Interchange fees on credit cards are one of our largest expenses. This article details the little known effects on both small businesses such as ours as well as the costs to our customers. Even more interesting, this debate is a metaphor for the way business is done in D.C.
“The swipe fee debate, as mundane as it may appear, is emblematic of how Washington works today — and helps explain why Congress hasn’t passed an appropriations bill in years, can’t write an annual budget, is flirting with defaulting on the country’s debt and effectively gave up on job-creation efforts in the midst of a brutal economic downturn. There are, to be sure, a variety of reasons that Congress is zombified, but one of the least understood explanations is also one of the simplest: The city is too busy refereeing disputes between major corporate interest groups.”
Mark Bittman is one of my favorite food writers. The “Minimalist” column ran for years in the NY Times. When he writes that we should “Encourage and subsidize home cooking. (Someday soon, I’ll write about my idea for a new Civilian Cooking Corps.) When people cook their own food, they make better choices. When families eat together, they’re more stable. We should provide food education for children (a new form of home ec, anyone?), cooking classes for anyone who wants them and even cooking assistance for those unable to cook for themselves” I pay attention because this mirrors my own thinking.
Alan Richman, GQ’s Food and Travel writer spent 30 days trying to dine ethically. An article in the July GQ titled “Eat No Evil,” describes his quest. I think that my favorite is “If you have to eat in airports, don’t.” Another is “Transform your front lawn into a garden (be prepared for neighbors to consider you a fruitcake– or worse, a European).” (Ooops, here is a photo of our front lawn garden.) The article is not online but he has distilled some of his conclusions down to these ten commandments.