I wouldn't necessarily expect to put my thumb on the pulse of the region's economy at a flea market, but I got pretty close recently because I am an inveterate eavesdropper.

An old boy who looked like he'd just stepped off the lettuce truck was talking to one of his colleagues at his stand out at Happy's Flea Market in Roanoke, where I was busily snapping pictures for a portfolio. "Dang gas prices is going to run me out of bid-ness," the farmer said as he chomped on his cigar. "I'm gettin' behind on payments at the farm and they ain't no catchin' up when everything I make goes to keep the equipment runnin.'"

A few days earlier, I'd accompanied our reporter Don Simmons as he interviewed some big truck dealers and we listened slack-jawed as they explained that it takes nearly $1,000 to fill up the tank of a long-haul tractor-the kind my daughter used to drive on those coast-to-coast runs she made. Daddy's Little Girl.

Then I start reading how the Bush Administration-oil men and tycoons-is allowing big companies to buy up contracts meant for small businesses ("bundling," it's called) and that the Small Business Administration is not reviewing most bundled procurements. A U.S. Senate report says that $384 million worth of contracts (87 of them) weren't reviewed in this particular period last year. The Inspector General's office, according to the report, concluded that because there were so few people to monitor the process (due to a lack of financing), only 11.6 percent of the centers are examined.

From there, I hit upon a BusinessWeek headline that asked, "Is the SBA Hurting Small Business?" and in the long interview with Lloyd Chapman, the fiery founder of the American Small Business League, we find the answer to be, "Oh, yes!"

Chapman doesn't much like the SBA, an agency the Bushies have downgraded from cabinet status and whose budget they've cut substantially (all the while claiming "efficiencies"). Chapman says in the article that he senses "anti-small-business policy . . . I'd say I'm a bipartisan person, but I think the Bush Administration has done more damage to small business than any [other] president in my lifetime." Now, wait a minute, Lloyd, you're talking about a guy who loves to surround himself with small bid-ness people for photo ops and a man who says he just adores these "folks" who've pulled themselves up by their bootstraps-something he's heard about.

Here's some of the fodder for Chapman's ire, according to the BusinessWeek story:

• The administration refused to implement a law that requires a five percent goal for women-owned business to receive government contracts.
• The Bushies have allowed "some of the largest companies in the world to be classified as small business," including Oracle, H-P, and Northrop Grumman. "One of the biggest problems facing the SBA . . . is that large companies are allowed to receive small business contracts."
• Our boy Lloyd thinks the Bush Admin will try to close the SBA in the coming months.
• 9/11 response: "Only 10 percent of the [relief] loans" went to those small businesses with losses. "The problem is that the SBA has a real mission that's totally inconsistent with its [activities]. Its mission is supposed [to be] to help small business, but it appears focused on helping federal agencies."
• The Bushies want a small business exemption for venture capital companies. "Chase Manhattan Bank will be considered a small business," under this directive, Lloyd says.
• Bush appointed Steven Preston, an executive at ServiceMaster (which operates Merry Maids, Terminix and TruGreen) as head of the SBA recently. BusinessWeek says Preston has "no experience as an entrepreneur and comes from a company with a reputation as a bully among some small business owners."

Meanwhile, Bush's arch-foe John Kerry, the ranking Democrat on the Senate's Small Business and Entrepreneurship committee, is beside himself. He says Bush's tax cuts will clobber small business people, who are rarely in the wealthy elite (average income $1.5 million) who will benefit from the cuts. Kerry points out that 8 percent of small business households earn more than $200,000 a year, but the group making more than that will get 51 percent of the benefits of the tax reduction that goes to small business owners. Sixty-two percent of those households based on small business income below $75,000 will get 16 percent of the cuts.

Meanwhile, on the direct-to-you level, Kerry tells us Bushies want to eliminate the Advanced Technology Program, which encourages high-risk research; has proposed to "cut or eliminate micro-loans and counseling to micro-entrepreneurs (disproportionately hurting women and minorities)"; are doing little or nothing to expand small business' access to health care and rising healthm care costs; and continues to allow large businesses to "take advantage of loopholes and poor oversight to receive contract dollars intended for small firms."

'Course Bush's guys deny all of the above, mostly claiming it's some kind of illusion. But next time you go over to the Texaco filling station and start pumping gas and the numbers mount, you might do well to remember that Bush is an oil man. Chaney is an oil man. Rice is an oil ma . . . uh, woman. And that the administration is heavily populated with marketing professionals and big business executives. As the price of oil climbs and small businesses struggle, there's little wonder why.

Misc.

The Queen of Schmooze departs. There are influences in the evolution of any business that you can point back to with pride, with horror or with some other meaningful response because they were important. I look at Deborah Nason coming by my office five years ago, seeking an opportunity to do something she just knew she could do well, as one of those.

Deborah has been our lead freelancer since that time, a position she so clearly earned that she is the only "contributing editor" we've ever had. Deborah came with little experience, but a lot of enthusiasm and an ability to schmooze the likes of which I was not aware existed.

A little while back, she handed in her 100th story-most of them cover stories-and I think that over that period she made far more friends among our readers than a journalist has a right to expect. Deborah didn't make the friends by pandering. She did it the old-fashioned way by writing stories that were true (not just factual) and by telling readers how business was done right. That means a lot because there has to be a reason to pick up a publication; you have to get some value for your time. Deborah has always presented that. Now she and her husband, Richard, a good guy and an optometric researcher who was caught up in the Johnson & Johnson misfortune recently, will return to The North-New Jersey or Connecticut or New Hampshire or one of those states that all look alike to me. I, among many, many others, wish them both well. But, boy, I'm going to miss Deborah's contributions. She made my job easier and your read better. Deborah asked if she could use this space to say au revoir, les enfants. I said yes.

Here 'tis:

"I want to thank all of you in the Blue Ridge Region business community for being so wonderful to work with over the past five years. It has been a privilege to get to know so many interesting people and diverse businesses throughout this far-flung region. In the spirit of true regionalism, I recommend that you make the effort to visit communities in the area that you have never seen before, and to get acquainted with their business communities. I am sure you will be surprised by what you will learn-I always was. I will miss you."