Obama urges businesses to hire veterans

By: MARIE KEMPH

Obama urges businesses to hire veterans

President Barack Obama is urging companies to take advantage of a new law giving various tax credits to businesses that hire long-term unemployed and disabled veterans as soon as possible.

"Today, because Democrats and Republicans came together, I'm proud to sign those proposals into law," Obama said, before a bill-signing ceremony Monday at the White House. "And I urge every business owner out there who's hiring to hire a veteran right away."

Entitled the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, the new law gives up to a $5,600 credit for hiring veterans who have been unemployed for more than six months, and a $2,400 credit for those who have been out of work for more than four weeks. 

It also increases the tax credit to $9,600 for business that hire disabled veterans who have been unemployed for more than six months, as well as enhances job training and counseling programs.

In October, the national unemployment rate among veterans hovered at 12 percent, and in Tennessee, it has ranged between 18 and 20 percent for the past year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Several organizations that represent military veterans praised Congress and the Obama administration after the bill was signed into law, including the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

"This is an historic day for veterans," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director for Veterans of America, who founded the organization seven years ago.

Rieckhoff founded the organization to advocate on behalf of fellow veterans after becoming concerned with the way the war in Iraq was being portrayed in the media and the overall plight of newly returned veterans, according to the group's website.

"It is the first jobs legislation of any kind to be passed all year," Rieckhoff said. "It's practical, bipartisan and long overdue. This smart and comprehensive bill contains provisions for which (we) have been advocating for, for nearly two years."

The tax credits were originally included in Obama's jobs bill. But because of partisan gridlock over other provisions included in the bill, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress agreed to take up the measure separately.

The tax credits passed Congress and were signed into law as part of a larger bill that tightens Medicaid eligibility requirements and repeals a 3 percent withholding tax placed on businesses that have government contracts.

Rep. Diane Black introduced the measure to close what she described as a loophole that could have allowed some middle-class Americans who earn up to $60,000 a year to qualify for Medicaid benefits and exchange subsidies when the health care bill is fully implemented.

"I am thrilled that the president signed my legislation into law, preventing $13 from being wasted as a part of the health care law," Black said. "By including my legislation in the veterans job package, we were able to ensure what the president signs today will not add to the deficit, but gives billions of dollars back to the U.S. Treasury (Department)."

Some Democrats in the U.S. House initially balked at tightening Medicaid eligibility requirements. However, the proposal received little opposition once it reached the U.S. Senate, in large part because both parties strongly supported the veterans tax credit bill.

"Veterans who return home to use and seek work should be able to find it, and I believe these tax credits will spur American businesses to hire our nation's veterans," Black said.

It is the first bill that has been proposed by a member of the freshman class in Congress to make its way through the legislative process and to the president's desk to become law this year.

"In a year marred by crippling partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C., coupled with rising veteran joblessness rates, this bill couldn't come at a more critical time," Rieckhoff said. "As Congress stalls on so many other issues, it's good to see them come together in realizing that one of the smartest investments they can make is supporting the new Greatest Generation."

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Rising Star: Tonya Vachirasomboon

Tonya Vachirasomboon thought she'd someday own a dance studio. Instead, she practices in the business advisory department at Bingham McHale, advising clients on mergers and acquisitions, start-ups and contracts.

The finance and real estate major was minoring in dance at Indiana University with plans to teach at her own dance studio.

"For a long period, I thought I was going to be a ballet dancer," said Vachirasomboon.

But she ended up discovering a new path when she took a business law class.

"I talked to some professors and discovered that business law was something I wanted to get into," Vachirasomboon said.

She was surprised how easy the transition from school to practicing law was for her. Vachirasomboon enjoys helping clients make informed decisions and that she is continually learning.

She was instrumental in helping found the street law program at Howe High School on the Eastside of Indianapolis, where students get a feel for what it's like to be a lawyer. And in 2011, Indiana Lawyer named Vachirasomboon an up-and-coming attorney.

Vachirasomboon doesn't dance much these days, but she's still active. She teaches a Yoga of the Heart class at City Yoga. The class is geared toward those affected by HIV/AIDS, their caregivers and health-care professionals.

"This was a better fit for me. You are continually learning, and it never gets boring," she said. "I'm leaving it up to the advanced professionals to open a dance studio."

How did you manage to stand out in a crowd and advance quickly in your career?

When I first started out, my goal was to be the best attorney I could be. I've learned that hard work and dedication to my clients pays off. I'm thankful to be working in a field where I'm constantly learning and challenged to think outside the box to find efficient and effective solutions for my clients.

What was your first job? How did it impact your future?

I was a ballet teacher in high school. I learned how to inspire and bring out the best in the others. I also learned that it's not the end game that matters, but it's the preparation and the work leading up to the performance where one grows the most.

I think the experience taught me that hard work and diligence is necessary all the way to the end in any project or task.

What's the toughest mistake you ever made, and what did you learn from it?

When I first started, I was hesitant to speak up or voice an opinion for fear of being wrong. I quickly learned that by taking a chance and being confident I could grow and be successful in this field.

How important is it to have a mentor? Did anyone in particular help you advance in your career?

It's of paramount importance to have a mentor. It's important to be able to share your concerns and obstacles with more experienced attorneys or business leaders to advance in any career.

I've had so many (mentors). There are multiple people that stand out. They are in equal footing. The attorneys at my firm that have been instrumental in my career are Jeremy Hill, Keith Bice, Melissa Ford, Matthew Troyer, Jeffrey Kirk and Kristin Dutton.

I think soliciting advice from experienced attorneys was critical to my building my career. They help guide me in the practice of law.

What advice would you give to other young people trying to get started in the legal field?

Law is a great profession if you are a curious person and like to learn new things. Rarely a day goes by that I don't learn anything new. It's important to have a collegial attitude.

It's equally important to learn the value of hard and detailed work, and efficiently and effectively providing solutions to clients.

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By  DIANE DIETZ

A LEGAL TRADE-OFF

Taylor Funk, in his final year of law school at the University of Oregon, had a head full of legal theory but little practice. Kerri Vanden Berg, a longtime bike mechanic who was launching her own repair shop, was anxious about filling out confusing government forms required to start up her business.

They each found what they needed this fall at the UO's Small Business Law Clinic — a whopping dose of practical lawyering.

The law clinic has provided similar help to 99 students and 246 mostly fledgling businesses since it began 7½ years ago, offering hundreds of thousands of hours of free legal work to entrepreneurs launching businesses in Lane County.

"Think of the number of billable hours that are not being paid," said Gary Smith, faculty at the Lane Small Business Development Center. "If you assume $150 to $250 an hour for a lot of these services, there's quite an economic boon. It's a leg up to business without a doubt."

Among the clients the students have helped in recent years are a farm, a life coach, a certified public accountant, a cupcake maker, a pottery studio, a craft brewery, a general contractor, an architect and a biotech company.

"It's good for the law school; it's good for the students and really important to the community," said attorney Kirk Strohman, an alumnus who now has a small business practice in Eugene.

For many of the students, it's the first big, heart thumping test of their knowledge, poise and confidence as a developing lawyer.

"When somebody looks at you, and they say, 'Well, what should I do?' You're like, 'Wow, that's an incredible feeling.' You want to make sure you get that right," Strohman said.

The clinic accepts only half of the students who apply — a total of 16 students a year, who work with 32 businesses, under the supervision of two attorneys, said Laurie Strother, the administrative program coordinator.

Before the students meet their clients, they attend intensive seminars on everything from how to explain and recommend business types — sole proprietorship, limited liability company, corporation — to how to put clients at ease.

Before meeting the client, students practice their personal skills and delivery on community business people and business school faculty who volunteer for the duty.

Only then are students ready to put on suits and await the arrival of their assigned business owner.

For many of the small business owners, it's their first experience with an attorney, said Katherine Moyer, director of the Small Business Law Clinic.

Student and client sit face to face at the conference table with the supervising attorney off to the side. The student is expected to take charge of the meeting. Some evince a momentary panic. Funk's nervousness lasted about 10 seconds, Vanden Berg said. She repairs bicycles; Funk said he once dreamed that he would have a bicycle repair shop.

The first job was to figure out what Vanden Berg needed for her repair shop, which she operates out of her garage in the West Jefferson Neighborhood. Funk, in consultation with Moyer, one of two supervising attorneys, had to decide what legal work he could reasonably produce based on his skills and within the time frame of a semester.

Most often, students help the entrepreneurs form types of businesses — limited liability company or S-corp — that will help them with taxes and protect their personal property from law suits. They write operating agreements. They create contracts that business owners can use with customers. They answer the business owners' questions about employment, including whether someone who works with them is an independent contractor or an employee, which would trigger workers compensation, wage and hour, and other legal considerations.

Vanden Berg had already decided that a limited liability company would be best for her. It limits the business owner's liability to the cash and assets in the business; creditors usually can't touch a business owner's home or personal assets.

Vanden Berg had already filed the required documents with the Oregon Secretary of State, but she wasn't confident she'd done it properly. "You're really kind of guessing. 'What are they asking me?' I didn't have any kind of background in that," Vanden Berg said.

Funk wrote an operating agreement for Vanden Berg that lays out how the business will operate, including how she will pay herself and how she will handle taxes. The operating documents provide direction for business owners, reassurance for lenders and protection for the business owner.

Funk also filed papers so Vanden Berg could use an assumed business name, Kerri's Neighborhood Bike Shop, without having to add LLC. "For marketing it makes it a lot more accessible to other people," Funk said.

He wrote a bill of sale for Vanden Berg to use with her customers, and he reviewed the documents she'd filed earlier with the secretary of state. He drafted and redrafted Vanden Berg's documents, trading them with Moyer for correction more than a half dozen times.

"It's not cranking out the work as fast as you can," Funk said. "It's learning how to do the work the best that you can."

Moyer said: "We supervise it and we make sure, at the end of the day, it's quality work that we can sign off on and the client can feel comfortable with."

Students occasionally face some tough conversations with clients — such as why a husband and wife or lifelong friends, need an operating agreement that governs how they will handle disputes between them.

The students learn to explain that when people are launching a venture, and all the participants are excited and their "best selves," is the best time to figure out how to handle the tough times, Moyer said.

Law clinic students, for example, set up an agreement for Gryphon Scaffolding owner Doug Lambert giving him 49 percent ownership of the business and his wife 51 percent, Lambert said. "What it does is it protects both parties if something goes in default," Lambert said.

The other tough topic for students: How the company will be dissolved and the assets divided at the end of its run, whenever and however that comes.

"You need to know how you're getting into this business right now but you need to plan in terms of how you're going to get out of the business," said Mindy Wittkop, the clinic's second supervising attorney. "It prevents disputes down the road if you've got a clear agreement up front."

Strohman said he thrived on the challenges during law school when he worked at the clinic. He admired the entrepreneurs, especially those setting out in a difficult economy, and saw he could improve their chances.

"I thought, as a business lawyer, I'd just sit at a computer and draw up contracts all day — and how tedious and terrible a job that would be," he said. "But when I did the clinic I realized that this is a people business. I had to sit down and really understand relationships and personal situations.

"It was not adversarial. You were helping people grow and succeed. That's something you don't spend much time on in law school. You read case law, and cases are all about people fighting with each other.

"In the clinic, we're sitting down and just helping. It was like, 'Wow, this suits me. This is the kind of attorney I want to be. I don't think I would have really realized this kind of attorney existed without the chance to be in the clinic."

Vanden Berg said she didn't understand at first what all the fussy documents were for. "Seeing the final product is when it made sense that this is what needed to happen," she said.

"Now, I see how much I really need to keep track of everything, keep everything separate," she said. "It puts more pressure on me in a good way. It gives me more direction."

The only cost to Vanden Berg was the state's filing fees. The free legal work she got from the clinic would have amounted to one third of her start-up costs, she said.

Another business owner, Rachel Travis of the Mujeres Salon & Spa in Eugene, has returned to the clinic a couple of times over several years when she needed legal work.

The students helped her form her limited liability company and later switch to an S-corp business entity.

"It always flowed, like, really good," she said. "They said this is where you should be, so they set it up"

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Changes in employment law will speed up redundancies

Changes in employment law will speed up redundancies

PLANS for a "radical" reform of employment law have received a muted welcome from Welsh business leaders.

Business Secretary Vince Cable yesterday unveiled a package of measures including an overhaul of employment tribunals and moves that could see a reduction in the current 90-day consultation period when firms are planning to make more than 100 redundancies.

The moves also included plans for all claims to go to the conciliation service Acas before reaching an employment tribunal, options for a "rapid resolution scheme" to offer cheaper, quicker decisions on more straightforward claims, and a regional pilot scheme for smaller firms to use mediation.

Mr Cable also confirmed plans to increase the qualification period for making a claim for unfair dismissal from one to two years of employment from next April, and a consultation on "protected conversations" to allow employers to discuss issues such as retirement or poor performance without it being used at a subsequent tribunal claim

The Government believes the reforms will save employers £40m a year.

Small employers in Wales yesterday welcomed the move, but some legal experts said the measures would not have a significant impact on the number of tribunal claims.

Announcing the measures in a speech to the Engineering Employers Federation, Mr Cable said: "Our proposals strike an appropriate balance and we are keeping the necessary protections already in place to protect employees."

Mike Gorshkov, managing director of Cardiff-based recruitment firm Linea Resourcing, welcomed one move in particular.

"The "protected conversation" proposal offers both the employer and employee the opportunity to have constructive, off-the-record conversations concerning performance or other issues without instigating formal disciplinary measures," he said.

"This will not only help speed up problem resolution and improve communication but also will be more conducive to the pace and demands of modern business with less red tape and formality."

Fabio Grech, partner and head of employment law at Berry Smith, said the shake-up would come as a relief to many small businesses.

"As SMEs account for the majority of Welsh businesses, the economy in Wales would certainly benefit from these changes and the savings they will create nationally," he said. "It is vital, however, that during this consultation ministers balance the need for business growth against the security of employment rights.

"Following a 40% rise in tribunals over the last three years, it is certainly important for business to weed out unsubstantiated tribunal claims by disgruntled staff, which many SMEs are forced to settle on a commercial basis."

But Damian Phillips, partner at Darwin Gray and the South Wales representative on the Employment Lawyers Association, believed the impact of the measures may prove limited.

"While I have no doubt that the Government's proposals will be warmly greeted by some businesses, I don't believe the changes will have any great impact on the number of employment tribunal claims," he said. "I don't question the sentiments behind the proposals, but I do believe that it is a window dressing exercise.

"Exempting business with 10 or fewer employees from employment regulations may have some benefit, but the question is which regulations are to be exempted? When this was first raised some months ago, it was suggested that only new employment law would be exempted, meaning that all existing legislation will still apply, such as prohibiting discrimination under the Equality Act.

"Similarly, increasing the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from one year to two years will not prevent other claims being brought which don't require a minimum qualifying period, such as discrimination."

Jennifer Cottle, of Dolmans solicitors, said the proposals were clearly seeking to reduce the burden on small firms.

"It will be interesting to see more flesh on the proposals to assess how the Government thinks this will work in practice and to then consider the legal implications of the same," she said.

John Walker, National Chairman, Federation of Small Businesses, said more funding was needed for Acas as a result of the announcement.

"If properly implemented, these reforms should reduce the fear many small businesses have when taking on a new member of staff," he said.

"Reducing that fear, will go a long way to boost employment and is therefore a welcome step in the right direction."

Chairman of Acas Ed Sweeney welcomed the announcement.

"This announcement will mean significant changes to the work of our highly experienced conciliators and the systems and processes that support them," he said.

"We will be working with our sponsor department, BIS, over the coming months to work through the details more closely."

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By Associated Press

Ala. city drops immigration law case against Mercedes-Benz exec arrested under new crackdown

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Authorities said Wednesday they dropped a charge against a German Mercedes-Benz executive who was arrested under Alabama's new crackdown on illegal immigration after a police officer caught him driving without identification required by the law.

While Tuscaloosa police arrested the man last week for not having proper citizenship documents while driving a rental car in the city, city attorney Tim Nunnally said in an email the charge was dismissed after the man later provided the documents in municipal court.

Police identified the man as Detlev Hager, 46. The company said he was in Alabama on business at the time but declined further comment.

The arrest drew widespread attention because the German automaker is one of the state's leading employers, and its decision to build its first U.S. assembly plant in Alabama in 1993 provided the spark that helped lead to the state's large automotive industry, which includes foreign manufacturers Honda, Hyundai and Toyota.

Republicans who support the immigration law say it will help create jobs for legal Alabama residents by driving away illegal immigrants, but some business leaders and critics of the law contend similar arrests could hurt economic development in the state by making it a less-attractive location for foreign companies.

One newspaper cited the executive's arrest in urging Mercedes to move to Missouri from Alabama.

"Our state has many advantages over Alabama. We are the Show-Me State, not the 'Show me your papers' state,'" the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote in an editorial.

The man's arrest caused a state inquiry to the city prompted by Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed the law, but his office refused to say how Bentley knew the man had been detained. Bentley is from Tuscaloosa, where he practiced medicine for years.

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Chavez: New rules will fight inflation

CARACAS, VENEZUELA

President Hugo Chavez says he is optimistic that new rules broadening price controls will help his government curb high inflation.

Chavez says the Law for Fair Costs and Prices will prevent unscrupulous businesses from unjustly raising prices.

While price controls already exist for some basic foods, the law taking effect Tuesday extends them to a wider range of goods and gives the government more enforcement authority.

Business leaders have warned that more extensive and stringent regulations will reduce investment and cause shortages of products in high demand.

Chavez said Tuesday the law will also advance the establishment of a socialist economic model in the country.

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By Christopher Toothaker

Venezuela businesses brace for more price controls

CARACAS, Venezuela—New rules aimed at curbing Venezuela's high inflation by broadening government price controls will scare off investors and hurt consumers, the president of the country's largest business chamber predicted Monday. 

Jorge Botti, president of Fedecamaras, said the Law for Fair Costs and Prices will spook investors looking for wider profit margins and cause shortages of basic goods because makers of numerous products will likely scale back production.

"It's going to create more doubts and uncertainty," Botti said.

He said sweeping price regulations applied to goods and services in every area of Venezuela's economy will inevitably hurt businesses already struggling with socialist-orientated policies established by President Hugo Chavez.

While price controls already exist for some basic foods such as cooking oil and rice, the law taking effect Tuesday will extend them to a wider range of goods and give the government more enforcement authority.

Government officials argue the law will help reduce Latin America's highest rate of inflation by forcing businesses to set retail prices at rates established by authorities.

Among the factors that officials will consider are production costs such as prices for raw materials and wages of workers.

Venezuela's Central Bank announced last month that the annual inflation rate had edged back up to 26.9 percent in October. It was 27 percent last year.

Government officials have set a goal of holding inflation to between 23 percent and 25 percent by year's end, but many analysts predict the rate could be higher.

The opening paragraphs of the new law state that unscrupulous businesses must be stopped from raising prices. It calls for government controls to limit the profits, giving that task to a panel of government authorities to be called the "Superintendence of Costs and Prices."

"The flagrant abuses by monopolies within many sectors of the economy have sprung up through the accumulation of capital from elevated profit margins, which prompt constant increases in prices without any other objective than the direct exploitation of the people," the legislation states.

Karlin Granadillo, a government official responsible for establishing and applying new price regulations, defended the law Monday, denying it would hurt businesses and expressing optimism consumers will see benefits.

"Economic and price stability is going to benefit everybody, including the people who receive the goods and services and the business sector," Granadillo said during an interview broadcast on Union Radio.

Granadillo said officials are not ready to immediately apply new regulations.

Officials will initially focus on setting price controls for food, personal hygiene and home cleaning products, construction materials, automobile parts, medicines and health care services before moving on to other areas of the economy, Granadillo said.

Luis Vicente Leon, director of the Venezuelan polling firm Datanalisis, which tracks the availability of basic goods and consumer prices, predicted the law won't tame inflation and will cause shortages of some goods.

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SA's labour laws work, says Motlanthe

DEPUTY President Kgalema Motlanthe has defended the country's labour laws, saying they were not the main stumbling block to job creation.

By, THABO MOKONE

Motlanthe, who is being touted as a possible successor to President Jacob Zuma in 2014, was addressing academics and business executives at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) on Friday night.

While his remarks pleased Cosatu, which is in alliance with the ruling ANC, the labour federation expressed disappointment at his continued support for US retail giant Walmart's entry into SA.

Asked at the Gibs function if the government planned to make labour law more business-friendly, Motlanthe said it was a myth that labour laws were stifling job creation.

"I don't think our labour laws are an obstacle to the creation of jobs. I think they contain enough flexibility," Motlanthe said.

Business executives and large companies criticise the laws as too rigid, saying they make it hard to hire and fire employees.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and National Planning Commission Minister Trevor Manuel expressed similar views earlier this year.

But Motlanthe said the current labour policies had been agreed at Nedlac, the body at which government, business and labour discuss issues of mutual interest.

He pointed out that the current labour framework had the support of the International Labour Organisation.

"I know that this year an accord was signed again at Nedlac which now allows for apprentices to be absorbed without those apprentices being treated as full-time employees, so there is flexibility in our labour regime," said the deputy president.

Turning to Walmart, Motlanthe told the gathering that the arrival of the global retail giant was "a vote of confidence" in SA's trade policies and laws.

He dismissed suggestions that Walmart would kill small retailers, an argument that has been repeatedly cited by Cosatu in its attempts to block the Walmart takeover of Massmart.

"My understanding is that it [Walmart] has to procure supplies from small suppliers. I mean Pick n Pay has not killed small producers of vegetables and other perishables. Instead it guarantees them a market," said Motlanthe.

"The way we look at it is that it makes a very positive vote of confidence in South Africa as an investment outlet."

Motlanthe's view contradicts that of the ministers of economic development, trade and industry, and agriculture, who have asked the Competition Appeal Court to impose more stringent conditions on the Walmart-Massmart transaction.

While he welcomed Motlanthe's backing for the labour laws, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi slammed the deputy president for his Walmart remarks.

"Where was he when cabinet instructed three ministers to oppose an unconditional entry into South Africa by Walmart?" Vavi asked. "I think the cabinet ministers have gone to the appeals tribunal with very, very sound arguments."

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By Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

California law to protect socially conscious firms

California could become a magnet for companies pursuing a triple bottom line - people, planet and profit - thanks to a law taking effect in January that extends legal recognition and protection to such "for benefit" enterprises.

AB361, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month, creates a framework for corporations to include social and environmental goals alongside financial ones in defining their purpose.

The Bay Area has long been a center for these entities, known as "benefit corporations" or "B corporations," with companies like Method, Give Something Back Business Products, New Leaf Paper, Numi Organic Tea, Bison Brewing Co. and New Resource Bank. But until now, while companies could go through a certification process to prove that a social mission was on their agenda, they weren't legally entitled to put that mission ahead of profit making.

"Without the new law, the only legitimate purpose of a business under California law was to maximize profit," said Jay Coen Gilbert, who co-founded the B corp movement five years ago and whose B Lab certifies B corps using a scorecard covering environmental practices, employment policies, purchasing policies and products' benefits to society.

Fiduciary duty

"If you wanted to make money but also make a difference with your business, you could be sued by shareholders for breach of fiduciary duty" without the law, he said. "Now investors and entrepreneurs have another choice: to form a benefit corporation. If they do so, they are legally protected to pursue more than just profit as their objective."

California is the sixth state to recognize companies that operate "for benefit" as well as for profit. But the Golden State, and especially the Bay Area, is already a hub for the B corp movement; more than 130 of the 500 B corporations certified with Coen Gilbert's group are headquartered in California.

That critical mass plus California's progressive climate may mean the new law will draw more B corporations to set up shop here, in the same way that Delaware's corporate-friendly laws attract big companies to incorporate there.

"California now has a good chance to become the Delaware of B corporations," said Don Shaffer, CEO of RSF Social Finance, a San Francisco financial services firm that specializes in lending to companies "with a deep social and environmental mission."

'Creating change'

"I think this will carry quite a bit of cachet, and there will be a race on," he said. "California is the natural winner, in my opinion. We've got much higher environmental awareness and level of social activism here than almost anywhere else in the country. The ethos here around creating change is unrivaled."

Adam Lowry, co-founder of San Francisco's Method, which makes eco-conscious cleaning products and was among the original B corporations, agreed.

"The idea that incorporating environmental benefit and social good into your business will help your business grow and be more profitable, not less, is a progressive idea and has a lot more traction in Northern California," he said. "That's why this is a hot spot for B corporations already."

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who sponsored the Senate version of the bill, said it "is designed to meet the needs and desires of 21st century businesses." Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, carried the Assembly version.

"What we heard from many of the businesses supporting the bill was that current law limited them," Leno said. "All decisions they made legally had to only look at bottom-line considerations. With this bill, they'll have greater flexibility."

Mike Hannigan, co-founder and president of Oakland's Give Something Back, an office-supply company that donates all of its profit to charity, said that greater flexibility will free up his firm to seek outside investors to help it expand.

"We've grown dramatically in the past two years, but to accelerate growth, we need to bring in outside capital," he said. "But we don't want to jeopardize our mission. Even if we got an investor who was totally behind our mission (without the law), they could later say they had changed their mind and wanted a dividend. Now we can preserve our social mission into the future, regardless of what investors we bring in."

What is a B corp?

AB361, which takes effect Jan. 1, creates a class of California companies called "benefit corporations." They follow the same structure as existing California corporations, and also must:

-- Aim to create a material, positive impact on society and the environment as part of their corporate purpose.

-- Redefine fiduciary duty to require considering the interests of employees, community and the environment in decision making.

-- Give annual public reports on their social and environmental performance using an independent and transparent third-party standard.

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How Conservatives And Liberals Are Trying To Stack The Deck Ahead Of The Supreme Court's Obamacare Ruling

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

How Conservatives And Liberals Are Trying To Stack The Deck Ahead Of The Supreme Court's Obamacare Ruling

In anticipation of the Supreme Court deciding next year whether part of President Obama's health-care reform is Constitutional, partisans on both sides are demanding that certain Justices recuse themselves.

Conservatives have accused Justice Elena Kagan of having a conflict of interest. And liberals are suggesting that Clarence Thomas excuse himself from the case. 

Conservatives are pointing to an e-mail Elena Kagan sent to Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe about the health-care reform while she was soliciter general in the Obama administration. 

"I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing," she wrote in 2010. 

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where Republican Jeff Sessions was grilling Attorney General Eric Holder about Elena Kagan's role during the health care reform debate. Holder explained that Kagan was specifically excluded from working on issues related to the health-care reform. 

Well, I can tell you that certainly one of the things that we did while she was solicitor general was to physically—physically, literally move her out of the room whenever a conversation came up about the health care reform legislation. I can remember specific instances in my conference room where when we were going to discuss that topic, we asked that Justice Kagan to leave and she did," Holder said at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing.

Further, Ed Whelan of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center points out that Kagan specifically assigned her deputy, Neal Katyal, to lead "a group to get thinking about how to defend against inevitable challenges to the health care proposals that are pending." 

On the other side of the aisle, liberals are pointing to the fact that Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginni has founded a conservative activist group dedicated to opposing President Obama's agenda as a conflict of interest.  

George Zornick of The Nation writes: 

The group [Ginni Thomas founded] frequently advocates against "Obamacare," pushing misinformation that it would be a "disaster" for small businesses and urging lawmakers to repeal it.

This created immediate concern among legal experts, who were worried about the obvious conflict of interest, given that her husband would likely rule on challenges to the law. Moreover, Liberty Central was taking unlimited and secret donations, something aided by Clarence Thomas's ruling in Citizens United. 

Despite partisan bickering there is almost no chance that any Justice will recuse themselves. Conflict of interest rules are rather flexible. And so far neither of the cases being made are compelling. 

The truth is that this is one of those cases where the Supreme Court's ruling has direct and immediate political consequences. Although most Supreme Court-observers are confident that Obamacare's individual mandate will be upheld in Court, activists on both sides will attempt to delegitimize any decision that goes against them by portraying it as a "political" decision rather than a coldly legal one. 

One thing is certain: the composition of the Court itself will become a major campaign issue next year. 

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