Commentary

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Economic reports show that most job growth in our country this year has come from small- and medium-size businesses. That trend will only accelerate, according to the recently released Small Business Index from the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Charlie Sheen may have become the best pitchman for international drug cartels, that, I venture, would gladly pay him the added million a week he demands to continue acting on the cancelled Three and a Half Men television sitcom from the better than $30 billion the cartels rake in annually from U.S. users. He can be their poster child luring legions of fans into the world of drug consumption.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was killed in Iraq, and his body was sent to his family for a proper burial. On the day the Snyder family was to lay their son to rest, the Phelps family picketed the funeral. They carried signs that read “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “Thank God for IEDs,” and “Fags Doom Nations.” The Phelps family did not limit their attacks to the military or the gay and lesbian community, however; they also targeted the Snyder family.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; The presidential meeting this week between Mexico’s Felipe Calderon and Barack Obama looked from the outside like a hastily arranged exercise in damage control. But while most analysts emphasized the tensions between the neighboring nations going into the meeting, the real crisis behind the visit was the failure of what the two leaders most strongly agree on: the war on drugs south of the border.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; In California, the state government currently spends more than $34 billion a year paying private contractors to do jobs that civil servants can perform for half the cost. Another $900 million of taxpayer funds is wasted annually propping up the state’s failed enterprise zone program. Common sense dictates that any proposal to balance the state budget begin here.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; I was “raised union.”</p>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; My mother, who immigrated to the United States from Nicaragua, worked the 3 p.m. to midnight shift at a toy factory after the birth of my younger twin sisters. She was a member of the United Rubber Workers, which later merged with the Steelworkers Union.</p>

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<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; As a proud New Yorker and the mother of a first responder who lost his life on September 11, 2001, I am saddened to learn that Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is holding congressional hearings, March 10, on the “radicalization of American Muslims.”</p>