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Return to Article: Defenders, attackers of women's contracting regulations square off

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  The answer is that Women are a minority based on the power of money.

  I was a women owned business with affirmative action. State of California until it crumbled. The first thing I learned was that affirmative action was POLITICAL their were no laws to protect me it was what I call COSMETIC laws that allowed me to participate in contract bidding.

  What happens is the big boys who see these contracts and want them for political purposes which is what WOMEN don't understand.

  The vendor that you use has an investor or investment bank that loans money tto your distributer or maybe even you who's money is politically backed. The next thing you know your out of business and they have your account.

  All of this happend in the 90's and 2000's you have to have a laws to protect the business or the courts and attorney's won't be able to protect you and you will loose everything.

  What seems to be happening is when people put their money with investor's they could be using that money for political purposes or to run some poor guy out of business and the investor may never even know it.

  I'am not against men but what I found was having Women participating in anything seems to keep the guy's honest

  It helped protect our Bids for awhile until the bad boys finally got in there.

  Office Depot came in later and took the State of California Bid it took them a few years to realize they were being overcharged after an audit. Now the state has removed Office Depot, and guess who the state is coming to now for quotes..... So women in business is a good thing all people in business is good but I think we help keep things balanced.

  linda Posted December 19, 2008 12:07 PM
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  Contracting opportunities should be published widely, but the contract should then just be awarded to the lowest bidder. Anything else is bad economics, unfair discrimination, and unconstitutional. See my column last week on National Review Online.

  Roger Clegg Posted February 13, 2008 12:18 PM
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  What a joke! How are women a "minority"? Not population-wise. Not every white male is a CEO of a company. Stop the PC nonsense from the '60's and create fair bidding rules, irrespective of gender, skin color, basal temperature, amount of subcutaneous fat, etc. Time to compete fairly against other countries, not divide our workforce against itself.

  ChristmasTree Posted January 18, 2008 9:29 AM
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  I'm in total agreement with Art - and what a procurement streamlining initiative to boot! There are now so many special interest groups this has turned into nothing but an "entitlements" program which does not benefit anyone.

  Former KO Posted January 17, 2008 11:04 AM
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  Why not end all of the socio-economic public policy (welfare) programs that hamstring Fed/DoD procurement? That way we could by the best products and services at the best prices. Rather than paying more, paying for the 'overhead' associated with developing, implementing,and managing these special interest approches, and the gaming of the system that goes with them.

  Art Posted January 17, 2008 8:43 AM