Sen. Patty Murray's Shocking Discovery - Capitalism!

"With regard for nothing but their own profits, some traders are bidding up oil prices by buying huge quantities of oil just to resell at an even higher price.

You see, these traders never plan on actually using the oil they buy. They just keep buying it to inflate the price so that they can make more and more money when they turn around and sell it. The problem is, families like yours and mine are stuck paying the bill." ~ Washington State Senator and tennis shoe wearing mom, Patty Murray on today's Democrat Radio Address.

Has the woman never even ran a lemonade stand when she was a kid? Is she so out of touch with reality that she thinks retail stores exist on thin air and good intentions? Has she never heard of Wall Street, or the phrase "buy low, sell high?" How can anyone be so ignorant of the American free-enterprise system and be elected to one of the highest offices in the land? Or perhaps she's not as much ignorant to American capitalism as she is hostile to the idea.

"Real Katrina hero? Wal-Mart, study says"

According to ConsumerAffairs.com, a new study has shown that in an emergency, you can expect more help from your local Wal-Mart than the federal government.

We can a find better neighbor, right PARDners?

Empowered to 'do the right thing,' employees gave away supplies and offered sleeping space after the 2005 hurricane. Local knowledge allowed big-box retailers to respond before FEMA could.

Hurricane season is just around the corner, so Americans should know where to turn to if disaster strikes.

It's not the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A new study suggests Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's would be a lot more helpful.

The study, by Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., stresses that successful disaster relief depends upon responders having detailed knowledge of a local area and the right incentives to act on that knowledge.

Examining federal and private responses to Hurricane Katrina, the study says why FEMA was destined to fail and why for-profit companies succeeded at disaster recovery.

It also looks at the Coast Guard -- the only federal agency lauded for its Katrina performance -- which rescued more than 24,000 people in the two weeks after the storm.

Local knowledge critical
The study says Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's made use of their local knowledge about supply chains, infrastructure, decision makers and other resources to provide emergency supplies and reopen stores well before FEMA began its response. Local knowledge enabled the big-box stores to make plans ahead of the storm and then put them into effect immediately.

"Profit-seeking firms beat most of the government to the scene and provided more effectively the supplies needed for the immediate survival of a population cut off from life's most basic necessities," Horwitz wrote in the study, which was published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "Though numerous private-sector firms played important roles in the relief operations, Wal-Mart stood out."

Also, Wal-Mart leadership gave tremendous discretion to store managers and employees to make decisions rather than waiting for instructions from upper-level management, allowing for more-agile disaster response. CEO Lee Scott passed down a guiding edict to regional, district and store managers: "A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that's available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing."

The report calls out several examples of that principle in action:

A Kenner, La., employee used a forklift to knock open a warehouse door to get water for a retirement home.

In Marrero, La., employees allowed police officers to use the store as a headquarters and a sleeping place, as many had lost their homes.

In Waveland, Miss., assistant manager Jessica Lewis ran a bulldozer through her store to collect basics that were not water-damaged, which she then piled in the parking lot and gave away to residents. She also broke into the store's locked pharmacy to supply critical drugs to a hospital.

Freedom to act
Horwitz said the Coast Guard also places a strong emphasis on local knowledge. A flat organizational structure and unique agency culture allow for subordinate officers to alter the plans for a specific operation so long as they follow the commander's intent.

The Coast Guard's experience with search-and-rescue operations and marine work, and its division by geographic area, provide greater expertise for disaster response, Horwitz said.

He also examined the conventional wisdom that businesses take advantage of disasters through price-gouging and other unsavory business practices.

Though some price-gouging does occur during disasters, Horwitz's report details how Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's sent truckloads of free supplies to the hardest-hit areas in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He noted that's good public relations, of course, to help build long-term customer loyalty.

"Disaster response happens at the local level," Horwitz said. "FEMA is not local to anyone except people who live in Washington, D.C."

As usual, the free market solution is always the better one.

HT: Mike D.

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Wal-Mart: Prescription for Ailing American Health Care

Universal healthcare provided by the government that gaves us the $500 toilet seat and the $250 hammers No thanks, Daily Watermelon. I'll take "Free Market Health Care Solutions" for $1 billion, Alex.

Since launching the $4 prescription program in September 2006, Wal-Mart customers in Washington have saved $11,487,959.73.

The $4 Program provides a solution for the nearly 800,000 uninsured Washington residents (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation) who may may presently avoid filling prescriptions and remain untreated. Nationwide the savings have amounted to more than $1 billion as of March 10.

That's a lot "sickos" treated, eh fatso?

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What the Big Box Battles On the Palouse Are All About

Even though his frequent self-congratulatory egocentrism makes me blanch (e.g. "I'm a university professor with a large, successful, corporate-funded program that advises them on their business,") I generally enjoy Chuck Pezeshki's online comments because he cuts through all the usual bullshit our local liberals spout and reveals the unvarnished thoughts of a leftist in public. Take for example this recent comment on Dnews.com:

It's pretty shallow to define life in America as some kind of enhanced shopping experience. I don't think that the Founding Fathers meant 'pursuit of happiness' to mean price-shopping in a small geographic area. Sadly enough, with the collapse of anything resembling an external life in this country, shopping and over-work have turned into the few available pastimes. Lest ye think that I lament only for liberal pastimes, look at the fate of groups like the Lions. And try to buy a beer in an outdoor venue in the US. Not allowed-- because we're all supposedly hooligans. Even though there are whole continents where such a simple pleasure is a way of life-- not an exceptional activity.

For the last 12 years, this country's hit the skids. People are afraid, and now many are queued up for losing their homes. The collapse is on its way. It ain't gonna be pretty...

Bubba definitely had something to do with it. But GWB hammered the throttle down.

Besides demonstrating a terminal case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, Chuck's comment perfectly illustrates what Professor James Twitchell of the University of Florida in an article in Reason magazine called "Marxism Lite:"

Since the 1960s, the primary "readers" of the commercial "text" have been the well-tended and -tenured members of the academy. For any number of reasons--the most obvious being their low levels of disposable income, average age, and gender, and the fact that these critics are selling a competing product, high-cult (which is also coated with its own dream values)--the academy has casually passed off as "hegemonic brainwashing" what seems to me, at least, a self-evident truth about human nature: We like having stuff.

In place of the obvious, they have substituted an interpretation that they themselves often call vulgar Marxism. It is supposedly vulgar in the sense that it is not as sophisticated as the real stuff, but it has enough spin on it to be more appropriately called Marxism lite. Go into almost any cultural studies course in this country and you will hear the condemnation of consumerism expounded: What we see in the marketplace is the result of the manipulation of the many for the profit of the few. Consumers are led around by the nose. We live in a squirrel cage. Left alone we would read Wordsworth, eat lots of salad, and have meetings to discuss Really Important Subjects.

In cultural studies today, everything is oppression and we are all victims. In macrocosmic form, the oppression is economic--the "free" market. In microcosmic form, oppression is media--your "free" TV. Here, in the jargon of this downmarket Marxism, is how the system works: The manipulators, a.k.a. "the culture industry," attempt to enlarge their hegemony by establishing their ideological base in the hearts and pocketbooks of a weak and demoralized populace. Left alone, we would never desire things (ugh!). They have made us materialistic. But for them, we would be spiritual.

To these critics, the masters of industry and their henchmen, the media lords, are predators, and what they do in no way reflects or resolves genuine audience concerns. Just the opposite. The masters of the media collude, striving to infantilize us so that we are docile, anxious, and filled with "reified desire." While we may think advertising is just "talking about the product," that packaging just "wraps the object," that retailing is just "trading the product," or that fashion is just "the style of the product," this is not so. That you may think so only proves their power over you. The marginalized among us--the African American, the child, the immigrant, and especially the female--are trapped into this commodifying system, this false consciousness, and this fetishism that only the enlightened can correct. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy's observation that, "The consumer is no fool, she is your wife" is just an example of the repressive tolerance of such a sexist, materialist culture.

Needless to say, in such a system the only safe place to be is tenured, underpaid, self-defined as marginalized, teaching two days a week for nine months a year, and writing really perceptive social criticism that your colleagues can pretend to read. Or rather, you would be writing such articles if only you could find the time.

See, the problem with Chuck's ascetic Waldenesque utopia is that he and his elitist and enlightened academic chums who share his vision don't just want to decide what goods, stores, leisure pursuits, lifestyles, thoughts, feelings and beliefs are worthy for themselves, they want to decide for you also. This is the path to a totalitarian society.

Another example of Chuck's line of thinking is the book "The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism" by Michael Lerner. This book and its message have been enthusiastically embraced by Hillary Rodham Clinton ("It takes a village to raise a child"), among others. Jonah Goldberg in his #1 bestseller "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning" states that modern American "progessives," like Chuck, share the same nostalgic tradition as the communists and fascists in that they want to use political power to reestablish in the alienated modern city the lost innocence of community and kinship of the pre-modern village.

This is what the fight over Wal-Mart and Hawkins in our community is all about, not water, traffic, or stormwater runoff. I thank Chuck for reminding everyone of that.

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