free to the borrower?’ Why would we do that?, wrote one commenter.”
2. “There needs to be greater clarification on what will motivate the banks to make these loans. We have scarce resources, another banker wrote.”
3. “One official at a major SBA lender, who declined to speak publicly, said that the loans’ small size and bureaucratic overhead mean they probably won’t be a “profitable, effective solution” for his bank.”

This quote in the article is especially troubling to me, read between the lines of the bolded area: “ARC loans are intended to go to businesses that are ‘viable’ but also suffering financial hardship, and until the SBA offers more specifics, bank officials say they are leery about making the correct call on which applicants they should green-light for loans.”

in other words this may turn out ot be another non-inclusionary program that really isn’t a bail out for the SBO’s, the ones that really need cash. these quotes show a general lack of interest in the small business arena by some of the same people that just accepted TARP money…money given to them for doing nothing but being a central part of the mess of things of this economy and the struggles most are enduring! if one can not see the “civic value”, as quoted by one person in this article, then they have no intrest in developing the communities in which their banks hold interest and locations. certainly they are in the money & paper business with the purpose of turning profits, but the sheer fact that a good number refuse to see beyond the need to float the major enterprise and reach down to the small biz that can possibly become an enterprise one day is just the sad state of our current system of capitalization. our country was founded and ascended to greatness because of capitalism but it was done so in a way that didn’t box out the people that could one day be a part of that cycle of growth thorugh capitalism. today there isn’t that same prevailing feeling and effort, even by some of the same people that just were handed $$$ to cure their mistakes!

most of this post has been dedicated to critical comments on matters within this article, but i do need to take a moment to commend guys like Bob Polito of Webster Bank in Connecticut on his comments: “We want to make sure [the ARC loans] are beneficial to us, but there’s also the goodwill aspect of just helping our borrowers,” said Polito, Webster Bank’s director of government-guaranteed lending. Come June 15, when the SBA begins backing ARC loans, he plans to pounce. I’ll be at my computer signed into the server at midnight to make sure we get those funds to borrowers who will benefit, he said. The only concern I have is that the funds will go too quickly.”  now whether his comments and efforts are altruistic, philanthropic, or even capitalistic he seems to “get it”; the “it” factor is to succeed in the future you need and want as many other people to do the same…there needs to be both people creating ideas and businesses and people with money to consume the products and services that are being provided, if too many people get left behind well then eventually everybody looses! i will still remain optimistic that the plan will come to fruition and prove beneficial; keep checking back to see what updates come down the pike.

Thanks again for stoping by the blog; here’s to prosperity for us all!

limomangary’s thought and response to the article:

As a small business owner currently boxed out of loans and deal flow because of a mess created by the people that were supposed to be smarter with letters like MBA & Ph.D behind their names. (I don’t begrudge them their success, rather I am distressed by such a colossal mess made and how difficult they have made things for the next generation of entrepreneurs) Let’s see if this newly introduced plan talked about in this article is actually a way for the distressed business to right it’s ship through an offering that actually takes into consideration that the business owner’s personal credit might now be in shambles because they so deeply believed in what they were creating and thus put all of their money in their business or that the business is distressed due to the current state of the economy? Will banks and SBA programs actually say we’ll help your small business based upon your idea and strong business plans and not based upon your current financial picture? To each we’ll see; I’ll be the 1st in line and will certainly report back on my findings, stay tuned….

As I see it and has been talked about for generations, the savvy investor looks for viable market penetration vs. entering a saturated market; that being the case many investment dollars and deal flow are not reaching under-served start-up & early-stage companies that operate in the service industry (keep in mind that of the world’s richest individuals, the industry most represented is service & or manufacturing of goods).

I would like to suggest that whether you are a major or minor investor, looking to buy low in this economy with potential to sell extremely high, you seek out companies that are service based that have strong development plans but are currently under-capitalized. Considering the current climate and call for entrepreneurship by our country’s new administration, the small company that is currently struggling and needs funding can be well positioned after weathering the storm. Those that are left standing will have endless possibilities for revenue generation when money begins to again hit the market and consumers begin to again loosen the purse straps.

Consider this fact that my early-stage company’s operation is within the 6.5 billion dollar Car & Limousine Service Industry, a 1% market capture rate translates into 65 million dollars in annual revenue.

I welcome any thoughts or comments, leave a comment on the blog or contact me:

garyt@expressionlimo.com / 845.453.2488

After reading some of the responses to this article on the U.S. Chamber website, I felt it necessary to write my own direct response to Mr. Donohue, below is that response. Here is the link to the article to see what others also had to say: http://www.uschambermagazine.com/content/090421.htm

Mr. Donohue,
I invite you to take a moment to view some of the recent posts and reactions on my blog about this article you wrote, here is the link:
http://limomangary.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/small- businesses-will-pave-the-road-to-recovery/

I am the owner of an early-stage car & limousine service that wants to build into a national service. I have been searching for funding for development, unsuccessfully for 18 months, because of the mess created by Washington, Wall Street, Banking Institutions, and the large industry giants currently receiving the benefit of TARP money. The general individual public doesn’t have money to get involved in the so called “friends & family stage” and the Banking industry all of a sudden (because of the housing/mortgage debacle) NOW decides to be diligent in their making loans & offering credit. Sadly, now not offering opportunity to the group(s) that would be in best suited to utilize and create opportunity for jobs, and as a result generate revenues enough to repay the credit extended. That group Mr. Donohue is my group those that are the small businesses (disadvantaged or minority or women owned businesses) the very group and sub-groups that you wrote about but as an organization and government seem to not be doing anything about. I felt it was a great outward gesture to make such a statement, that couldn’t hurt for small businesses like mine currently trying to raise funds through independent sources such as private equity, angel funds, etc but banks and other INSTITUTIONS currently won’t take on the risk of funding loans and credit for companies that currently have weak balance sheets & minimal to no profits at present, but that do have strong development plans and potential to create jobs and generate substantial revenues and would have the ability to repay loans & credit offerings. The point of “poor balance sheets & profits” is the essence of small business and why WE go looking for capital to get beyond this phase.
That is something that the Chamber absolutely must correct and establish; I am personally tired of seeing small businesses fail due to the fact that WE are currently boxed out of $$$ deal flow. There needs to be more incentivized programs established, the fed is backing money to the failing giants, the same should be done for the small business owner that could be showing profits if their business were properly capitalized to move on an action plan that drives revenue up!
We all know there is money to take on the risk of funding a small business looking for 50K – 500K for incremental development but now the INSTITUTIONS choose to utilize a stringent underwriting system, that’s an infuriating fact considering that the purse straps were extremely loose during the feeding frenzy that was the mortgage & housing market boom! As of this moment the only places for entrepreneurs/small business owners to go is high-net worth individuals or groups such as private equity/angel funding/venture capital, groups that have their own standard and preference for whom to fund, which is mostly not the small business. Because of the $$$ mess that was created the “friends & family” or micro lending sources don’t have the money or rather discretionary money to throw at a “good idea”, all these factors are effectively boxing out the small business and especially the early stage small business. That being the case is the reason why President Obama, Fed & The U.S. Chamber MUST act to cause the institutional lenders to lessen their requirements and open doors that they themselves have closed to us the small business owner; bluntly speaking Mr. Donohue, you MUST do something about this!
(Poughkeepsie , NY)

Mr. President, I sincerely thank you for your time & energy on the matter.
-Gary Thomas
www.limomangary.wordpress.com/about

“Small businesses not only generate 60% to 80% of net new job growth and most American innovations, but they will also be the ones to lead us out of this economic recession. That’s why the U.S. Chamber is committed to ensuring that small businesses have an environment in which they can grow and succeed. It’s also why we’re committed to highlighting the critical role that they play in our economy and in the pursuit of the American Dream.

A thought from limomangary in response: “Seeing this information and considering what has gone on with Wall Street and Investors this thought on Ponzi Schemes is one of those hmmm I wonder moments…to think that there is the possibility that some folks got into the Madoff mess knowing the loopholes and considering the possiblity of seeing both some gains from his Ponzi Scheme and then getting bailed out by authorities is a real possibility.” See the following article link I found on Yahoo Finance about this very topic: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Trustee-agrees-to-sell-part-apf-14774151.html

Let me know what you guys think about this?