Free Speech in Iraq Gets You Three Years in Jail

Nice to see we've built a regime based on rule of law in Iraq. Imagine how many years he would have gotten if he'd actually hit W with the shoe.

Why We Need Walmart - Warts and All

The Poet asked me to blog about WallyWorld a couple of weeks ago, when she forwarded me this undercover piece by a person who actually went to work at a Walmart. The article basically says that, despite what Walmart's opponents say online, working there sounds stunningly like working in just about any other retail place. It's dreary, dull, hardly inspiring and tough to make a living working there, but Walmart is not exactly like a labor camp.

It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what I wanted to say more broadly when I came across this piece in the Times. Remember that during the White House's Health Care Fiesta they were claiming that tons of cost savings could come from electronic patient records? Well it looks like Walmart has beaten them to the punch, and in a fight between the Federal government and Walmart, we have plenty of evidence to suggest Walmart would wipe the floor with the Feds.

Mrs. Fundman and I shop at Wally World at least once every couple of weeks. The produce blows, and I'd sooner chew on shoe leather than purchase any fish from a Walmart. But if we are out of spaghetti sauce, canned tuna, dairy, pasta, or Mrs. Fundman's Soy Breakfast Hockey Pucks it's the only place to go. Packaged stuff is so much cheaper than any place else. How do I know this? Well partially through comparison shopping, but partially through simply observation. I just look at who is shopping there.

The store is full of immigrants (or my town has a miraculously successful Spanish program in its public schools), African Americans, and working Moms who benefit from the prices and the ability to make one trip to shop for everything. Anyone who's a parent understands how friggin important it is to be able to save time and not shop at three or four different places. When you drive a Lexus SUV, have "domestic employees" at home and send your kids to boarding school you may not understand the appeal of Walmart. When you work for a living and try to raise a family you do.

Oh I've heard the claims from the left that Walmart destroys local "Mom and Pop" businesses and hurts minorities by not offering health insurance and underpaying people and they don't do the union thing, and blah, blah, blah. Lower middle class folks, older people, poorer folks who cannot afford to eat tofu, organic beet chips, free range mushrooms, or buy hydroponic toilet paper, environmentally friendly free trade toilet cleaner, or enjoy Turkish llama cottage cheese need Wally World and the savagery that it inflicts upon other retailers to drive down prices. "Mom and Pop" usually means "Boutique" these days, and Walmart eats Boutique for lunch.

And THREE YEARS before President Greenie won office, lookie who was putting solar energy panels on their new stores to save money? That would be Walmart. And who sells tons of organic foods each year? Wallyworld.

But thinking more broadly, going to Wally World is like flying Southwest Airlines or seeing people at McDonald's order a Latte. It's about democratizing quality of life. You, as a lower middle class consumer, can do much better saving money at Wally World and do more with it. The same goes for Southwest Airlines. No more long bus trips and lost time. Both of them have improved the lives of a lot of people. And you don't have to look into a Starbucks and wonder what Cappuchino tastes like; you can afford one for a buck fifty at Mickey D's.

Which is not say they are a panacea. I wouldn't want to work at Wally World now even though they are now being called "innovators" in providing health care. McDonald's still grosses me out foodwise. But all of them, and Southwest too, provide opportunities for folks who aren't rich and affluent to enjoy more of the conveniences and luxuries of modern life. They do it by playing fairly through markets, not relying on government subsidies or handouts to fight the competition. So don't be surprised if Walmart and its ilk continue to be at the forefront of innovation and cost saving in a lot of surprising areas. Now if they could just sell a decent piece of Tilapia......

Environmentalists Celebrate Human Suffering

In not one, but TWO articles in major news outlets this week. Don't worry about delaying your retirement, forcing your kids to take out more loans for their college education, or helping out your neighbors who are unemployed - carbon emissions have gone down! Thank God! So sayeth Newsweek in this thoughtless little piece on how the world's recession is good for the planet. How can anyone think that unemployment among the world's poor is somehow "good?" I mean where have sensibilities gone?

At least in the case of this piece from the Boston Globe they have some regional bias which explains the hypocrisy. I mean this is the same place where the liberals from New England are happy to have wind power, as long as it doesn't ruin the view from Cape Cod.

An Alternative Title

Most of the major news outlets have been reporting on this study about the state of American religion by a couple of demographers funded by Lilly with headlines about the decline in Christianity in the U.S. No doubt their numbers reflect that, but in one area only - mainline Protestantism. Check out Table 3 on page 5. It's pretty amazing.

Alternative title - "Welcome to Catholic/Evangelical America" Now we know why Obama was trying to reach out to Evangelicals with the whole Rick Warren thing.

No Guns and No Strollers

Those were the only two things you could not bring to the Golden Gloves matches held at the Armory in my hometown several years ago - I kid you not. Apparently some smart Army reservist had decided that preventing the widespread distribution of these two dangerous tools of destruction among the crowd would make us all safer. So can we ever know that by preventing strollers and firearms from entering in the Armory did save me from gunshot wounds and being beaten to death by a 1,200 dollar stroller?

Over the past few weeks a lot of folks in the blogosphere, media, and government have been debating the fate of Citibank since its share price is around a dollar and the government has become the largest shareholder at 36%. By the way, the government's other big "investment" AIG, has now turned completely sour and will almost certainly end up being a huge money loser after some people argued the deal might actually turnout profitable.

The gist of the Citi debate, on the surface, is the "too big to fail" vs. "markets must have failure to function" argument. Because Citi is much more than just a bank, because it has operations in more than 100 countries, and because a very rich Saudi prince happens to have invested billions, the government can't let it fail. After all when it let Lehman die, look what happened!

There are two folks, Megan McArdle and Kevin Drum, who I read, and they have both posted on this issue over the weekend. I think both make reasonable opposing arguments on the matter.

I'm not an economist, although as I've noted before even if I was it would hardly make me authoritative on the issue of how the macro economy functions, so I have no particularly strong view on how bad a Citi shutdown or nationalization would really be. But I do know this - from a political standpoint the actual issue of causality and credit-claiming is central here.

Folks on the left argue that while the government sat around and "did nothing" during the Bush years the economy collapsed. Folks on the right have argued that the market's decline since Obama became President is "caused" by his policies. Harry Reid says the Stimulus Package will "create" 3 million jobs, and Richard Shelby isn't worried about letting Citi fail and says it would fit into the model of how we deal with smaller banks.

So here's what it comes down to - the left uses something called the "precautionary principle" when it makes most of these arguments. Whether it's about the stimulus, bank bailouts, or safety regulation, they argue that 1) past failure to act has caused problems and 2) current actions will solve and prevent problems. Generally speaking conservatives and/or libertarians argue the opposite that 1) past problems are caused by government actions and 2) government actions just exacerbate current problems.

Who's right? Well who knows because determining "causality" in statistical terms what causes something to happen, is really, really, really, difficult to determine in complicated systems. Try to determine in the real world what causes things and it gets even harder.

My general rule is that the precautionary principle overstates risk, BUT, and this is a huge but, most people are very risk averse during crises and willing to "pay" for risk abatement through future taxes. In English, yes I will mortgage part of my children's future even if there's a small chance this policy will prevent a horrible Depression. Interest groups (read here bond holders in AIG and Citi) know this and play up the fear.

But the right has never, NEVER done a good job acknowledging the potential risks and real costs that markets incur on losers during crises. That's why they are losing now, and that's why the costs of all this government "risk prevention" are so much more costly than they have to be because they have not offered a comprehensively less costly alternative set of plans.

And in four years when Obama is running for president again and the economy has turned around, which it will probably do, the two parties will have to fight over whether his plans helped spur the turn around or simply burdened us with higher taxes and debt. Either way the key issue of what actually "caused" the recovery won't matter - what will matter is who can make the better case politically, and that will probably, again, be the Democrats.

As My Father Likes to Say

About guys who go on a killing spree and THEN kill themselves, why do they always get the order wrong? Remember: First start with yourself.

UNFORTUNATE UPDATE

Two more idiots, one in Alabama and the other in Germany, also got the order wrong this week.

Angry White Men Won't Cut It

As Wall Street tumbles, the government prints money like Mugabe, and the Bachelor apparently was lying, Republicans have had to spend the past week bowing down at the altar of Limbaugh. I honest to God never thought I would write a sentence like that in my life.

I mean this is the guy who made fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's disease. The guy who was addicted to prescription pain killers and still wanted us to go after drug dealers. The guy who did the "magic Negro" parody on his show is that revered in the GOP? And a political party staffed, presumably by professionals, has allowed the White House to make HIM their spokesperson.

I'd like to recommend that the Republicans hold a special training seminar for their leadership in which they watch this film. Maybe they'll learn something about politics and how it's played.