There are at least two political issues that I don’t understand why big business in the United States doesn’t support.

One is single payer health care. The other is strict gun regulation.

I don’t understand why big business in the United States doesn’t get behind single payer health care because if I were a big businessman, I would imagine that I would salivate at the notion of cutting my human resources team in half, and at the notion that I wouldn’t have to screw around once a year pursuing better insurance rates, or screw around once a year telling my employees that the rates are going up, or screwing around once a year having all of those meetings.

If I were a big businessman in the United States, I would be begging the Chamber of Commerce to get the heck on board with single payer health care. Think of all the time and effort I could cut from my schedule about all of this crap about caring about my employees and get back to pillaging and white-knuckling over the bottom line. Wouldn’t that be great, big businessmen? Then why in the wide wide world of sports don’t you give this issue some shoulder?

I also don’t for the life of me comprehend why if you’re a big businessman in the United States, you don’t think it’s an excellent idea for government to regulate who can own a human-killing machine, and where and when he can brandish it.

This news story caught my eye today. A man walked into a Kroger store brandishing a loaded assault rifle in Charlottesville, Virginia. It scared the living shit out of everybody.

Shopper Monica Green said she fled the store and called 911 after she saw the man. Green said she warned people in the parking lot not to enter the store.

“It’s amazing because some people didn’t want to believe it was true, they just stood there like sitting ducks,” Green said.

Do you see what happened there? This redneck inspired one of the customers to walk out of the store and to encourage others not to enter. Now, once she saw this guy was getting his head pushed down into a squad car, she went back in and finished shopping. But how many of those folks took their pocketbooks back to their cars to buy their Wheaties elsewhere today, and how many of them now see a big red X when they drive by that particular location?

It happens. The local Home Depot near my previous neighborhood was where Linda Franklin had been shopping before she was cut down by Malvo and Muhammed during the world-famous run-back-and-forth-while-you’re-pumping-gas days in the metro D.C. area. Not that I go to Home Depot a lot as I try to frequent local hardware stores first (plus there’s that whole in-Home-Depot-nobody-can-hear-you-scream aspect) (hat tip to Cherrydale Hardware), but after that, all I could think about going there was two deranged assholes in a highly-customized Chevrolet sedan.

All that could be done, by the way, to this guy who walked into a Kroger in Virginia brandishing a really big gun was the Kroger banninated him from the store. No $.59 toilet cleaner for you, man, because you terrorized the rest of the people in here who were just trying to sniff and poke the artichokes. He didn’t break the law. He wasn’t even arrested. That to me is crazier than Charlie Manson, and remember, Charlie Manson is locked up for life. But THAT…is out here.

Hint to big business: Allowing rednecks to carry deadly munitions in public is bad for business, as is allowing huge insurance companies to tie up your own HR departments penny pinching in the health care market. Also, there are a number of other quote-endquote “liberal” policies that by the way are actually excellent for the bottom line.