Quote of the Day II

The existence of private property rights and the ability to do things with your land as you see fit is often not fully appreciated. The United States of America would not be the county it is without these rights. John Adams, one of the founding fathers of our country, said, "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." (I bet John Adams told some really good I-remember-when stories.)

Lots of people want to tell you what you can do with property they do not own. The challenge is to allow development of private property in ways that provide profit to the landowner and facility to the community. It is often difficult to find the middle ground, and it is never possible to make everyone completely happy. If the community is not alert, small groups of vocal and active people can be very obstructive and do great harm to the future of the community.

- Steve Busch, "The ever-changing face of the Palouse," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, May 28, 2008

Moscowans should be glad that Steve and other individuals with common sense founded the Greater Moscow Alliance and saved the city from the clutches of those "small groups of vocal and active people."

Pullman Enemy #1

KLEW TV has more on the Moscow Civic Association forum on the Hawkins water deal, and you won't believe what Tri-State owner Gerard Connelly had to say.

Connelly said he supports the "pro-business" makeup of the new council, but said there's a difference between economic expansion and retail displacement. He used the proposed Wal-Mart supercenter in Pullman as an example.

"Currently, in Pullman, they think that when Wal-Mart opens a 100,000 square-foot grocery store there that people are going to eat more food. They're not," he said. "Nationally, when Wal-Mart opens up a 100,000 square-foot grocery store, two grocery stores in that market go out of business. Nationally, for every two people that Wal-Mart employs when they open up, three people lose their jobs. That's not a matter of philosophy, it's a matter of record."

Bullshit. "That whole 2 stores closing for each Wal-Mart and 2 Wal-Mart employees for 3 losing their jobs" argument is a bunch of weak, unsupported lies right off the Wake-Up Wal-Mart website. If Safeway was so concerned about Wal-Mart closing them down, why in the hell did they just do a very expensive remodel of their Pullman store? And there are only two grocery stores in Pullman to begin with. Does anyone seriously believe that Wal-Mart would shut both of them down and leave only one grocery store in a city of 27,000 people? That's ridiculous.

Again, I know Connelly has been too successful in business to believe that we think that "when Wal-Mart opens a 100,000 square-foot grocery store there that people are going to eat more food." What we believe is that THOUSANDS OF PULLMAN RESIDENTS THAT CURRENTLY SHOP AT WAL-MART AND WINCO IN MOSCOW FOR BUDGET GOODS AND GROCERIES WILL START SHOPPING AT WAL-MART IN PULLMAN INSTEAD. Certainly all the Pullman developers believe that, as evidenced by new and planned construction in and around Bishop Blvd. Connelly knows that. That's why he is only against a Pullman Wal-Mart, not a Moscow one.

Then Connelly mentioned SEL:

Connelly said Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories in Pullman is a good example of economic development, because SEL continues to adds jobs without displacing any current businesses

HELLO, GERARD????!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU'RE RIGHT. SEL HAS ADDED JOBS AND PEOPLE TO THE AREA. IT HAS BROUGHT SOME 1,100 JOBS TO THE PALOUSE. MANY OF THOSE EMPLOYEES AND THEIR FAMILIES ARE NEW TO THE PALOUSE, ABOUT HALF OF WHOM HAVE LOCATED IN PULLMAN, LIKE MYSELF. WE'RE NOT GOING TO EAT MORE FOOD. THERE ARE MORE MOUTHS TO FEED. DO YOU NOT GET THAT???? DID NO ONE PICKUP ON THIS PIECE OF ILLOGIC??? And SEL does cause business displacement, just not in Pullman. Every company that buys SEL relays costs some other relay maker a sale. Eventually, that might result in that other company having to lay off employees or even close. That is the nature of business. There are winners and there are losers. Unbelievable.

And WTF is Connelly doing going off on Pullman and Wal-Mart at a forum ostensibly about the Moscow City Council's decision to sell water to a developer in Whitman County. Neither Pullman and Wal-Mart fit into that equation at all.

I've always disagreed with attempts at boycotting local businesses to express dissatisfaction with the owner, but I'm starting to consider it.

"Forum on Hawkins deal brings questions, answers"

Let me sum up last night's Moscow Com, er, Civic Association forum on the Hawkins development.

Moscow will receive $170,000 a year for selling Hawkins the same water Hawkins could have been pumping themselves, versus nothing.

Leftists still view national chain retail as some sort of capitalistic murder-suicide plot versus an investment.

And Gerard Connelly is still against any retail development in Pullman.

Now, can everyone please shut up? It's a done deal.

From today's Lewiston Tribune:

MOSCOW - Secrecy in government and a hurried business deal became fodder here Tuesday night for a bevy of questions and answers, some lengthy explanations and at least one concession.

"Has the council learned a lesson? Absolutely," Councilor Wayne Krauss said during a public forum about the city's recent closed-door deal with Hawkins Companies developers. "Should there be more public process? Absolutely. I agree with that."

The city council voted 5-1 last month to provide water and sewer service across the state line to Hawkins' proposed 714,000-square-foot shopping center. The action came after 22 hours of secret mediation and no public input.

"We got bad results from a process that was dubious at best," said Dennis Baird, owner of the Wine Company of Moscow.

Krauss and Baird were joined on a panel by Councilor Tom Lamar and Tri-State business owner Gerard Connelly. The forum, attended by about 100 people at the 1912 Center, was co-sponsored by the Moscow Civic Association, the Moscow Chamber of Commerce, and the Palouse Water Conservation Network.

Lamar, the only council member who voted against the agreement, said while the city council was on firm legal ground, "morally I feel like we should have done a lot of things differently."

Connelly defended the intentions of all elected officials. "I believe that every single person on the old council and the new council, and the mayor, acted honorably. And don't question anybody's motives."

But he said retail development is not economic development. "Retail follows economic development," Connelly said, adding he couldn't think of a more important vote taken by a Moscow City Council than the rushed decision with Hawkins. And yet there was "woefully inadequate public comment."

Krauss pointed out the lack of public involvement and secrecy started when Mayor Nancy Chaney and members of the old city council went into executive session last year and apparently came to a consensus to appeal Hawkins Companies attempts to secure water rights for the development. Then the city, without public input, decided to enter into mediation, Krauss said.

"We suddenly found out, guess what, we're going to mediation next week," Krauss said of how the process was sprung on new council members. He, Chaney and Councilor Walter Steed attended the mediation session with Hawkins in Spokane. All had to sign a confidentiality agreement.

"We felt that the Hawkins development, it was coming no matter what Moscow did," Krauss said. If the city didn't supply sewer and water, Hawkins would drill its own well and sewer system. "So the next best thing was hammer out the best deal we can."

Krauss estimated Hawkins will pay the city upward of $170,000 annually for water and sewer service on top of thousands more for hookup fees.

Most of the written questions at the forum focused on details of the water and sewer deal, rather than the secrecy of the decision making.

Baird expressed his doubts about the development, saying local businesses will lose out. "And then the place will close ..., and the whole community will be stuck with less business and less tax revenue than we have right now. That's the scenario that I'm really afraid of, that the mall will succeed just long enough to sink a whole lot of ships in Moscow and Pullman ... and then fail."

Connelly predicted the shopping center would amount to the latest exercise in "economic displacement," not growth. Nonetheless, if the development is inevitable, he'd rather have it right next to Moscow than farther away. "The closer you can be to your competition, the better."

Concerns about the development using too much water, Krauss said, should be less under the proposed agreement because Moscow will be able to regulate the amount. He also said people who fear excessive water use by Hawkins need to be more concerned about residential developments that go in with little or no discussion about their drain on groundwater supply.

"Hawkins's development closed-door dealings under scrutiny; Moscow council members maintain their decision was in city's best interest"

Ah, right out of the ol' liberal playbook. You lose an election, you bitch about the people that won for the next few years and constantly demand they be removed from office.

From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Moscow's newest City Council members have spent the last several days defending their decision to sell water to a development firm that wants to build just across the state line in Whitman County.

Some residents are so unhappy they're considering a recall.

Dan Carscallen, Wayne Krauss and Walter Steed voted Monday along with Bill Lambert and John Weber to approve a settlement that offers Boise-based Hawkins Companies 45 acre-feet of potable water and 20 acre-feet of irrigation water on an annual basis for use at its proposed 700,000-square-foot retail development just west of Moscow. The Idaho Department of Water Resources must approve the offer before it is official.

The settlement was drafted after two days of mediation last week in Spokane.

Hawkins has about three months to decide whether to purchase wastewater treatment services from Moscow. The settlement also means the city will drop its appeal of water-rights transfers granted to Hawkins, which in turn will relinquish 45 acre-feet of water rights when it has access to Moscow water.

Confidentiality

Moscow resident Bill French, a member of the Palouse Water Conservation Network, said he and others have considered calling for a recall of the council members who voted for the settlement.

A recall is worth considering because "five of our six council members, at least in my opinion, betrayed the public trust by conducting this closed-door negotiation and settlement," he said.

Moscow's representatives at the mediation - Steed, Krauss, Mayor Nancy Chaney and Public Works Director Les MacDonald - agreed to keep the proceedings confidential, as demanded by the mediator. The council had to vote on the settlement without disclosing its content to the public.

Krauss said the confidentiality was necessary because the information discussed in mediation couldn't have been used in later litigation if no settlement was reached.

French said Moscow's representatives should have walked out rather than sign the confidentiality agreement.

"I think it was very imprudent for the council to enter negotiations and make a decision before the public had any opportunity to weigh in on what they were thinking," he said.

Dennis Baird, owner of the Wine Company of Moscow, agrees.

"They could have said, 'I'm sorry, we're not going to do that,' " Baird said. "If the mediator didn't like that, then they could have gotten another mediator."

French said Moscow should have continued with its water rights appeal.

"I'm not of the opinion that (the appeal) was destined to fail," he said. "At the very least it might have delayed Hawkins long enough to change the whole situation."

Krauss and Steed said they decided it was best to go ahead with the mediation.

"I went up there to reach a settlement to conclude the Hawkins situation," Steed said.

Krauss said city representatives had two other options: They could have proceeded with costly litigation on the appeal, or dropped the appeal altogether, but "that would have allowed a private entity to pump from the same aquifer we do without any public entity to monitor them on a regular basis."

Chaney said she was not surprised that the mediation session was kept confidential. To disclose things in a legal dispute would be counterproductive to Moscow's interests.

However, Chaney said the council could have proceeded differently after mediation concluded.

She said the council could have declined the settlement and opened discussion to the public. They could have discussed the elements in the settlement without disclosing the agreement itself, and returned to mediation later if the other entities were open to it.

Control issues

Carscallen, Krauss and Steed said Whitman County was going to help Hawkins move forward one way or another. Moscow had the opportunity to get as much as it could out of the deal.

"We didn't do this to sell out Moscow or to harm or to help Hawkins," Steed said. "We saw an inevitable development that we felt that we could to some degree control, to some degree reduce the amount of water (it used) that we all draw from and to make some money for the city."

The councilmen said the settlement ultimately reduces the net effect on the Grand Ronde aquifer, compared to the water Hawkins would pull if all its water rights were approved and Moscow was not involved.

Chaney said the settlement means "the Hawkins group will end up with more water than was otherwise authorized."

Hawkins had only secured rights to 45 acre-feet, but the settlement guarantees 65 acre-feet.

Chaney said she also dislikes the portion of the settlement in which Moscow agrees not to protest, directly or indirectly, "any permits or governmental approvals" sought by Hawkins for the project. The city can protest "based on public safety or nuisance."

The project was "too ill-defined" for such an agreement, Chaney said.

She also is concerned that the city does not control utility-related issues at Hawkins it would control within city limits. For example, Moscow can't regulate how much grease a restaurant in the development can release into the wastewater system.

Economic issues

Steed said people who shop at the Hawkins development may continue across the border and spend money in Moscow. Shoppers who don't find what they want at Hawkins could come to a similar store in Moscow.

"It's Marketing 101 - you put in a Burger King across the street from a McDonald's," Steed said.

Baird said Hawkins is more likely to hurt Moscow businesses. Because Hawkins will benefit from city infrastructure, which businesses help pay for, the council is forcing business owners to "pay for their own death."

Rate issues

French said he is concerned the agreement doesn't specify what Hawkins will have to pay for water or wastewater treatment.

"We should be making sure we're getting as high a rate as we can from them for providing that service," he said.

Carscallen said city representatives did not set a specific rate because they do not know what Moscow's water rates will be when the development is built.

The settlement states that Moscow "shall be fair and reasonable and consistent with rates and charges set for similarly situated customers of the city."

Steed said this does not mean that Hawkins will pay the same as a business within Moscow city limits.

Krauss said there are no "similarly situated" businesses, so the city will have to create a new rate for businesses across the state line.

The current rate for businesses outside the city limits is twice that of businesses in town, Krauss said. The rate for Hawkins could be as much as three times the in-town rate.

"We will work out a fair rate for them based on who and what they are," Krauss said.

The councilmen said the city also could save money if Hawkins decides to help pay for upgrades to Moscow's wastewater treatment plant in order to speed the availability of treated wastewater for irrigation.

What's next?

French said people who are unhappy with the settlement should speak out when the Idaho Department of Water Resources evaluates the sale.

"We need to see if there is any way to prevent this agreement from being followed through," he said.

Chaney said the settlement could bring positives.

It could encourage the Washington State Department of Ecology and Idaho Department of Water Resources to manage the Palouse Basin as a common watershed, she said. Any well drilled by Hawkins prior to hooking into Moscow's water could later be used as a test well for the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee to assess aquifer levels.

"I think we are all coming at this from the perspective of wanting to do what we think will be beneficial to water in the Palouse Basin," she said. "We may not agree on what that is but ... we will make the best out of whatever the outcome is."

"Commissioners schedule third public meeting to discuss Hawkins proposal"

I applaud the county commissioners' efforts to clear up the misconceptions, misunderstandings and outright lies about the Hawkins bond proposal. However, I also hope that they pull the trigger quickly and not get bogged down in endless public hearings. The naysayers will only garner more press as a result, as we have seen with the WSU golf course. And private development does not have the fiat of the state government to keep things moving forward.

A comment on the Daily News website in response to Moscow Civic Association member Jack Porter's letter yesterday sums it beautifully:

What ignorant oaf first said Hawkins was looking for a subsidy and how dumb are those who keep repeating that falsehood?

Check the record. Hawkins is proposing a government entity supply it the same kind of services provided to most existing businesses within the political subdivision. For that service, it proposes to repay the capital and operating costs as well as providing a positive revenue stream into the foreseeable future through payment of taxes and fees. If the numbers available in public documents are correct, the Whitman County stands to do quite well by the deal.

Of course Mr. Porter is no ignorant fool. He's bright enough to see where a considerable sum of money which now flows into Moscow and Latah County will go and to use rhetoric proven to strike a chord with and manipulate both anti-growth activists and anti-government reactionaries.

Nice try, Jack but I think there are enough people in Whitman County who can “do the math” to win the day. Fortunately, it appears we can count our county commissioners among the enlightened.

From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Whitman County commissioners want to hear more public input before they make a decision on selling $10.5 million in bonds to cover the costs of public infrastructure at the proposed site of the Hawkins Companies' development just west of the Idaho state line.

A third public comment session is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Monday in the commissioner's chambers at the Whitman County Courthouse. The bonds and Hawkins' proposal to form a public/private partnership with the county for the purpose of constructing the infrastructure will be discussed.

The commissioners hoped to make a decision on the proposal Monday, but Commissioner Jerry Finch said they have decided to delay their decision after several county residents raised concerns about the development during last Tuesday's public input session.

"It was obvious after that meeting last week people had a lot of questions in their minds, and we want to clear up some of those misconceptions," Finch said.

One way the commissioners hope to clear up questions is by making a fact sheet available to the public, detailing the proposal and the county's plan.

Finch said the fact sheets should be available early next week and can be obtained by calling the courthouse at (509) 397-6200.

Spinning the Moscow Liberals' Defeat

The Lewiston Tribune continues to put their leftist spin on the total defeat of the Moscow Civic Association in Tuesday's election.

Jim Fisher writes in his column today:

Tuesday's city council races were nowhere near as decisive. The results again displayed the centrism among voters that leads them to switch back and forth between opposing factions in city politics. In electing Wayne Krauss, Dan Carscallen and Walter Steed - running on a slate endorsed by the Greater Moscow Alliance - they turned the council away from the restrictions on big-box stores and water use of the councilors endorsed by the Moscow Civic Association.

But in giving the biggest number of votes to Lamar, longtime executive director of the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute, they sent a message to Krauss, Carscallen and Steed.

That message? Remember what happened to Gary Young. Swing wildly to the right, and you can be replaced too.

And David Johnson reports:

Mayor Nancy Chaney said Wednesday the previous day's city council election rendered a modest pendulum swing back to the right, but not a political mandate.

You keep believing that Nancy. I've got an oceanfront fishing village in Kansas I want to sell you for a sustainable development.

Here are the salient facts, as I see them, even if no one else wants to admit it:

1. I would not read too much into Tom Lamar's victory. Remember only two GMA candidates were running in the "Vote for 3" category versus three MCA candidates. It was therefore inevitable that one MCA candidate was going to win a seat. However, that leads to Point 2.
2. Whenever two incumbent council candidates with the MOST years of service receive the LEAST amount of votes, I call that a mandate. Lamar has only been on the council for a few months. He is the least known to the voters. This was no doubt a "throw the bums out" election.
3. Whenever one side has a 5 to 1 margin, I call that a mandate.
4. We have now seen in elections in Moscow and Pullman that when council candidates, be they incumbents or challengers, are against Wal-Mart, they go down in defeat. I call that a lesson. Oppose Wal-Mart at your political peril. Two university towns or not, there is enough of a agricultural/small business community on the Palouse that we have little tolerance for elitism. That lesson has been learned in Pullman already. No candidate in our mayoral or city council elections this year was against Wal-Mart, even though the issue of Wal-Mart is still up in the air.

Technorati Tags: wal-mart walmart

In Case You Thought I Was Joking About Those Red Scarves Worn by the Moscow Civic Association

This picture of MCA candidate Tom Lamar appeared in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

"Moscow City Council takes a sharp turn as GMA-backed candidates sweep into office"

Goodbye, Citizen Ament. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Moscow politics took a drastic shift Tuesday with the election of three new City Council members and leaving only the newest incumbent left.

Cheers and shouts of victory echoed through the Eastside Marketplace as Greater Moscow Alliance members learned all three of their endorsed candidates won seats on the council.

Dan Carscallen and Wayne Krauss won four-year seats, and Walter Steed won the lone two-year seat. All were endorsed by the GMA, which was established in 2006 to promote free enterprise and property rights.

Tom Lamar, who was appointed to council in June, also won a four-year seat on the council with the highest total number of votes.

Lamar was endorsed by the Moscow Civic Association, which was established in 2002 to work for progressive and sustainable communities. The MCA also endorsed incumbents Linda Pall and Aaron Ament, who placed fourth and fifth, respectively, in the four-year race. Evan Holmes, who was not endorsed by either group, was defeated by Steed.

"This shows me that many people in Moscow are not happy with the way things have been handled and are looking for some fresher ideas on the City Council," Krauss said.

Carscallen, Krauss and Steed agreed voter turnout played a major role in their success. This year, 37.82 percent of voters went to the polls. In the 2005 election, 30.52 percent of voters cast ballots.

Krauss and Carscallen said they were thankful for the GMA's effort to get people to vote, as well as the group's support for their campaigns. Steed said he had been largely on his own when he ran in the past, but "this time there was a lot of people that really wanted to make a change and worked to make it happen."

The GMA candidates' victories brings the council to more "middle road," Krauss said.

"I think that we're pretty much just a moderate, centrist group and I think we're going to bring that centrist look back to the City Council," Carscallen said.

Carscallen thanked his competitors for running a clean campaign. He said he looks forward to hearing from Ament, Pall and Holmes as they stay involved in city government.

Krauss said now is the time for people in Moscow to find common ground.

"We all have the same goal of keeping Moscow the community that it is and still remain economically viable," he said. "We can do this by working together."

Lamar also spoke of working together and dedicated his victory to John Dickinson. Dickinson, who was elected to council in 2003, went missing in January after a traffic accident. His body was recovered from the Columbia River in July.

"As a City Council member he operated with a spirit of community-building and teamwork and good decision-making," Lamar said. "I feel like that's what we need to have in this community."

Lamar thinks he will work well with the new council members. He said they have been involved with city government, but have not attended council meetings frequently or worked at that level.

"I think that probably the major thing right off the bat is that there's going to be a steep learning curve for new members of the council," he said. "But that's happened in past elections, too."

The new council will face the same issues as the current council, such as water use and lack of sidewalks.

"We're going to have to step up as a council, as one unified group, to solve these problems," he said.

Lamar attributed his success to many volunteers and his community experience as director of the Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute.

"There were hundreds of people involved in my campaign, and I think it shows," he said.

Pall said this election drives a wedge further into Moscow politics. She said "electoral comments" and the presence of Dave Glasebrook, the independent picketer who accused her, Lamar and Ament of being bigots played a role in the election.

"That wedge is something that I had been working on for four years to heal, and this seems to go in the opposite direction," she said.

Pall said she plans to continue working on projects such as the dog park and Paradise Path. Her advice for the new council members is to look outside Moscow for education and ideas.

Pall, who has been a councilwoman on and off since 1977, said she may run again in the future.

"It has been a real honor to serve the city of Moscow for 18 years, and I look forward to doing it off the council as well," she said.

Ament declined to comment. Holmes could not be reached by press time.


Moscow City Council

Four-year seat

x Tom Lamar 2,847

x Wayne Krauss 2,768

x Dan Cascallen 2,579

Linda Pall 2,451

Aaron Ament 2,285

Two-year seat

x Walter Steed 2,529

Evan Holmes 2,307

"Moscow council makeup changes"

I laughed reading how the left-wing Lewiston Tribune was sputtering over the Moscow election story. City split down the middle? Uh uh. Not when pro-growth forces enjoy a 5-1 margin in the city council chamber. Funny Tom Henderson and Jim Fisher aren't weighing in on the conservative triumph in Moscow. From today's Tribune:

Tom Lamar, Wayne Krauss, Dan Carscallen and Walter Steed won election Tuesday to the city council here.

The results mean the political pendulum in this Latah County town has swung back to the right of center and limited Mayor Nancy Chaney in the power she enjoyed under the current council makeup.

Voter turnout was 37.8 percent, compared to 30 percent in 2005. A total of 5,022 out of 13,280 registered voters cast ballots.

In a five-way race for three four-year seats, Lamar received 2,847 votes, Krauss garnered 2,768 votes, and Carscallen totaled 2,579 votes. Linda Pall, an incumbent with a total of 18 years on the council, narrowly missed re-election with 2,451 votes, and incumbent Aaron Ament came in last with 2,285 votes.

In the two-way race for one two-year term on the council, Steed tallied 2,529 votes, while Holmes received 2,307 votes.

Final results were not available until shortly before midnight after officials struggled with the counting process, said Latah County Clerk-Auditor Susan Petersen. The city contracted with the county to do the counting. Because of the late count, candidates could not be reached for comment.

Prior to the vote, many people said Tuesday's election could decide Moscow's future. The town has long had a reputation of being a stronghold of liberalism in a state known as a bastion of conservatism. And city government has for years swung back and forth between the two viewpoints. But never before had the battle lines been so clear. But because of the closeness of the vote, Tuesday's return to the right seems to have left the town still divided down the middle.

Other issues aside, the election hinged on economic growth and the role government should play. Lamar, Ament and Pall, the three incumbents, along with Holmes, said they encouraged growth but within guidelines geared to ensuring Moscow's unique small college-town character. The three right-leaning challengers, Krauss, Carscallen and Steed, touted free enterprise and said government should keep only a loose reign on the economy.

The partisan flavor was underscored by the formation of two citizen groups. The Moscow Civic Association and the Greater Moscow Alliance assumed politically left and right postures, respectively, and endorsed candidates.

The MCA backed Pall, Lamar and Ament, while the GMA gave the nod to Steed, Carscallen and Krauss. Holmes waged an independent bid for office.

"The GMA wins," Bruce Livingston, president of the MCA, said shortly after the final results were made official.

The election actually being fueled two years ago when Chaney rode an endorsement from the MCA to a 294-vote victory. Chaney's opponent, incumbent Councilor Peg Hamlett, sized up her defeat by saying, "You do the best you can, but it's tough when they have an army going door to door."

One year later, the GMA was formed with President Steve Busch all but saying the citizen group was an antidote to the MCA. "I don't think we'd admit that," Busch said. "We are free-market oriented. We can't stand back and let government fix all our problems."

Riiiiiighhhhhtttttt, Face!!

It looks like Moscowans have had enough of the liberal "smart growth" experiment of the last two years. With 17 of 18 precincts reporting, all three candidates endorsed by the pro-growth Greater Moscow Alliance, Dan Carscallen, Walter Steed, and Wayne Krauss, have won city council seats, joining pro-growth incumbents Bill Lambert and John Weber. After the ugliest election ever on the Palouse, the only "progressive" that will sit on the new city council is Tom Lamar. Now the bitter recriminations, accusations, and recount demands from the leftists will begin.

We can only hope that Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney will see this for what it is: an outright repudiation of her failed left-wing policies and hopefully put a halt to her meddling in Whitman County.

My congratulations to the GMA for taking their city back!

Meanwhile, in Pullman, Al Sorensen leads Nathan Weller 153 to 144, with several hundred votes yet to count. Could be an interesting race, but we won't know anything more until Thursday.

You Can't Make Stuff Like This Up

Dr. Forbes and I attended the University of Idaho Homecoming parade in Moscow yesterday as one kid was marching in the Lincoln Middle School band and another in the Pullman High School band.

Queen Nancy led off the parade in the "Sustainablemobile," a biodiesel-powered VW Bug, followed ironically and fittingly enough by a big-ass, gas-guzzling Idaho Army National Guard HMMWV painted in bright, patriotic red, white and blue, filled with young men wearing black berets and Army Combat Uniforms.

But the best was yet to come. The Moscow Civic Association was out in force, 30 or 40 strong, touting their three city council candidates. The ponytailed old hippie dudes, the long, gray-haired old hippie chicks, the dapper metrosexuals, and the "The Simpsons" Comic Book Guys were riding their bikes, waving their signs and flags, banging their drums, and playing their trombones. It was like some freakish touring company of the jongleur show at a Berekely Renaissance Fair.

But even that amusing spectacle was not the best part. The members of the MCA were all wearing RED SCARVES, just like the Young Pioneer organization in the former Soviet Union. I wonder if anyone else caught the significance.

I told Dr. Forbes that, unbelievably, these were the people in charge of Moscow, and God help me, part of me wants them to hang around in power for a few more years. How much better does Pullman look with these blatant communists running Moscow? This is the best thing that has ever happened to Whitman County and Pullman business people. Unfortunately, I think the voters in Moscow will take those red scarves and choke the MCA with them in three weeks.