"Make way for new stores"

From the December 9 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

It appears several large retail chains are interested in the Moscow-Pullman area.

Palouse Mall property manager Jim Bendickson confirmed Friday that Old Navy and Bed, Bath and Beyond will soon open stores at the Moscow location.

He would not disclose any dates for the anticipated openings, but did say at least one of the retailers will move into the space currently occupied by Gottschalks.

The Fresno-based department store announced earlier this week that its Moscow location is going out of business in January.

Bendickson said the public can expect to hear sometime next week about the anticipated arrivals of the new stores.

“We are still in the process of putting that information together,” Bendickson said. “We’ll make an announcement when we’re ready.”

Several calls to the corporate offices of Old Navy and Bed, Bath and Beyond this week were not returned.

In Pullman, construction is underway for an Ace Hardware store at the Wheatland Center retail space previously occupied by Safeway.

The owners, Doug and Linda Henry of Henry’s Ace Hardware in Milton-Freewater, Ore., were not available for comment, but store manager Justin Schouten said the family is anticipating a mid-spring opening.

“That’s what we’re shooting for, anyway,” Schouten said Friday from his office in Milton-Freewater. “At this point, I don’t see how we could open the doors any sooner than that.”

I had previously reported way back in March that Old Navy would be coming to the Palouse Mall, only my sources indicated Michaels would be the location. Looks like its Gottschalks instead.

Old Navy, a store that sells hip clothing at a discount, will do a killer business in this area of two universities where the average age is in the 20s. The first few weeks the store is open will probably be standing room only. I've always said it was the one business the Palouse really needed. Too bad it has to be in Moscow.

With regards to a question that was asked of me on this blog by one of the owners of Ace Hardware linking its opening to Wal-Mart's, this was not based on any "inside" information. I simply stated that a study showed that stores in the building materials/home improvement line do 4% more business after 10 years of Wal-Mart's opening. Also, building materials/home improvement stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's actively jockey to get next to a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Homegrown Pullman Building Supply is getting in on the action. Why should national chain Ace Hardware be any different?

They're Not Paying Attention to Rural Values, As Usual

An article in the Seattle Times on Tuesday wistfully wondered if I-933 proponents and foes could reach a compromise on property rights in Washington:

...those who opposed I-933 may be paying more attention now to rural concerns: "To the extent it helps create a respect for the values rural folks contribute, that's a good thing."

The arrogant editorial from Mary McCumber, chairwoman of Futurewise, that appeared the same day in the Seattle P-I doesn't give much hope of that happening, despite paying lip service to "protecting farmers":

Where there were many reasons to vote against I-933, no one voted against the rights of property owners. They simply reaffirmed the common-sense understanding that our property rights are by definition balanced with the rights of neighboring property owners, who have a right to protect themselves against destructive actions that would harm their property.

...After two lopsided initiative losses in 11 years (Referendum 48, a similar initiative sponsored by the Farm Bureau in 1995, lost by 20 points as well), it's time to move on.

This is the same old lie that was repeated during the campaign. I-933 was not aimed at helping developers in any way. All the major building and construction associations in Washington stayed on the sidelines and did not actively support I-933. The only thing that I-933 would have destroyed is the tyrannical hold of government over our private property, without which fringe groups like Futurewise and PARD would be totally irrelevent.

The Democratic supermajority in Olympia has already indicated that environmental issues will be a top priority this session. God help us.

The saddest part of the editorial is that Whitman County is singled out for "praise" because we opposed I-933 by a 59% margin. I hope our local farmers, who don't feel the sting of Critical Areas Ordinances as badly as other rural areas in the state, don't come to regret that vote one day, but I fear that they will.

Free Pass III

First, we read that Starbucks is going to triple the number of its stores and saturate the worldwide coffee market, prompting a lawsuit over "monopoly capitalism."

Then Starbucks is accused of exploiting third world workers.

Now, we see that Starbucks is treats its baristas unfairly and is resisting attempts at unionization.

Like many corporate executives, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz believes his company treats employees so well that they should not want a union.

Where have we heard that before?

"Despite all their rhetoric of being progressive, they're as anti-union as a McDonald's or Wal-Mart," said John Bowman, a national representative for the Canadian Auto Workers, which represents about 75 Starbucks employees in the Vancouver, B.C., area.

...

Some baristas cannot get the 20 hours a week necessary to qualify for health insurance, union reps say. Others have such sporadic hours that they can't have another part-time job to augment their income.

Starbucks does not guarantee baristas or other hourly workers that they will work 40 hours a week, although officials say many baristas do work full time.

...

In 2005, Starbucks settled charges the union had filed with the NLRB accusing the company of systematically screening out job applicants who had worked at unionized employers or had other perceived union sympathies.

...

Only 42 percent of Starbucks workers have health insurance. The company says the main reason that baristas decline coverage is that they have another health plan, often through their parents, a spouse or a full-time job elsewhere.

So where is "Wake Up Starbucks" and "Starbucks Watch"? There are way more Starbucks stores on the Palouse than Wal-Marts. Why aren't the "heroes" of PARD out fighting against them also? Why don't we see letters to the editor from TV Reed that proudly proclaim that he doesn't buy his mochas there? Simple. It's classism. Starbucks appeals to the higher-end demographics. They aren't about to mess up their latte fix. This shows more clearly than anything else that all the rhetoric about wages, benefits, poor labor practices, exploiting third world workers, monopoly capitalism, etc. are not sincerely held beliefs, but rather excuses to oppose the "intrusion of the undesirable social classes" into Pullman.

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"Washington minimum wage increases with new year"

From the Associated Press:

Thirty-cent spike has some border-town businesses eyeing Idaho

MOSCOW -- James Randall lives in Moscow and goes to school at the University of Idaho. But for 30 hours a week, he crosses the state line into Pullman to work as a pizza delivery driver.

That's because Washington's minimum wage is more than $2.00 higher than Idaho's $5.15. And it just went up again Monday, from $7.63 to $7.93.

It applies to workers in both agricultural and nonagricultural jobs, according to the state Department of Labor and Industries. And it's recalculated each year for workers age 16 and older, based on cost-of-living increases, and is expected to reach $8.14 by 2009.

"It's kinda hard to make ends meet," Randall said. "I'm just glad the state of Washington has tied the minimum [wage] to inflation. That way it's advantageous to everyone." Maybe not everyone. Some businesses in Pullman say the steadily increasing minimum wage in Washington starts to make that Idaho border look a little more tempting.

"You'd like the wage to support families, but it's also difficult for a border town," said Pullman Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Fritz Hughes. "It's a double-edged sword. It's good for some folks, and on the other side, it's difficult for some small business." Idaho's minimum wage has been at the federal level of $5.15 an hour for about 10 years. A state bill to increase the wage to $6.15 an hour -- and mandate yearly increases tied to inflation, like in Washington -- died in a House committee this spring because some lawmakers feared it would lead to higher prices, increase unemployment rates and reduce incentives for low-paid workers to improve themselves.

In Moscow, the city voted in August to pay its employees a "living wage" of $10.25. But that only applies to city employees, or those employed by a company that contracts with the city.

Hughes said he think the higher wage has put a damper on development on Pullman. The higher minimum wages translate into higher prices, he says -- which can be tough, when there's a town with lower prices less than 10 miles away.

Lori Meyer, who owns Simply Tanning and Nails Spa in Pullman, says she doesn't mind paying her seven employees an extra 30 cents per hour, but if wages hit $9.50, she's going to have to cut back and raise prices.

"As a small business, it's going to catch up to me eventually," she said. "If it keeps going up, I'll have to even it out somehow."

Ah, life in Caitlin Ross's "business-friendly" Washington.

Code Words

“He’s worse than Nixon in his vulgarity. He looks like he shops at Wal-Mart."

- Filmmaker Oliver Stone on President George W. Bush

I grew up in the South in Sixties and Seventies, attending the first integrated elementary school in my home town. Does that make me an "expert" on racism, say like David Leonard or John Streamas? No, but I certainly know it when I see it. By that time, racism wasn't terribly overt. The N-word was never used in polite company. Code words were used instead. Typically, those words involved third person pronouns. For example: "We don't want 'their kind' in our neighborhood; "'They' bring in drugs and crime"; "Don't bring one of 'them' home."

Discrimination certainly is not restricted to skin color. Probably the oldest form of prejudice is based on socioeconomic class. While racism is not publicly tolerated any longer, classism is alive and well in 21st Century America. According to Wikipedia, individual classism includes behaviors such as making jokes or stereotypes at the expense of the poor, or treating workers in menial jobs as stupid or unworthy of respect. This is especially prevalent when applied to lower class whites. You know, rednecks, hillbillies, white trash, hicks, trailer trash, and Carmento Floyd's "crackers" . Look at TV shows like "King of the Hill" and "My Name is Earl" or movies like "Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby." As Jim Goad details in the "The Redneck Manifesto", it's America's dirty little secret.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our local opposition to Wal-Mart. But just as with racism, code words are used like "urban sprawl," "traffic," " Mom and Pop stores downtown," "quality of life", "not sustainable, "living wages," "deer testicles,", etc., etc. Why do I say that opposition to Wal-Mart is classist? Simple. If the opponents truly believed all the arguments they make against Wal-Mart, they wouldn't engage im the laughably pathetic logical exercise of vetting retailers, as with PARD's public support of Target and Costco. PARD's appeal to the District III Court of Appeals revolves around economic impact and traffic. Does anyone believe that Target or Costco wouldn't have exactly the same effects as Wal-Mart? Sure Costco's business model may be more politically correct than Wal-Mart's, but Costco is still just a business seeking to make a profit, not some religious order. Even Costco is currently the subject of a large class-action gender discrimination lawsuit. No, Target and Costco are more SOCIALLY palatable, appealing to higher-end demographics. Also, by endorsing Target and Costco, PARD can appear to be "business-friendly" and cover up their classist agenda.

C'mon, admit it. You know it's true. When I was a kid, we made fun of people who shopped at K-Mart. Now it's Wal-Mart. I was in a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Vancouver, WA last week. While walking down one of the aisles, I witnessed a mother first yelling at and then spanking one of her kids. What do you think most people's reaction is to vignettes like that? Despite their supposed virtues of "tolerance" and "diversity," your average liberal can't handle such in-your-face encounters with the lumpenproletariat.

This stench recently captured the attention of longtime Wal-Mart critic John Brummett:

Wal-Mart is starting to get treated unfairly by class snobbery, and it may be something that we in Arkansas, belabored as we are by inferiority complexes and chips on our shoulders, should take personally.

The front page of Monday's The Wall Street Journal reported that Wal-Mart, with profit margins still good but down, is encountering politically muscular resistance in its latest push into Northeastern urban centers. It quoted Mayor Thomas Merino of Boston as saying, "Wal-Mart does not suit the clientele we have in the city of Boston. They don't pay wages that are sufficient. Their benefit structure is poor. I don't need employers like that in our city."

That was as thoroughly arrogant and snobbish as any public pronouncement I've encountered since Barbara Bush last spoke. The mayor was presuming to speak for low-income people in his constituency. He was presuming to declare them not interested either in Wal-Mart's discounted staples or its jobs.

Then the article reported that the mayor was actively courting Target, which is Wal-Mart with a varnished veneer, and which has come under similar criticism for its wage and benefit structure.

That's pure snobbery against Wal-Mart and it tests my resistance to geographic paranoia, considering that Target is from Minnesota and Wal-Mart from Arkansas.

Just recently, Wal-Mart and Target were making a move on Chicago when the city council passed an ordinance saying no retail establishment of a certain big-box square footage could pay less than $13 an hour in wages and benefits.

The intentions might have been worthy, but the policy was fatally flawed. A living wage beyond a legal minimum wage can't be legally or fairly applied on the basis of square footage, for heaven's sake.

Appropriately, Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago vetoed the ordinance.

My points are that Chicago's mayor is not the snob Boston's is and that Wal-Mart and Target have too much in common for Boston's mayor to go around snubbing one and wooing the other.

This Wal-Mart backlash may have lashed back entirely too far.

Sometimes, the classism almost sneaks out behind the noble rhetoric, like when Deirdre Sommerlad-Rogers testified under oath last year that Wal-Mart would lead to the "intrusion of undesirable social classes" into our fair community or Don Orlich alleging that those low-class Wal-Mart workers suck up our tax benefits with their welfare and Medicaid. It's been very apparent recently with Jeffrey Joswig-Jones' letter that Wal-Mart sells "junk" and TV Reed claiming that Wal-Mart sells "shoddy sweatshop made goods." Besides the utter absurdity of claiming the items made in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Vietnam sold in Wal-Mart are any different than those sold in Shopko (which PARDner Cynthia Hosick assures us they support), both writers sanctimoniously claimed that they don't shop at Wal-Mart. The implication is clear: "I'm too good to buy 'cheap crap' from Wal-Mart. If you do, then you're beneath me."

"But," the PARDners will sputter, "we're for the working class. We're trying to improve their lot in life..." Sure. Segregation was justified as being in the best interest of African-Americans. "But we have national studies that show..." Sure. There were all kinds of pseudo-science that alleged blacks were mentally and physically inferior to whites. "But we are fighting the good fight and advancing the cause..." Sure. The KKK felt it was fighting for "noble" causes such as state's rights, racial purity, and the virtue of white women. "But, the only people who support Wal-Mart are paid PR flacks..." Sure. In Bull Connor's and George Wallace's minds, the only people agitating for civil rights were Jews and Communists.

Let's just cut the BS. The whole battle over Wal-Mart in Pullman is nothing more than class warfare, pure and simple, just as vile and despicable as racism. That is the dark truth behind all of PARD's (and other Wal-Mart opponent's) posturing, deny it though they may.

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The Wait for Wal-Mart May Have Just Gotten a Bit Longer

I think (most) everyone in Pullman realizes that the decision to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter will ultimately be a business and legal decision. Individual preferences and desires, both for or against, are of little actual consequence.

Business decisions, especially by a major corporation, are not made in a vacuum. That is why this news is disturbing for those of us who support the economic growth a Supercenter would bring to Pullman:

Judge tosses Wal-Mart building permit in Chelan

Associated Press

CHELAN, Wash. - Less than a month before Chelan's new Super Wal-Mart is scheduled to open, a Chelan County Superior Court judge has thrown out the city-issued building permit for the megastore.

Defenders of Small Town Chelan provided a written copy of an order signed by Judge Lesley Allan on Friday.

Wal-Mart opponents tell The Wenatchee World newspaper that they will likely ask the judge to order that the 162,000-square-foot store be torn down.

Defenders of Small Town Chelan sued in May to challenge the building permit.
Wal-Mart has started hiring employees and stocking shelves in preparation for an opening on Jan. 22.

In the written ruling dated Friday, the judge wrote that the city did not follow its own land-use rules in granting the building permit and another permit for grading and excavation on the site about a half mile northeast of Chelan off Highway 97A.
The excavation permit was issued on April 20. The building permit was issued on May 1.

I certainly don't expect a judge to order a $20 million building to be town down. This is just a legal speed bump. And the issues in Chelan are totally different than the issues in Pullman.

However, make no mistake, Wal-Mart will probably proceed more cautiously in Pullman as result of what has happened in Chelan. I don't think we will see Wal-Mart aggressively pursuing a building permit during the appeal process, at least not in the short term. When you are reponsible to millions of shareholders, you tend to be somewhat cautious and risk averse. We may have to wait out the latest appeal and a Supreme Court rejection, if necessary, before the project moves forward. That could be a couple of more years. It's incredibly frustrating that a small group has been given this much power. But Wal-Mart is in for the long haul. As proof of this, they have revived plans for a Supercenter up in Hayden after three years of inactivity. The store was originally proposed there in 2002. It's all just a war of attrition.

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Stormwater on the Palouse - Time for an Ad Hominem Attack

Chuck Pezeshki had this rant published in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Stormwater on the Palouse — time for a positive vision

What’s really up with the storm-water situation in Pullman? According to the more conservative voices, it’s the fundamental unfairness of the Washington State Department of Ecology’s process for issuing a stormwater permit for the city of Pullman. Hillary Hamm, the Daily News reporter, dutifully states without reference that you won’t be able to wash your car in your driveway if you live in Pullman. Tom Forbes (Opinion, Nov. 15), avid Wal-Mart groupie, says that all this will be “bad for business” — his ultimate “kiss of death” for cleaning up the South Fork of the Palouse River. These regulations are supposed to be applied for the west side of Washington state, which cares about salmon. And since we don’t have salmon, we ought not be concerned with the fact that after every rainfall, we have a creek full of dirt and anti-freeze. Then, finally, we get the “since-the-other-guy-beats-his-wife,-it-should-be-fine-if-we-do,-too” line of reasoning. Moscow isn’t going to have to conform to any new stormwater regulations. Why should we worry?

First, a little background. Both Pullman and Moscow treat their residential and industrial sewage — the stuff that comes from houses and buildings. They conform to whatever the regulations are in their respective state. The treated effluent, which is pretty clean, goes into the creek. Fine.

But neither Pullman nor Moscow treat their stormwater, the water that flows down outside drains and gutters. That’s also typical for small communities. But as communities grow, and their industrial base expands, this also changes. Every city goes through a transition where storm-water becomes an issue and has to be treated. Spokane treats some of its storm- water. Typically, there are two lines into a stormwater treatment facility — one from the industrial base, and one from residential areas. In the case of a storm, the facility first manages the industrial run-off, because there is more bad stuff in it — toxics, motor oil, etc. They devote the remaining capacity to cleaning up the residential run-off.

In our case, it’s important to realize that the stakes involved with the South Fork of the Palouse are pretty high. It runs right through where we live. And we haven’t done a great job on the Palouse of having any creeks that aren’t open sewers at one time or another. Southeastern Washington has only one potential natural river environment — the Palouse River and a couple of tributaries. The fact that we’ve completely wrecked the entire basin is nothing to be proud of. We’ve wrecked it because we’ve allowed the agriculture industry, that employs only 1.6 percent to 3 percent of the population, at a $16,000-per-year wage to plow down to, and over the side creeks.

Instead of defending the status quo, why not engage all the stakeholders up and down the South Fork of the Palouse and its tributaries to clean up their act? Let’s collaborate with our upstream neighbor, Moscow, and get them to manage their stormwater. Let’s lead by building a storm-water facility of our own. Groups like PCEI, as well as agencies like the Soil and Water Conservation Service, have been working on fixing erosion in the upper watershed. Let’s tell our legislators that heavily subsidized agriculture must stop polluting our last local river, and demand larger buffer strips along the branches. As taxpayers, we are already paying out the nose to grow wheat that no one wants.

Finally, let’s dispense with the old canard that having a sewage ditch instead of a river in the middle of our community is somehow “good for business.” It’s not. People who will create the jobs are attracted here because of bike paths, river walks, and shady groves of trees along clean rivers. They aren’t drawn here by Wal-Mart Supercenters, and concrete rivers, and the freedom to dump your radiator fluid down the drain when it rains. And unlike days of old, it’s not a case of “jobs first, then people follow.” As documented heavily in the famous book, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” by Richard Florida, it’s “talented people come, and jobs follow.”

A clean river running through our town also would say a lot about our family values — that we have a vision of our future for our kids that makes things like natural landscapes where we live a priority — not more parking lots. And the cost is not that great. Forbes’ Town Crier column said the cost would run $9/month per household. That’s three bags of potato chips. Aren’t our children’s future, our economic growth, and a more beautiful world worth it?

You would think that Pezeshki, a professor of mechanical and materials engineering and chairman of the WSU Faculty Senate, could come up with a more learned argument for stormwater regulations than calling me names and hyperbolic claims that our local waterways are open sewers.

Pezeshki's disdain isn't just reserved for me. He apparently loathes the "$16,000-per-year" farmers who have worked the land long before he and his carefully coiffed facial hair graced the Palouse. The farmers are apparently not members of the "creative class," as the good professor apparently fancies himself to be. Plus, I'm sure he blames those damn clodhoppers for voting Republican as well.

I guess I should be flattered that I annoy the local left-wing intelligentsia so much. I have become their all-purpose bogeyman as of late. But it's not just me that believes that the proposed DOE stormwater regulations are ridiculous. So does Mayor Johnson, the entire Pullman City Council and the director of Environmental Health and Safety at WSU. I'd rather have their approbation than the elitist Pezeshki's.

Pezeshki does not explain where the money to fund his grand vision will come from. It would be a hell of a lot more than a bag of chips, I can tell you that.

Finally, Pezeshki writes of legislative priorities. That's funny, because I didn't see him at the Town Hall meeting last month with our legislators advocating that point. It's easier to pontificate from his ivory tower I guess.

"Moscow’s Mayor Chaney doesn’t understand"

A letter in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

I am writing in regard to the article in the Dec. 30 Lewiston Tribune newspaper regarding Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney opposing a proposed shopping center just over the border in Washington. First, she doesn’t want it in her community, now she doesn’t want it in Washington. How far away from Moscow does big business development have to be in order for Chaney to be happy?

It is a loss for the people of Moscow to have a mayor that does not understand, nor will work with, new businesses so they will locate in our community.

The tax and revenue that would be generated from such businesses would help the community in many ways.

Yes, Chaney, the increased tax and city service revenue would pay for the urban services such as street maintenance, sanitation services, snow removal and police, fire, and emergency medical services.

Moscow’s current zero tolerance policy to new development does not only affect businesses coming in to construct large buildings in Moscow, but it also keeps our current businesses from growing and expanding. Instead of looking to the economic benefit (or even compromising), Moscow says “no,” placing the tax and city services burden on the existing businesses and the community.

Kudos to the developer that is pursuing this proposed shopping center and Whitman County Planner Mark Bordsen for seeing the benefits to Whitman County. I just wish Moscow would be able to enjoy the economic benefits of it.

Shelley McLam, Moscow

Of course Chaney doesn't get it. She wants Moscow to be like a Mexican fishing village. Plus, the corridor development represents a direct threat to her and her comrades' agenda. It's not just the loss of tax revenue and new business. Those are concerns for the Chamber of Commerce. No, Chaney and the Politburo fear the Hawkins development because it provides a realistic argument for opening up development in Moscow, particuarly with big-box stores. They would much prefer everyone in Moscow to just remain asleep.

Seems a Little Early for April Fools

This letter appeared in last Thursday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Thanks for the clean campaign

As the old year ends, we would like to thank the Whitman County voters for turning out in record numbers in the recent off-year election.

The Whitman County Democrats and the 9th Legislative District had three young, committed, energetic candidates: Caitlin Ross for Position 1, 9th LD; Nathan Weller for county commissioner; and Nathan Horter for county auditor. These candidates ran clean, knowledgeable campaigns with relatively small campaign coffers. They worked hard, pounded the pavement, met lots of folks at events around the county and beyond and made many friends. They made strong inroads and thank you for your support. They are an inspiration to everyone who has given up on the “younger” generation.

We also congratulate their Republican opponents.

Our sign wavers, on street corners, had a great time bantering with their counterparts. It was part of the experience, exposure and fun. We also are pleased that there was very little sign vandalism in this campaign. We thank all who demonstrate “freedom of speech” in this and countless other ways.

The greatest thing about democracy in America is that it takes us all to make it work. Thanks to each of you who participated in any way.

We hope in the new year and beyond all of you will commit to the Whitman County tradition of active citizenship.

Carolyn Cress, chairwoman, Jacob DeGraaff, vice chairman, Whitman County Democrats

Are they serious? I guess if no one else will pat you on the back, might as well do it yourself. Man, these liberals have no shame.

"Ran clean, knowledgeable campaigns with relatively small campaign coffers?" Someone please tell that to Eunice Coker. She was outspent three-to-one by Nathan Horter and she was blamed in the newspaper from everything to covering up misconduct by a public employee to gross malfeasance.

"Our sign wavers, on street corners, had a great time bantering with their counterparts?" Oh, you mean the one that allegedly assaulted Bryan Burke? The type of "democracy" demonstrated by the vicious lies about Cathy McMorris put forth by those sign wavers might be free speech, but it is the kind of negative campaigning that turns people off from participating in the democratic process.

At least they congratulated their Republican opposition, because as usual, the local Dems had their butts kicked again. As long as people like Cress are at the helm, that will continue to be the case.

The Wal Mart Grinch

From the Moscow Pullman Daily News (online, Jan. 1)

My former neighbor, Burma Williams, wrote to the Daily News with another laundry list of Wal-Mart misconceptions (Dec. 30 & 31).

Jobs? National studies have shown repeatedly that within three years of the arrival of a new Wal-Mart, three jobs are destroyed for every two created.

Free enterprise? In the United States today free enterprise applies only to small companies; they are “free” to be gobbled up by giant corporations like Wal-Mart that feast on tax breaks and force taxpayers to subsidize their work force through state benefits.

Bringing other businesses? The Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development has in fact contacted a number of other companies about coming to Pullman. To cite one example, we were privy to talks about the Cordova with a developer who specializes in renovating historic theaters and building shops in the surrounding area, when the city precipitously approved a weaker plan. PARD has no objections to churches downtown, but the empty space around the Cordova attests to the loss of a better business opportunity.

Bishop Boulevard needs stoplights? Got me there Burma. I agree completely. Bishop is already a traffic mess. But since a Wal-Mart would turn Bishop into a parking lot, I suppose that would save us the need for new stoplights.

Dictating where to shop? 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. But I’d add that in the several years since I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart I have saved money on gas while supporting local merchants. Anyone comparing prices online will soon find that Wall-Mart seldom has the lowest price anyway, and by sometimes paying a bit more for goods that last longer I’ve saved a bundle.

T.V. Reed, Pullman

Hey, T.V. Can you clear up a few points for us?

When, where and by whom were these studies you keep citing about Wal Mart related job losses done?

Please define "shoddy sweatshop-made goods. When I shop at Wal Mart, I see the same brands carried by politically correct places such as Sears, Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Staples and others.

If Wal Mart seldom has the lowest price, just how are they more of a threat to local merchants than the online sources you seem to prefer?

Ooops! Was that the sound of you tipping your hand? Could it be that you don't shop local but buy on-line when you want to save money? Could it be that you and your friends are really just anti-Wal Mart union shills after all? Is your belated acknowledgement that Wal Mart already serves our community another slip? Could it be that you would rather just let Moscow keep reaping the benefit of our tax dollars rather than admit you are wrong?

While we're at it, let's talk about saving gas. Since we know a goodly portion of our citizens already make the trip, you must be an anti-environmentalist as well. Just think of all those trips in cars and how much gas is burned every day. Now, compare that to the amount of fuel required to service a local Wal Mart. Guess what? It saves a considerable amount of energy, even when you count lighting and air conditioning the space of the new store. So, while you sit home feeling smug about your position, think of all the damage you and your kind are doing to the environment and the fact you are supporting the oil companies of the world.

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