we are excited for you to be here and your leadership here. we need to talk offline about this great subcommittee, but thank you for being here, and senator kerry, thank you for being here. we have others that are on the way, but i d like to go ahead and start. i know senator kerry has a limited time here, and my i understanding is senator rockefeller has limited time. let s get underway. i want to thank you for being here and the witnesses for participating today. certainlily, this is certainly, this is a very important hearing on privacy in the mobile marketplace. chairman of the subcommittee, i appreciate your willingness to participate in this very important dialogue. as technology evolves, consumers continue to lose control of their personal information. without question, cell phones have become a part of that trend, and as they have become more and more versatile. today, more than 234 million americans use mobile devices and 73 million americans have smart phones o
the economy. we re looking ahead to identify and address challenges facing small businesses that will be important to overcome to build a competitive economy. in march, treasury co-hosted a party that had business leaders and academics to draw additional attention troubles facing small businesses, reducing barriers to their success and find new ways for the private and public sector to work together. with that, let me thank you again for the opportunity to be here today and reiterate how appreciative i am of this committee s work and the commitment to america s small business. i m happy to answer any questions you may have. thank you very much. we ll have a first round of questions by the members. we ve been joined by senator cardin from maryland. we appreciate him being with us this morning. before i want to get into the questions, i want to submit things for the record that i found quite encouraging. one is a document i received about a couple of weeks ago from the vistag
social capital. we are going to have we are going to focus on helping your business grow through exporting. and finally a workshop focused on high growth innovative companies. and for people who can t come to washington, you can also participate virtually because all these events will be live streamed over the website, nationalsmallbusiness.com. education is so important. ken, we have you on the show all the time and talk about this all the time, but we often get questions from people saying where can i find mentors? marie, you have it this week, but i want to give you a second, ken, to tell us what score does. it has been a while since we have given you that opportunity. sure. you are very kind, j.j. score is a volunteer organization. businessmen and women, mostly retired who help small business owners and those who want to start. we launched a little over a week ago a new web presence at score.org. fantastic new opportunities for small business owners and those who would like t
don t tell that to small business owners. the national federation of independent business s optimism index was down significantly in april with weak sales and a sluggish economy keeping them from hiring. this comes as washington prepares to celebrate national small business week with a number of events, awards and presentations. marie johns is deputy administrator of the small business administration. and ken yanyy is a chief executive officer. great to see both of you guys. thank you, j.j. thank you, j.j. the optimism index was negative, negative, negative and then suddenly we saw positivity in it. it is a little more volatile now than it had been the past few years massachusetts rea, what is going on? here s what s going on, j.j. we are coming out of the worst economic downturn from the great depression. and the good news is that small businesses are leading the way. you know the statistics. half the people working in the country today are working in their own small business
that s why we are proud to present your business on msnbc. hi there, everyone, i m j.j. ramberg and welcome to your business where we give you tips and advice to help your business grow. many entrepreneurs know what it is like to go up against the competition, but what do you do when you business competes against itself? it is a unique situation and with it comes particular challenges. one entrepreneur worked his way through pitfalls by learning to strike a balance with his business. we opened a bowling alley. we have several properties all within five to six blocks of each other. it is a challenge but it is important we maintain that so we don t compete against ourselves. this is the biggest restaurant owner in downtown tulsa, oklahoma. the old joke we used to have is we built a neighborhood pub, now we have to build a neighbor. since he opened the first establishment, an irish pub named mcnellie s. is something else going to happen? it was not happening quic