A Salute to American Small Businesses (and Pizza!)

As Americans get robbed by corporate treachery, and as our taxes get funneled to bail-out the destruction caused by monumental greed, it is still small businesses that are at the heart of the U.S. economy.

Small business owners are hard-working people many of whom provide local services.  And they are everywhere, from small towns to large cities.  They have no hidden agendas; there is nothing underhanded going on.  Your hard-earned dollars are exchanged for their hard-earned services.  It’s the proverbial “win-win” situation in its most basic form.

We can all live, and live much better, without “upper echelon” corporate criminals and the politicians that enable them to prevail.  But we can’t live without the small businesses that provide us with so many essential products and services, many of which, quite simply, make us very happy.  Like pizza!

New Yorkers will argue that the best pizza in the U.S. is made in NYC. Among themselves, of course, New Yorkers will argue about just where in NYC that pizza is made. Manhattan? Brooklyn? Queens? Staten Island? Jersey, even. Well, you can find great pizza pretty much anywhere in NYC (even in Jersey). But the best...that would be the pizza in The Bronx! Pictured here is the pieman from this Bronx native's favorite pizzeria in all of NYC.

“That One”

How about John McCain start focusing on THIS one?!!!

An American worker watches her retirement investments vanish as the Dow Jones Industrials plunge nearly 778 points on September 29, 2008.

When the Dow Jones Industrials plunged nearly 778 points on September 29, 2008, many believed the financial markets had hit their bottom.  Many were hopeful that the “bailout,” or “rescue” package which was finally reskinned and signed into law would begin to turn our financial crisis around.  Since then, the Dow has lost over another 800 points, and markets worldwide are plunging to greater and greater depths.

Against this backdrop of financial turmoil, while people are seeing their retirement investments and education investments for their children dissipate, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, with outrageous audacity and sheer disrespect, flippantly referred to his Democratic opponent Barack Obama as “that one” during the October 7, 2008 presidential debate.

It is that very attitude of disregard, disrespect, and overwhelming hubris that has defined the Republican administration for the past 8 years.  John McCain, with that one insulting, childish, mean-spirited, and quite revealing remark, has sealed his place as a representative of ALL that is and has been wrong with our government for a long, long time.