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Noting recent headlines touting the fact that summer jobs were very scarce for teenagers it was tempting to go out and see if anyone had any idea of what the real problem is. The people writing the articles gave no clue. While in Dennys restaurant here in New Smyrna Beach the other day, I asked Catherine O’Brian about the job market for teenagers.
She said it is "tough and business is slow.” When asked about how to fix the problem she responded, “We need to get more money into the economy.

When I look out my living room window over to the Marathon gas station on North Dixie Freeway, my eyes become glued to the gas prices, which for the past week have been stuck at $3.999 a gallon for regular unleaded. I cannot understand why they even bother with that third digit. Just get to four bucks. God knows it is not going to stop there, anyway. I feel sorry for all the hard-working middle class families in our community that bought those huge sport utility vehicles that now cost anywhere from $70 to $100 to gas up. I have a little car. Well, sort of. It's a gas hog.

I was not surprised the weekly Observer newspaper folded Monday. I was the final editor under the daily version of what was the New Smyrna Beach Observer and warned ownership that converting it into a weekly would be its death knell. That is why I am so pleased to have established NSB News under NSBNEWS.net. This is greater New Smyrna Beach's daily home-based newspaper. Period. So here we are, 11 months later and indeed The Observer is no more. I remember the day I put together that very first weekly edition. As soon as it hit the press, I was shown the door. Just like that.

Talking to people around around Southeast Volusia like Claudia Torres about the economic slowdown reveals most are sure things are slow, but they are uncertain as to what is really causing it.

Torres, an agent at State Farm, said: “The slowdown is horrible here. There is less money and business. An acquaintance is having a hard time affording gas for his SUV to drive to his job in Orlando”

When asked about what is causing the slowdown, she blamed it on the war and said the president is not handling the money well.

Joyce Hanson also at State Farm said, “we are having hard times.”

Talking to Harold Haycook, owner of Haycook Moving and Storage, and his assistants, Mike West, 31, and Joe Braunig, 38, it was quickly established that they were all in favor of national health care, but what they did not realize are some of the serious pitfalls.

However, talking to local hospital employees at Bert Fish Medical Center, it was discovered that they are quite leery of national health care.

Hospital employees seemed to be mostly against national health care, although they did not want to be quoted.