Coming soon: the Somalian cookbook

The WSJournal just took out a hit on NYC’s Green Cart program, framing the issue through the sad tale of a Korean grocer in Brooklyn whose business is way down but waiting until the penultimate graf to note that both the Bushwhacked economy and construction near her store were contributing as much to her Fail as the competitive price of bananas. A liberal neighbor took up the cause on Facebook, where I had to point out that these carts are going into neighborhoods where bananas are overpriced if they’re available at all, not like the carts of hustlers who commandeer so many corners in our little corner of privileged Manhattan (the one opposite Whole Foods is particularly tenacious, putting the lie to the notion that “no-overhead” vendors have the edge on bricks and mortars). Jay Gould must be reincarnated, because this whole country is proving what he said more than 100 years ago: “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” While the “little people” never notice if Monsanto is paying any taxes at all. . .