Politics from the Palouse to Puget Sound

Monday, May 12, 2008

Non Sequitur of the Day

Instead of waiting until gas is $9 per gallon, we could seek to develop augmented water supplies.
- Chuck "Mr. Civil Discourse" Pezeshki, "Like it or not, change is coming for us all," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, May 10, 2008

Huh? What does the price of gas, which we have no control over, have to do with water supplies?

Runners-Up:
We could pull out all the stops and work toward developing sustainable housing close to the university, where many of the staff that now must commute from Colfax, could live.
Apparently, with Chuck away in Europe, he didn't hear that College Hill has been designated a historic district listed with the National Register of Historic Places. Good luck putting in your "sustainable housing" now. Those drafty, old, energy inefficient houses are here to stay.

We could work toward making both Moscow and Pullman the most bike-friendly communities in the West, and move the majority of our student population toward cycling.
Ditto. Chuckie must not be aware that Pullman was recently named one of the most pedestrian-oriented cities in the U.S.

We could actively engage our organic farming faculty toward a goal of campus food self-sufficiency.
I can't wait to see the organic farming faculty grow enough food to feed 18,000 students.

Honorable Mention:
Some of our faculty and staff in my university building, from professorial to janitorial, still drive from homes far distant, alone in their pick-up trucks, spending up to 15 percent of their take-home pay on gas.
15 percent?
We celebrate the commissioning of an unnecessary and useless golf course that will only further deplete our pristine water supply.
I am definitely taking up golf because it pisses off the liberals so much.
We still welcome obesity with our dietary choices.
What a rant. Chuck is taking swings at everything that makes him mad, including apparently, fat people driving pick-up trucks. You gotta love the intolerance of the "tolerant."
Instead of having city councils making backroom deals for large developments promoting failed models of consumerism, we could have our local governments actively address some of these big issues.
"Failed model of consumerism?" Unfortunately for Chuck and his fellow socialists, consumerism hasn't failed. Otherwise, Hawkins wouldn't be building a mall. And just what would he have local governments do? It's the people that decide where they want to shop last time I checked.

7 comments:

Satanic Mechanic said...

Is Two-Buck Chuck drinking anti-freeze now? I would hate to take any of his classes. This guy reminds me of those stupid Netflix radio commercials that make no sense.

Next week, Chuck discusses the dropping water levels with the reduced production of Spice* from the giant white worm of the Palouse which is directly correlated to the sub-prime market.
*Frank Herbert's book Dune.

Michael said...

We should name this award after Bill Clinton. What was it he said - an investigation never fed a starving child or something like that? The left swooned as I recall. Maybe two buck chuck is trying to recreate the magic.

Michael said...

The actual quote from The Slick One may have been, "negative attacks never fed a starving child."

The left did swoon though.

Bruce Heimbigner said...

A listing on the "National Register of Historic Places" doesn't keep a building from having its use changed, energy features updated, or even be torn down.

Unknown said...

No, but it will make tearing those old houses down to make room for Chuck's European-style dense, sustainable housing nearly impossible.

From the January 26, 2006 Daily News:

The Pullman Planning Commission split Wednesday night on whether the preservation of College Hills historic character is more important than the need for student housing.

Historic character won in a 3-2 vote recommending denial of a request to rezone three lots on Northeast Oak Street.

The application was filed by Kathy Wilson of DRA Real Estate on behalf of property owners Walter and Dora Mih and Brett Bly. The plan was to rezone the lots from R2, low-density residential, to R4, high-density residential, then replace a 100-year old house straddling two of the lots with a 12- or 14-unit apartment building. A house sitting on the third lot would remain.

Alex Hammond, a board member of the College Hill Association, said the proposal was inconsistent with the citys comprehensive plan and destructive to the neighborhoods character. He referenced a string of quite beautiful and architecturally significant houses in the area. An apartment building would not be a good fit, he said.

Is the impulse here to make it look like Terre View (Drive)? Hammond asked. That is not the character of the neighborhood.


Alex Hammond, by the way, is the treasurer of PARD. Can you imagine what would have happened had Bishop Blvd. been designated a historical district?

Historical and cultural significance are items on the SEPA checklist. In Washington, once something is designated "historical" it has the de facto full protection of law.

Bruce Heimbigner said...

It is entirely up to the city. The listing doesn't provide protection, just leverage. Note the Planning Commission didn't reference the Register of Historic Places, or was it even listed in 2006?

Unknown said...

Agreed. But the current city government does not seem inclined to bulldoze old houses on College Hill and replace them with 5 story apartment buildings.

The historic district designation request was filed with the National Park Service on October 17, 2006.

In any case, as we have discussed before, Chuck's argument is absurd. Pullman is a very compact city. I would bet that 80-90% of WSU Pullman students live within 2 miles of campus. That's easy walking/biking distance.

But the whole premise of his article is absurd. "Sustainable tourism" in Wales? Uh, Britain is an island, so the vast majority of the 30 million overseas tourists who travel there yearly do so by plane (including Chuck.) If we go back to the pre-fossil fuel economy of 1900 that Chuck and his fellow greenies desire, there will be little tourism, sustainable or otherwise, in Wales.