[Burkeman1]

Bingo- Being a "minority" or "women owned" business has many advantages over a "white male" owned business. For example- funds are avaialble for startup costs that are not available to white men. Low interest loans, tax deductions and exemption from even environmental regualtions that whites are not exempt from. Not to mention outright preference in the awarding of most state contracts and all federal contracts. Of course their are ways around this- like making a minority or woman the nominal owner of the company or a significant shareholder. Such "strawmen" owners are more and more frequent and front for white male owners. The most blatant example of this is Fidelity Investments- the largest privatley held investment firm in the country started by Ned Johnson. It is now technically listed as a "woman" owned business with his daughter as the nominal "owner."

[bat-boy]

Another example is Spectra Communications/CenturyTel. When GTE sold CenturyTel some of their telephone facilities in Missouri, CenturyTel could not afford it because they did not have the mulah. No problem. They made up a front company called Spectra and made an african-american the owner. They were able to get the funds.

One year later, Spectra is history and CenturyTel is the owner.

[rdb3]

Bingo- Being a "minority" or "women owned" business has many advantages over a "white male" owned business. For example- funds are avaialble for startup costs that are not available to white men. Low interest loans, tax deductions and exemption from even environmental regualtions that whites are not exempt from. Not to mention outright preference in the awarding of most state contracts and all federal contracts. Of course their are ways around this- like making a minority or woman the nominal owner of the company or a significant shareholder. Such "strawmen" owners are more and more frequent and front for white male owners. The most blatant example of this is Fidelity Investments- the largest privatley held investment firm in the country started by Ned Johnson. It is now technically listed as a "woman" owned business with his daughter as the nominal "owner."

Where are you getting that in the article?

[mhking]

exemption from even environmental regualtions that whites are not exempt from

While I won't deny that the government has plenty of "set-aside" dollars that some individuals get to benefit from, I have to ask you to support this assertion - I haven't seen any situation where a black-owned or minority-owned business would be exempt from any environmental regs; if so, I would have expected the tree-huggers to go up in smoke long ago...