"PARD whimpers, whines and dissembles"

Funny, I was thinking the other day about Terry Day and Chuck Millham. Now today, Terry has a great column in the Daily News eviscerating TV "PARD Has Clearly Won The PR Battle" Reed.

Will the whimpering, whining and dissembling never end?

No one likes a sore loser and they don't come much worse than the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development.

PARD has lost at every turn in its efforts to block Wal-Mart from exercising its legal right to build a super store in Pullman, and the right of Pullman citizens to decide for themselves where they will shop.

PARD tried to elect anti-Wal-Mart candidates to the City Council. Pullman voters spoke with a strong voice, leaving the City Council in the hands of public servants who believe in the rule of law.

Losing again, PARD sued, and lost yet again.

On PARD's behalf, T.V. Reed continues to disgracefully whimper that hearings weren't truly open. This is double speak. The hearings were fully open. Anti-Wal-Mart speakers were abundant and they were heard loud and clear. I know, because I was there. Everyone, including PARD, was offered every opportunity to present their case.

The hearing examiner concluded, as the law required, that city officials acted properly. Reed's continued claims that hearings weren't truly open are an insult to elected officials and to the community.

PARD pouters are elitists stuck in an economic model that has been outmoded for well more than half a century.

The good old days are nostalgic. I fondly remember going to Beste's Grocery Store in Kennewick, as a small boy, and the owner - who also was the clerk, cashier and bagger - would slice off a sliver from a huge wheel of cheddar cheese on the counter and give it to me. There was sawdust on the floor of the butchery in the back of the store.

We had no progressive PARD to protest when the big, bad national Safeway firm came to town and ran Beste out of business. And - if you can imagine - this giant firm, which took all its profits out of Kennewick, wouldn't even let my family charge its groceries, as Mr. Beste did.

Safeway and other food corporation invaders also contributed to the demise of Sherman's Market, the home-owned store where I obtained my first regular employment, as a 14-year-old "box boy."

The J.C. Penney Company made it increasingly difficult for Mr. Lanter to make a go of his men's clothing store, and local shoe stores were no longer profitable.

National franchise operations ran mom and pop restaurants out of business, including the Stop 'n' Go drive-in that my friends and I frequented.

We don't still live in 1940 or 1950 and most of us don't want to.

Romantic as the memories now seem, business isn't what it used to be, and thank goodness for that.

Today's business models have both positive and negative aspects, but there is no turning back, or even standing still.

PARD wants to force us all to effectively subsidize home-owned businesses by limiting outside competition. But that's not the proper role of government, and most especially not when the voters have spoken for progress.

Local business owners who adjust their business plans to compete with Wal-Mart and other national behemoths will survive, even thrive. Those who rely on PARD to keep competition out of town will eventually die on the vine.

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