Wal-Mart
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Walmart and Gay Marriage
I had the thought today about Walmart and Gay Marriage – that true political hatred is reserved for opponents who do your job better than you do. To Wit:
- Walmart is a fairly right wing company, in a right wing industry. So they seem from their marketing anyway. They provide many, many thousands of jobs for low skilled workers and have gained their gargantuan size by first and foremost serving the needs of the bottom half of the income distribution. They do it far, far better than any government program. Their critics have to reach as far down as being unfair to suppliers for criticism.
- Gay marriage is a full on embrace of marriage, while it does in involve an irritating (to me) changing of the definition marriage, there really is no downside to conservatism by changing the law to allow for gay marriage. Opponents have to claim a “sanctity” argument, which the more I think about it is bizarre. Mandating polygamy (it has happened believe it or not) would be degrading sanctity but degradation by extension? I have changed my mind on this over the years. It must be infuriating having the other side be more gung ho about a cornerstone of the whole conservative platform.
This post is a bit of a ramble, sorry, it’s late…
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Extremely well put
You know, to me Wal-Mart is a lot like George W. Bush. It’s not that I’m that big a fan in the abstract, really, it’s just that the viciousness and stupidity revealed in its enemies tends to make me view it more favorably than I otherwise would.
Which says it exactly right. For someone I didn’t vote for and for a place I rarely go (and when I do, it’s usually because of the hours, and not the price) I’ve spent a fair amount of time defending both. Ditto for the pro-lifers. Hmmm.
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As If
In a remarkably shoddy job of reporting, the AJC goes through an entire article about Avondale Estates’ quest for businesses to pay taxes and fill spaces on College Avenue without mentioning that they turned down the Walmart that would occupy the abandoned and dilapidated Avondale Mall.
And speaking of Walmart, in parts of New York, they’re trying not so subtly to ban them from building there.
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Thursday rapid fire
- Bush Urges End of Trade Tariffs, Subsidies – this would actually be a legacy worth remembering, and probably the first “Conservative” thing he’s done (with the exception of the tax cuts) since becoming president.
- You Don’t Save What You Don’t Own – a nice summation of the bus thing in NOLA
- Trial Of The Century: Keillor V. MNspeak.com – Someone else approximately shares my feelings about Garrison Keilor
- Via the Agitator
From Colby Cosh…if I can’t have a libertarian paradise where state power defers to social power, or use recent events to urge others to the wisdom of such a state of affairs, I’m willing to propose a second-best for America: replace the three branches of republican government with permanent joint rule by Wal-Mart and the Salvation Army. Go on, tell me you could honestly do worse.
- I can’t find a link to this anywhere, but Commie-Rocker Steve Earle sold one of his songs to be used in a truck commercial. It was quite the talk of the DBT email list (which I still read periodically)
- Since we don’t hear anything about hurricane relief in Alabama and Mississippi can we assume that state and local government did their jobs there?
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Reactions to Katrina
A person’s reaction to Katrina seems to vary in direct proportion to their average daily time spent with people. The more time with people, the more likely one will see it as a human problem, either with Bush or the N.O. Residents. The less time one spends with people, the more likely to see it as an engineering (both physical and social) problem.
Oddly, I’ve been hearing the idea that we should not rebuild New Orleans (at least nowhere near as it was) from some surprising quarters, including me. For a good summation of the main argument, see Josh Trevino’s article.
For more literal reactions, see the Agitator’s post on what WalMart has done so far. It’s quite staggering. The business community has done a great deal already.
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Items of the day
- Funnies one liner – John J. DiIulio for his characterization of the the Bush administration as “the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis“
- This post by the Agitator :
Better people who are well-employed decide for the urban poor that they don’t need those jobs. And that they should be shopping at more tasteful stores, anyway.
I think that maybe — just maybe — anti-Wal Mart sentiment has more to do with an aversion to the white, rural ethnology the store sometimes represents than its labor practices. We can’t have our Ethiopian restaurants and esoteric bookstores blighted by NASCAR culture.