StartUP America

One of the mistakes liberals make too often is to criticize businesses in one lump sum. We all know the problems related to the power of corporate America. And the risks of "too big to fail" are still being felt all over this country. But we need to recognize that when jobs are the number one issue - the vast majority of those come from businesses. So if we want jobs created, we need to find a way to encourage them to be developed.

For all their blustering about the "free enterprise system" and the value of competitiveness, the truth is that corporate America and their supporters in the Republican party try to do whatever is necessary to reduce competitiveness. One example of this will suffice...merger and acquisition have been the main hallmarks of a so-called "successful" strategy in corporate America. For example, does anyone else live in a major city where one airline is hubbed? Every move that company makes is to limit competition.

Its often the small companies who are best at innovations that threaten these developing monopolies. And that is why Obama - in both word and deed - is doing everything he can to support small business and innovation. Here's what he said in his State of the Union address:

Our future prosperity in part depends on whether or not we are creating an environment in which folks can test new ideas, bring new products to market, and generate new businesses.

And yesterday he followed those words up with the kickoff of StartUP America.

“Startup America” is President Obama’s campaign to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. The Startup America Partnership is a coordinated public/private effort that brings together an alliance of the country’s most innovative entrepreneurs, corporations, universities, foundations, and other leaders, who work in concert with a wide-range of federal agencies to dramatically increase the prevalence and success of American entrepreneurs.

This mission to promote entrepreneurship is a core component of President Obama’s National Innovation Strategy for achieving sustainable growth and quality jobs. Not only do startups bring a wealth of transformative innovation to market, they also have generated all net job creation over the past three decades. Entrepreneurs who are intent on growing their businesses create the lion’s share of these new jobs in every part of the country and in every industry. Moreover, it is entrepreneurs in clean energy, medicine, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and other fields who will build the new industries of the 21st century and solve some of our toughest global challenges.

This initiative will be led by Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, CEO of Revolution LLC and chairman of the Case Foundation. The two founding partners include the Case Foundation and the Kauffman Foundation.

Here are the initiatives goals:

- Ensure access to capital for high-growth startups throughout the country;

- Expand entrepreneurship education and mentorship programs that empower more Americans not just to get jobs, but to create jobs;

- Strengthen commercialization of the $147 billion in annual, federally-funded research and development, which can generate innovative startups and entirely new industries; and

- Identify and remove unnecessary barriers to high-growth startups, both within government and large corporations.

Those tired old corporations whose main goal is to protect the status quo and their territory will have a choice to make...get on board or move aside. Koch brothers...I'm looking at you.

And Republicans, we're still waiting to hear you propose anything related to job creation.