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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, November 04, 2005

Wal-Mart Reinventing the Tobacco Institute 

...one of the things one learns over time is that the search for truth should always include finding the money. Research funded by an interested party is always something to be handled with care; one need think only of the years of scholarly endeavor by the scientists of the Tobacco Institute to affirm this caution. A new example of the need for caution comes with today's reporting of research concerning the economic benefits that come our way courtesy of the business practices of Wal-Mart. In their defense, the conference on Wal-Mart's economic effect did include a few studies that were less flattering that the work done by Global Insight, but the fact remains that there is a larger point hidden behind all these statistics. Wal-Mart is trying to structure a new, softer image of itself to stem the aggressive opposition that it is encountering in its equally aggressive efforts to expand its business empire. If examples from around this region are to be trusted, Wal-Mart isn't just looking to move into new locations; it's looking to expand its offerings in areas where it already has a presence. Central Oregon is only one of the latest battlefields where an existing Wal-Mart store is intended to be replaced with a Super-Center, a proposal that is meeting with grass-roots opposition over the very sorts of issues that Wal-Mart didn't gloss over, such as decrease in income and employment...

...the whole thrust of this Wal-Mart conference highlights the apples/oranges aspect of the debate over that giant corporation's impact. While it's all well and good that their domineering pricing and employment practices have led to arguably measurable benefits to the American economy, there still exists a whole 'nother train of reasoning about the societal position of a corporation that this smiley face economic news shoves aside. What kind of neighbor is Wal-Mart? What value do they contribute to the community? How do they treat your friends, neighbors, and relatives as employees? Negative evidence abounds: when meat-cutters in one Texas store tried to unionize, the company eliminated those positions - not only in Texas but nationwide; the company was forced in Oregon to pay employees for violations of wage and hours laws, and reports about it's "off-clock" practices are common; employment practices have led to numerous lawsuits and unfavorable coverage about the shifting of the burden of health care for Walmart employees and their families to the public sector. Groups like "Wake Up Wal-Mart" have almost gleefully collected all of this and much, much more information into one convenient location, hence the sudden upsurge of smiling Wal-Mart employees all over your newspaper, magazines, and television extolling the virtues of Sam Walton's marvelous creation. In the face of all of the bad publicity, the sudden appearance of yellow smiley faces zooming around the room as the corporate cherubim sing heralds to Wal-Mart's economic benefits begin to resemble just a little bit too much the observations of Tobacco Institute scientists about the risks of smoking. There's no empiracle reason to doubt the research, but knowing where the money is does matter, and we've been down a trail that looks remarkably similar to this one before...
Posted by: Jack K. / 3:00 PM 0 comments

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Writing Checks Your Political Capital Can't Cash 

...as Gee Dub flees wildly across the windswept tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base to swaddle himself in the soft pungent leather familiarity of Air Force One and the hope of a desperately needed John Wayne moment in some face to face meeting with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez at the ocean-side resort in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the beating drums of American discontent are loudly resonating to the sound of his retreating footsteps. Those polls that Gee Dub and Karl Rove hang their dreams on but insist they pay no attention to are saying things about this presidency that no sane person would tolerate being uttered by a committed enemy without an opportunity to address the issue in some cowboy bar parking lot sometime after midnight...

Gee Dub's big silver bird is being chased south across the equator by the revelation that almost 60% of Americans doubt his integrity. This is probably a more dangerous factoid than the simple up or down measurements concerning his performance with regard to the economy (doing poorly) or the War on Terra (stinks) or Hurricane Katrina (well...oh, never mind). People don't like being lied to, they don't even like to suspect that they haven't been dealt with in a straight manner, and they don't forget that sort of sin readily. Most issues are performance-based, which is the rationale for various Republican operatives insisting that Gee Dub can turn this all around with some good news in Iraq or gas prices or the general economy. Trust in leadership is not, however, performance-based; once you have a pretty good idea that you've been cheated on and lied to, the ability to rebuild trust is a very difficult road down which to travel. The other numbers in this poll are straight-up bummers in their own right; Gee Dub has lost the country on his handling of the economy; he is losing them in the War on Terra; the majority question the ethics of his administration; most folks don't think that he understands their lives or concerns, less than half view him as a strong leader, and almost 60% don't think he shares their values...

His numbers are negative on health care, dismal on energy costs, and he has suffered major losses in support from men, no doubt because of his connection to some small yappy lap dog. I mean, come on, out west here we understand that some rancher roaming his expansive spread in a big ol' Ford Truck isn't going to have a dog with him that looks like it was carved out of a small bar of soap by one of of those 'big-eyed children' artists who decided to branch out. Plus there'd be cows...but that's another issue. Suffice it to say that we are facing an administration that - at least for now - appears to be well and truly broken, and - more to the point - broken at many anchoring points completely outside all the chatter about the potential indictability of various White House officials. Gee Dub famously chattered on at length just after the election about all that political capital he accrued from his three point victory. The very idea sounded absurd at the time and has proven throught its implementation that he was only kidding himself, and any checks he's trying to write on that account are going to start coming back stamped "insufficient funds".. The polls say that it's not about the dirty tricks or the scheming or the lying about a couple of confused issues, with a minor ethical lapse sprinkled in here or there for taste; the polls say it is all about the rotting disolving core of this very administration. This is, at it's root, a solid vote against core compentencies (or the lack thereof) and the sort of repudiation that Bill Clinton never saw at the most extreme moments of his primary political battle surrounding the determined Republican efforts to impeach him for...well...something. It's probably a sad thing for partisans, but he's probably sunk to within a few points of as low as he can go, but even as I look at those words I don't know for sure how reliable they are. A continued muddle in Iraq and high gas prices and a wandering economy could drive his negatives higher as more registered Republicans decide to chance a leap into the closest available lifeboat. In the meantime, Republican operatives will start to act more and more like wharf rats trapped in a warehouse fire as the beginning of the mid-term campaign season draws closer and this hamstrung gang of lame fixers keeps cranking out campaign points for the Democrats. Insiders and outsiders will turn against each other in a desperate battle of separation between a damaged, hopeless, sinking and increasingly irrelevant White House and a national campaign committee that would run over burlap bags full of puppies to maintain it's majority. Barring some major changes, it's going to be an interesting time as this conflict plays out. I can hardly wait...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:02 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Revisiting the Usual Suspects for Oregon Governor 

...and so the first tentative Republican toe has been dipped in the waters of the upcoming Oregon gubernatorial contest. Kevin Mannix, that seemingly eternal candidate for statewide office, has announced his effort to stage a rematch against Governor Ted Kulongoski, in the process spouting all the typical nonsense about "malaise" and "getting back on track" without seeming to understand that the malaise and off-trackedness from which this state has been suffering stems primarily from the Republican legislative rule that has afflicted one or both houses of the state legislature for far longer than any reasonable person would care to contemplate. Mannix, skilled through years of practice at hitting all the necessary buzz-word points, mentioned economic improvement and schools in his announcement, but also managed to opine in the presence of microphones from Oregon Public Broadcasting that he was here to bring "new ideas" to the good citizens of the state. This, of course, is nonsense...

...the primary "new ideas" that Mannix offered consisted primarily of the elimation of a variety of taxes. While that may make Oregon a safe space within which the business community can operate, it exposes the fundamental lie of Mannix's platform. His "new" tax-cutting ideas are just exactly the sort of 'solution' that would lead public education farther down the path of failure that past Republican legislatures have been leading Oregonians for over a decade. Mannix lingers at the edge of the Grover Norquist continuum, espousing tax cuts as a cure-all that will take the state to a new millenium of fiscal sanity and adequate services at just exactly the time when virtually anybody who understands the problem is fully aware that such an approach is - at its very best - a recipe for failure. The Republican majority led by House Speaker Karen Minnis demonstrated to pretty much everyone's satisfaction that clearing the decks for tax cuts and benefits for the best well off amongst us was of greater importance that seeing whether or not it would be possible for my children to be exposed to computers somewhat newer than Apple Lisa's. This is the new message that Mannix wants to represent. These are his new ideas; cutting taxes for the richest amongst us while paying lip service to the idea of properly funding public schools and health care, and then playing off one desperate constiuency against another in a climate of artificially created budget shortfalls to decide which one falls through the cracks to splat noisily on the sidewalk below. Oregon just simply has to be better than this. We really have to at least hope that we deserve something better than the tired old conservative agenda's of people like Mannix and their desires to destroy the effectiveness of government for the personal gain of either themselves or their supporters...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:25 PM 0 comments

Robbing Peter to Save Paul's Tax Cuts 

...it's a little thing, in the larger scope of the universe, but it is another thing, and all these things are additive. The Bush administration, to which those precious fat-cat tax cuts are more sacred than life itself, has decided that it would like to eliminate the emergency wildfire fund that Congress approved just last year to provide federal land management agencies with backup funds on particularly active fire years. An innocent might surmise that there isn't any such thing as a rainly day in BushWorld, so there's no reason for a rainy day fund. And now you know why innocents are such an endangered species out here in the real world...

One need only look back to a couple of years ago when a particularly active fire season rapidly depleted USDA-Forest Service firefighting funds. When efforts to acquire additional funding were unsuccessful, the agency turned to a wildly-misnamed option called "fire borrowing" where every other appropriated account was forced to fork over a percentage to the fire efforts. The effect was deeply felt and immediate in a number of program areas, as programs ground to a halt, contracts went unawarded, and temporary employees were laid off until the start of the new fiscal year in October. But it was that name that got everybody's goat; the diverted money wasn't borrowed, it was taken and it was never paid back. That is the prospect that wildland firefighting agencies could be facing again next summer if this proposal is implemented as part of the reduction package...

It's long been clear that Gee Dub would turn his back on rescuing babies from a burning orphanage if it somehow interfered with his efforts to protect at all cost the lavish tax cuts bestowed on his rich friends. It's becoming apparent that we probably don't even want to know if there's anything that would make him roll back even a portion of those cuts. War didn't; natural disaster didn't; apparently the potential for a repeat of disruption of federal agencies won't, either. Nope; don't wanna know...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:50 AM 0 comments

Monday, October 31, 2005

Fundamental Rules 

...nothing else matters, once you get down to the fundamental rules. Those rules can't be broken, no matter how much you wish and pine away for a more perfect world in which they don't matter. One of those fundamental rules is Don't Use a Credit Card You Can't Explain to buy a lottery ticket...

Life is simply easier if you learn these fundamental rules early on in life and stick to them. If you don't, life is hard...it's a hard thing...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:37 PM 0 comments

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