Some serious mental gymnastics are required to hate WalMart and like Congress. How can WalMart be evil for having one of the lowest profit margins on Earth? How can Congressmen stay pure while dishing out five times the bucks? Or thousands of times the bucks because WalMart only has 3.3% of $400 billion to throw around instead of 100% of a couple Trillion. Only a sucker would bribe a WalMart exec when you could buy a congressmen instead.

The numbers are simply staggering and the implications are too. If WalMart is bad for squeezing out the little guy for efficiencies of scale .. then what does that mean for government programs that promise to create even bigger efficiencies by going to an even bigger scale?

To be cynical the difference is that WalMart looks to make a profit (which is bad, mmkay) and politicians run on having benevolent motives (well meaning is the same thing as good). It is popular on the left to talk about people "voting against their interests" and I'm starting to understand what that means.

It is worth repeating that WalMart's actual efficiencies are demonized while promises of future Government efficiencies are lauded. Healthcare is 10% of domestic spending but if only you would make it a federal program it would be cheaper with better outcomes and create jobs. How cheaper, creating jobs, and not shrinking the 10% of our economy interact is absent in speechifying. Cut these guys a break, they are running for office and not for a real job, after all.

PS Who did more for the afflicted in the wake of Katrina? If you thought "the government" then think again.