George Will Gets It Right

I have to make sure I'm picking the right adjective....

Whoring, intr v., "To compromise one's principles for personal gain."

But if you don't have principles that's not quite right... Oh yes, here we go....

The Washington Post gives Bush Administration shills William Kristol and Gary Schmitt the opportunity to argue why the President should feel free to ignore the Constitution:

A U.S. president has just received word that American counterterrorist operatives have captured a senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan. Among his possessions are a couple of cell phones -- phones that contain several American phone numbers. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, what's a president to do?

Well gosh, golly gee... a hypothetical Al Qaeda operative is picked up, his hypothetical cellular phones contain hypothetical phone numbers of American citizens within the United States, and (although they can monitor the numbers for up to 72 hours under FISA before submitting a back-dated application for a warrant) a hypothetical Administration official fears that their hypothetical application might be denied for hypothetical reasons, which might cause them to lose hypothetical evidence. What is a President do do, other than flout the Constitution?

George Will outthinks them both, even before you get past the headline of his editorial - "Why Didn't He Ask Congress?"

Out With The Laundry

Today's Washington Post, in an unsigned editorial, complains about money laundering charges:

It may be, as the judge found, that the money-laundering statute technically applies in this situation, but its use here strikes us as odd. Ordinarily, money laundering would be taking criminal booty -- say, drug money -- and finding a way to transform it into legitimate-looking funds. In this case, though, the "proceeds of criminal activity" -- the corporate-funded campaign checks -- are the same as the alleged criminal activity itself.

Doesn't this boil down to an argument that you should never be able to be convicted of money laundering in relation to a purely financial crime (e.g., a ponzi scheme or 'sale' of non-existant real estate) because the "'proceeds of criminal activity' ... are the same as the alleged criminal activity itself"?

One of the peculiarities of modern interpretation of double jeopardy is that we frequently see what would seem to be a single criminal act split into parts, with each part subject to separate criminal charges. Drive a truckload of drugs across a border? That's separate offenses of importing drugs and possessing drugs. Forge a check and deposit it at the bank? That's separate offenses of forgery and "uttering and publishing" - hey, and if you deposit the check by mail, we can get a few more charges out of that as well.

Is It Torture?

Given that some people have a great deal of trouble deciding what is torture and what is not, I propose the following test:

If you wish to assert that something is not torture, you subject yourself to the technique at the hands of those who disagree. If, after a standard application of the technique, you continue to insist that the technique is not torture, you win! If you confess that it is torture, even if just to get things to stop, you lose.

This may be a suprisingly fast process:

Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

The larger question is whether you get valid information through torture, or torture-like techniques (if you prefer not to use the T-word). My point is not so much that you need to admit that these techniques constitute torture - it is that you would admit that they were torture, often within a few minutes of their onset.

Do you think Khalid Sheik Mohammed gave a full and truthful account of everything he knew after one round of waterboarding? Or do you go for round two, round three, and additional rounds until you are sure? And are you sure because the story he gives you is consistent? Or are you sure when he starts telling you what you want to hear?

The rational torture victim is probably a lot like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man - "What do you want me to say so I can get out of this?":

Christian Szell: Is it safe?... Is it safe?
Babe: You're talking to me?
Christian Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Is what safe?
Christian Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.
Christian Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Tell me what the "it" refers to.
Christian Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.
Christian Szell: Is it safe?
Babe: No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful.

(A more personal account of torture and its impact on society is available in the Washington Post.)

Rolling the Percentile Dice

I'm all for taking care before violent criminals are released from incarceration, and that concern is heightened where they have killed and may kill again, but what should I make of this:

Why was Hanson considered for release when he had apparently been evaluated in prison as being an inmate with a 91% chance of reoffending and an increasing tendency towards violence?

By what scientific method, dare I ask, can one establish such a specific probability figure?

So His Silence Means... Guilt?

President Bush is famously tight-lipped about the criminal acts of his underlings. Even when it seems obvious that he knows or could easily determine the culprit's identity, has promised to take strong action against the culprit, and an inictment has been issued, he insists that we must reserve judgment.

Except, as it seems, where he believes the suspect is innocent.

Compare:

On Wednesday, Bush was asked on Fox News Channel whether he believed DeLay was innocent, and he replied, "Yes, I do."

Spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday that Bush was exercising his "presidential prerogative" in commenting on the case.

Contrast:

Yesterday, Wilson delivered a speech in which he said Rove should lose his job regardless of whether he knowingly used Plame's name or revealed her CIA connection. "This is a firing offense," he said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected that idea and said Rove was at work, engaged in meetings and enjoying Bush's full confidence. McClellan said the White House will not comment on the leak because the investigation is ongoing and it does not want to prejudice the Libby case.

Oh, no... They certainly wouldn't want to do that....

Fighting Plain English

I was making revisions to another lawyer's work today, and was reminded of the proliferation of articles and practice guides which encourage the use of plain language when drafting legal documents. While many lawyers write clearly enough... stepping into character:

In the instant case, were said lawyer referencing an biographical article about Professor Edward Said, said lawyer might be inclined to reference said article with, "Said article on Said said clearly what Said said about said circumstances."

And he wouldn't see a problem with that.

Reefer Madness Redux

In the U.K., it seems that a growing number of people (including some who used to deem marijuana relatively harmless) are embracing the notion of reefer madness. The idea is that marijuana is more potent than ever, and as a consequence it actually is making people psychotic. The evidence boils down to anecdote, and correlation as causation. The potency argument:

Much of the alarm is due to the fact that the drug is not the same as it used to be, and the very high content of active ingredient in skunk compared with more benign weed. Called tetrahydrocannabidinol or THC, it is the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, the bit that makes us high. Skunk tends to be grown hydroponically (without soil), indoors and without natural sunlight, and whereas 30 years ago an average joint contained about 10mg of THC, a joint of skunk today might contain as much as 300mg.

Except... I happen to know a few people who might be deemed "aging hippies" (and who still, um, dabble). When this notion of declining potency comes up in conversation, to date every single one has thought the notion ludicrous, and has insisted that pot was much more potent in the 60's. (Any other aging hippies out there? Add your thoughts in the comments.)

It is interesting to read that the critics of this new potent marijuana, even those who argue that it causes psychosis and perhaps schizophrenia, support legalization.

Interestingly (and it might come as a surprise to the Daily Mail), there is one point on which almost everyone I spoke to agrees: it would be much better if cannabis were legalised. At present, consumers cannot be sure about the strength of the stuff supplied by dealers. If they could buy it over the counter, the THC content clearly displayed like alcohol proof on a bottle, they would know what they were getting. Prohibitionist Jeremiahs warn that punters would inevitably go for the high-octane stuff, but the argument does not follow: given the choice, we do not all opt for brandy rather than beer. Meanwhile, few mental-health professionals see the point of criminalising already vulnerable people.

This is qualified with the suggestion that the legalized pot should be regulated in its THC content. (Regulate it down to 10 mg, though, and I am quite confident that my aging hippy friends will continue to find alternative sources....)

Of Mice and Men

I've been having a peculiar problem with my computer mouse, which causes the mouse to jump suddenly to a random corner of the screen while I am scrolling. This happens more frequently when the computer is performing CPU-intensive tasks, which led me to believe it was a hardware or driver problem. When this phenomenon kept repeating as I was trying to highlight text I was editing in a long, complext document (which results in my suddenly selecting several pages of text instead of a few lines), I decided to research the problem more deeply than I have in the past to try to pinpoint a cause.

I found some relatively obscure discussions of the technical problems which can cause this problem, with talk of reinstalling drivers, adjusting the mouse settings, updating the BIOS, reinstalling Windows, or junking the mouse. Occasionally there was a reference to using an uneven surface under the mouse, but I was using a clean Dell mousepad which I obtained years ago when I purchased the computer. The overall tone of the advice was "You'll probably have to throw away the mouse and buy a new one." Which wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that I only recently purchased this mouse to replace one that was dying of old age.

And then I found a practical joke:

The optical mousetrap is a gag device designed to torture your coworkers.

It's a small clear sticker that affixes to the optical pickup on any optical mouse. Embedded in the sticker are small etchings designed to diffuse the light and cause the mouse to go crazy and fly off to the corner of the screen.

Coworkers go crazy trying to figure out what's wrong with their mouse and finally give up and get another one from the supply room. Luckily, the stickers come in a 10 pack. Fun for everyone.

I think for a moment.... My Dell mousepad has an interesting texture built into its surface, presumably to make a mechanical mouse roll more smoothly. So I took a sheet of plain white paper, placed it over the mousepad, and... problem solved.

I wonder how many other Dell users upgraded to optical mice, and are frustrated by Dell's inadvertent practical joke?

Looking For Villains In All The Wrong Places

Recently, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column, The Hubris of the Humanities, in which he quite rightly pointed out that the U.S. is losing ground in maths and sciences.

But put aside the evolution debate for a moment. It's only a symptom of something much deeper and more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.

One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.

In this society, which for generations has venerated the high school athlete and demeans studious ("geek", "egghead", "nerd", etc.), who is to blame for this?

The problem isn't just inadequate science (and math) teaching in the schools, however. A larger problem is the arrogance of the liberal arts, the cultural snootiness of, of ... well, of people like me - and probably you.

Now I admit to having a liberal arts education, which (as you would expect) included extensive study of the natural sciences and math. Kristof conflates the liberal arts with the humanities.

Leaving aside his careless choice of words, I can agree with Kristof's overall argument that our society would benefit from greater scientific literacy. Kristof's examples, though, seem designed to advance his notion that it is experts in the humanities who are somehow at fault for this nation's poor grasp of science:

What do I mean by that? In the U.S. and most of the Western world, it's considered barbaric in educated circles to be unfamiliar with Plato or Monet or Dickens, but quite natural to be oblivious of quarks and chi-squares.

* * *

In terms of the skills we need for the 21st century, we're Shakespeare-quoting Philistines. A year ago, I wanted to ornament a column with a complex equation, so, as a math ninny myself, I looked around the Times newsroom for anyone who could verify that it was correct. Now you can't turn around in the Times newsroom without bumping into polyglots who come and go talking of Michelangelo. But it took forever to turn up someone confident in his calculus - in the science section.

Apparently, those Times employees confident in their calculus did not include Kristof, hence his need for verification. Which isn't a surprise as, "math ninny" or no, if you don't exercise your calculus skills they become rusty. And Kristof concludes,

But there's an even larger challenge than anti-intellectualism. And that's the skewed intellectualism of those who believe that a person can become sophisticated on a diet of poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes. That's the hubris of the humanities.

This isn't the first time that Kristof has invented a soft target at which to aim his barbs. I am wondering - can he identify even one person who believes "that a person can become sophisticated on a diet of poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes"? And upon what basis could he possibly suggest that this fictitious faction poses a greater danger to scientific literacy than anti-intellectualism? Perhaps it's all the sports dads suddenly pulling their kids off of the football team to study Monet and Michelangelo.

Kristof perhaps takes his call for scientific literacy beyond what I would deem necessary. I could devote the necessary time to refresh my math, calculus, physics, and other science knowledge and skills, or even to expand them. But realistically, there is not much call for calculus in my daily activities, and when there is I find it more efficient to refresh my memory in relation to the specific need. My knowledge of science and statistics provides a framework which I attempt to use when processing information, even as some of the specifics become hazy. I would like to see our society embrace the maths and sciences as an important part of all levels of education, and to provide both opportunity and encouragement to kids who are inclined toward the maths and sciences.

Wasting Time At Work

How much time do workers waste at work? According to Microsoft, it's two days per week:

In the U.S, the biggest productivity pitfalls were procrastination - picked by 42 percent of those polled - lack of team communication (39 percent), and ineffective meetings (34 percent). Global numbers were quite different. There, procrastination got 29 percent of the vote, while unclear objectives and ineffective meetings garnered 32 percent.

More than a third of the hours down the tubes are those wasted in meetings, said American respondents, who estimated that they spent 5.5 hours in meetings per week, with 71 percent of those workers feeling meetings are unproductive.

Ah yes... The glorious meeting. I once worked at an organization which appointed a committee to pick the decor for the restrooms. They met for a couple of months, looking at various wallpaper and wall covering samples, and after many hours of diligent work... picked beige paint and a 6" wallpaper accent around the ceiling. But then, the meetings on more weighty issues never seemed to produce any meaningful results.

According to CNN/Money, it's more like 1.5 days per week... based upon a more management-friendly definition of wasting time:

By "wasting time," all that's meant is time spent on the job not doing actual work, said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of Salary.com.

(Tempting though it may be to include, it doesn't mean all that time you spend in pointless meetings or carrying out inane requests from the boss.)

Apparently we waste an average of 2.09 hours per day, when managers expect us to waste only one.

By we, of course, I mean you. If you look at the number of hours attorneys bill in a typical week, you will immediately recognize that lawyers don't waste time and maintain peak productivity even when working 70 hours per week. (Bill padding, you say? No, really - it's our exceptional productivity.)

Judicial Activism, or Asleep On The Bench?

From the ACLU of Michigan (emphasis added):

After exhausting all avenues in the Michigan courts, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan announced today that it has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Catholic man who was criminally punished for not completing a Pentecostal drug rehabilitation program.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Mr. Hanas when he entered the program, one of the goals of Christian Outreach was to convert him from Catholicism to the Pentecostal faith. He was forced to read the bible for seven hours a day and was tested on Pentecostal principles. The staff also told him that Catholicism was a form of witchcraft and they confiscated both his rosary and Holy Communion prayer book. At one point, the program director told his aunt that he “gave up his right of freedom of religion when he was placed into this program.” Mr. Hanas was told that in order to complete the program successfully he would have to proclaim his salvation at the altar and was threatened that if he did not do what the pastor told him to do, he would be “washed of the program and go to prison.”

After seven weeks of receiving no drug treatment whatsoever and only coercion of the Pentecostal religion, Mr. Hanas left Christian Outreach. Though he objected to a pervasively religious rehabilitation program, he was denied reinstatement to the drug court program.

The judge acknowledged that Mr. Hanas had been prohibited from practicing his religion, that Christian Outreach was a religious program, not a treatment program where there were no drug or alcohol counselors on staff, and that Hanas was prohibited from attending Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings.

Nonetheless, the judge determined that he did not satisfactorily complete the program, removed him from the Drug Court and sentenced him to jail for three months and then to boot camp. It was only after his release from boot camp that he finally received drug treatment at a secular residential rehabilitation program.

What a wise use of our "faith based" tax dollars.

Dems and the Center

I've been reading lots of commentary lately on how when you poll people at the political center - so-called swing voters - they tend to align themselves with the Democrats on social issues, but that doesn't stop them from voting Republican. Much of the commentary concludes that security is the most singificant factor in causing swing voters to choose a "strong on defense" Republican, even though they don't agree with that candidate's social agenda. I do think that the stereotype of Republicans as being better on defense and "law and order" issues helped Bush win reelection, but what about the first time when the nation was pretty evenly split between the candidates?

I think Bush's self-portrait as a "compassionate conservative" who believed in "a hand up, not a handout" was a significant factor in his first victory. His campaign recognized that voters did not support a hard-right social agenda, so they depicted Bush as advancing policies of individual responsibility and opportunity. I think that resonates with voters. I believe that many swing voters and low-income wage earners view the Democrats as a party which gives handouts to people they see as the undeserving poor, and will perpetuate and even expand upon "welfare" programs they see as a wealth transfer from them to the poor. Recall Reagan, who is credited with "shifting the middle" and his tales of the welfare queen who drives a Cadillac? That perception still resonates, particularly with people who live from paycheck-to-paycheck.

It even resonates with some who are the beneficiaries of welfare programs, such as food stamps, Section 8 housing subsidies or Medicaid. Some don't see the benefits they receive as welfare, and some may believe that they pay for those benefits through their taxes. But some probably feel that that it's okay to take a subsidy if you're working (the proverbial "hand up"), but not to get a hand-out if you're not. Some fear a tax increase.

Bill Clinton's popularity was not driven by the notion that he was a hard-as-nails Republican who would increase our military might. He was frequently depicted as having avoided the draft, of being weak on military, and even of weakening our defense capabilities. But his welfare reform was pretty conservative and in the eyes of many was not-so-compassionate. Yet the reforms resonated with voters to the extent that the Republican party frequently accused Clinton of stealing their ideas. When was the last time one party accused the other of "stealing" an idea that was a loser with the voters?

Diagnosis of Autism

According to the London Guardian,

Detailed snapshots of the children's brains showed that networks of nerves thought crucial for understanding other people's emotions and intentions did not spark into life at the appropriate moment. The more severe a child's autism, the less activity the circuits showed.

Let's hope this discovery leads to innovations in treatment.

"Make Mine Unleaded"

I recognize that a common joke at a coffee shop is to ask for "unleaded" instead of "decaf", but apparently George Will takes that quite literally....

Because the average price of a gallon of gasoline has swiftly plunged from the post-Katrina high of $3.07 to $2.15 (compared with $185.60 for a gallon of Starbucks espresso), the recurring populist fever that always follows oil price spikes has broken. It will be back.

So is he suggesting that we economize by drinking gasoline instead of Starbucks espresso, or is he pioneering a line of cars that run on coffee? [Insert smiley here for the sarcasm-impaired.]

Walmart, Walmart, Walmart....

Over at TPMCafe, Matt Yglesias posted a rather dismissive comment about criticism of WalMart which, needless to say, inspired reaction.

This [notion of WalMart's payroll as subsidized] is a genuinely perverse way of looking at the situation. Here's what's happening. You have some people. Once upon a time, they didn't work for Wal-Mart. Then they decided to take jobs at Wal-Mart. Presumably, their previous jobs were worse, or not jobs at all. Wal-Mart jobs don't pay very much money, which makes many of the people who work at Wal-Mart poor. The government, at the behest of decades of liberal agitation, runs programs that provide services or money to poor people. And now liberals are supposed to complain that this amounts to Wal-Mart getting subsidies?

I think his analysis is simplistic, but it did inspire an interesting response from Mark Schmidt about a trend away from a minimum wage (which would be paid by business) to subsidies for low-wage employees (which are paid by our taxes). Personally, I don't think this is a WalMart question - lots of employers pay their employees poorly, with WalMart standing out due to its size - but instead reflects the outcome of public policy decisions which attempt to ensure a basic standard of living for wage-earners, but which doesn't require corporations to bear the full cost of that public policy.

If minimum wage is $5.15/hour, and WalMart pays a typical entry level employee $7 or $8 an hour (pulling numbers out of the air here), it is difficult to argue that the minimum wage is forcing up the cost of labor. But if you were to raise the minimum wage to $7.50 per hour and also mandate reasonably comprehensive, employer subsidized health care, you would significantly increase the cost of labor. The subsidies we give to low-wage workers allow "pro-market" politicians to pretend that they are letting the market set wages, allow "labor-oriented" politicians to pat themselves on the back for protecting low-wage workers, and... well, beyond the political convenience, they aren't really pro-market and probably aren't the most efficient subsidies we could offer if we truly wished to improve the lot of low-wage workers and their families. Like so many things in our society, we create an ugly kludge of policies that perhaps best serve politicians by allowing all of them to declare victory, and to give themselves glowing self-appraisals in the letters they send to their constituents.

If you have ever been a manger in, say, food service, it would be difficult to leave the situation without recognizing that there are people in the job market who will never rise above the lowest levels of employment. Some are capable of more, but either by poor work habit or by preference don't rise through the ranks. Some aren't capable of more. Some, you wonder how they managed to successfully complete the application (and, actually, some don't). We can't pretend that corporations will take care of these low-end workers - WalMart's factories in China (or heck - the history of the industrial revolution, or the story of Triangle Shirtwaist) tell us how it would treat its employees here if given the chance.

The population which always rises to the defense of corporations would use the same line, no matter what the circumstances for the workers - "They decided to take jobs at a sweatshop. Presumably, their previous jobs were worse, or not jobs at all." Anything above penury is an improvement, and is thus justifiable. To some, it seems like profits are a moral imperative, people an afterthought.

At its heart, the question of how we treat these workers - whether through education, minimum wage, subsidies, other anti-proverty programs - helps define our culture and society. Are we truly committed to providing opportunity for all, or do we prefer to give lip service to equality while instituting or perpetuating policies which perpetuate or even expand the population of workers who will never rise more than a few inches above the entry level.

Language Barriers

When I got married in Costa Rica, one of the witnesses to the wedding was the singer who performed each night at the resort. She was very nice, and spoke excellent English, but apparently there was a bit of a language barrier.

That night at her performance, seeing us in the audience, she announced to the audience that we had been married that morning, and dedicated a song to us... and had the band play Careless Whisper by Wham!. (Although she had a great voice, I must say that nonetheless I was happy that she didn't sing along on that particular number.)

That's probably not a mistake that will be repeated after George Michael's wedding.

"Hands Off My Kid"

The London Guardian presents a mother's examination of how children are treated in the modern world and argues that a desire to protect our offspring from harm has turned into an even greater threat to society as a whole.

High Taxes Are Good

Or, at least, that's the message I infer from Sebastian Mallaby. You see, high taxes - preferably focused on the working poor - creat a significant pool of revenue which can be used to subsidize products for all of society, and which can be used to devise programs to help the poor. Sure, it would lower income for the working poor, but between the new social welfare programs and lower prices they may well end up better off. And the rest of us would enjoy lower prices!

Well, perhaps he had something else in mind, but that is more or less his argument as to why WalMart should be deemed a "progressive" company. It's just that instead of having the government tax the wages of WalMart employees, Walmart offers them a lower wage, shares the wealth with the rest of society (like a Robin Hood who rejects "class warfare"), and sponsors its own programs to help the needy. (These new programs could be less targeted at the needy than existing programs - after all, why should only the needy benefit from such programs?)

Mallaby presents a former economic advisor to John Kerry, whose analysis is claimed to show that WalMart saves shoppers (not poor shoppers - all shoppers) $50 billion per year on groceries. (That figure is apparently extrapolated from the savings across all retailers the economist attributes to WalMart's prices and their downward pressure on the competition.) Mallaby then variably speculates that this means that WalMart shoppers save between $200 and $250 billion annually on all of their purchases (despite presenting no evidence that WalMart's effect on prices is the same for non-food items as it is for food). Yet if you recognize WalMart's market share of about 15%, give them a generous bonus of 1/3 to reflect their remaining geographic limitations, their direct share of that speculative savings figure is $40-$50 billion, with the rest coming from lowered prices at other retailers, many of which pay better, offer better benefits, and some of which are even unionized.

Mallaby then speaks of the depression in worker wages caused by WalMart, but unlike his prior, wacky and wild attribution of all retail savings directly to WalMart and fabrication of a multiplier to "represent" all WalMart products, he gets cautious - "Arindrajit Dube of the University of California at Berkeley, a leading Wal-Mart critic, has calculated that the firm has caused a $4.7 billion annual loss of wages for workers in the retail sector. This number is disputed...." Mallaby then contends that other retailers also pay employees poorly. By this point in the column, most readers looking for actual data have probably given up in disgust, saving themselves from this additional disappointment. Mallaby presents no data to back up his notion that WalMart doesn't depress wages, nor does he speak to how WalMart's measured effect of causing its competitors to lower prices might depress wages at other stores. (But then, you didn't really think that Mallaby read, let alone understood, the economic paper he cited earlier, did you?)

And, Mallaby assures us, even if workers are down $5 billion at WalMart, that's "dwarfed" by the $50 billion that everybody saves buying food at all food retailers... well, no, he's still not acknowledging that WalMart doesn't sell all of the nation's food. And despite his excess of caution on wage deflation, Mallaby speculates that even lower wages are still a greater good, because low-wage workers can shop at WalMart and may even be better off due to the low prices which result in part from their low wages. Seriously.

Indeed, Furman points out that the wage suppression is so small that even its "victims" may be better off. Retail workers may take home less pay, but their purchasing power probably still grows thanks to Wal-Mart's low prices.

But let's not think Mallaby is "unfair" - while ignoring the effect WalMart has on its competitors' wages, he is willing to look at the wages offered by suppliers:

To be fair, the $4.7 billion of wage suppression in the retail sector excludes Wal-Mart's efforts to drive down wages at its suppliers. "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," the new anti-Wal-Mart movie that's circulating among activist groups, has the requisite passage about Chinese workers getting pennies per day, sweating to keep Wal-Mart's shelves stocked with cheap clothing. But no study has shown whether Wal-Mart's tactics actually do suppress wages in China or elsewhere, and suppression seems unlikely in poor countries. The Chinese garment workers are mainly migrants from farms, where earnings are even worse than at Wal-Mart's subcontractors and where the labor is still more grueling.

Ah yes - the "sweatshops are good, because it is better than starving in the country" argument. Mallaby's next column, I expect, will call for a return to the labor policies of the industrial revolution and praise the positive economic effect of companies like Triangle Shirtwaist. No, wait, it will be about communism as a boon to capitalist markets - how great it is that there are still hundreds of millions of people living in totalitarian communist regimes, where they will continue to provide us with a pool of cheap, invisible sweatshop labor for the indefinite future. And how we can plead innocent to our role in perpetuating that regime by retorting that the Communist Party, not the market, sets the value of labor.

And then there's WalMart's high percentage of workers on Medicare. Mallaby presents yet another astounding claim - progressive and capitalist thinkers alike should applaud the fact that its workers are government-subsidized:

Wal-Mart's critics also paint the company as a parasite on taxpayers, because 5 percent of its workers are on Medicaid. Actually that's a typical level for large retail firms, and the national average for all firms is 4 percent. Moreover, it's ironic that Wal-Mart's enemies, who are mainly progressives, should even raise this issue. In the 1990s progressives argued loudly for the reform that allowed poor Americans to keep Medicaid benefits even if they had a job. Now that this policy is helping workers at Wal-Mart, progressives shouldn't blame the company. Besides, many progressives favor a national health system. In other words, they attack Wal-Mart for having 5 percent of its workers receive health care courtesy of taxpayers when the policy that they support would increase that share to 100 percent.

Is Mallaby the world's dumbest man? No, more likely he is regurgitating a set of speaking points he received from WalMart. (One wonders at time if he is paid to produce nonsense like this, or if it is just so easy to regurgitate a memo or press release somebody hands to him that this is typical of his output.)

Companies like Wal-Mart are not run by saints. They can treat workers and competitors roughly. They may be poor stewards of the environment. When they break the law they must be punished.

Let's be blunt. Companies like WalMart do as companies are wont to do. They seek to maximize market share and profits. In the absense of regulation, we see the industrial revolution, we see Union Carbide's plant explosion in Bhopal, we see children and other workers working six or seven long days per week in sweatshops throughout the developing world, we get mercury poisoning in Minamata bay, we see a fifty-mile long benzene slick flowing downstream from a 100 ton benzene spill.... And, as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and similar companies have demonstrated, some companies will actively defraud their customers, clients and shareholders, and will permit management to treat the corporations assets as a personal piggy bank to support excess that even the Shah of Iran and Imelda Marcos might have denounced as debauchery. Now I recognize that some people will look at all of that and say "It's still better than having government regulate business," which is a point where we will have to agree to disagree.

All of that said, my objections to Mallaby's idiocy do not mean that I hate WalMart. WalMart wishes to open a store in an armpit of a small town north of Detroit, where despite its wages it will be one of the better paying employers in town, and will provide jobs in an area of high unemployment. If it opens it will cause some local businesses to close, including a small, dismal, run-down K-Mart, the owner of which is putting a lot more energy into fighting WalMart than into measures which might make his business more viable. It will also probably cause the local grocery store to close, but they sold out to a regional chain a number of years ago, and many locals already travel out of town for the better prices and selection available at larger grocery stores in nearby towns. On the whole the net impact on the town and surrounding community will likely be positive.

But that doesn't mean I have to buy into Mallaby's "with friends like these" defense of WalMart.

Why Do We Pretend?

The New York Times shares with us the alarming news that student athletes are finding ways to inflate their high school GPA's such that they qualify for sports "scholarships":

The New York Times identified 14 [graduates of 'University High'] who had signed with 11 Division I football programs: Auburn, Central Florida, Colorado State, Florida, Florida State, Florida International, Rutgers, South Carolina State, South Florida, Tennessee and Temple.

University High, which has no classes and no educational accreditation, appears to have offered the players little more than a speedy academic makeover.

Let's say that a student attempting to enter one of those schools on the basis of academic merit submitted a made-over transcript from "University High"... how many seconds do you think it would take for the admissions officer to stamp "REJECTED" on the application?

The school's program illustrates that even as the N.C.A.A. presses for academic reforms, its loopholes are quickly recognized and exploited

If by "loophole" we mean a way to cheat the system, with the colleges accepting athletes knowing full well that their high school GPA's are works of fiction, then yes, it's a "loophole". But if you were to require even a modicum of good faith action on the part of the colleges....

At least in relation to the "big money" sports, why are we still pretending that college athletics are somehow about academics?

David Brooks Takes On His Irresponsible War Coverage

Today's column by David Brooks (Heroes Abroad, Unknown at Home; It's behind the "Times Select" firewall... sorry) is critical of the war coverage - no, not of the rationale for war or whether there was a distortion of the evidence, but of the scant media attention given to soldiers. His argument boils down to this:

* I have done a terrible job sharing the heroic stories of individual soliders - in fact, before today, I don't recall a single column or television appearance where I shared such a story. But, to the extent that space permits, I'll introduce such a story. ("I don't have space to describe how Ieva and the other marines fought on that hot spring day, but by the end, about 75 insurgents had been killed and 17 captured.")

* The media should be covering these stories.

* The media's failure to cover the stories is your fault.

As Brooks laments that "most Americans couldn't name a single hero from this war", perhaps he has forgotten that when the Pentagon announces that a soldier is a hero and presents the story line, the press will carry the story. That is why Americans can name Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. But no... in the world of Brooks, it isn't the media or Pentagon who bear responsibility - it's you:

That's partly because in the post-Vietnam era many Americans - especially those who dominate the culture - are uncomfortable with military valor. That's partly because some people don't want this war to seem like a heroic enterprise. And it's partly because many Americans are aloof from this whole conflict, and couldn't tell you a thing about Operations Matador and Steel Curtain and the other major offensives.

So people like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Charles Krauthammer, Sean Hannity, David Brooks himself, and other leading conservative voices are silent on stories of individual courage because they are uncomfortable with military valor? Because they are aloof from the conflict, and know nothing of individual operations? Because they don't want the war to seem like a heroic enterprise? Or perhaps Brooks, in his inimitable manner, presents another thoughtless, knee-jerk rationalization?

Our nation loves its heroes - when it hears about them. There's certainly room in the media to cover the minutia of the love life of Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson... and, for that matter, to manufacture their fame. Looking at the Fox News website right now, I see no individual stories of heroism from the war, but I can read what Russell Crowe thinks of his now-resolved criminal charge for assaulting a hotel employee, of a statue of the Virgin Mary that is supposedly "crying" a substance that looks like blood... and a teaser for The O'Reilly Factor on the murder of the nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford. (If you go to his main page, he's actually talking about the war, but apparently Fox thinks its viewers are more interested in the salacious and sensational.)

And when Brooks writes,

Every time you delve into the situation in Iraq, you come away with the phrase "not enough troops" ringing in your head, and I hope someday we will find out how this travesty came about.

Has he truly forgotten?