Killing citizens, 5% GDP, and hating Walmart

Obama targeting US citizens?
A friend of mine recently told me that Obama should be impeached because of the drone attack which he signed off to kill a US citizen named al-Awlaki in 2010. Al-Awlaki was a fairly senior member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). My friend’s argument was essentially that no US citizen should be deprived of due process. My retort was that the question must first be answered if this is war, or a matter of law enforcement and criminal prosecution.

A reasonable person could accept Obama's and Eric Holder's position, without feeling like it leads to a slippery slope in which the government can begin to preclude due process in a variety of cases. Obviously that's the implicit worry that a reasonable person would have about this situation - a worry that I don't share because of the following reasons:

The president, by directing the armed forces during war, is authorizing those armed forces to kill all senior al Qaeda members. If this task is successfully executed by the armed forces, this has the same result, regarding al-Awlaki, as him being specifically targeted. (Because either way this US citizen would not have the right to a trial, etc.) In other words, the fact that he was specifically selected as a target is irrelevant in practice.

This means that in order to be consistent regarding the imperative of applying due process to all US citizens in all possible situations, one must necessarily argue that the armed forces must specifically avoid killing him in any combat, since they are aware of his existence.Of course this is impractical for many reasons, not the least because they may not always be aware they are shooting at al-Awlaki during a particular firefight. And this is why it matters whether this is war or not. But even if it were not impractical and US forces could be certain to avoid killing him (a very dubious and theoretical proposition, remember), it still brings up a constitutional dilemma. The conundrum is this:

The constitution authorizes the president to direct the armed forces in war. Warfare is conducted against groups of people (whether nations or, in this case, terrorist organizations). Waging war entails killing combatants of that enemy group indiscriminately. Therefore, by waging war the president is implicitly authorized to kill individual members of that group. As stated above, it doesn't matter whether this authorization is specific or general. It happened to be specific.

On the other hand, all US citizens must also be given the right to a speedy trial and a jury by their peers, etc.

Which part of the constitution is more important?

My answer is that warfare is clearly different from criminal prosecution and therefore operates under a different set of rules. Due process is irrelevant in this situation.

But there’s another answer that meets both specifications. According to my friend, someone who does not live in the US, and actively fights against it, would be in effect giving up his citizenship. This should end the question too, since al-Awlaki absolutely meets these conditions.

5 percent GDP growth
Larry Kudlow recently said we have a post-war GDP growth average of 4.6 percent. Last year I was ridiculed by friends because I said with the right president and Congress we can have 5 percent. I said this because one of the GOP candidates (of back then, someone not in the race anymore) said that we must have 5 percent GDP growth for the next ten years. I understand that is not easy to do – but if we’ve almost averaged this for the past 60 years, why should it be hard? Because we’re in a recession? Well, that will soon change, and I think that was the point of the candidate. In any case, I wish one of our leading presidential candidates would again say, “it’s time for America to have 5 percent GDP growth!”

Economies are built upon four principle things: land, labor, capital and innovation. America has more useable land than any other nation, or nearly so. It has an extremely low relative population density, in any case. We are replete with a large labor pool and have a tradition of immigration to increase it over time – plus we have a higher birth rate than almost every other developed nation. We are consistently flush with capital, and unlike Europe and many other places, we rely less on banks to fund new enterprises, and entrepreneurs have more diverse options for getting their businesses going. And finally, not only has America driven the technological progress of the previous century, but we are by no means becoming a second rate engine of innovation. The big picture seems to show that America has the potential for high GDP growth. So, why is it so hard to believe that with the right leadership we can’t have it?

Disliking Walmart
A lot of people dislike Walmart. I don’t. A few years ago they started the whole generic prescription for 4 dollars, some for 10 dollars, making millions of person’s lives easier to get needed medication at extremely low prices. Every other major pharmacy followed suit. At the time a friend who dislikes Walmart said “they were just reacting to market forces, don’t praise them for that.” Well, no other major pharmacy did this, so even if they were merely “reacting to market forces,” they didn’t have to do this (on the other hand, all the other pharmacies clearly followed suit so they wouldn’t lose all their business to Walmart). But medication, I would imagine, is a pretty inelastic commodity relatively speaking. You either need it or you don’t, and price change isn’t going to affect demand drastically. Sure, Walmart probably make this price change to snatch up a larger share of the pharmaceutical market, but I don’t care about motives – I care about how it affects me as a consumer! No business is an exercise in altruistic philanthropy. I only care that it provides service for me that I want at a low price. And they led the way in doing this.

If you can only think of businesses as good for altruistic reasons, then what about this:
I remember five years or so when they donated an equal amount of land to the federal government for conservation to all the land of every retail and corporate real estate that Walmart owned. Essentially, they doubled the amount of land they owned, and then donated half of it for national and state parks and wilderness preserves. There’s no possible way this could give them enough tax breaks to offset this plan (otherwise wouldn’t lots of other businesses do it too?). They weren’t praised for it, even by many environmentalists as I recall at the time! I like businesses that do things like this.

So, then my friend argues that Walmart forces vendors to lower their prices (if you can sell to Walmart, you’re gold as a vendor, so it’s in their interest to give Walmart a great price). But by forcing vendors to lower their prices, it encourages lower product quality. (My friend has an uncle who owns a company which actually sells a nice quality product to Walmart – but is constantly having to lower its quality to meet Walmart’s low price demand). However, while I would feel bad for the vendor if he were my uncle too, isn’t the vendor just a business like Walmart? Why should the average consumer feel empathy for him? You see, from the consumer’s point of view, if Walmart has low quality products, then the consumer can go to another store to buy higher quality products at higher prices! That’s what I do – I don’t buy everything at Walmart because some things are lower quality there. And that’s fine. If Walmart sold things of better quality they couldn’t sell things at their low prices. This is all just economic common sense. I’m glad I have the option of going to different stores with different products. It is our competitive market which allows this freedom for the consumer. Why should Walmart get some kind of special blame for anything? They are a good store that sells products commensurate to their prices. And that’s all they are. Stop hating! It’s unamerican!