Small business and money in politics

From: Rob Shattuck <rdshattuck@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 10:47 AM
Subject: Small business owners and money in politics
To: vbrown <vbrown@birminghambusinessalliance.com>
Cc: Alison Howell <ahowell@birminghambusinessalliance.com>

Dear Mr. Brown,

I am communicating to you in your capacity as Vice President, Minority Business and Small Business Development, of the Birmingham Business Alliance.

The Represent.Us organization says:  "The corruption in our political system is causing our elected officials to focus their time and effort to their campaign donors instead of serving their constituents. Represent.Us is building a grassroots movement to end this corruption."

As part of this movement, the Represent.Us organization is conducting an initiative to obtain endorsements by small business owners of  the provisions of the American Anti-Corruption Act. 

Information about this initiative, including an endorsement form and a fact sheet, may be found at this link: Represent.Us small business endorsement.

In my Congressional campaign in the AL 6th Congressional district, I tried to call the attention of the business community generally to its concerns about the country's economic recovery being threatened by "fierce political divide" and about Congress being a "primary culprit." See my campaign blog entry  BhamBizJournal: "Congressional Inaction Could Derail Recovery".

As that entry indicates, I sent communications to the Birmingham Business Alliance (as well as to the Business Council of Alabama and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) about this matter.  As part of my communications, I submitted to the chambers of commerce two ideas or concepts which I believed were worthy of their consideration in order to improve Congressional performance and the governance of the country by Washington DC.

The purpose of this email is to solicit of you an opportunity for me to make a presentation to small business members of the Birmingham Business Alliance about the above initiative of Represent.Us (which is directed to small business owners).

I appreciate you may not be able to afford me this requested opportunity, but I want to ask nonetheless.

Also, while it is outside your bailiwick, I wish to say that I remain interested in engaging with appropriate persons at the BBA about the two ideas or concepts I submitted to the BBA, as described above.

I am copying Alison Howell on this email because she was the BBA contact for me on my previous communications.

I hope it will turn out that I can be allowed an opportunity to make a presentation to small business members.

Thank you for your attention to this letter.

Sincerely,

Rob Shattuck

UPDATES
12/13 See Other area Chambers of Commerce
12/14 Posted by Small Business News at http://paper.li/AdamGoldstien/1336546104#!politics

#SmallBusiness News is out! http://t.co/IUmJ2T66Tn Stories via @RobShattuckAL06
— Adam Goldstien (@AdamGoldstien) December 14, 2014

1/19/15 More on Congress failing small business