Business Pulse

COUNTY SMALL BUSINESS BY INDUSTRY Total 50 or Fewer Employees Type of Business Businesses Total % AGRICULTURE Crop production 39 34 87 Livestock & Poultry 6 6 100 Agriculture/Livestock Services 391 388 99 Landscape Services 449 432 96 Timber Tracts 8 8 100 Commercial Fishing 3 3 100 MINING Minerals 12 12 100 Oil & Natural Gas 72 69 96 CONSTRUCTION Residential Contractors 831 824 99 Commercial, Industrial 355 348 98 Heavy Construction 212 202...

The people who turned this city's Carnaval parade into a multimillion-dollar enterprise of feather headpieces, fanciful floats and gyrating dancers in expensive costumes have even bigger plans afoot. Hiram Araujo, the event's cultural advisor, envisions a "spectacle" with the glitz and commercial appeal of a major Broadway hit or an NBA basketball game. "Carnaval isn't yet what it could be," Araujo said. "We are still learning how to administer the product."

By now we're all too familiar with the psychological and economic havoc wrought by January's earthquake. So it's nice to find the occasional piece of good news in the wake of the disaster. There's just such a bright spot, unearthed by a Times Poll of Los Angeles County conducted the week after the big shaker. The survey chronicled the physical and emotional losses suffered by a wide range of county residents, but the message wasn't all bad.

The advent of the Republican Congress and its "contract with America" has provided rich new sources of argument for politicians and pontificators. And to this observer, it's brought a whole new life to one of the more annoying habits of those who occupy the Sunday op-ed pages and talk shows--making unwarranted claims about public opinion.

First, the counter worker called in sick. Then the other sales clerk said he would be late because he had to meet with his kid's teacher. Meanwhile, a reporter was pestering Bill Koenig for information about his Postal Instant Press franchise. "I'm all by myself," the harried PIP owner said. "Can you call back late today?" It was a typical scene. As the self-described owner, manager and janitor of the PIP store in Anaheim, Koenig has been coping with his store's day-to-day disasters for 20 years.

So you think you're an entrepreneur? Well, if you own your own business, you most likely are, even if you don't quite match the popular perception of the entrepreneur as a quintessential risk-taking, reward-seeking, enterprising innovator. For while someone like computer maven Steven Jobs is without question an entrepreneur, not all entrepreneurs are like Jobs. Most, however, are small-business owners. A study by the National Science Foundation shows that most of the innovations in American business and technology in the past 15 years have come from small businesses.

If there is one common entry on the inventory list of every small-business owner, it is an unlimited supply of problems. Some are small and merely annoying; others loom large and threaten the existence of the business. John Lynch, a 38-year-old jewelry designer, knows all about the perils of small business and how seemingly smart decisions can lead to disaster. Lynch recently bought an established, but ailing, retail jewelry store in Brea after successfully operating his custom design shop for 9 years.

In late March--after months of deliberation--the Orange County Board of Supervisors adopted a growth-management plan designed to defuse one of the most divisive issues in years. Had it been up to the county's small-business owners, however, the plan might not have passed at all. Exactly half of the 522 participants in The Times Small-Business Survey said they opposed "having Orange County officials place stricter controls on local growth and development." Even so, most were willing to spare some change to deal with the consequences of growth: Nearly two in three supported a sales-tax increase to fund road improvements.

Political pundits look for revolution in each election. Searching through the rubble voters leave behind, they desperately seek the harbingers of a future that cannot be seen. One election cannot predict the next. With that disclaimer given, this reporter will now proceed to add his examination of the entrails to the pile. Some see this election as a permanent sharp rightward swerve on the public's part. But what happened is more complex.

Bill Clinton is suffering through what rightfully can be called "bad poll days." At the start of the year, it looked as if his job rating might break through the 60% mark that has so long eluded him. Instead, his scores have moved ever downward, from 58% in January to just 39% this month, according to the Gallup Poll. Political know-it-alls say presidential fortunes are hitched to the economy. But Clinton's, enigmatically, have gone south during a time of reported economic growth.

George H. Gallup, an inventor of modern opinion polling, idealistically believed that surveys of the public would enhance democracy by providing leaders with a true picture of peoples' attitudes and concerns. Sixty years have gone by, and polls are now as common as Big Macs on the American landscape. But their effect remains dubious at best, as does the effect of the burgeoning number of studies of all types that are now part of every public policy debate.

Consumer spending, say the experts, drives much of the nation's economy. So it's not surprising that economists, journalists and politicians hang on those periodic measures of consumer sentiment handed down from a number of sources. There's nothing magical about consumer confidence scores. They're taken from public opinion surveys that regularly ask Americans about the economy and measure changes from poll to poll.

By now we're all too familiar with the psychological and economic havoc wrought by January's earthquake. So it's nice to find the occasional piece of good news in the wake of the disaster. There's just such a bright spot, unearthed by a Times Poll of Los Angeles County conducted the week after the big shaker. The survey chronicled the physical and emotional losses suffered by a wide range of county residents, but the message wasn't all bad.

Pressures for deficit reduction have virtually quashed Bill Clinton's flirtation with a more activist economic policy. Since the demise of the middle-class tax cut, the President's economic program has lurched steadily to the right, nudged along by a Congress seemingly obsessed with budget cuts. That may or may not be good economics, but it's risky politics for a Democrat.

It began quietly two years ago in the company's hallways--the equivalent of the back yard fence of past decades--where working mothers stopped to compare notes on common concerns, such as discipline, self-esteem, or whether to lie about missing work because of sick children. Fathers became interested, and soon they formed a Working Parents Support Group to hire professionals to speak on parenting topics at lunchtime.

Under the iron-gray skies of morning, Chuck Denman listens to the steady swoosh-swoosh of his plastic skate wheels spinning against the blacktop. While his co-workers wallow in freeway traffic, Denman strides through a back route in Seal Beach, where he spies an occasional fox darting through the undergrowth or hawk gliding above the fields. "I find driving to work is pretty boring," said Denman, 42, a strategic planning and marketing analyst who either runs, bikes or skates to work most days.