“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”And
– Karl Marx
Depressed about the elections? So is Karl.
The American people themselves are “the greatest obstacle to progressive change” in America.Still not too late to stage a takeover, conservative Cougars.
Likewise, small businesses find themselves unable to compete with Wal-Mart’s rock-bottom prices. A Pullman Supercenter will choke and kill much of our beloved local commerce.I suppose one can't argue with a self-styled "expert" on Pullman economics who is also a Rhetoric and Composition grad student from Seattle who uses apocryphal stories and far-left websites to support his arguments. Nevertheless, let's take a look at some hard data anyway.
Tuesday: We'll take a look at what happened over in Sequim, after much controversy in opening a Wal-Mart Supercenter there.“Not one business went out of business because of Wal-Mart,” says Michael Tracy. He should know. Tracy heads up the Grays Harbor Economic Development Council. His organization has tried to identify and help businesses affected by Wal-Mart’s decision to locate in Aberdeen in 1994.
“Understand,” says Tracy, “there was high unemployment at the time and businesses were going out of business right and left. But, not because of Wal-Mart.” Wal-Mart slowed the flow of people leaving Grays Harbor to do their shopping in Olympia, he says.Aberdeen and Grays Harbor County had real gains of 13 percent and 7 percent, respectively in taxable retail sales from retail trade from 1995 through 2003. “The threat to locally owned businesses is not Wal-Mart,” Tipton says, “it’s I-5 to Tumwater, Lacey and Portland. Wal-Mart has slowed [Aberdeen’s retail sales leakage] considerably.” When local shoppers stay in town to buy their basics at Wal-Mart, he says, they are more likely to look locally first for their other needs and to comparison shop at home, given the opportunity.
Wal-Mart captured an increasing share of a increasing retail sales base in Aberdeen and Grays Harbor County between 1995 and 2002. As Figure 3 shows, taxable retail sales from retail trade in Aberdeen and Grays Harbor County kept pace with inflation even without Wal-Mart over this period, demonstrating that Wal-Mart not only increased its market share, it helped grow the size of pie....the city’s revenues have grown in all categories since 1994. Sales and Use Taxes have been a good source of revenue growth – up 9 percent after inflation from 1994 through 2003 – but the big growth category for the city’s general services has been Business and Utility Taxes, which was up 16 percent after inflation. These are taxes levied by the city on various special services like water, sewer and garbage.
Adjusted for inflation, Wal-Mart’s sales tax contribution to the city grew 89 percent from 1996 to 2002. At the same time Wal-Mart’s share of city sales taxes paid doubled as its tax contributions grew well ahead of overall city sales tax growth.Total wages in Grays Harbor County paid by stores in the general merchandise category, like Wal-Mart, grew from $4.6 million in 1993 to $6.5 million in 1994 the year Wal-Mart opened – a 39 percent increase after inflation. And, average general merchandise employment went from 345 to 477 jobs.
On average general merchandise stores in Grays Harbor County paid their employees about $13,263 annually in 1993 before Wal-Mart came to town. By 2003 this average annual wage had grown to $21,432. Even after adjusting for inflation, general merchandise workers experienced 21 percent growth in their real average wages.
Sadly, the reality of living in a capitalist society is that not everyone can “make it” the way Rossi did. A lot of people work their entire lives and never see the same type of success. For that reason, it makes little sense for someone in Rossi’s position to represent a working-class public.- Amir Hassan, "Rossi needs to tell the truth to voters," Summer Watermelon, June 23, 2008
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
A group of conservationists intend to appeal a ruling in their water mining case against Washington State University and the state Department of Ecology.
The appeal will be filed in Whitman County Superior Court, said Rachel Paschal Osborn, a Spokane-based attorney with the Center for Environmental Law and Policy who represents the group of conservationists.
The group contends WSU's attempts to consolidate its wells will adversely affect other wells in the area, arguing that the university will annually draw more than three times the amount of water it currently does.
In 2006, Ecology granted WSU's request to consolidate its seven wells. The Washington State Pollution Control Hearings Board reviewed the conservationists' initial appeal in January, and ruled April 17 that the Palouse Water Conservation Network, the Palouse Group Sierra Club and Pullman-area resident Scotty Cornelius did not prove that the consolidation would negatively affect other wells in the area.
Osborn said the appeal to Whitman County Superior Court is necessary because the three-judge hearings board denied her request to re-evaluate its decision.
Osborn asked the board to reconsider specifically because the Department of Ecology was not required to analyze the declining Grand Ronde aquifer. The analysis would determine how low aquifer levels can drop before the state intervenes. The outcome of the analysis, called a "reasonable and feasible pump lift," could lead the state to limit the amount of water used by major pumpers such as WSU, or put a freeze on water rights applications.
"Our reaction is that we're going to appeal," Osborn said. "We think that this is the final decision in a series of decisions where we think justice has not been done, so we're going to pursue review.
"They said they properly interpreted the case. They said there's not a problem with the declining aquifer," she added. "If you don't have to do the test in this situation, where would you ever have to do it? It's abundantly obvious there is a problem with the Grand Ronde aquifer."
Osborn has 30 days from Friday to file the necessary paperwork in Whitman County.
The conservationists claim WSU's ability to consolidate its water rights will allow it to annually pump more than three times the amount of water it currently does. The group argues that the university has contributed to the dropping levels in the Grand Ronde aquifer, and claims that the 18-hole Palouse Ridge Golf Club will create more drawdown of the area's primary water source.
The group was forced to prove that the consolidation interrupts or interferes with the availability of water in the Grand Ronde aquifer for residents throughout the Palouse. The hearings board determined that the general decline of the aquifer, claims that the university is mining water and the role of the golf course in the aquifer's declining levels were not relevant in the case.
"The board is operating on two assumptions: That they're requiring us to show causation ... but they have interpreted the law in a way that we can't prove that," she said. "We have to appeal."
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.)- Steve Busch, "The ever-changing face of the Palouse," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, May 28, 2008
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.
There is no really good area outside of what’s on campus.- WSU architecture professor Ayad Rahmani passsing judgment on Pullman, "Architecture students protest on Bishop Boulevard," The Daily Evergreen, April 1, 2008
Each building is completely independent from one another
Angela Congdon thinks the city of Pullman could have done better when planning Bishop Boulevard.-"Students protest city's 'architorture'," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, March 28, 2008
The 21-year-old Washington State University student said the boulevard's box stores (?) and strip malls add no quality to the Pullman community and detract from the well-planned, pedestrian-friendly downtown area.
"There's no cohesion," she said of recent construction along the boulevard. "Everything is random."
[...]
Congdon, who came to Pullman from the north Seattle area, said she likely wouldn't have initiated the protest without Rahmani's leadership. But she wanted to leave her mark on Pullman, since she soon will leave town to finish her degree at WSU-Spokane.
He simplified a really complex idea. It was frustrating because it’s not as easy or as simple as he made it out to be.- WSU Progressive Student Union member Chelsea Tremblay, "Best-selling author talks about race", The Daily Evergreen, March 27, 2008
It's pretty shallow to define life in America as some kind of enhanced shopping experience. I don't think that the Founding Fathers meant 'pursuit of happiness' to mean price-shopping in a small geographic area. Sadly enough, with the collapse of anything resembling an external life in this country, shopping and over-work have turned into the few available pastimes. Lest ye think that I lament only for liberal pastimes, look at the fate of groups like the Lions. And try to buy a beer in an outdoor venue in the US. Not allowed-- because we're all supposedly hooligans. Even though there are whole continents where such a simple pleasure is a way of life-- not an exceptional activity.Besides demonstrating a terminal case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, Chuck's comment perfectly illustrates what Professor James Twitchell of the University of Florida in an article in Reason magazine called "Marxism Lite:"
For the last 12 years, this country's hit the skids. People are afraid, and now many are queued up for losing their homes. The collapse is on its way. It ain't gonna be pretty...
Bubba definitely had something to do with it. But GWB hammered the throttle down.
Since the 1960s, the primary "readers" of the commercial "text" have been the well-tended and -tenured members of the academy. For any number of reasons--the most obvious being their low levels of disposable income, average age, and gender, and the fact that these critics are selling a competing product, high-cult (which is also coated with its own dream values)--the academy has casually passed off as "hegemonic brainwashing" what seems to me, at least, a self-evident truth about human nature: We like having stuff.See, the problem with Chuck's ascetic Waldenesque utopia is that he and his elitist and enlightened academic chums who share his vision don't just want to decide what goods, stores, leisure pursuits, lifestyles, thoughts, feelings and beliefs are worthy for themselves, they want to decide for you also. This is the path to a totalitarian society.
In place of the obvious, they have substituted an interpretation that they themselves often call vulgar Marxism. It is supposedly vulgar in the sense that it is not as sophisticated as the real stuff, but it has enough spin on it to be more appropriately called Marxism lite. Go into almost any cultural studies course in this country and you will hear the condemnation of consumerism expounded: What we see in the marketplace is the result of the manipulation of the many for the profit of the few. Consumers are led around by the nose. We live in a squirrel cage. Left alone we would read Wordsworth, eat lots of salad, and have meetings to discuss Really Important Subjects.
In cultural studies today, everything is oppression and we are all victims. In macrocosmic form, the oppression is economic--the "free" market. In microcosmic form, oppression is media--your "free" TV. Here, in the jargon of this downmarket Marxism, is how the system works: The manipulators, a.k.a. "the culture industry," attempt to enlarge their hegemony by establishing their ideological base in the hearts and pocketbooks of a weak and demoralized populace. Left alone, we would never desire things (ugh!). They have made us materialistic. But for them, we would be spiritual.
To these critics, the masters of industry and their henchmen, the media lords, are predators, and what they do in no way reflects or resolves genuine audience concerns. Just the opposite. The masters of the media collude, striving to infantilize us so that we are docile, anxious, and filled with "reified desire." While we may think advertising is just "talking about the product," that packaging just "wraps the object," that retailing is just "trading the product," or that fashion is just "the style of the product," this is not so. That you may think so only proves their power over you. The marginalized among us--the African American, the child, the immigrant, and especially the female--are trapped into this commodifying system, this false consciousness, and this fetishism that only the enlightened can correct. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy's observation that, "The consumer is no fool, she is your wife" is just an example of the repressive tolerance of such a sexist, materialist culture.
Needless to say, in such a system the only safe place to be is tenured, underpaid, self-defined as marginalized, teaching two days a week for nine months a year, and writing really perceptive social criticism that your colleagues can pretend to read. Or rather, you would be writing such articles if only you could find the time.
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.
I also agree with others who have written in before on these issues who have complained the driving all the way from Pullman to the sprawl area where Hawkins would wish to build is a waste of gas and not environmentally sound.- PARDner Christopher Lupke, online comment, Moscow-Pullman Daily News website, January 30, 2008
Burma seems to have forgotten there is a Wal-Mart seven miles away. If she has trouble getting there, I’d be happy to do the neighborly thing and take her. She has a right to shop for shoddy sweatshop-made goods if she wishes.- PARDner T.V. Reed Monday, letter to the editor, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, January 1, 2007
10. We already have a Wal-Mart 7 miles away, and a new Supercenter is being planned for Moscow- "Top 10 Reasons a Wal-Mart Supercenter Would Be Bad for Pullman," PARD Poster at 2005 National Lentil Festival
While we understand some people in Pullman who think it only fair turnabout to gain sales at the expense of Moscow, for a number of reasons that is highly unlikely to happen. Moreover, at a time when the Pullman and Moscow governments are seeking to cooperate on a number of projects, including responsible development of the Route 270 corridor, this is no time for store wars to ruin good will.- PARD Position Paper
A standing room only crowd packed commissioners’ chambers at the county courthouse in Colfax Tuesday afternoon to gather more information on the county’s proposal to float more than $10 million in bonds to set up infrastructure at a shopping center on the Idaho stateline.
The county was asked two weeks ago by Hawkins Companies, Boise, to pay for roads, lighting and water and sewer systems for the company’s proposed 700,000 sq. ft. strip mall.
“I’m worried that we don’t have answers to specific questions, and we’re a week away from this decision,” said Pullman Resident Carol Chipman.
Most in attendance sought clarification.
Chipman asked for clarification on the company’s proposal on the bond, which delayed payment of the principle until the bonds mature.
Cheryl Morgan, also of Pullman, asked for clarification on the company’s construction cost estimates.
Hawkins Spokesman Jeff DeVoe called the bond and construction figures he put forth two weeks ago a “sketch on a bar napkin,” and not hard figures.
He said county bonding consultant Jack McLaughlin, VP of public financing for DA Davidson in Spokane, explained to him the necessity to pay a portion of the principle and interest over the term of the bonds.
DeVoe added the private-public cooperation between the company and the county has been in “infantile planning stages for a long time”.
Pullman Developer Duane Brelsford worried that obligating public funds for a private development would set a “dangerous precedent.”
Brelsford said his company, Corporate Pointe Development, has several large projects planned in and outside of Pullman.
“We’ll of course assume we would be treated the same,” he said.
Brelsford added dedicating funds to Hawkins would mean the county would have to, in fairness, extend similar cooperation to other developers looking to site in the corridor.
“If we choose to go that direction, I think we’re going to need a lot more than $10 million,” he said.
Thornton resident Carolyn Kiesz doubted the wisdom of dedicating funds to the retail development in the face of a nationwide economic slump.
“Now is not the time to encumber the taxpayer with this debt,” said Kiesz.
She suggested a manufacturing company would better benefit the regional economy, as it would close the trade gap and not encourage a shopping center filled with “cheap foreign-made goods.”
Kiesz also noted that jobs from the retail development would not pay enough to be of significant value to job-seeking residents of other parts of the county.
Morgan questioned the reasoning for the public-private partnership.
Morgan cited news accounts that said the increased costs in construction, and in the company’s pursuit of water for the site, as built-in costs the company could well have anticipated.
“They’re not new to this process,” said Morgan. “It makes me wonder if this was the whole plan in the first place.”
DeVoe replied that the lengthy appeals process over the transfer of four water rights to service the site was new to him.
“Three years ago, if you would have told me the interesting road we would have been down on the water issue, I would have laughed,” said DeVoe.
The company last July received approval from the county Water Conservancy Board to transfer four water rights.
Three of the Conservancy Board’s decisions were upheld by the state Department of Ecology, and one was denied because the DOE found the company did not adequately address pumping groundwater in drier summer months.
Hawkins has appealed that decision.
The city of Moscow appealed the other three on the basis that such a development would further drain the region’s declining aquifer levels.
Conservancy Board Chair Ed Schultz questioned the wisdom of issuing millions of dollars worth of bonds without any guarantee that the development would be supplied with water.
Next week’s announcement, Commissioner Michael Largent explained, would declare whether or not the county intends to float the bonds.
Commissioner Greg Partch explained the company must have water rights in hand and an anchor tenant committed to occupancy before the county would issue the bonds. To date, only Lowe’s home improvement stores has committed to occupy the space.
DeVoe assured the crowd that the company will not ask for the bond without water and that anchor tenant.
“If I’m a taxpayer, I’m going to ask myself, ‘what if Hawkins goes away, are we left to pay off this bond?’” he said.
DeVoe said if the company acquires the water rights, it would then donate them to the county, as state requirements prohibit a private company from providing water and sewer service.
That transfer, he added, would not be as difficult a process as the company’s pursuit.
Kiesz then asked if commissioners would be open to other types of businesses in the corridor, or if this was an effort to help out the company.
“No one else has come forward, that I know of,” said Largent. “Whether Hawkins makes a profit or not is not our concern.”
Partch said commissioners were “not married” to this project or to the Hawkins company itself.
“We are married to the corridor,” he said. “Our future is hanging out there.”
He pointed to the lengthy re-zoning of land in the corridor as proof that commissioners focused on it as their main focus in economic development. County code was shifted for more than two years to allow such zoning.
“People in the past didn’t attempt development in the corridor because they couldn’t develop anything in this county,” said Commissioner Jerry Finch.
Finch pointed to developments such as the Garage Mahal storage units and James Toyota’s planned move to the corridor from Moscow as evidence that those re-zoning efforts have paid off.
Any growth, retail or otherwise, in the corridor, Partch noted, will help to stave off the impacts of a national recession on the Palouse. He also pointed out that the county’s treasury was seriously impacted by voter-approved initiatives that removed tax revenue and limited tax increases.
“If we put together this shopping center and they do it the classy way that they do, it will set the tenor for all development in the corridor,” said Finch.
Without such a development, Finch worried that in 20 years the corridor would be filled with “ramshackle steel buildings sitting in a hodgepodge.”
How many Moscow residents who resent their city officials discouraging certain developments because of potential effects on the community wish today they were residents of Whitman County? There, commissioners are preparing to obligate county taxpayers to subsidize work for a private shopping center.
It is a strange kind of conservatism that proposes floating $10 million in revenue bonds to provide infrastructure for the retail development by Hawkins Companies of Boise. Yet that is what county commissioners are rushing to do, despite reservations from constituents who are hardly starry-eyed radicals.
"I'm worried that we don't have answers to specific questions, and we're a week away from this decision," Pullman business woman Carol Chipman told commissioners Tuesday afternoon, according to the Whitman County Gazette.
More pointed was the warning from Pullman developer Duane Brelsford that commissioners were preparing to set "a dangerous precedent."
Saying his Corporate Pointe Development is planning several large projects in and near Pullman, Brelsford said, "We'll of course assume we would be treated the same."
"If we choose to go that direction," he added, "I think we're going to need a lot more than $10 million."
Do commissioners believe they can say yes to an out-of-state developer's request for up-front public financing, even if it is intended to be repaid by private revenue, and then say no to such requests from within their own county?
That is a separate issue from Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney's challenge to the shopping center's water rights, some of which were transferred from the city of Colton to the proposed development on the Pullman-Moscow highway abutting the state line. Chaney says she fears the 700,000-square-foot center will deplenish underground sources of water for Moscow and the entire Palouse.
Whitman County Commissioner Jerry Finch blames Moscow's resistance to the development for increasing Hawkins' costs, which he says justifies using public money to provide water and sewer service to the center.
"I think in a perfect world, they should do this 100 percent on their dime," Finch has said.
The question remains, however, whether commissioners can tap taxpayers for the cost of this development and ever hope to require future projects, by Brelsford and others, to pay their own way.
Putting public dollars into private development might be considered pro-business, but it is more reflective of socialism than conservatism.
It's getting closer now.
Corridor development in the past few years has gone from a subject for casual conversation to that for serious discussion.
The planning stage is next and, to that end, one of the latest ideas has positive economic potential for Whitman County and the region.
Boise-based Hawkins Companies plans to build a 700,000-square-foot retail center in the corridor along the border with Idaho.
Hawkins officials have proposed the center's infrastructure be paid by $10.5 million worth of bonds sold by the county. The money would pay for a well water system, roads, sidewalks and a sewer system. Hawkins also has stated it will build a fire station for District 12.
The resulting public-private partnership would have Hawkins constructing the infrastructure and the county purchasing it back at a predetermined price.
That's a sound idea.
Development in the corridor has been stymied by the lack of available water and sewer hookups. To extend those services from Pullman would cost millions per mile.
Most developers and business owners can't afford to foot that kind of bill, and Moscow thus far has not indicated an official willingness to sell those services across the state line.
For the past few years much has been debated about how to proceed with economic growth on the Palouse: some want to control it, some want to encourage it and still others want to find a middle ground.
The Pullman-Moscow corridor will be developed - it's just a matter of time.
Hawkins Companies has the ability to see its development to fruition. The result will be that economic boom many look for in the terms of jobs, tax revenues and money spent on the Palouse.
There are many hurdles left in the process and more opportunities for the public and entities to share input. The dialogue should be extensive - surprises tend to alienate people, and we all know what transpires when that happens.
Nothing is perfect. The bonding plan has a slight risk but such projects rarely fail. And this is a risk worth taking.
I am pleased to see Alice Schroeder speak out against this ill-conceived plan to prop up the Hawkins Project on the back of Whitman county residents. It was shocking to me to read the coverage in this newspaper that mis-lead the reader to believe that residents support this boondoggle. There has been one half-hour meeting and another is scheduled for next week. Both are in Colfax. For those of us who work for a living, it is difficult to take time out of the middle of the work day to drive so far. But even if we did, what is the message being sent by the county government by scheduling only a half-hour for such a meeting?Apparently, however, working stiff tenured professor Lupke did find the time to take out of his busy work day to drive home this afternoon and post this on the Daily News website at 1:19 PM (ironically, the approximate starting time of the first hearing in Colfax on Hawkins):
Lobo,I am assuming, of course, that Lupke, taxpayer champion that he is, drove home to post his personal political views from his own computer rather than utilizing the taxpayer-funded network and computer provided to him by WSU.
I'm still waiting for you to publicly reconcile a government handout to the Hawkins corporation with your expressed libertarian beliefs.
The good news is that after a small amount of fanfare by a couple radicals and the conservative editorial board of this paper, it now looks certain that this half-baked idea is going nowhere. It is even being vocally opposed by major, local developers, because it unfairly supports one corporate interest while ignoring local businesses in Pullman and the county who could use the subsidy too.
Of course, there are other problems with the project too.
If you lived in Whitman county and you knew that your tax dollars were subsidizing sprawl, you would likely feel differently about the matter.- PARDner Chris Lupke, online comment at Moscow-Pullman Daily News website, January 22, 2008
Mr. Forbes insinuates that I am left wing and maybe even a communist, but what he fails to point out is that I have previously advocated encouraging Costco to build in Pullman. This would make a lot more retail sense to me than Wal-Mart. That being said, many people in the community actually stand to the left of me on this issue, opposing any further big box development at all. This illustrates the fact that actually I am in the mainstream not on the radical left, as Mr. Forbes’ so desperately wishes to paint me.- PARDner Chris Lupke, online comment at Moscow-Pullman Daily News website, November 29, 2007
To that end, we should develop a regional plan for retail growth that attracts Moscow residents to Pullman not because we wish to replicate them but, as the C.L.U.E. study concludes, because we are adding new and unique “products and services not currently available within the region.”- PARDner Chris Lupke, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, June 16, 2006
We don't want any of our tax money subsidizing development, retail or housing.- PARDners Janet and Leroy Damm, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, January 21, 2008
An interesting idea that emerged from the discussion was that of a community trust that could work with groups like the Community Action Center to help families in Pullman find homes in their price range, keeping these homes in trust to ensure that when the owners decide to move, these homes remain affordable. It’s a win for the community, a win for the home owners and a win for Pullman.- Deirdre Rogers, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, December 14, 2007
Susie Law-Godat, with the Portland Community Land Trust, discussed how the program helps provide people with home owner opportunities in the Portland-area. Through the program, people purchase their homes but the agency owns the land.- "PARD forum tackles issue of affordable housing in Pullman," Moscow-Pullman Daily News, November 30, 2007
The idea, she said, is to keep the land to be used for affordable housing.
"It's a lot of bang for your buck," she said. "It's a great way to keep your subsidy in the same property."
Because the agency owns the land, the family's mortgage payments are lower. When and if a family decides to move, they often have acquired enough equity that they can purchase a home on the open market.
The "2006 Idaho Job Gap Report" noted that a living wage in Idaho for a family of three is $22.23 per hour. No business associated with Hawkins will ever pay that hourly wage. Again, there is no addition to the overall economy.- PARDner Don Orlich, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, January 24, 2008
I also have been asked the question, “If Target was planning to build in Pullman would there be the same opposition?” The answer is no. I think Pullman would welcome Target with open arms.- PARDner Leilani Alamillo, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, January 11, 2006
A Target, if of modest size and located away from Bishop Boulevard, will cause far less disruption and will actually accomplish the stated goal of super-center backers to bring people in from Moscow and even Lewiston.- PARDner TV Reed, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, November 2, 2005
Target pays between $6.25 an hour to $8 an hour for entry-level, hourly positions in its Twin Cities stores, according to a recent survey of local Target workers by the UFCW. That's in line with what Wal-Mart pays in this market, though some starting-level Wal-Mart workers can earn $9 to $10 an hour, the UFCW said.- Chris Serres, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, May 22, 2005
Both companies offer health care insurance to employees, but Target's is considered more restrictive. Two years ago, Target dropped health care insurance coverage for all part-time workers. By contrast, Wal-Mart makes its medical plan available to all workers, full- and part-time.
Union groups that have analyzed the two companies' policies maintain that Wal-Mart's also is more equitable.
All Wal-Mart's employees, from store cashiers to chief executive Lee Scott, are covered under the same medical plan. All employees can choose from the same four deductible options and receive unlimited coverage for catastrophic expenses -- such as organ transplants or cancer treatments -- that can financially ruin an employee.
Target, however, offers multiple health care plans to its employees that vary by geographic location, according to the company's employee handbook. At Target, store employees do not receive catastrophic coverage and deductible levels vary, according to former and current employees.
Wal-Mart estimates that 56 percent of its employees receive health care coverage. Target declined to disclose its percentage of insured workers, but the UFCW estimates based on surveys of Twin Cities employees that less than half the company's workers receive coverage under its plan.
