All the talk all week long has been about the giant bailout plan that was the subject of so much heartburn on Capitol Hill and so much political theater there and elsewhere.

And, as might have been expected, I've been hearing quite a bit of grumbling about it among microbusiness owners, too.

If, I have heard, Congress has a spare $700 billion lying around, why not divvy it up among the nation's small business owners? We'd each get something in excess of $250,000, which we could put to very good use out here in the real world.

After all, they say, aren't we the economic engine?

Nobody is pretending that this huge bailout is going to improve overall economic conditions in terms of things that impact real people, like inflation or employment, either. Under the circumstances, $700 billion is an awful lot of money to spend on something that isn't quite real.

Besides, Congress doesn't really have a spare $700 billion, does it?

Of course, I do understand why it's necessary to shore up the financial markets and restore confidence on Wall Street.

If the matter just concerned a bunch of fat cat investment bankers and the Paris Hiltons of the world, I wouldn't care how much money they lost. But there are a lot of retirement savings and investments by charitable institutions and such at stake as well ... not to mention all those homeowners.

At the same time, it is a bit galling.

There is a set of political language out there that targets individuals who get into trouble in one way or another and who need some form of assistance. In fact, I've heard some of that language used to refer to the homeowners who currently face foreclosure because they got bitten by some of those exotic sub-prime mortgages.

That language tends to be condescending at best, degrading at its worst.

And yet, isn't it odd that huge companies like GM and American Airlines and AIG, with access to more resources than you and I could ever dream of, are deemed deserving of help when they get into trouble (usually brought about by a combination of greed and poor management decisions), while you and I and our microbusinesses are not supposed to need anything at all?

Evidently, companies — well, no ... large companies — are judged by a different standard.

I'm sure that makes sense to somebody somewhere but it doesn't make any sense at all to me.