Starbucks once had an amazing business: it mixed water and beans and made money.

At least, it did. Now it is closing 600 stores. Why?

Starbucks decided to take the world’s most charming business, a cafe, and McDonaldize it. One does not settle into a comfortable seat a wait for waitress. In short, Paris’ cafe des artistes is not threatened by the competition.

The food is cafeteria-quality and there is no wine. Sandwhiches are stale. Bagels are sold, but the stores do not have toasters. The so-called pastries are straight from 7-11.

But like fast food, Starbucks enjoyed good margins. A dollar’s worth of water, beans, and labor equals a five dollar cup of coffee. And hundreds of those cups are sold every hour.

Then came competition and higher gasoline prices. This Chicago Tribune piece nicely captures both, by interviewing ordinary people happily buying the improved coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts:

I was saved by a gracious lady, Rosemary O’Brien of La Grange. She’s no Starbucksista.

“That other stuff is expensive,” she said. “Here, you can have a doughnut. Or two and the paper and coffee—and it won’t cost you $5. And that’s important, especially today, with things being so expensive.”

What about being associated with Starbucks? Isn’t there value in having the Starbucks cup in your hand as you proclaim your sensitivity to the environment while driving one of those new green mini-Hummers?

“Oh, so you can walk around with a Starbucks cup? You’ll pay extra money for that? How nice. No thanks,” Mrs. O’Brien said.

Unfortunately for Starbucks shareholders, more and more people are agreeing with Mrs. O’Brien. Economists would say the “price-value relationship” is imbalanced.  Real people, recognizing that the general quality of American coffee has risen while the cost of living has tightened, will say “Starbucks is too expensive.”

The chain either has to give more or charge less. Or be prepared to close a lot more stories.

In Washington, the date that someone’s haircut was last fashionable is usually the same date of their last original thought.

Something happens here that makes smart people stop thinking. Perhaps all of their available hard drive space goes to calculating. Or perhaps they learn that they can coast on their accumulated insights gleaned long ago.

David Brooks’ column today is a sad illustration of this phenomenon. In the mid-1990s, when he first started writing about “national greatness conservatism” and “TR,” Brooks had returned from Brussels and New York. He had new ideas. Now, after a decade in Washington, he recycles his ideas.

As a matter of political prognostication, he may be right. We may be in for an era of government activism. President Obama and the Democratic Congress certainly wouldn’t object.

But the five crises that Brooks writes about are the kind usually invented to spur government action.

The “health care crisis” is really a crisis for unions, who have misspent millions meant for long-term care and now want someone else to foot the bill. They may get their way. The infrastructure crisis? Government contractors and unions want more money and know that the feds have deeper pockets than the states and cities, who should be paying for highways and bridges. Energy crisis? It is largely a supply problem caused by foolish restrictions on drilling and production. But the “crisis” view serves the interests of environmentalists who want to subsidize alternative energy sources and create jobs for their compadres. Brooks complains about the “stagnation of human capital.” Once translated into English, he means that teacher unions have failed to educate the next generation. Next, he calls for “financial market reform” and says “even Republican administrations cannot allow big institutions to fail.” So reckless bankers need to be saved from their own foolish behavior? Again, the “crisis” seems limited to the bankers and the investors whose trust they have abused. Liquidate the assets, let sharper minds buy them and let the investors have their day in court. We don’t need a new bureaucracy as Brooks suggests, he need to remember that capitalism’s two freedoms are equally important: the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. Failure is a teacher. Protecting people from their own mistakes only guarantees more mistakes, usually bigger ones. Put the bankers on food stamps and let them reflect on their decisions.

Brooks’ approach sounds like the Chrysler bail out. All that did is delay foreign ownership for 2o-odd years–and the cost of billions paid by ordinary tax payers.

In short, Brooks contends that any group that howls loud enough creates a “crisis” that demands government action.

Next, he pivots into a McCain campaign advice column. Big reforms usually happen under “conservatives” like Teddy Roosevelt and Benjamin Disraeli. Leave aside that neither man was a conservative, and Brooks might be right. Even when votes want big changes, they want a leader who seems reluctant.

But telling us that a McCain presidency will be all about “reluctant” government activism to solve the problems caused by unions and bankers… that is not going to help the McCain campaign very much.

These two headlines tell the story: Obama raises $52 million in June and McCain gets a respectful hearing at the NAACP.

Obama is using new media to raise money from non-traditional donors and is reinventing the modern presidential campaign along the way. While it is too soon to say that Obama owns the Internet the way FDR owned the radio microphone and JFK the tv camera, history shows that the candidate who adapts to new media first generally wins.

Meanwhile, McCain plods along, re-running the Ford campaign. Does the NAACP even matter any more? You can see the wheels turning: well, we’re running against a black guy, so we need to reach out to black people. Who knows black people? Oh, the NAACP…

This cycle McCain should ignore the black vote. It typically goes 90 to 95% for the Democratic nominee. This year, the excitement of the first black Democratic nominee for president is too strong to counter. It may go 99% for Obama. Simply holding the line at 95% would require a Herculean effort on McCain’s part. Instead, McCain should go to Hispanics, Jews and any one else whose vote is truly up for grabs.

And when you want to talk to black people, why not reach them through organizations that still matter to them that are not inherently hostile to Republicans? The neighborhood church. The many black professional associations. The Eagles clubs (formed back when the Elks, Friars and others wouldn’t let blacks in, but still going strong today). If McCain’s team used some imagination in reaching new voters, those voters might actually think that the candidate cares enough about them to figure them out.

Instead, McCain is going through the motions–running like an old man on auto-pilot. If he doesn’t wake up soon, he will crash and serve out his retirement years in the senate telling us that no one could have beaten Obama. No one? Yes, that’s probably right. But someone can. McCain should figure how to be that someone.

Marc Thiessen has written a splendid rejoinder to the conventional wisdom on Jesse Helms. As usual, well worth reading. He presents a pile of unadorned facts, not the emotional impressions supplied by those whose man lost a senate election due to an “unfair” ad.

The debate over Sen. Helms will continue, of course. But it should continue on the basis of facts. Do Helms’ critics have facts to go with their accusations? (Hint: Broder’s reprinted column is pretty sparse on facts and long on emotions and quotes from unidentified sources.)

Calling someone who beats them in a fair election a “racist” has become a favorite form of moral preening among liberals. It makes them feel superior, especially in defeat. It would be better for both liberals and the country to drop with form of moral vanity. In American politics, your opponents are usually people of good faith who see the world differently or rank the virtues in a different order.  Political opponents  may be wrong, but are usually not evil.  Once one accepts that, then a conversation becomes possible.  In our democratic republic, conversation and compromise are  how progress is made.

Regrding Helms, liberals might want to stop believing that millions of Americans are racists and wonder why a fair-minded person might find Helms appealing. I know plenty of conservatives who have gone through the same exercise with Sen. Kennedy. Now, they can understand him, but still not agree.

Both Marc Thiessen and I have made similar journeys by learning to understand and respect our opponents. When I first met Marc, in college, he was a liberal and I was a fire-breathing libertarian. One day, a political professor asked Marc, who was writing about divestment from South Africa in 1986,  to take the opposite point of view to the one his was comfortable with. He did. And an intellectual journey began.

Within a year Marc was leading the rebirth of the Vassar Spectator, “the journal of neglected ideas.”
It took me a while longer to come to my senses.

David Duke, the racist who was kicked out of the Republican party in the early 1990s, has now been told that Belgium’s conservatives don’t want him around either.

Below I have posted the official statement of the Vlaams Belang party, Belgium’s largest party. The party is controversial because some of its political enemies say that it is a racist party–i.e. it opposes the Islamization of Belgium. (Some American commentators put the term “racist” in American sense: hatred of a racial minority. That doesn’t apply here. In Belgium, racism is about religious minorities.) And, for what it is worth, the racism or anti-Semitism charge against Vlaams Belang is not true. Its defense of the Jews of Antwerp should have been enough to put paid to that notion.

Yes, elements of the party are hostile to immigration. I have debated this point with them, while I lived in Brussels, many,many times. They oppose immigration for two reasons: they like the welfare state and fear that too many newcomers will bankrupt it and, second, violent crime has risen sharply in Belgium and its all to often has an Arab face.  I think this makes many of them xenophobes, not racists.

And there is a liberal wing to the Vlaams Belang, which includes my friend Paul Belien and his wife Sandra. I have known them for years. They are not bigots, racists or any other disreputable “ists.” They believe in free markets, free speech, tolerance and an independent Flanders. (The Flemish pay the overwhelming majority of taxes, the French-speaking Walloons consume the majority of taxes through welfare and state subsidies for failing industries.)
Anyway, here’s the official statement. I post it because you are unlikely to see it posted on the Anglo-side of the blogosphere. And, yes, I think it would be better if Karin Milik were kicked out of the party.

Our party, Vlaams Belang, has been named in an involvement with the American “politician” David Duke. Karin Milik, one of our 1,500 local councillors, had Mr. Duke over at her house when he was in Belgium to speak at a conference with which our party had nothing to do.

Vlaams Belang does not wish to be associated or linked in any way with David Duke or his ideas. Vlaams Belang has no ties or affinity whatsoever with David Duke, the organisations he belongs to or the ideas he stands for.

Ms. Milik has apologized because it was never her intention to incriminate or associate Vlaams Belang with the figure of David Duke. Vlaams Belang will not accept any repeat of such incidents.

Vlaams Belang strives for the independence of Flanders, fights the Islamization of Europe, defends the Judeo-Christian values of Western civilization, opposes anti-Semitism and all forms of racial prejudice, and regards the state of Israel as an invaluable ally in the struggle in which we are currently entangled with an enemy – radical Islam – that is bent on destroying our liberties and depriving our nations of their identity.

Bruno Valkeniers

Vlaams Belang party leader

Gerolf Annemans

Vlaams Belang group leader in the Belgian federal parliament

Filip Dewinter

Vlaams Belang group leader in the Flemish regional parliament

The New York Times profile piece, which will appear in print this Sunday, is as good as Rush Limbaugh could reasonably expect.

As for the rest of us, there are some fun surprises. One is that the writer couldn’t seem to find many liberal critics, although a number are interviewed. Rush has been accepted as part of the landscape, a mountain that cannot be moved to improve the view. Another: The writer doesn’t seem to wonder why Rush makes more money that the top three nightly news anchors combined. Is it that he is serving an large audience that they have neglected? It is strange that the writer doesn’t wonder about this. Maybe he was afraid of where that thread would lead.

Still, it is well worth reading. Here are two interesting nuggets:

Limbaugh’s audience is often underestimated by critics who don’t listen to the show (only 3 percent of his audience identify themselves as “liberal,” according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press). Recently, Pew reported that, on a series of “news knowledge questions,” Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” — the defiantly self-mocking term for his faithful, supposedly brainwashed, audience — scored higher than NPR listeners.”

Limbaugh’s audience is better informed than NPR’s? That’s got to be a surprise on the Upper West Side.

And Limbaugh’s take on Bill O’Reilly: “The man is Ted Baxter.”

As for the writer’s incessant baiting him on Sean Hannity, it reeks of editor-inspired bear poking.

Still, I suspect, that the full story about Rush is yet to be told. He has some 20 million listeners but is deeply private. He is breezily ebullient on the air but almost modest in person. He is an intellectual and a jokester. He went from being Hillary’s most effective critic in the 1990s to her biggest booster in 2008. He is the wealthiest man in the history of radio but still keenly feels his decades of loserdom.

There remains a biography to be written.

It had to happen. Almost every Independence Day some newspaper publishes a column taking the hair-shirt liberal position that America doesn’t deserve to celebrate July Fourth.

Yes, most liberals are as patriotic as any one else. Their criticism is a sincere desire to improve the country they love–a point some conservatives overlook. Love begets criticism. Ask any wife.

And, then, you run across the rump of the remainder. People who actually write “America has sinned” and should seek “penance” for its misdeeds, like this writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Or this one over at The Progressive.

Like the perfume of an empty vase, why do certain liberals always reach for religious language?

Chris Satullo is an official columnist for the Inquirer, which, until recently, won more Pulitzers than any other big-city daily. Now it publishes this:

So put out no flags.

Sing no patriotic hymns.

We deserve no Fourth this year.

Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nation’s birthday next rolls around.

His complaint is that foreign terrorists captured on the battlefield do not get exactly the same rights as Americans accused of committing violent felonies. To him, this is unconstitutional and a stain on our national honor.

Maybe it is a desperate bid for attention. Or maybe it is a revealing peek behind the curtain. You read it and decide.

A slow and subtle change is affecting campuses across the country as, one-by-one, Baby Boomer activist professors fade into retirement. The New York Times seems to be mourning this development.

On the other hand, I see it as a hopeful development.

Their younger replacements will not be conservative Republicans, but moderate Democrats. These Obama Democrats do not have the same aversion to free speech that Baby Boomer activists, who wrote the politically correct speech codes–the strictest in the 400-year history of the American university– that have suppressed student dissent on issues ranging from affirmative action to foreign policy.

And they are not absorbed by mindless symbolic fights. If the military wants to come to campus, fine, let ‘em set up right across from the feminist booth. Anyone who wants to talk to them can. As for the cultural fights–what books are assigned, topics studied–we’re unlikely to see major changes, but subtle ones.

Slowly as the moderates come in and the activist retire, the pendulum will swing. The remaining liberal lions will no longer be seen as the “conscience of the campus” but as the crazy pony-tailed man who won’t shut up.

The New York Times puts it somewhat less hopefully:

But a new study of the social and political views of American professors by Neil Gross at the University of British Columbia and Solon Simmons at George Mason University found that the notion of a generational divide is more than a glancing impression. “Self-described liberals are most common within the ranks of those professors aged 50-64, who were teenagers or young adults in the 1960s,” they wrote, making up just under 50 percent. At the same time, the youngest group, ages 26 to 35, contains the highest percentage of moderates, some 60 percent, and the lowest percentage of liberals, just under a third.

When it comes to those who consider themselves “liberal activists,” 17.2 percent of the 50-64 age group take up the banner compared with only 1.3 percent of professors 35 and younger.

“These findings with regard to age provide further support for the idea that, in recent years, the trend has been toward increasing moderatism,” the study says.

The Independence Day column is a staple of American journalism. It comes in two flavors: A look back at our heroic Founding Fathers with a call to remember their wisdom or a look back at a battle with the idea that we remember that so many died for our freedoms.

Bill Kristol, writing for the New York Times, pens a nice July Fourth piece that attacks no one, except indirectly King George III.  Usually, liberals turn up their noses as these kinds of columns. It is an appeal to sentiment or an attempt to gloss over America’s shortcomings or whatever.

(Ordinary people might take progressive criticisms of America a bit more seriously if liberals also found a few moments every year to honestly praise our country. If one both critiques and praises, one’s views are more likely to be seen as considered judgments rather than the reflex spasms of an over-conditioned lab rat.)

But, for some reason, harmless columns like Kristol’s cannot be left alone. There is something in the head of the liberal blogger that keeps returning its tongue where a tooth used to be.

“Exhibit A”: some blogger named Attaturk over at Firedoglake.com can’t resist jumping when the bell goes off in Pavlov’s lab.  Kristol’s column sets him raving. This poor sod scours the Declaration of Independence for a few stray lines he can twist into an anti-Kristol, anti-Bush, anti-Neocon rant.  Here’s a sample:

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power…

Just like our own George III. Don’t you dare question his “generals on the ground”.

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States

Just like our own George III has done in Iraq.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury

Just like George III has done in the GITMO that Kristol loves so much.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Hey, Blackwater gives a lot of money to George III…and it’s management loves watching you on Fox News Sunday Bill.

It isn’t the cheap shots that rankle, it is the ignorance of American history.

Why were American colonists complaining about putting military power over elected government, denying trial by jury and so on?  At the time, Americans and Britons were one people with a shared constitution that guaranteed those rights. Taking away those constitutional rights made us foreigners…
The cases that the blogger is trying to apply these sacred words to involve foreigners with whom we are actively at war.

We have no shared constitution with them and, if we did, they would reject it as they do all democracy–as “man’s law.” These foreign fighters consider the sharia to be their only law.

Firedoglake is even more thoughtless than the column cliche it condemns.

Sometimes it is hard to know if Senator John McCain realizes that he is actually running for president.

The Orange County Register asked him if he knew the price of gas. He didn’t and seemed annoyed by the question. Here is the question asked and his answer, in full:

When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?
Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.

I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.

The blogger Outside The Beltway points out why McCain’s ignornance matters.

The price of gas is the number one issue on the minds of just about every voter these days. It’s an issue that virtually transcends class. Most of us know, to the penny, what we’re paying for gas and where the cheapest gas is in our area. (Both my wife’s car and mine require high octane gasoline. The station where I generally buy has been stuck at $4.32 for quite some time now. Prices vary radically from block to block, with some charging as much as $4.65.)

If anything, Outside The Beltway is being generous. In fact, McCain’s answer tells us a number of other worrying things about his campaign.

Poor Staffing. McCain should not have been surprised. The price of milk, eggs, and, yes, fuel, are standard campaign-reporter gotcha questions. This has been clear since the 1992 presidential race when then-President Bush was ambushed on a radio station about the price of milk. Most campaigns give the candidate daily numbers on these items, adjusted for the region that they are visiting, to prevent precisely these kind of out-of-touch news stories.

Poor Candidate. McCain must know that gas prices are driving the average American to distraction. Couldn’t he have seized the opportunity to “feel their pain”? The question was suggested to the Orange County Register reporter by a reader, someone obviously vexed by high fuel prices.  Saying the Secret Service pumps my gas, as McCain did, isn’t exactly a soothing response.

Poor Policy. McCain reversed his stand opposing offshore drilling, but still doesn’t want to drill in ANWR because that part of Alaska is “pristine.” And the beaches of California and Florida are not? This is an incoherent policy. And he wants a gas tax “holiday” for the summer. So New Englanders can freeze because of the high cost of home heating oil in November? Another incoherent policy–and one designed to hurt him in states he desperately needs to win.

What Could He Do Instead? Call for suspension of the federal tax on fuel until oil returns to $60/barrel, roughly where it was when the Democrats took Congress in November 2006. That would provide long-term relief and show that he cares about the minivan-driving mom who still has to take her children to school, to practice, to the supermarket and home. He could even propose that states suspend their fuel taxes until oil prices decline, or else deny them federal highway money. Suspending the state and federal levies would save motorists about 80 cents per gallon. Freezing the greedy grab of government is the only way to reverse gas prices in the short term.

As for those who say all 80 cents won’t trickle down, well, they’re wrong. Those studies look for immediate effects. Gas prices shoot up quickly and decline slowly. But at least 40 cents per gallon would be realized immediately and the rest of savings would accrue over the next few months. Besides, that argument is really about the efficiency of cutting gas taxes, not the overall effect. Gas prices would go down and voters would see that McCain and the lawmakers that join will him are at least doing something helpful.

Instead he tells us that the Secret Service pumps his gas. What kind of message does that send?