Ninety-Three Pages and Not One Word for You

Cedar Valley News – February 3, 2026
Ninety-Three Pages and Not One Word for You
By: Caleb Mercer
From the fictional town of Cedar Valley, where characters from Quiet Echo continue to respond to real-world events.

I know what it feels like when a big company decides you do not matter.

I lived it. Twelve years in the Army. Came home. Worked the factory line until they shut it down and walked away. No warning worth the name. No plan for the people they left behind. Just a locked gate and a number to call, nobody answered.

A long time ago. By the grace of God and the patience of people who loved me when I did not deserve it, I rebuilt. I build things now. Cabinets. Shelving. Custom work. My name is on every piece. If something is wrong, you call me, and I fix it. Not because of some policy. Because a man stands behind his work.

So when I read the airline industry’s trade group filed a 93-page petition asking the federal government to take away your right to a cash refund when they cancel your flight, I felt something I have not felt in years. The old anger. The kind eating me alive back when I did not know how to live without it.

Ninety-three pages. They want to end your right to see the real price of a ticket before you buy it. They want to charge parents extra to sit next to their own kids. And they want the government to stop publishing the reports showing which airlines cancel the most flights. They do not want you to compare. They do not want you to know.

The man running the Department of Transportation used to be their lobbyist. He already killed the rule requiring up to $775 in compensation when they strand you at the gate. The fox is running the henhouse. I have seen this show before.

It is not just airlines. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—the agency Congress built after the banks nearly wrecked the economy in 2008—has been gutted. Staff cut from 1,700 to fewer than 200. The man in charge was sent there to shut it down. Meanwhile, complaints to the bureau went up 89 percent last year. More people calling for help. Fewer people answering.

Congress killed the rule capping overdraft fees at five dollars for big banks. Five dollars. The average fee is still twenty-seven. Every one of those dollars comes from someone already broke. I have been in those shoes. I know how the floor feels.

In the auto industry, the big manufacturers lobbied California into gutting its 55-year-old lemon law. Fifty-five years of protecting people who got stuck with a bad car. Gone. Because the companies selling the bad cars spent the money to make it go away.

Three industries. One playbook. Spend millions to kill the rules protecting ordinary people. Call it deregulation. It is not deregulation. It is abandonment.

I am mayor of this town now. I still cannot believe it sometimes. The old Caleb would have put a chair through a window reading this news. The old Caleb was broken. But by His grace, I was made new. And because I was made new, I do not throw chairs anymore. I build them.

Here is what I have learned building them. When you make something with your hands and put your name on it, you cannot hide behind a 93-page document. You stand behind your work or you do not stand at all. Lars Olson runs the hardware store the same way. George Khan runs the Deli the same way. Every small-business owner in Cedar Valley puts the customer first—not because a regulation tells them to, but because they live here. They worship here. Their kids go to school here. You cheat your neighbor, you cheat yourself.

Big business does not live here. Big business lives in a spreadsheet. And when people become numbers on a spreadsheet, it gets very easy to write 93 pages explaining why those numbers do not deserve their money back.

I am not against business. I am a business. But I learned the hard way—the very hard way—when the people in charge stop seeing people, everything falls apart. My factory did it. These airlines are doing it. These banks are doing it. And the government supposed to stand between them and us is doing it too.

On Saturdays, Helen and I open our home for fellowship. We pray. We break bread. We talk about how to live right in a world making it hard. And every week I thank God for this town and these people. Cedar Valley taught me something the boardrooms have forgotten: you serve the person in front of you. Everything else follows.

Government of the people, for the people. Lincoln said it. He meant it. And every time some corporation writes a 93-page petition to strip your protections, and every time some official who used to work for them signs off on it, someone breaks the promise.

I have been broken before. I know what it looks like. And I am telling you—this is what it looks like.

Nothing ever changes, I used to say. I do not say it anymore. Things change when people decide they will. This town is proof.

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series. While the people and town are fictional, the national events they reflect on are real.

Want to know the full story behind Cedar Valley? Teresa, Caleb, Dan, and the community you have come to know in these editorials first came together in Quiet Echo. Discover how a small town found its way from fear to fellowship—one quiet act of courage at a time. Available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3ME4nSs

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