I began winning lawsuits and legal battles against the federal government in 1994. I have lost track of exactly how many legal battles I have won since then. I do know that over the last 10 years I have won over 30 legal battles with the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act. I refer to them as legal battles because most of my lawsuits I've won in federal court, but some were won when the federal government capitulated just prior to going to trial.
There is a bill in Congress that I wrote called HR 1622, the Fairness and Transparency in Contracting Act. The bill is currently in the House Committee on Small Business and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
I have worked with NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN on investigative reports on the diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms. I have appeared on national television dozens of times to discuss issues involving small businesses and the federal government. I have even appeared on international television to discuss the way the federal government abuses small businesses. Millions of people around the world saw my appearance on the television network - RTTV.
Do I sound like a conspiracy nut to you?
The reason I ask you that is because the next thing I'm going to tell you will no doubt infuriate any journalist and make me sound like a complete and total conspiracy nut.
I think the mainstream media has unwittingly helped the government cheat American small businesses out of over two trillion dollars in federal contracts over the last decade.
The information I have obtained through my 30 legal battles and information from over a dozen federal investigations into this issue indicate American small businesses have been cheated out of over $200 billion a year in federal small business contracts for over a decade.
The mainstream media has covered this story for over a decade. Virtually every major newspaper and news agency in the country has covered the story along with every national television news network. Each and every story has reported on the Small Business Administration's (SBA) outlandish excuses that every day, for over a decade, many of the largest companies in the world have received billions of dollars in federal small business contracts year after year after year as a result of "anomalies," "computer glitches," "miscoding" and "simple human error."
Not one journalist has ever asked any government official why these random errors always divert federal small business contracts to large businesses and never the other way around. Data entry errors, miscoding or any other true random error pattern would have a random distribution pattern. In government contracting you only have two choices. A firm is either a small business or a large business. It's like flipping a coin. It will either come up heads or tails. The probability of either outcome is 50 percent.
A true pattern of "anomalies," "miscoding," "computer glitches" and "simple human error" would be random. Fifty percent of the time a contract to large business would be miscoded as a small business contract and 50 percent of the time a contract to a small business would be miscoded as a large business contract. In this situation you have billions a month in federal contracting dollars going to some of the largest businesses in the world reported as small business contracts. Clearly this is not a random pattern; this is willful and intentional on the part of the federal government.
And guess what, all of these totally random errors just happen to divert billions of dollars a month is federal small business contracts to many of the largest firms in the world and allow the SBA to totally fabricate the true percentage of contracts awarded to legitimate small businesses. It is difficult for me to believe not one journalist has been able to figure this out in a decade.
The SBA also says that large businesses receive federal small business contracts when a firm outgrows their size standard or, get this, when a large business acquires a small business. I don't expect many of you are well-versed in the Small Business Act or federal contracting law but can you guess what the law says about a firm's status as a small business when they are acquired by a large business or grow into a large business? If you guessed you no longer qualify as a legal small business, you're right.
No provision in federal law allows federal contracts to a Fortune 500 firm or any large business to be considered a small business contract under any circumstance. No journalist in a decade has ever mentioned this fact. Not one, not ever.
I am not a professional journalist but the first thing I would do if I were reporting on this issue would be to question the legitimacy of the SBA's "miscoding" and "simple human error" excuses. Next, I would make one phone call to check and see if federal law allowed the federal government to report awards to Fortune 500 firms as small business awards. It seems quite simple to me.
Maybe I'm in the wrong line of work. Maybe I should give up on being a small business advocate and become a professional journalist. Based on the inept reporting of this issue over the last decade, I might be able to win a Pulitzer Prize with my first story.
For the latest video from the ASBL, click here.