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.

Oh, how they mocked me last year when I shook my head about St. Peters, Missouri, arresting underage teenagers for taking pornographic videos to sell to their fellow high school students. (I went into greater detail about the absurdity the next day.) Can you get any more absurd than charging children for exploiting children?

The Meatriarchy Guy links to a story in story in USA Today:

A 15-year-old girl has been arrested for taking nude photographs of her self and posting them on the Internet, police said.

Her crimes?

She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.

She has been charged for abusing herself for having and distributing naked pictures of herself.

You know, Government could better protect The Children and the little inner The Children by straight-jacketing us and putting us in dark closets, where no carcinogenic sunlight need blemish us.

Here’s an Associated Press story for you: Consumers rein in their spending. The online version doesn’t carry the subtitle the print version does, but the lead drives the message home:

WASHINGTON – Consumers, a key force shaping the nation’s economic recovery, grew more restrained in February, increasing their spending by only 0.2 percent.

These are the same people who say that a slower increase in government spending is a cut.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust a reporter to tally a split check at a restaurant, much less explain the world or commerce to me.

Newt Gingrich wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post outlining a GOP strategy for job creation. His basic premise:

The Democrats think they’ve found the perfect one-sided debate by presenting themselves as the party that opposes “outsourcing” of American jobs. They hope the Republican Party will be dumb enough to take the bait and be the side that favors outsourcing.

That kind of binary argument, in which the Republicans take the role of defending the loss of jobs overseas, would be a dead loser for the GOP. Republicans must set up a new, winning argument by focusing not on the loss of old jobs but on the creation of new ones.

Sounds good, until he issues the fighting words:

Republicans, therefore, should insist, as President Bush has, that real economic growth depends on the right tax incentives and litigation reform to create even more investment, so that the next multinational company will choose the United States as the place to open a new location or headquarters.

He better mean lowering taxes across the board and not just lowering taxes for big corporations who will continue to play municipalities against municipalities, states against states, and nations against nations, each individual corporation sticking up the taxpayers for subsidies and corporate welfare to provide a pittance of jobs which the rest of the smaller companies and individual entrepreneurs in the area will pay for.

No, wait, he’s a former politician. Of course he means the latter.

What’s not to like about the headline and lead for this St. Louis Post-Dispatch column?

Buyer’s vision is 100 apartments for Pet Building

It’s happening. Mothballed for months, downtown’s distinctive Pet Building has a buyer – and a metamorphosis in the works. Balke Brown Associates has the property under contract.

Sale terms are not public, but here’s the vision: to turn the 15-story office building into 100 apartments for an estimated $30 million.

Yay, team! Go development! Build! Build! Capitalism, rah!

Until the dreaded Fine Print strikes:

The hurdle – and it’s a big one, says Land – is securing the state and federal historic tax credits to make the deal work.

Never mind. It’s not capitalism–it’s crony capitalism. Any company that can even conceive of buying a property for $30 million dollars should not count on sucking from the government teat, and I mean should not count on my personal tax contribution to make it work.

Who died and made you Suharto?

I guess we’ve uncovered another reason why I, just like the d-42 guy, only scored a 66 on the Libertarian Purity Test: I am all in favor of legalizing most things, but I’ll be damned if some international body is going to force it on my country.

Slashdot links to a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the World Trade Organization deciding that the United States is violating international trade laws by banning Internet gambling:

The World Trade Organization, in its first decision on an Internet-related dispute, has ignited a political, cultural and legal tinderbox by ruling that the U.S. policy prohibiting online gambling violates its obligations under international trade law.

The ruling by a WTO panel Wednesday is being hailed by online casinos operators overseas as a major victory that could force the United States to liberalize its laws.

But the Bush administration vowed to appeal the decision, and several members of Congress said they would rather have an international trade war or withdraw from future rounds of the World Trade Organization than have American social policy dictated from abroad.

“It’s appalling,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. “It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the U.S. and make it a trade issue.”

The decision stems from a case taken to the WTO in June by the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, which licenses 19 companies that offer sports betting and casino games such as blackjack over the Internet.

Antigua and Barbuda argued that U.S. trade policy does not prohibit cross-border gambling operations and that the United States would be hypocritical to do otherwise because it wants to allow American casino operations to operate land-based and Internet-based subsidiaries overseas.

It is not clear precisely why the WTO ruled in favor of Antigua and Barbuda, because the specifics remain confidential. The ruling covers only online casinos based on the islands, but other nations could seek similar rulings.

Cheez, Luis, this makes me want to put on a black ski mask, go to Washington state, and heave a brick through a Starbucks window. So the NWO World Trade Order gets to overwrite the laws of its members now, and to force them to trade in things its members have deemed illegal?

I tell you what, I will support this decision as soon as the WTO forces Smith and Wesson shops in interior China and opens Saudia Arabia to America’s pork industry. Until that time, the WTO can stick to doing what it does best, which is…um….making bureacrats fatter.

On another note, we at MfBJN have created a pool to determine when regime change will occur in Anitgua and Barbuda. What the heck, who needs regime change? I say Antigua for us and Barbuda for our Canadian friends who so lust for a Caribbean paradise. Let the partitioning begin!

Medicare’s going to run out of money by 2019, its trustees report. And as the sun sets, the whooperwill start shrieking out for the soul of the departing entitlement; only they’re understandably chirping at Bush:

In a conference call with reporters arranged by the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois blamed the Bush administration and its Medicare prescription drug bill for Medicare’s shortened solvency.

‘The Clinton administration and Democrats believed save Medicare first,’ Durbin said. ‘The Bush approach is save the special interests first. … This is not just about Medicare. It’s about the credibility of the Bush administration.’

So you see, Bush and our revered leaders have voted to add a drug benefit which redistributes wealth from workers to retirees, thus accelerating the decline of the entitlement. And Durbin cheeps about special interests.

You win, Senator. The elderly who receive more something for nothing are now a special interest. Those of us funding the free ride are a special interest. We, the citizens and electorate, are nothing but special interests fighting each other for your privileged dispensation or disbursement.

Jeff Jarvis spends a lot of time championing Howard Stern as some sort of Libertarian hero, I’d like to provide my own Stern Update Rebuke from something he said this morning.

Stern held up recent legislation from Charles Schumer as an example of proper legislation as opposed to bills cracking down on indeceny on the radio. Proper legislation, I guess, is overreaching legislation that does not particularly target Howard Stern.

This new bill makes gang murder a Federal crime and apparently adds a number of related offenses. Schumer’s out to Federalize crimes already covered by state statutes (I assume it’s still illegal to kill someone in New York) and adds another redundant layer of offenses that short-circuit double jeopardy protections of the Constitution.

This is good legislation because it’s specifically not bad for Howard Stern.

Behold your leader, minions, and worship.

With his relatively orthodox libertarianism, I am surprised the blogosphere doesn’t hang on the Chicago Tribune‘s Steve Chapman’s every column (Mondays and Thursdays, kids). Here he is today on New York’s newly-unconstitutional vehicle confiscation law (registration required):

This is a small but important victory for the proposition that Americans should not be punished without a demonstration of guilt. It’s also a blow to the government’s habit of using law enforcement to snatch property for its own enrichment.

Word to power. Or power to word. Whichever one won’t flip the circuit breaker and make me tromp into the litter-cluttered dark of the basement in my bare feet.

Actually, equivalence makes two things equal. This story about the death of the Hamas leader does not actually equivocate:

Sharon’s government has gone after militant leaders using Israeli helicopter gunships in a controversial policy that has resulted in a number of civilian casualties in addition to the deaths of senior figures in Hamas and other groups.

It’s controversial because of accidental civilian casualties. Attacks that target innocent bus riders or train riders or just people eating in a cafe or dancing in a nightclub–that’s an accepted, noncontroversial expression from an aggrieved people. They’re acceptable, but the Israeli policy is not. Thanks for dishing up the unwritten commentary with the facts, AP.

Yassin was viewed as an inspirational figure by his followers in the Gaza Strip (news – web sites) and West Bank. His death could spur violent protests not only in the Palestinian areas but in the wider Arab and Islamic world, where he was well-regarded as a symbol of the Palestinian battle for independence.

His death could spur violence. Why should it differ from his life?

From Lileks today, expressing his fascist nature to the protestors:

These people want “freedom,” but only for themselves. Freedom to preen. Freedom to flatter themselves that they are somehow committing an act of bravery by Speaking Truth to Power. But they’re speaking Nonsense to Indifference.

Speaking Nonsense to Indifference. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. But print it out first.