“If we can increase contracting, we can reach back into the communities that have so far been passed by,” said Fred Jordan, head of the F.E. Jordan & Associates construction firm and president of the chamber's San Francisco chapter. "If we don't do that, all these stimulus programs that have done so much for Wall Street will have done little for Main Street and nothing for Martin Luther King Way or Cesar Chavez Way." Jordan, who sits on the small-business council at Caltrans, said that only 0.1 percent of Caltrans contracts go to African-American businesses — a number that he hopes to change, partly by pushing for more on-the-job training for disadvantaged youths. Full Article at San Diego Union-Tribune