Category Archives: Economics

Stiff upper lip, mate: Coping with austerity in Britain

1 Reply

On a previous post, Bud and Silence had an exchange about Britain’s austerity measures, with Bud painting a fairly dismal picture:

Check out the results of the austerity approach in Great Britain. It’s been a disaster with GDP declining a full 2 years after the US began to grow. They’re approach a full blown depression.

Well, I don’t know about all that, but I do know that when I was there at the start of last year, all the buzz was about the steep increase in the VAT, which took effect while I was there. Everywhere I went, businesses had signs out about sales and such that appealed to people’s worries about the tax increase. The newspapers were full of back-and-forth between Labour pols attacking the increase and Tories defending it.

Personally, I didn’t notice the difference — everything was a little more expensive over there than here before the increase, and I didn’t feel a few more few bob here and there. Besides, when you’re on vacation you don’t count pennies the same way — especially since pennies there are different from here to start with.

I did appreciate the sign in front of The Crown Inn in Woodstock (a short bus ride from Oxford). We went in and had lunch, and I enjoyed a couple of VAT-increase-free pints. But then, I would have anyway. It was (we were told) the oldest pub in town, and we got a nice table next to the fireplace. Cheers!

Just to be clear: Without the mandate, you can just forget about any sort of health care reform

123 Replies

I get sick to my stomach of reading stuff like this:

The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with a question that looks increasingly significant after conservative justices battered the individual mandate: Should the rest of President Barack Obama’s health care law stand if the requirement to purchase insurance falls?

Most of the justices appeared opposed to throwing out the entire law, but their views on how much to keep in place were murky, and the divisions between conservatives and liberals were not always as clear cut as they were Tuesday….

If you get rid of the mandate that puts everyone into the system, then just scrap the law. Because without everyone in the system, we’re stuck with the same system we have now, which causes us to pay more than other developed nations for some of the worst health outcomes.

Either everybody is in it, or there’s no hope of affordability. And without affordability, nothing you come up with can work in the real world.

Surely the justices are all intelligent enough to understand that.

Wouldn’t it be horrible if our Constitution — the glory of what America is about — proved to be a barrier to our having a rational health care system? Well, that will be the case if the Court holds that you can’t require that everyone be in the system.

The only hope at that point would be if the barrier was simply this requirement of everyone having to buy insurance. Perhaps we could still have the workaround of a single-payer system that covers everybody. That, of course, would be far better than requiring everyone to purchase a hodgepodge of private products. The fact is that you’d still be requiring everyone de facto to buy in (through taxes) to a system that covers everyone, but maybe it would work as a de jure workaround. It sounds possible to this layman.

But then, the political barriers to taking that far more rational approach were (and will probably remain) so great that the Congress passed the cockamamie Obamacare to start with. So the thought doesn’t cheer me up all that much.

Gas prices pull GOP hopefuls even with Obama

31 Replies

Put this in the “maybe Democracy isn’t such a good idea after all” department…

This from The Washington Post:

Disapproval of President Obama’s handling of the economy is heading higher — alongside gasoline prices — as a record number of Americans now give the president “strongly” negative reviews on the 2012 presidential campaign’s most important issue, according to anew Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Increasingly pessimistic views of Obama’s performance on the economy — and on the federal budget deficit — come despite a steadily brightening employment picture and other signs of economic improvement, and they highlight the political sensitivity of rising gas prices.

The potential political con­sequences are clear, with the ­rising public disapproval reversing some of the gains the president had made in hypothetical general-election matchups against possible Republican rivals for the White House. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) now both run about evenly with Obama. The findings come just five weeks after Obama appeared to be getting a boost from the improving economy.

Gas prices are a main culprit: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the situation at the pump, where rising prices have already hit hard. Just 26 percent approve of his work on the issue, his lowest rating in the poll. Most Americans say higher prices are already taking a toll on family finances, and nearly half say they think that prices will continue to rise, and stay high…

So basically, when gasoline prices head back down, suddenly Obama will be a great president and get credit for the improving economy? Yes, probably. Which shows how ridiculous this stuff gets.

And then, if the president’s new best friend Israel goes ahead and attacks Iran, and that leads to even higher gas prices, suddenly he’ll be a loser again, right? Yep, and the GOP candidates will probably be criticizing him for not being supportive enough of Israel’s actions, while at the same time they will pound him over the natural economic effect of Israel’s action. And the voters will probably swallow that, too.

Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others. Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others. Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others…

I’m just going to keep saying it, until I feel better…

What’s the proper price for books that don’t exist?

14 Replies

Just a couple of days after I posted a video of the director of the Ayn Rand Institute, that organization sends out this release:

Apple Should Be Free to Charge $15 for eBooks

WASHINGTON–Apple and five top book publishers have been threatened by federal antitrust authorities. According to the Wall Street Journal, they are to be sued for allegedly colluding to fix ebook prices.

According to Ayn Rand Center fellow Don Watkins, “Traditional books may come from trees but they don’t grow on trees–and ebooks and ebook readers such as the iPad definitely don’t grow on trees. These are amazing values created by publishers and by companies such as Apple. They have a right to offer their products for sale at whatever prices they choose. They cannot force us to buy them. If they could, why would they charge only $15? Why not $50? Why not $1,000?

“There is no mystically ordained ‘right’ price for ebooks–the right price is the one voluntarily agreed to between sellers and buyers. Sure, some buyers may complain about ebook prices–but they are also buying an incredible number of ebooks.

“What in the world justifies a bunch of bureaucrats who have created nothing interfering in these voluntary arrangements and declaring that they get to decide what considerations should go into pricing ebooks?”

Read more from Don Watkins at his blog.

I didn’t know what the Institute was on about until I saw this Wall Street Journal piece:

U.S. Warns Apple, Publishers

The Justice Department has warned Apple Inc. and five of the biggest U.S. publishers that it plans to sue them for allegedly colluding to raise the price of electronic books, according to people familiar with the matter.

Several of the parties have held talks to settle the antitrust case and head off a potentially damaging court battle, these people said. If successful, such a settlement could have wide-ranging repercussions for the industry, potentially leading to cheaper e-books for consumers. However, not every publisher is in settlement discussions.

The five publishers facing a potential suit areCBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster Inc.;Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group;Pearson PLC’s Penguin Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc., a unit of News Corp. , which also owns The Wall Street Journal….

This is truly a fight in which I do not have a dog. I think. And it should please the Randians that my own attitude has to do with market forces. I can’t conceive of paying $15 for a book when, after the transaction, I don’t actually have a book.

So I can approach this dispassionately, and ask, to what extent is this a monopoly situation? After all, Apple has competitors — such as Amazon, which actually pioneered this business of selling “books” to people electronically. The WSJ story addresses that:

To build its early lead in e-books, Amazon Inc. sold many new best sellers at $9.99 to encourage consumers to buy its Kindle electronic readers. But publishers deeply disliked the strategy, fearing consumers would grow accustomed to inexpensive e-books and limit publishers’ ability to sell pricier titles.

Publishers also worried that retailers such as Barnes & Noble Inc. would be unable to compete with Amazon’s steep discounting, leaving just one big buyer able to dictate prices in the industry. In essence, they feared suffering the same fate as record companies at Apple’s hands, when the computer maker’s iTunes service became the dominant player by selling songs for 99 cents.

Now that sounds more like what I would think the market would bear, if the market were like me. $9.99 sounds closer to what I might conceivably be willing to pay in order to have access to the contents of a book without actually getting a book. But it still seems high.

Yes, I can see advantages to a e-book. You can store more of them in a smaller space. They don’t get musty, which for an allergic guy like me is nothing to sneeze at. And you can search them, to look up stuff you read, and want to quote or otherwise share. That last consideration isn’t that great for me because I have an almost eerie facility for quickly finding something I read in a book, remembering by context. But… once I’ve found it, there’s the problem that if I want to quote it, I have to type it — which is not only time-consuming, but creates the potential for introducing transcription errors. Far better to copy and paste. (At least, I think you can copy and paste from ebooks. Google Books doesn’t allow it. See how I got around that back here, by using screenshots of Google  Books.)

But I still want to possess the book. Maybe it’s just pure acquisitiveness, or maybe it’s a survivalist thing — I want something I can read even if someone explodes a thermonuclear device over my community, knocking out all electronics.

In any case, all of us are still sorting out what an ebook is worth to us. Let Apple set the price where it may, and try to compete with Amazon. Then we’ll see what shakes out.

The infrastructure of a healthy society

6 Replies

Well, I’m back. I had some sort of crud yesterday that made me leave the office about this time yesterday– upset stomach, weakness, achiness. It lasted until late last night. When I got up this morning, I was better, but puny. So I went back to bed, and made it to the office just after noon. Much better now.

Anyway, instead of reading newspapers over breakfast at the Capital City Club the way I usually do, I read a few more pages in my current book, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann. Remember how I was all in a sweat to read it several months ago after reading an excerpt in The Wall Street Journal? Well, having read the prequel, 1491, I’m finally well into this one.

And I’m reading about how settlement by Europeans in many parts of the New World established “extraction societies.” At least, I think that was the term. (It’s one I’ve seen elsewhere, related to “extraction economy” and, less closely, to “plunder economy.” The book is at home, and Google Books won’t let me see the parts of the book where the term was used. But the point was this: Settlements were established that existed only to extract some commodity from a country — say, sugar in French Guiana. Only a few Europeans dwelt there, driving African slaves in appalling conditions. Profits went to France, and the institutions and infrastructure were never developed, or given a chance to develop.

Neither a strong, growing economy with opportunities for all individuals, nor its attendant phenomenon democracy, can thrive in such a place. (Which is related to something Tom Friedman often writes about, having to do with why the Israelis were lucky that their piece of the Mideast is the only one without oil.)

Here are some excerpts I was able to find on Google Books, to give the general thrust of what I’m talking about:

There are degrees of extraction societies, it would seem. South Carolina developed as such a society, but in modified form. There were more slaves than free whites, and only a small number even of the whites could prosper in the economy. But those few established institutions and infrastructure that allowed something better than the Guianas to develop. Still, while we started ahead of the worst extraction societies, and have made great strides since, our state continues to lag by having started so far back in comparison to other states.

It is also inhibited by a lingering attitude among whites of all economic classes, who do not want any of what wealth exists to be used on the kind of infrastructure that would enable people on the bottom rungs to better themselves. This comes up in the debate over properly funding public transit in the economic community of Columbia.

Because public transit doesn’t pay for itself directly, any more than roads do, there is a political reluctance to invest in it, which holds back people on the lower rungs who would like to better themselves — by getting to work as an orderly at a hospital, or to classes at Midlands Tech.

It’s a difficult thing to overcome. Other parts of the country, well out of the malarial zones (you have to read Mann to understand my reference here), have no trouble ponying up for such things. But here, there’s an insistent weight constantly pulling us down into the muck of our past…

Wow. Can you get more simplistic than this?

21 Replies

The eagerness of both ends of the political spectrum to demagogue on gasoline prices is a powerful force. But I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite as simplistic as this before:

Joewilson

Gas prices are too high, and we need President Obama to listen.

With an 8% gas price spike last month and prices expected to rise further this summer, it’s time to solve our energy problems, provide real energy solutions for the American people, and get our economy focused on creating jobs. The president’s energy policy isn’t helping and begs the question: is the president even listening? We need the entire Keystone XL pipeline built, we need to drill domestically, and we need to stop depending on foreign oil. If we can lower gas prices, we also can grow our economy and create jobs for the American people.

Welcome to my new Rally page – where you can rally behind my pro-jobs, pro-growth campaign. Leave comments, donate, and support the campaign.

Let’s get this economy back on track.

What precisely does that mean — “President Obama: Will you listen?” What are we to suppose the president hasn’t heard? That there’s an uptick in gas prices? Hasn’t the predicted advent of $4-a-gallon gas been done to death over the last couple of weeks — even before it arrives?

And what, pray tell, is it that we’re to assume the president should do about the global market forces and geopolitics that are causing this momentary uptick?

And do you really believe that lower gas prices are in the long-term interests of the United States?

I was momentarily encouraged two weeks ago when I saw this headline on a release from Joe Wilson: “Wilson Supports All-Of-The-Above Energy Bill.” I thought maybe Joe was moving toward an Energy Party stance. But then I saw it was just more pandering about the gasoline prices that he and others are always so eager to exploit.

Yep, people don’t like paying more for gas; it’s true. I don’t. Present gas prices are hard for me to pay already. But I also know that Joe’s right when he says we need to “stop depending on foreign oil,” and that keeping prices low is the OPPOSITE of a policy that would encourage that.

A true, all-of-the-above energy policy would include, among other things:

  • Further development of domestic sources of fossil fuels.
  • A crash research and development program to get us OFF fossil fuels as soon as possible.
  • A gasoline tax increase that not only pays for research, but discourages overuse of the resource.
  • Conservation.
  • Public transit.
  • Expedited construction of nuclear power plants.

There was a bill, awhile back, that moved in the right direction. Unfortunately, Lindsey Graham withdrew his support for it when Republicans of Joe Wilson’s ilk persecuted him for the “sin” of working with a Democrat.

A rational policy aimed at energy independence would include elements that Republicans hate, and others that Democrats hate — and would require some general sacrifice. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Joe Wilson to push for anything like that. He’d rather pander to us.

My theory about the end of the draft and its relationship to political polarization

67 Replies

On a previous post, we got into a discussion of the importance of character in political candidates. (I have come over time to believe that it is paramount, to the point of paying far less attention to policy proposals by comparison. And of course, as you know, I am positively inimical to ideologies.)

We had a good discussion, and achieved some degree of synthesis. Along the way to that, Phillip happened to mention the fact that many in politics use military service or the lack thereof as a shorthand marker for character. This is certainly true. But as we discussed the relationship of such service to character, I went on a tangent… and decided it would be worth a separate post, as follows…

I believe that our politics started becoming dysfunctional, in the ways that I decry (hyperpartisanship, adamant refusal to listen to, much less work with, the “other side”), when we ended the draft.

Before that, you didn’t find many men (most officeholders today are men, and it was more true then) who had not spent at least a portion of their youth in the military. That certainly exposed them to having to work with all sorts of people from different backgrounds (as Phillip noted here), but it did something else: it forged them into something larger than those differences.

The WWII generation in particular may have had its political differences, but those guys understood that as a country, we all share interests. They may have been (in fact, were) liberals or conservatives or Northerners or Southerners or what have you, but they understood that they were Americans first. For those who served after the war, when the military was on the cutting edge of integration, it helped give black and white a sense of shared identity as well. (Indeed the shared experience of the war, even though it was in segregated units, helped lay the groundwork for the next generation’s gains toward social justice.)

As the first wave of young men who had NOT served (starting with those who were of an age to have served, but had not, such as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich) arrived in the top echelons of political power in the country, they brought with them a phenomenon that we hadn’t seen among their elders… a tendency to see fellow Americans who disagreed with them politically as the OTHER, even as “the enemy,” and a practically dehumanized enemy — one that must be opposed at all costs.

That said, Bill Clinton does deserve credit for rising above that new partisanship in many cases (welfare reform, deficit reduction) in order to accomplish things. And Newt Gingrich often worked with him to accomplish such goals.

But below them, among the young guys coming up in politics — the ones hustling around statehouses and working in campaigns — there was a generation rising that really could not think of the OTHER SIDE as someone to be communicated with, much less worked with.

I really believe that if those young guys had had the experience of being thrown together, outside of their communities, their cliques and their comfort zones, their heads shaved and put into uniforms, and required to work together in a disciplined manner toward common goals — THEY would be different, and consequently our politics would be different.

Mind you, I’m not saying we should reinstitute the draft in order to make our politics more civil (although there may be other reasons to have one). But I am saying that I believe today’s extreme polarization is in part an unintended function of that development in our history.

Maybe you consider the end of the draft to have been a good thing. What I’m asking you to do is consider that even good things can have unintended ill effects. The opposite is true as well. Y’all know how deeply opposed I am to abortion on demand. But it seems reasonable that it would have the effect claimed in Freakonomics of reducing crime over time (by instituting a sort of pre-emptive capital punishment of unwanted children, who are more likely than the wanted to become criminals). Just as it has had the undesirable effect in parts of Asia of drastically reducing the number of females in society.

Good actions have good and bad consequences; so do bad ones. It’s a complicated world.

What I was doing all weekend

4 Replies

Gerrita Postlewait, Fred Washington, John Simpkins and Terry Peterson discuss "Education, Poverty and Equity on the Ground in South Carolina" with moderator Mark Quinn.

Y’all probably think I haven’t blogged in days. I have; it was just microblogging. One of these days I’m going to get social media totally integrated into this blog so y’all can immediately see my posts on Twitter, because when I’m away from my laptop, that’s where I’m sharing observations.

From Friday through Sunday, I was at the Riley Institute’s Diversity Leaders Initiative graduate weekend in Hilton Head. When I arrived, Cindy Youssef of the Riley Institute asked me to Tweet as much as possible, and to use the hashtag #onesc.

It’s dangerous to tell one of the Twitterati to Tweet as much as possible. There were others putting the word out there, but I was probably the most manic, as you can see by looking at the hashtag results. There was a respite of a couple of hours when I took my iPhone up to my room to recharge it, but other than that I didn’t slow down much.

Here you see most of my Tweets from the weekend. I left out some asides that had nothing to do with what was going on, but also left a couple of those in, for flavor.

For a complete roster of who was there, you can look here.

Most of the Tweets were when people said something I agreed with, although not all (as I’ve explained before, I favor single-payer NOT because people have a “right” to health care, but because it’s a more rational system for society overall than what we have now; but I thought it very interesting that Ed Seller thinks it’s a fundamental right).

When someone else’s Tweet is quoted, I use that person’s handle in front of it, and then insert my own as it goes back to my voice. I hope that makes this easier to follow.

Anyway, enough explanation. Here you go:

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Listening to Marlena Smalls singing to Riley Institute Diversity Leadership graduates in Hilton Head… He’s Got the Whole World…#OneSC

I was listening to Ken May talk about folk art traditions in SC when the coffee started to kick in… #OneSC

Just had an enjoyable political chat with Alston DeVenny, husband of Susan & law partners with the uncle of @fitsnews in Lancaster.#OneSC

Will Folks aka Sic ‏ @fitsnews

@BradWarthen ha! my uncle Robert is a good dude …

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Don Gordon talking about the need to transform the two South Carolinas into One… #OneSC pic.twitter.com/PQNaC7Qc

Harvey Peeler ‏ @harveypeeler

What is it about Starbucks that makes people want to tell you they are there and does the Drive-thru count ?

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

@harveypeeler @Starbucks is awesome, they have time to kill, they’re caffeinated, and no, it doesn’t count.

In reply to Harvey Peeler

Harvey Peeler ‏ @harveypeeler

I think I can remove my “Tweeter training wheels ” when @BradWarthen pays attention to what I Tweet.

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

“Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale.” Rudolph Virchow, quoted by Ray Greenberg.#OneSC

MUSC’s Greenberg: Problem of people not getting needed meds because of cost is getting WORSE… #OneSC

MUSC’s Ray Greenberg: People with higher levels of educational attainment spend more on alcohol… #OneSC

Greenberg: Stats indicate I-95 corridor is SC’s stroke belt… #OneSC

Greenberg: In many rural counties in SC, there’s not a single OB/gyn. “Deserts” of care… #OneSC

Greenberg: SC is No. 1 in people living in mobile homes. Whoo-hoo! One-fifth of us! #OneSC

Greenberg: Health disparities are NOT the result of bad habits of the poor. #OneSC

Forrest L. Alton ‏ @YoungGunCEO

Sitting at table by @BradWarthen, master tweeter… I can’t keep up, guy is good!! #OneSC #watchandlearn

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Ed Sellers: In SC, income does not rise with age, but health cost rise dramatically, for blacks and whites. #OneSC

Ed Sellers, formerly of Blue Cross Blue Shield: Access to health care is a fundamental right… #OneSC

That parenthetical interjection on the last Tweet was mine, not Ed Sellers’… #OneSC

Literally jumping the shark: “@CBSNews: Video: Reporter swims with sharks – without a cage (via @CBSThisMorning) bit.ly/wAhfsQ”

@wesleydonehue @harveypeeler When it comes to @Starbucks, I take a backseat to no man!

Heads up, folks: “@AnitaGarrett: Ed Sellers: “There are 55% more whites than black that will be on Medicaid.” #OneSC”

Carolyn Wong Simpkins: In US, we have best & worst health care.#OneSC

Ed Sellers: $24 billion spent on health care in SC annually. It goes up a billion a year… #OneSC

Ed Sellers: Other countries control health care costs by controlling growth of capacity, which (irrationally) is anathema to U.S. #OneSC

Simpkins: We are SO concerned to make sure no one undeserving gets care, we overcomplicate the system… #OneSC

Wanda Gonsalves highlights the crying need for primary care physicians, a “dying breed.” #OneSC

Watching a film that exhorts us to respect barbecue. But I don’t have to be persuaded… #OneSC

The takeaway: Don’t trust a barbecue pitmaster who doesn’t choose and cut his own wood… #OneSC

Huge applause for Pitmaster Rodney Scott of Scott’s BBQ in Hemingway, SC. #OneSC

BBQ Pitmaster Rodney Scott: Hemingway isn’t in the middle of nowhere; “It’s in the middle of everywhere.” #OneSC

Doug Woodward: SC productivity shot up from 90s thru early 00s, leveled off. And our income is FALLING, even when economy is good… #OneSC

Woodward: We must educate more of SC population at a higher level to be ready for 2030, when only 1 out of 6 will be working… #OneSC

Woodward: If we raise educational attainment to national average by 2030, personal income will rise by $68 billion. #OneSC

Jim Hammond ‏ @restlessboomer

#onesc Economist Doug Woodward: If we’d followed the policies Gov. Riley for the past 18 years, we wouldn’t have this (increase in poverty)

Brad Warthen ‏ @BradWarthen

Woodward: Key to prosperity — attracting and keeping the creative class… #OneSC

Steve Morrison quoting someone on poor towns in SC: We built Interstates so we wouldn’t have to look at them… #OneSC

Steve Morrison: If you want a safer and more secure South Carolina, teach a young man to read. #OneSC

Steve Morrison: We must get the greatest teachers to the students with the greatest need… #OneSC

Morrison: Recent trend in education in SC — cutting funding, while passing unfunded mandates to the districts… #OneSC

Morrison: Can we agree that teachers matter the most? #OneSC

Morrison: Take that tax base along the coast, and share it with the poor districts… #OneSC

Morrison: It’s great to have good private schools, but public education MATTERS… #OneSC

Morrison: The child gets off the bus at 5 years old with bright eyes. He’s not defeated. Yet. #OneSC

John Simpkins: The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. (“My kids are fine; yours aren’t my concern.”) #OneSC

To paraphrase Terry Peterson, we need not just a love of justice, but a hard-minded understanding of what economic dev. requires. ##OneSC

What this conference keeps wrestling with is what to do about the total triumph of “I, me, mine” in SC politics. #OneSC

Ex-Gov. John Baldacci of Maine says Riley Institute is “kind of like a focus group for the state of SC.” #OneSC

Baldacci says on his first visit to SC, “I was really blown away” by downtown Greenville. (Something for Columbia to aspire to.) #OneSC

Baldacci: “The very basic foundation of our democracy is education.”#OneSC

Baldacci: As dysfunctional as our politics may be, what we have is better than what most people have had throughout history. #OneSC

Baldacci describes the surreal experience of being in Congress on 9/11/01… #OneSC

Baldacci: You can go anywhere in the world, but you can’t become Chinese; you CAN come here from China & become an American.#OneSC

Baldacci: “You’ve gotta be yourself; you’ve gotta tell the truth and you’ve gotta work hard.” (Father’s advice.) #OneSC

Baldacci: “We all have to get over it, folks… We have to realize that we have a greatness here if we work together…” #OneSC

Baldacci exhorts us to treat people as Dick Riley always has… with dignity and respect. Amen to that; we could have no better model.#OneSC

Others call Dick Riley “secretary.” I call him “Governor.” For SC, that means the most (to me, anyway). #OneSC

Apparently, I'm even Tweeting while talking at the barbecue with Clare of the Clare Morris Agency and Susan DeVenny of First Steps.

SC Democrats tout latest employment figures, give Obama the credit

52 Replies

Rep. James Smith, Mayor Steve Benjamin and Councilwoman Tameika Devine gathered at Main and Gervais today to celebrate the latest employment figures.

Here’s a quote from the release that summoned me to the windswept presser (sorry about the sound quality):

When the President took office, we were losing more than 700,000 jobs a month. The economy was spiraling out of control, and the economic security of millions of middle-class Americans was vanishing. Now, the private sector has added more than 3.7 million jobs, the American auto industry and the more than 1.4 million jobs it supports were saved, and manufacturing is creating jobs for the first time since the 1990s. But the President didn’t just address the immediate crisis and stop there.  He began to lay a foundation for a stronger economy across the country so such a collapse can never happen again.

This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and we have a lot more to do if we’re going to continue the trend we’ve seen for the last two years. That’s why the President has outlined a vision for an America built to last.  It’s a blueprint based on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers and a renewal of the American values that made our nation’s middle class the envy of the world – values like fairness and opportunity.

Mitt Romney and Republicans in South Carolina don’t share this vision.  He doesn’t think we should invest in our workers, our students or American industries like carmakers and clean energy. He doesn’t think that we should be rewarding companies only when they bring jobs back to states all across the country, not when they send them overseas. And just as baffling, Romney and the Republicans don’t even admit that this reversal and recovery is happening.

Today, Democrats are embracing the fact that in January, unemployment plummeted to its lowest point in three years. Here’s a copy of the chart they’re standing next to. Meanwhile, some of their detractors are saying that a record number of people dropped out of the workforce that same month.

So I guess you pick the stats of your choice, according to your predilections.

For my part, I told James after the event, all I know is that Obama was inaugurated, and six weeks later, I was laid off. I guess that makes me a tough audience. 😉

But seriously, folks, whoever can claim credit, I’m glad to see promising signs, and look forward to when everybody’s doing as well as they did before 2008.

Gingrich insists: Employment glass is half empty

5 Replies

I was wondering this morning how the GOP field was going to react to the awful news — from their perspective — that the unemployment rate has dropped to the lowest level in three years.

Newt Gingrich didn’t make me wait:

Gingrich Response to December Jobs Report:
We Need a Reagan Conservative
Hanover, NH – Newt Gingrich made the following statement today in response to this morning’s report of 8.5% unemployment for the month of December 2011:

“Three full years into the Obama presidency, and there are still 1.7 million fewer Americans going to work today than there were on Obama’s Inauguration day.

“Today’s new December unemployment figure doesn’t capture the full scale of the tragedy: almost 24 million Americans still unemployed, working part-time for economic reasons, or discouraged from looking for work.

“The Obama experiment has failed, and it is time to look to proven solutions that have successfully empowered job-creators in the past.

“Ronald Reagan enacted historic income tax rate cuts, a stronger and more stable dollar, regulatory reforms, and spending controls. Three years into his recovery, Americans had created about 9.5 million jobs. When we took control of the House in 1995, we moved quickly to balance the budget, reform entitlements, and make the largest capital gains tax cut in history – three years later, 8 million more Americans were going into work every day.

“Now more than ever, America needs a Reagan conservative in the White House.”

###

Now, before you laugh too hard at his desperation to find a dark lining in a silver cloud… Newt definitely has a point. More than one, even. I can attest to the fact that there’s plenty of pain out there. Someone very close to me lost his longtime job just this week — along with most of the people in his office. And there are no statistics telling the story of the tons of people who remain profoundly underemployed, compared to the jobs they had before September 2008.

But still… Newt mentions Reagan here. Does anyone doubt that, if Reagan were in the White House now, Mr. Gingrich would be insisting, vehemently, that we embrace the good news in the report? I don’t.

I don’t know whether the policies President Obama has pursued have helped improve the economy or not, and I’m suspicious of anyone who claims to know.

But good news is good news. And Obama looks more like a two-term president than ever. And some of the candidates who did not get into this race — Huckabee, Barbour, Christie — are probably quietly congratulating themselves right now.

Entire DHEC board elected by Haley

19 Replies

OK, here’s a piece of the puzzle that was missing for me when I read Vincent Sheheen’s release demanding that the whole DHEC board resign for having approved a permit for Georgia…

The whole board was appointed by Nikki Haley:

  • Chairman and Member-at-large — Allen Amsler
  • 1st District — Mark Lutz
  • 2nd District — Robert Kenyon Wells
  • 4th District — L. Clarence Batts, Jr.
  • 5th District — Ann B. Kirol, DDS
  • 6th District — John O. Hutto, Sr., MD

    • Make of that what you will, but you can begin to see why the senator just might be holding the governor responsible for what he regards as a sellout of South Carolina’s environment and its economy.

    Saving the world from democracy

    Leave a reply

    Direct democracy, that is. But hey, the headline pulled you in, right?

    Good thing the Greek PM can’t make a decision and stick with it. He’s backed off from further roiling world markets with his highly destructive idea of holding a referendum on whether his country will accept the terms of remaining part of Europe:

    Greek Leader Calls Off Referendum on Bailout Plan

    ATHENS — After a tumultuous day of political gamesmanship, Prime Minister George A. Papandreou called off his plan to hold a referendum on Greece’s new loan deal with the European Union and vowed to continue in office despite rumors he would resign and growing pressure from within his own party to do so.

    In an address to his party’s central committee on Thursday evening, Mr. Papandreou said there was no need for a referendum now that the opposition New Democracy Party had said for the first time on Thursday that it would back the loan deal.

    Trying to capitalize on what appeared to be a major political coup, the prime minister invited that party to become “co-negotiators” on the new deal and later said that talks on a unity government should begin immediately.

    OK, so maybe he was crazy like a fox. But playing with the world’s economy like that was still crazy. And we’re not out of the woods yet.

    The necessary ingredients for capitalism to work

    26 Replies

    On a previous post, Kathryn Fenner had the following to say (sort of taking off on something Phillip had said) about our economic and political systems:

    Free market capitalisn is the best system going for creating wealth, but it is really poor at distributional equity. You have to redress it somehow, or the disenfranchised will reinstate a Hobbesian jungle, and kill the freedom of the market. In a really capitalist society, the capitalists drive around in bullet-proof limos and hide behind gated compounds while the rest of the society scraps and scrounges…many “developing” nations are like this.

    In response to both, I wrote a series of comments, and for the sake of coherence, I will now edit them together as the rest of this post…

    That’s not capitalism; that’s oligarchy. You find it in totalitarian systems (Stalinist Russia) with a small “Inner Party” with exclusive access to foreign goods, or in strongman-type dictatorships (such as with the Caudillos you see so much in Latin American history). And despite what Occupy Wall Street may think, that’s not what we have.

    For capitalism to work, you need a thriving middle class (and NOT the bullet-proof oligarchs). Businesses need customers and skilled workers. There needs to be lots of unfettered economic activity.

    This, by the way, is why all of those people turned out for that announcement Friday. Far from being just the “politicians” Doug universally despises, it was a cross-section. Yes, there were politicians of all stripes — and one of the wonderful things about an event like this is that Democrats and Republicans are happy to celebrate together, which is a good thing for the Republic.

    But there were all sorts of representatives of business and academia. People I run into everywhere — Rotary, church, on Facebook, Twitter, etc. It was sort of like the last episodes of “Seinfeld,” when all these memorable characters from previous episodes crop up. Everywhere you turn, recognition. And they are people you don’t normally see together.

    (At one point, Page Ivey — now with USC, formerly of the AP, formerly of The State — and I were standing near Bobby Hitt, and she remarked that it was like being in The State’s newsroom in the late 80s. I said something about The State having sent two writers, and she corrected me — yes, Jeff Wilkinson is still with The State, but Chuck Crumbo was with Columbia Regional Business Review. THAT publication had sent two — Chuck, and Jim Hammond, also formerly of The State. By the way, Chuck had also once worked at The Wichita Eagle, where I had been in the mid-80s. Memories of past lives, everywhere.)

    Even Walid Hakim from OC fit into that category. He and I sit on the Community Relations Council board. He’s a nice guy and a very dedicated, helpful board member. I enjoy conversing with him. He, too, was attracted by the promise of new economic activity, if only to protest it.

    It was particularly fitting that so many ex-newspaper types were there (and I didn’t name all of them I saw). A weakened newspaper, which is what The State and so many others were going into 2008, is like a canary in the coal mine for the local economy. If things slow down, or suddenly seize up the way they did in September of that year, the already-distressed newspaper keels over. Newspapers, relying almost entirely on advertising for life, are enormously dependent upon their communities thriving economically.

    I’m acutely aware of it in the marketing game as well. As was pretty much everyone there. We can feel the fluctuations more easily than a lot of people with fixed salaries who have never seen volatility up close and personally. We all truly welcome the promise that a large new industry brings — especially one that pays a lot of people well — and how that can positively effect everyone in the community. And we have greater appreciation than my friends with The Nerve have for a community, as a community, taking on some small risk in order to encourage such growth — and an expanding industry can be one of the best kinds — in their midst.

    Because for capitalism to work, everyone needs to thrive — blue collar, white collar, and yes, the Fat Cat investors. Lots of people able to buy cars and shop in the stores, and pay taxes so that we can pay for the governmental services that provide the framework for healthy economic activity — roads, parks, schools, laws that uphold private property rights.

    One more point — for private and public to function together so that the whole community benefits, it is essential that people in the community have some faith in, and respect, those institutions. That is one reason why I so consistently denounce movements that are built upon the delegimization of such institutions. That includes the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, the Libertarian Party, the Sanfordistas in the Republican Party. Any movement that has its basis in lack of trust of these institutions.

    Yes, by all means, point to problems with the system, as Nicholas Kristof did in that column that Phillip brought to my attention. Point to things we can fix, to make the system better.

    But there is nothing worse than unfocused outcries against the system itself. Because a free and open republic in which capitalism can thrive to the benefit of all classes is the best hope mankind has yet come up with for mutual benefit in a community — or rather, in a complex web of communities, which is what we actually live in.

    Man is a social animal. He does not thrive in isolation. And he interacts through institutions, from the family to the federal government, from Mom and Pop shops to large corporations. The idea is to work together to keep those institutions healthy and functioning as they should for the benefit of all, not to try to tear them down or make them pariahs or shrink them until they’re small enough to drown in a bathtub.

    The movements or philosophies that would do those things are the enemies of our communities, and therefore the enemies of every one of us. And I stand against them.

    I don’t know WHAT I think about the ‘Chinese currency manipulation’ thing. You?

    13 Replies

    I don’t know what I think about the issue that Lindsey Graham keeps going on about:

    Graham Responds to Chinese Government Criticism of Senate on Vote over Currency Manipulation

    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement in response to criticism from the Chinese government’s Central Bank, Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Commerce over Senate legislation to crack down on Chinese currency manipulation. (Articles below.)

    Last night, the Senate voted to proceed to debate on legislation cracking down on Chinese currency manipulation.  The procedural vote was 79-19.  The Senate continues to debate the legislation today.

    Graham said:

    “China’s threats to the United States Senate should fall on deaf ears.  We should be examining their business practices, not their rhetoric.  China should be rewarded and engaged when they play fair and we should push back when they continue to cheat.

    “The Chinese government’s criticism of our efforts to bring about long-overdue currency reform is ill-advised.  We all want a healthy trading relationship with China, but their business practices – from intellectual property theft to currency manipulation, has created an unhealthy business relationship.

    “China’s pegging of the yuan to the dollar and keeping it consistently undervalued continues to create a competitive advantage for the Chinese.  China has too big of an economy to allow them to continue creating an unfair trade advantage.  Chinese currency manipulation has resulted in 2 million jobs being lost in the United States and over 40,000 in South Carolina.  China must stop cheating.”

    #####

    How would I know? Like I’m an international currency expert or something.

    I know what my gut reaction is — to be mad at the Chinese for being all unfair to us and everything. But what does my gut know about fair currency policy?

    From what I hear, what they do is fairly standard practice for developing economies. And they DO have a developing economy — a humongous, planet-eating developing economy, but still…

    That’s it. I just exhausted by expertise on this.

    Sen. Graham, ‘opting out’ would leave South Carolina with no options at all

    17 Replies

    I’ve just been shaking my head ever since I read this release a day or two ago:

    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) will hold a press conference tomorrow to discuss legislation they plan to introduce, the Medicaid Flexibility for States Act, which enables states to ‘Opt-out’ of the Medicaid expansion mandate included in Obama health care law.

    And now they have introduced it.

    Here’s the thing, Sen. Graham: The health care reform bill passed by Congress was far from perfect. This is thanks in part to your friend and mine (more your friend than mine, but I still respect you, him and John McCain as much as or more than anyone else in the Senate), Joe Lieberman, who blocked key provisions that could have made it more worthwhile.

    But it might help. When fully implemented, it will offer some alternatives to depending upon overburdened employers for this benefit, and create at least the beginning of the kind of national pool insured that would make the most sense and benefit the most Americans. Oh, and to go back to the beginning of the sentence: “When fully implemented…” Neither you nor anyone else has even given this legislation a chance to either succeed or fail.

    You’re fond of saying that “elections have consequences.” I agree, and always have. But so do votes of Congress. And while this falls far short of the kind of all-purpose nullification we’ve unfortunately seen revived over in the Legislature as our lawmakers have gone careening off into anachronistic extremism, it is still at the very least unseemly for you to be moving to exempt South Carolina from this national law. Yeah, I get that you think you are protecting South Carolina from something. But I submit that in protecting us from the bad effects that you anticipate, you would also be preventing us from receiving any benefit which you may not be able to see.

    And since we desperately need something to broaden access to medical care, and you and I both know that the Legislature of this state is NOT going to do anything to help on its own — quite the contrary — it is unconscionable to try to prevent South Carolinians from reaping any such benefit.

    For South Carolinians, this is it. There is no state solution. (I don’t believe any state can do it on its own, but set that aside; I know South Carolina won’t.) This is our only chance. If you “opt out” on our behalf, you’ve opted us out of any chance to get greater access to effective, affordable, portable health care.

    Well, the Onion nailed us that time

    6 Replies

    On an earlier post, Burl shared this link to The Onion:

    Obama Visits South-Carolina-Ravaged South Carolina

    SEPTEMBER 20, 2011 | ISSUE 47•38

    COLUMBIA, SC—Calling the devastation “heartbreaking and appalling,” President Barack Obama toured South-Carolina-ravaged South Carolina Tuesday, vowing never to turn his back on the 4.6 million residents whose lives have been turned upside down by the horrors of South Carolina. “For decades, citizens from Columbia to Walterboro have suffered a kind of pain and anguish that most Americans could never fathom,” said Obama, who later led a silent prayer for the countless victims of the Southern state. “But I’m confident you will rebound. Maybe not in a month. Maybe not in a year. But South Carolina will one day emerge from the ashes of this South-Carolina-torn land.” Obama will reportedly be traveling to Charleston next, a city the president said has miraculously escaped the devastation of South Carolina.

    Yeah, that’s pretty much us. I wish it weren’t. I wish it were some outsider view that unfairly stereotypes us as something we are not, but that’s us.

    There was a time when we could have blamed “the Yankees” for keeping us down economically and otherwise. Laughably, some still do (see, “Tea Party,” demands that Congress quit “stepping on our rights,” move to ban U.S. currency, etc.).

    But nowadays, we have ourselves to blame for the fact that we lag behind their neighbors. And inexplicably, we keep marching down the path that has brought us to where we are.

    Wow, he actually did say it. He actually did say he should not be taxed on that leftover $400,000

    103 Replies

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    At first, I thought nobody would be as stupid as to actually complain about the idea of increased taxes by saying that he, personally, only had $400,000 left over after “feeding his family” and paying his taxes.

    And indeed, when I watched the interview with this Tea Party guy John Fleming, I thought for a moment that I was right, that he was actually saying something different. I thought he was saying that he was talking about money he needed to invest in his business and create jobs.

    But then… the guy has $400,000 left out of a $6 million business after he has paid all of his business’ operating expenses and his personal and business taxes and met his family’s needs? Really?

    This isn’t a Silicon Valley entrepreneur from the late ’90s. He’s not exploring exciting new ways to transform our economy. Nor is he producing high-paying jobs with futures. This guy owns Subway franchises.

    So you’re saying, you can’t contribute to paying down the deficit because it might… hamper your ability to open another Subway every year or so? And your failure to do that is going to kill the economy?

    I suppose you could argue that he’s right. I could mount such an argument if forced to. But not even I would be persuaded.

    Actually, was he even saying that? Since he is deliberately mingling his business revenues with personal income, it’s confusing. But another way to look at it is that he takes home $600,000, which seems to be a whopping 10 percent of his businesses’ total revenues. And then he seems to say that his family’s needs are fully met with one-third of that, and I suppose that’s true. A family could, just maybe, scrape by on 200k a year if they were really careful.

    And then he’s got $400,000 left over. He’s making out like this is his businesses’ money rather than his money, but then he is deliberately confusing the two.

    It just gets worse and worse…

    Why do you think all those people are out of work here in South Carolina?

    7 Replies

    I didn’t have much to say about South Carolina’s 11.1 percent unemployment rate, beyond these two thoughts: 1) I really hope this isn’t a double-dip recession (and if we actually got out of the first one, which I can’t tell; can you?), and 2) boyohboy am I sick of this stuff.

    The disorienting thing for me about all this is that I can’t tell what’s happening. Outside of the newspaper business, I have trouble telling how things are going. I understood the economics of that, so I could tell as we went along: I can see things are bad. OK, now they’re worse. Now they’re WAY worse. Uh-oh, the PACE of getting worse just accelerated, dramatically. Whoa! The bottom just dropped out!

    Not so much a roller-coaster ride as a fall down a well.

    But out here in the world, where I’m immersed in the thing I was held away from, as a matter of policy — the thing called business — I’m disoriented, and have trouble telling what’s going on. Because it’s going on all around me, above me and below me and inside of me. It’s like… I read once that each man’s experience was totally different on Omaha Beach in the early hours, trapped on a limited scrap of sand that was all pre-sighted by the Germans, as death of various kinds rained down. You would experience one battle, and a guy 15 feet from you would experience something dramatically different.

    This is like that, in the business world. Since I wasn’t supposed to touch business in the newspaper world, I could see it unfolding in front of me — like watching it on a screen. Now, I’m in it, and it’s much harder to see the real picture.

    So some days I think things are going well, and the economy as a whole is picking up (based on what I see at ADCO and through the lenses of our various clients), and other days… not well at all. And it’s hard to make out the trend, the pattern.

    Is it that way for you? Whether it is or not, I can tell that the unemployment rate climbing further is not one of the good signs. Not for any of us.

    So that’s what I have to say about it. Someone writing in Salon decided to dig into the numbers, and this is what he had to say:

    But a look inside the numbers, at the five worst and five best states, is unhappily revealing. The states with the five highest unemployment rates are Nevada (13.4 percent), California (12.1 percent), Michigan (11.2 percent), South Carolina (11.1 percent) and Florida (10.7 percent.) Nevada, California, Michigan and South Carolina all registered unemployment increases in August, compared to July. Florida held even.

    The states with the lowest unemployment rates are North Dakota (3.5 percent), Nebraska (4.2 percent), South Dakota (4.7 percent), New Hampshire (5.3 percent) and Oklahoma (5.6 percent.)…

    What does the geographical distribution of the hardest hit areas tell us? Again, not a whole lot that’s new. California, Florida and Nevada were among the three states hit hardest by the housing collapse, with Nevada getting the extra negative bonus of depressed Las Vegas tourism. Michigan, battered by globalization and the woes of the auto industry, has long been near the top of the unemployment charts. (Although the state had been improving quickly until about four months ago, when unemployment started rising again.) South Carolina’s high unemployment rate has been something of a mystery for years. Perhaps the most that can be said is that as a relatively low-tax state dominated by some of the most conservative Republican politicians in the country, it is certainly no advertisement for conservative orthodoxy, at least as far as boosting employment goes.

    Of course, that’s about what you’d expect to read in Salon. Next time I see Salon saying anything positive about Republicans, it will be my first time.

    They do have a point, though. We have pursued a certain course in South Carolina, in rather dramatic contrast to neighboring states such as Georgia and North Carolina, which decided to build up the kind of infrastructure — especially human infrastructure — that has made their economies stronger than ours.

    I’ve lived all over in my life. And in my adult life, I’ve worked — and closely observed politics — in three states (the other two being Tennessee and Kansas). And I’ve never seen any place in this country more afflicted by self-destructive ideology than my home state of South Carolina.

    So, you’ve heard what I think, and what some guy writing for Salon thinks. What do you think?

    The nod and the wink? Deconstructing Perry’s comments about Bernanke

    25 Replies

    I didn’t really notice Phil Noble’s release earlier about Rick Perry and Ben Bernanke (I’m drowning in email), until it was also forwarded to me by Samuel Tenenbaum today. Here’s the full release, and here’s an excerpt:

    Noble Calls on Perry to Apologize for ‘Unacceptable’ Attack on South Carolina Native Son Bernanke

    Gov. Rick PerryIn response to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s continuing suggestions that South Carolina born-and-bred Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is not acting with America’s best interests at heart, SC New Democrats president Phil Noble is calling on the GOP front-runner to apologize.

    “In the last few days,” Noble said, “Rick Perry has called our native son Ben Bernanke ‘treacherous’ and ‘treasonous’ and has questioned what his ‘true goal is for the United States.’ Somebody needs to tell Mr. Perry that we don’t talk that way about central bankers here in the South Carolina, and we certainly don’t talk that way about central bankers who happen to be Jewish.”

    Noble continued, “The stereotype of the ‘treacherous” or ‘treasonous’ Jewish banker is one of the most poisonous slurs in all of recent Western history. And whether Rick Perry is exploiting this anti-Semitic stereotype today out of true malice or simple ignorance of that long and tragic history doesn’t really matter. Either way, it’s completely unacceptable, and he needs to apologize to Mr. Bernanke and all the people of our state for this grossly inappropriate attack on one of our most distinguished native sons before his Texas boot heel touches South Carolina soil again.

    “Or, to put this in terms that even the Governor should understand: Gov. Perry, don’t mess with South Carolina.”

    Samuel offered his own observation, which I’ve heard him make before in different contexts:

    Remember Campbell and his political anti-Semitism [a reference to the campaign against Max Heller]? It is the old nod and wink game here. Call it the “nink.” Those who have the correct receptors get his message and those who do not, never would associate anti-Semitism with his statement.

    True, as a goy, I did not at first associate what Perry said with Bernanke’s Jewishness. But then, I had not initially heard that one bit of comment from Perry, “… I think there will continue to be questions about their activity and what their true goal is for the United States.” To a Catholic, that sounds familiar. But still…

    Samuel and I have a lot of discussions about stuff like this. We went to see “The Passion of Jesus Christ” together, along with Moss Blachman, on Saturday in 2004, and then we all went to lunch and debated it. We did not see it the same. But we agreed about one thing: We didn’t like the movie.

    Bottom line, I don’t think Perry is going after Bernanke because he’s Jewish any more than because he’s from South Carolina. I think Perry is going after him because a section of the electorate he’s trying to woo deeply dislikes the Federal Reserve, and Bernanke just happens to be its current chairman. The Fed chair could have been a gentile from Oregon, and for that matter could be pursuing policies completely different from Bernanke’s, and Perry would still be on his case.

    That’s what I think.

    Live at Walmart! With its business threatened, the megastore tries something new

    4 Replies

    I’d never seen this before, but I certainly saw it tonight. I was wandering through the men’s clothing section (did you know you can’t find plain white boxers at Walmart any more? this was the fourth one I’d tried), and I started hearing something that could only be live music. So I flipped on the video on my phone and kept approaching, and above is what I saw.

    I’d heard Walmart was troubled. Remember, I put this WSJ story on my Virtual Front Page last night:

    Wal-Mart Loses Edge

    Perception That Retailer No Longer Has Best Prices Undercuts Sales Turnaround

    Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is losing its longstanding reputation for offering consumers the lowest prices, complicating its efforts to end a two-year sales slump in the U.S.

    The Bentonville, Ark., retail colossus became the world’s largest store chain by avoiding sales gimmicks through “every day low prices” on everything from food to sporting goods under one roof.

    But surveys by retail consultants, analysts and brand experts now find that Wal-Mart’s aura of price leadership has faded since the recession, because customers who searched for better deals sometimes found them at competitors such as Dollar General Corp., Aldi Inc. and Amazon.com Inc….

    It certainly didn’t look troubled tonight. Based on my difficulty in finding a checkout line that was neither too long (the “express” lanes”) nor featuring people with more than one filled cart. (I wrote on Twitter while waiting, “Waiting in crazy lines at Walmart. Apparently, a lot of people are simultaneously planning polar expeditions…”)

    Not  that I’ll mourn if Walmart suffers a bit. Walmart is just one of a bunch of factors that killed the newspaper business. You’ll recall a time when grocery stores were a huge newspaper advertiser, along with department stores. Well, Walmart threatened and undercut them both with a strategy that did not require regular local advertising: With “Everyday Low Prices,” you don’t need to advertise any specials. You just have to let the word get around town, and you’re permanently set. And a lot of traditional newspaper advertisers were permanently shafted.

    But the live music makes it all worthwhile, right?