Author: Brian J. Noggle

Think you can do better than Congress? Here’s the National Budget Simulation, where you can set budget priorities and adjust taxes. Your hero, or mine anyway, scored thusly:

Budget Totals

Old budget was $3251.488 billion
($2264.172 billion in spending, $987.316 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

New budget is $1727.29 billion
($1318.51 billion in spending, $408.78 billion in tax expenditures and cuts).

You have cut the deficit by $1524.2 billion.

Your new deficit is $-1167.19 billion.

Oops!

You’ve cut so much that the federal budget now contains a substantial surplus. Many economists warn that this budget may help induce or prolong a recession,
and ordinary citizens demand a refund. You might want to cut taxes or raise spending.

Oops? That’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

(Link seen on The Agitator.)

Neil Steinberg, of the Chicago Sun-Times, jumps on the anti-Wal-Mart bandwagon today:

Wal-Mart is a thing of evil

There is great irony that the Wal-Mart proposed for the South Side would be located on the site of the shuttered Ryerson steel mill, a bit of symbolism that would be too obvious in fiction, but in real life just sits there and smirks at us: the good-job, good-salary past of America bulldozed to make room for the penny-shaving gulag of Wal-Mart. Of course it’s our own fault. We rhapsodize the small town past of America, with good old Mr. Henderson standing behind the oak counter at Henderson’s Drugs, wrapping our box of cotton balls in brown paper and twine. But when forced to act on our convictions, it turned out we’d rather save a few pennies on our cotton balls by buying them in a 55-gallon drum from an indentured servant at Wal-Mart with Mr. Henderson greeting us at the door for minimum wage.

Tales of Wal-Mart excess — from forcing illegal immigrants to work unpaid overtime to triple-charging customers through a credit card snafu — were already piling up when a truly frightening story arrived from Inglewood, Calif.

The Inglewood city fathers, sensibly enough, blocked Wal-Mart from importing its Third World employment practices to their community. The Bargain Behemoth responded by getting a referendum on Tuesday’s ballot with a proposal that would basically create a sovereign Republic of Wal-Mart in the heart of Inglewood; if you think I’m exaggerating, the New York Times said the measure would ”essentially exempt Wal-Mart from all of Inglewood’s planning, zoning and environmental regulations, creating a city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules.”

My bet is that voters pass the measure — what is the integrity of your government compared to the lure of buying stuff really cheap? — and no doubt Wal-Mart will find a way to jam itself into Chicago next.

The most telling detail of the California nightmare is this: The goons Wal-Mart hired to gather signatures to get their measure on the ballot were paid a far better wage than the clerks in its stores.

How disappointing. Steinberg takes a couple of isolated incidents, mixes them together, and decides that the free markets aren’t good. Or at least great success in the free markets aren’t; maybe Steinberg prefers only moderate success mixed in with enobling failure. Granted, I’m putting words into his keyboard here, but people who hold up Wal-Mart as an example of what’s wrong with capitalism are poor thinkers. I don’t know what those people want, probably just something else, and heaven forbid if we ever get it.

Wal-Mart got to where it is by building stores where others wouldn’t, by selling acceptable quality products at low prices to people who weren’t being served by other department stores or boutiques. Although some portions of the corporation have done wrong (skimping overtime pay, hiring un-driver’s-licensed illegal aliens) and some unfortunate incidents occur (accidental overbilling), it’s not a force for evil. Its customers can shop at higher-priced stores if they get better service there or if that’s important to them; its employees can get other jobs if it’s important to them. Wal-Mart’s the intersection of free wills in this little thing we call commerce. If it bothers you so damn much, bobos, take up substinence farming and start whining about your aching backs instead.

Wal-Mart is just the Microsoft for those who don’t pretend to be technical.

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Others weigh in:

• Kim du Toit thinks “Wal-Mart is a tool of Satan (not to mention Communist China’s best client).”
• The Meatriarchy Guy agrees with me that “They are a friggin’ department store and no one is forcing anyone to shop there.”
• The ORACULATIONS guy recognizes So as a lifetime job WalMart sucks. As an entry level job while you are looking for something else or while going to school it’s great.”

In today’s SFGate.com, Emil Guillermo looks at the microphenomenon that is William Hung and finds what he expected: anti-Asian American racism. (Hurry, that’s a perishable link.)

For those of you who don’t know, William Hung wanted to be a contestant on the television show American Idol, but whose cover of a Ricky Martin song, “She Bangs”, proved so awful that he didn’t make the cut. Instead, he was thrown out at audition, but since these auditions aired, became an anti-star of sorts. He’s made the rounds of the television shows and has a CD coming out. America likes an earnest, but ultimately undertalented, performer. Sure, it’s funny, but it’s also endearing. A lot of us can project ourselves into William Hung.

What does Guillermo project? Seemingly, a lack of virility:

With William Hung, is there any other reason to extend the joke on America except that it plays to a racist image of the ineffectual Asian-American male?

What is Hung but an infantilized, incompetent and impotent male image? Strong? No. Virile? No. Sexy? The guy’s a virgin.

You know what, Emil? A lot of people are virgins, and some of them don’t care for it. The modern message indicates you’re a freak if you’re not getting head in third grade. I haven’t seen William Hung in action–I get my entertainment and pop culture news on the Internet– but I wouldn’t be so quick to call him infantilized, incompetent, and impotent. As a matter of fact, those words don’t tend to come to mind for most people unless they’re writing television ads for male supplements. Those men are incompetent.

Guillermo hits the v-word again with this bit:

It wouldn’t be so bad if we saw positive images of Asian-American males in the media. But, for the most part, we’ve been invisible, and the images have usually come with martial-arts enhancements.

Bruce Lee’s combative persona has been the most virile and most enduring icon for Asian-American males. But the stereotypes that predominate are the sinister and inscrutable or ineffectual and effeminate.

Jeez, buddy, give it a rest. You’re so caught up in making William Hung’s name ironic that you fail to see what makes him iconic: that he’s an underdog member of a multicultural society that appreciates underdogs.

Guillermo might want me to prove it:

You certainly wouldn’t see them glorify a black man who couldn’t sing and dance on “American Idol.” Nor would they prop up a clumsy, tone-deaf white person.

He’s wrong. For starters, Don “No Soul” Simmons was a joke in 1987. But that’s not the point.

America braces people who sincerely try, often even if they’re not the most talented. When I look to my hometown sports teams, I see that the fan favorites are often blue-collar players, not the superstars. The St. Louis Cardinals have had Joe McEwing and Bo Hart; the St. Louis Blues have had Tyson Nash, Mike Danton, and Dallas Drake. They play their hearts out, but they’re not eight-figure players.

Still, we lesser mortals can see ourselves in their positions and can root for them to succeed beyond their ability.

Well, some of us do, anyway. Others, like Guillermo, have other projections to see.