Also from the Rev. Jack Zylman:

Could Joe Bruno and Louis Pizitz have survived?

I don't think so.

Governor Bob Riley's Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program is changing the rules to try to destroy the small businesses that have been founded by mostly immigrant entrepreneurs, just like Bruno and Pizitz were. These small stores sell only nutritious food and baby formula to poor women. The products are paid for with US government vouchers.

WIC has lowered infant mortality significantly in the United States and in Alabama. Far fewer babies are dying in the first year of life. Further, these small businesses are creating new successful Americans, like Joe Bruno and Louis Pizitz once developed.

Without Bruno's, Pizitz, Loveman's, Burger-Phillips, Blach's and Parisians, which all came from such small businesses, Birmingham would be far poorer as a city than it is.

Riley's administrator, Wendy Blackmon, states that these stores charge higher prices than the giant chains, like Wal-Mart's, Bruno's and Publix. But this is a smoke screen. It is nothing but corporate welfare for the monopolists.

The little old neighborhood stores and the push carts always charged more. Bruno's little store charged more than A&P. But that changed as Bruno's became successful and grew. He sold convenience and neighborliness, and Bruno's ballooned into Alabama's largest supermarket chain. A&P is not even in business in the state anymore. Given a chance, small businesses started today by this generation of immigrant entrepreneurs will become the successful businesses of tomorrow.

But not if Riley's administration has its way. Pressured by the supermarkets, convenience stores, discount stores and other mega businesses, his administration has chosen to drive these small entrepreneurs out of business by bureaucratic fiat, as reported in the Birmingham News. What a travesty!

Alabama and America are going from the land of opportunity to the land of bureaucracy and from the land built by small business to the land of monopoly. Has Governor Riley sold out to the monopolies, and are the small businesses to pay the price?

Riley, Blackmon, and the giant monopolies need to back off and let small businesses thrive. They are our future. It is the American way.