Legislative Games

The Times has a great opinion piece today on the games legislatures play, in order to slow or stall bills they don't like.

This is how things are now in Congress as partisans propose mousetrap amendments aimed more at campaign smears than doing good. The pornography stunt was the window dressing on language that would cut the bill’s spending on the National Science Foundation and other agencies.

As Kent Brockman reminds us, Democracy just doesn't work.

Kent: With our utter annihilation imminent, our federal government has snapped into action. We go live now via satellite to the floor of the United States congress.
Speaker: Then it is unanimous, we are going to approve the bill to evacuate the town of Springfield in the great state of --
Congressman: Wait a minute, I want to tack on a rider to that bill: $30 million of taxpayer money to support the perverted arts.
Speaker: All in favor of the amended Springfield-slash-pervert bill?
[everyone boos]
Speaker: Bill defeated. [bangs gavel]
Kent: I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

Of course the simpsons was trying to be funny; I don't think our congress critters are shooting for that.

Telling it Like It Is

This is from a New York Times editorial.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has finally done something important to advance the cause of justice. He has resigned.

Dead straight, mate!

In There Hands

I'm posting a lot today; I guess I have a backlog. I wanted to underline this editorial at the New York Times, written by seven who are serving in Iraq.

Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

Well worth reading, and I have to salute these soldiers for taking a position that will probably cause them a certain amount of trouble.

The Eye of the Beholder

Wal-Mart is a company that fires whistle-blowers, fights unions, discriminates against women and black truck drivers, violates child labor laws, locks its workers in their stores overnight, pays poverty level wages, and so on and so forth. But, apparently, all that is a small price to pay for the chance for small town America to get cheap products, according to an editorial at the New York Times.

See if the owners of Wal-Mart weren't such ruthless bastards, they wouldn't be able to offer the same kind of cheap prices, and people in rural communities (mainly the ones who don't happen to work at Wal-Mart) wouldn't be able to get by as easily.

According to one recent academic study, when Wal-Mart enters a market, prices decrease by 8 percent in rural areas and 5 percent in urban areas. With two-thirds of Wal-Mart stores in rural areas, this means that Wal-Mart saves its consumers something like $16 billion a year. And because Wal-Mart's presence forces the store's competitors to charge lower prices as well, this $16 billion figure understates the company's real impact by at least half.

These kinds of savings to customers far exceed the costs that Wal-Mart supposedly imposes on society by securing subsidies, destroying jobs in competing stores, driving employees toward public welfare systems and creating urban sprawl.

Yep there it is. Wal-Mart has been successful so should be allowed to whatever the hell it wants! You'll forgive me if I don't entirely buy into this line of thinking.

Salon also has an article about Wal-Mart, dealing with the growing anti Wal-Mart movement. It's a good article, although it could have been more tightly edited.

Red White and Blue

An editorial at the New York Times, talked about a recent appearence of Karl Rove, in which, "[h]e made the Bush strategy clear: It's the terror, not the economy, stupid, even if the nation is suffering rolling deficits and relentless unemployment, and despite Mr. Bush's serial tax cuts for the captains of industry. Democrats may want to talk health care and other economic issues, but they will have to grapple their way through a patriotic blitz of a campaign, if Mr. Rove has his red-white-and-blue way. Democrats can rightly fear an "October surprise" coming color-coded by Tom Ridge next time around."

Here's the question Republicans want to be able to ask by next October. "If you love America, and don't want to see any further terrorist attacks, how can you not vote for Bush?"

Eight to go.