A press release that was sent out by the American Small Business League (ASBL) in late December 2007 is pitting American small businesses against the interests of large and wealthy venture capitalists. The press release states that indicated potential policy changes and Obama administrative appointments are sending a clear message that when it comes to government monies, small businesses should brace themselves for being left out in the cold.

The PR Newswire press release, which I encountered at the Las Vegas Business Press website, claims that potential Obama policy seeks to rewrite the federal definition of a small business. Currently, that definition describes small businesses as being independently owned. The release indicates a belief that by changing that technical definition, the doors shall then be thrown open for a small group of wealthy venture capital firms to compete head to head against small businesses in bidding on billions of dollars worth of contracts which have traditionally been reserved specifically for small businesses. Additionally, the ASBL release hints at some favorable reductions in capital gains taxation for these venture capital firms.

The ASBL press release states, in part: "The Obama Administration's new pro-venture capital policy could virtually repeal the Small Business Act for legitimate American small businesses... Under the proposed Obama Administration policy, "independently owned" will be changed to include firms that are not independently owned, but are actually controlled by wealthy investors and possibly some of the nation's largest venture capital firms."

It remains to be seen whether or not ASBL advocates are indeed correctly interpreting these potentially devastating changes. However, one thing appears to be quite clear already; with President-elect Obama's appointment of wealthy venture capitalist Karen Mills to the lead position of the Small Business Administration, it would appear that Mr. Obama intends to put small businesses well under the thumb of big business. This revelation certainly shall not make many of our next president's middle class supporters very happy.

I read a quote in an article recently which stated, "What Wall Street is about is smart guys thinking about ways to make money from dumb ones." That quote is attributed to one John E. Fitzgibbon, the publisher of an online newsletter, in an article from Eric Dash via The New York Times. While Mr. Fitzgibbon's remark might validate special investing skill on the part of some smart and timely investors, I take exception to the notion that all those investors who lost money in the markets over the past year are the dumb ones.

The question now is, where is the smart money headed?

The General Services Administration announced last week that teams of companies led by AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) and Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE: Q) have won the Networx sweepstakes to provide the federal government telecommunications for the next decade. Noteworthy by its absence was Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S), which has provided these services via the previous two 10-year contracts. Those companies winning the contract will be eligible to bid for federal telecommunications services currently estimated to be worth up to $20 billion, although some suggest the total worth may be twice that amount.

For AT&T Government Solutions, this builds on the many existing contracts it holds with departments of the government including Justice, Homeland Security, and the IRS. 4,000 employees already work for this division of AT&T. Its partners in this bid were Bechtel, Cingular Wireless, EDS, Global Crossing, GTSI Corp., Northrop Grumman IT, and SRA International.