Astroroots, Not Grassroots

The Pullman Alliance for Responsible Develoment describes itself as a "grassroots" movement to stop Wal-Mart. They are in reality an "astroroots" group. "Astroroots" is a term used to describe corporate-backed groups that masquerade as a "grassroots" citizen's group.

A story on MSNBC a few months back stated:

A union crusade against America's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has the potential to not only hurt the company’s balance sheet and alter Americans’ shopping habits, but also to change the course of the 2006 and 2008 campaigns.

Americans cast their votes not just on Election Day but every day, by deciding where to spend their money. And the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is urging Americans to not spend their money at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has successfully fought the union's efforts to organize its workforce.

Now the union has recruited strategists from the 2004 Howard Dean and Wesley Clark campaigns, and they are mounting a crusade that goes beyond the usual union tactics, such as the boycott or shareholder resolution expressing disapproval of a company’s policies.

Paul Blank, who served as political director for the Dean campaign, is running the "Wake-Up Wal-Mart” campaign, and Chris Kofinis, a strategist for the Clark campaign, is the effort's communications adviser.

Blank and Kofinis are deploying election campaign-tested tactics to assail Wal-Mart: running petition drives and holding house parties, canvassing at farmers’ markets, stockpiling an e-mail list and conducting conference calls to marshal the efforts of local anti-Wal-Mart activists.

“We need a broad social movement to change this company,” said Blank. “This is a moral question about what kind of America we want to live in. Do we want to live in Wal-Mart’s version of America, where you drive down wages, don’t provide health insurance, provide no retirement security, ship jobs overseas and have complete abandonment of your values in the relentless pursuit of profit?”

“This is going to become a very important wedge issue that political leaders on Capitol Hill and across the country are going to have to face,” said Kofinis.

"...running petition drives and holding house parties, canvassing at farmers’ markets, stockpiling an e-mail list..." Does that sounds like anyone we know? So what connection does PARD have with organized labor anyway? Plenty. T.V. Reed, PARD chairman, "recently completed a new book The Art of Protest (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2005) that retells the history of key US social movements from Civil Rights era to the current movement against corporate globalization using cultural forms (music, murals, poetry, drama, etc.) as lenses onto the movements." Nella van Dyke, PARD Petition Coordinator, presented a paper at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in 2004 titled “Manufacturing Dissent: Labor Revitalization, Union Summer and Student Protest.”

Need further proof? Check out PARD's entry on the Wake Up Wal-Mart site. Or this post and this one highlighting PARD and Pullman on Wal-Mart Watch's website.

So I think it's pretty obvious that this "grassroots" movement is just the Pullman franchise of a greater national left-wing movement against Wal-Mart, started by Al Norman, and now being run by organized labor and the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic Party.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in 2008. As we all know, Bill Clinton and Wal-Mart are the two biggest things to ever come out of Arkansas. Wal-Mart was a contributor to Bill Clinton's presidential campaigns as well as Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign. In fact, in the early 90's, Hillary Clinton even served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart. If, as widely expected, Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for the Democratic Presidential nomination, how will the anti-Wal-Mart jihadists like PARD react to her?

Washington GOP Backs I-912

Over the weekend, the Washington Republican Party Central Committee voted to endorse I-912. I-912 is the initiative on the ballot for November that will repeal the 9 1/2-cent gas tax passed by the legislature back in April. No New Gas Tax!, the organization that is supporting the initiative did not ask for Republican support, but was happy to get it. The Republican Party can can now contribute funds. The state Libertarian Party is also backing the initiative.

I'm proud my party for taking a stand. We discussed I-912 a couple of weeks ago at Whitman County Central Committe meeting, and everyone supported it. Several RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) from the west side did vote for the tax. Dino Rossi, the once and future gubernatorial candidate, has been non-committal on I-912.

The 9 1/2-cent gas tax only shovels more money into the hands of people in King County that have already squandered millions and millions on the monorail and other transportation boondoggles. And what do we have to show for it? Seattle was recently listed as having the worst public transportation system in North America. It's certainly not for lack of money. Washington has one of the highest gas taxes in the country.

We in Pullman don't need to pay for Seattle's waterfront beautification project (i.e. the Alaskan Way Viaduct) just because the "Governor pro tem" yells "Earthquake!" If an earthquake is such a concern, why hasn't the Viaduct been closed already. Why isn't some of that big tax surplus we just heard about being applied towards it? Why not make the Viaduct a toll road and let the users pay for it? Plus, this gas tax does virtually nothing to improve Pullman's roads.

Other states are putting a moratorium on their gas taxes in this time of national crisis and record high gas prices. Olympia is not only NOT suspending our gas tax, it is raising it. Talk about bad timing. I'm not against improving our infrastructure, but until the state shows they can spend the money responsibly and equitably and not on these pork-barrel, special interest (i.e. union) giveaways, count me out.

Out of Touch, Soon To Be Out of Mind

In a letter to The Daily Evergreen yesterday, T.V. Reed and Christopher Lupke of the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development stated:

Congressional and academic studies as well as reports in esteemed publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine and The Arizona Republic all enumerate the negative effects of Wal-Mart in communities like Pullman, negative effects such as undermining local businesses and draining social services that will undercut any taxes Wal-Mart brings into our community.

Dead wrong.

From yesterday's edition of the Idaho Falls Post-Register:

It's pretty hard not to notice, and I've had a number of questions recently about the steel going up on the north side of the Ammon Wal-Mart.

What it will eventually become is a strip mall. It is being built by the Klein Group of Coldwater, Minn. There's no word yet on possible tenants.

George Klomp, Ammon's building official, said the project, at 939 S. 25th East, was permitted nearly a year ago but put on hold until recently.

The company specializes in building strip malls near Wal-Mart supercenters. This one will be 36,550 square feet with an estimated value of $1.1 million.

And from a couple of years earlier in Billings, Montana:

A steady stream of customers and potential customers dropped by to check out the UPS franchise store when it opened Monday in the minimall at the corner of Wicks Lane and Main Street.

Clint Lunde, a 20-year veteran of United Parcel Service, and his wife, Suri, were the first to open their store in the latest minimall in front of the Heights Wal-Mart.

Lunde said one man who lives along Bench Boulevard was happy the store was open because he was eager to send a gift to a grandchild in Oregon.

"His first granddaughter is due in March and he's already sending the crib off," Lunde says.

The Hallmark Cards at Rimrock Mall is expected to open another store in two weeks in the retail center along Wicks.

And a third business, a hair salon called Great Clips, opens Friday in the mini-mall. Dennis and Nancy Stevens are the owners. Stevens' sister and brother-in-law started the chain in 1982.

Dennis Stevens built a heating and air conditioning business in Eagan, Minn., a suburb of St. Paul, and sold it for $30 million last year. He and Nancy retired to Luther next to his hometown of Red Lodge. But retirement didn't last long.

Billings was one city in Montana that didn't have a Great Clips, a national chain with 2,000 salons.

So, the Stevens opened two Great Clips last spring: One at Rehberg and Grand and one next to T.J. Maxx on Central Avenue.

The third store in the Heights will offer a grand opening special of $2.99 for haircuts, which are normally $8 for children and seniors and $10 for adults.

The two minimalls along Main Street were built by The Klein Group of Coldwater, Mich.

You're not going to find stories like this in a paper put out by Congressman George Miller's office. George Miller, you see, is a Democratic Congressman from the East Bay of San Francisco with a liberal record that would make Ted Kennedy envious.

You're also not going to find stories like this in academic studies. Liberal faculty in liberal arts/social studies programs outnumber conservative faculty 7-to-1 at American universities.

Nor will you find it in liberal MSM newspapers like The Arizona Republic, which has been leading the effort to embarrass the Pentagon over the Pat Tillman story.

As far as the "the esteemed publications" The Wall Street Journal and Fortune, they have both been singing Wal-Mart's praises as being the only lifeline for towns affected by Hurricane Katrina. So much for "enumerating negative effects on communities like Pullman."

But none of that changes the truth. Wal-Mart is a boon to local economies. Why else would there be a business that specializes in building strip malls around Wal-Mart Supercenters?

This points out one of the fatal flaws in the logic of PARD's arguments. They don't like "urban sprawl" and they don't like Wal-Mart's "one-stop shopping" model because it "destroys local businesses." Those two beliefs are inconsistent. If Wal-Mart worked the way PARD claims, "sprawl" would be eliminated. All other stores in town could be torn down and replaced with greenways, bike paths, trendy coffee shops, trolley lines, or whatever else they felt would be "non-sprawl."

It's actually the opposite. PARD (and the rest of the world) knows that no one does all their shopping at Wal-Mart. As seen above, Wal-Mart is an economic engine that creates even more businesses, which leads to "sprawl." So it's "sprawl" they are against. The "undermining local business" objection is whitewash to cover up how much they truly don't understand the average person.

Why are they so against "sprawl" (what the rest of us call growth and prosperity) ? This editorial from Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal sheds some light on their mindset:

The first cultural contradiction of the Democrats is their alienation from the real economy. Democrats participate in the economy as lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, teachers and the like. Somehow, it's supposed to be more than mere workaday money-grubbing. But there is one career that would never enter the mind of most Democrats: Spend it working for Procter & Gamble. They'd go homeless before toiling as a middle manager at Procter & Gamble, which is "out there" somewhere. But this is what most Americans do, at thousands upon thousands of such companies spread from Pennsylvania to the border of California. No matter; in the Democratic Zeitgeist, it's all simply "corporate America," an alien blob of marketing types who have something to do with creating Wal-Mart, and other strange stuff.

These Americans don't live in the average Democratic mind as anything real; they're pod people, who cause "sprawl." In the election they just lost, Democrats demonized for months, then ran against "the Enrons and the WorldComs"--as if resentment of corporate logos would drive voters to the polls. At least in the old days the progressives railed against the Robber Barons, men with names. But with the decline of industrial unions, cultural Democrats have lost any affinity whatsoever for this swath of American society, which they've reduced to an economic abstraction.

You could just as easily substitute "grubby little merchants" or "Schweitzer Engineering Labs" in the piece above for "Procter & Gamble" and it would really drive home the point. Judy Krueger et. al. want a trolley and trendy boutique restaurants downtown because that is what wealthy lawyers and professsors with no small children at home want. It's not so much malevolence as it is an incredible arrogant ignorace about the "common man" they talk about protecting as they sit around and sip their lattes.

I don't believe that every Democrat in Pullman is against Wal-Mart any more than I believe that every Republican is for it. There used to be some great Democrats in this country that came from the working class and fought for the working man. But they have been replaced by effete intellectuals often born of wealth and privilege.

But there is no question that PARD is composed of these far-left, out-of-touch Howard Dean-type Democrats (more about that tomorrow).

PARD Has "Nothing To Hide" - Let Them Prove It

In a letter to the editor to be published in tomorrow's Daily Evergreen, T.V. Reed and Christopher Lupke lash out at Russell Hall, who wrote a letter to the editor last week calling PARD on their tactics, and demand an apology from him.

They say that PARD has "nothing to hide." Interesting. Then why have they not addressed the serious allegations of lying leveled at them by Jerry Griebling, owner of Jerry's Auto Repair?

Fraud in the obtaining of signatures to be used in a SEPA comment, which is then part of public record and can be used as evidence in appeal hearings, is a serious matter.

Why not write a letter addressing that issue instead? Talk about defamatory. Go ahead Tim. Strike out at the local businesses you say you are "defending." It seems PARD's "above-it-all" veneer is starting to crack just a bit and the community will soon see what they are all about.

If PARD has nothing to hide, why are all their minutes after January 27 password protected. And why did they stop publishing minutes at all after May 19?

And if a majority of Pullman residents support PARD, why did PARD restrict access to their discussion board after Wal-Mart supporters started posting there? These are not the actions of a bold majority, but of a paranoid and insular minority.

Of course, Tim himself admitted over the summer in a op-ed for the Daily News that no one knew if a majority opposed or supported Wal-Mart. That was the truest thing he has said to date. PARD is just much happier pretending everyone agrees with them

I find it deeply inappropriate that a high-ranking faculty member is this deeply involved in this issue. I urge the "vocal minority who favor this boondoggle", as they so "respectfully" put it, to contact WSU President Lane Rawlins and share your opinion with him.

It's time for the pages of the Daily News and Evergreen to start flowing with pro-Wal-Mart letters. These arrogant radicals need to see just what kind of "minority" they are dealing with.

News You Won’t See…

…on Al Norman’s sprawl-busters.com, the PARD web site, or in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Recently renovated Wal-Mart Supercenters in Richland and College Place (Walla Walla) opened to the public yesterday. Wal-Mart has also announced plans to build a Supercenter in Pasco. Pullman is now left as one of the only cities above 10,000 population in Eastern Washington without a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Richland economic development director Diahann Howard said that Wal-Mart’s expansion brings new jobs and sales tax revenue to Richland, and may help increase traffic in an area the city would like to see grow.

The Tri-City Herald reported about 1,200 people applied for about 200 openings at the Richland Wal-Mart. So much for no one wanting to work at Wal-Mart.

Don’t worry, that will be us soon.

The Ghost of Pyrrhus

In a bizarre twist, PARD spokespersons Christopher Lupke in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News yesterday, and Montine Vona-Pergola on NewsTalk 1150 this morning, stated that they were glad that the city had applied 35 conditions to the Wal-Mart site plan approval. It’s almost as if they are claiming victory and taking credit for the conditional approval. The arrogant hypocrisy of these people is stunning.

Some of the “hard-hitting” city conditions:

#6. Provide calculations for the retaining walls including the total face area of the walls.
#9. The City will require 3 sets of construction drawings for our use.
#10. All construction shall meet City of Pullman Standard Construction Specifications and Standard Plans.
#21. Grip rings and/or Foster connectors are acceptable in lieu of thrust blocks and are required for fire hydrant assemblies.
#23. Landscape trees shall not be placed in utility easements.
#27. No obstructions shall be placed within three feet of a fire hydrant. Shrubs, utilities, etc. shall not be placed within 3 feet of a fire hydrant. Fire hydrant steamer ports shall face the street, access road, parking lot lane, etc.
#33. Approved numbers or addresses shall be placed on the building in such a position as to be plainly visible and legible from the street fronting the property and shall contrast with the background. The pylon sign on Bishop Boulevard shall also have the address of the site on it. Monument signs on Fairmount Drive are not required to have addressing.

There ARE several minor conditions concerning storm water runoff (reports, documentation, relocation of a swale, etc), striping on Fairmount Drive to control traffic, and replacement of trees and a landscaping screen along the boundary with the cemetery. These all directly related to issues that PARD is currently appealing from the SEPA approval a few weeks ago.

So now what? Previously, PARD excoriated Mark Workman for the final SEPA Determination of Non-Significance. Now they are praising him. Does this mean they will drop some of their SEPA appeals based on the city’s conditions and not pursue a site plan appeal? Not bloody likely. Lupke said yesterday PARD would likely appeal, BEFORE HE HAD EVEN REVIEWED THE SITE APPROVAL.

PARD will look even shriller, fanatical and out of touch because now they have acknowledged the city did a good job on the site plan (albeit, they’ll claim, only because of PARD’s prodding). But gosh darn it, even if Wal-Mart addresses all 35 issues (which they will), PARD will still have to appeal the site plan and the SEPA approval for “the good of the people of Pullman.”

This will prove to the public what I have been saying all along. There is NOTHING that Wal-Mart or the city can do that would meet with PARD’s approval. Only complete “slam dunking” of Wal-Mart, to use Al Norman’s catchphrase, will assuage them.

UPDATE: 9/23/05 5:15 PM - I was right. PARD is claiming credit and declaring victory. From their website:

The Wal-Mart Site Plan has been approved with 35 mitigations. The city apparently agrees with us; several of our criticisms of the site plan are outlined. This is a site plan with serious issues that must be resolved prior to a building permit being granted.

To quote WSUStretch's comment:

Conditions placed on site plans, or on residential or commercial plats are nothing unusual - go back and look and any of the rulings from the planning commission or the city council over the past 20 years. It's normal. Most of them are obvious and more reminders than "restrictions"

They are hardly "serious issues". We'll see now if they appeal the site plan after publicly saying the "city apparently agrees with us."

Another Bad Week for the Bad Guys

As expected, Pullman Planning Director Mark Workman approved the site plan for the Wal-Mart Supercenter today, contingent on Wal-Mart meeting 35 routine conditions. This commences a 10-day appeal period.

The next step would normally be the issuance of a building permit. However, we all know that isn’t going to happen for several months. First, we’ll have to put up with all the incessant blathering by the uptight intelligentsia about how they know better than our city government. Then, the frivolous SEPA appeal filed by PARD has to have a hearing (and potentially another appeal hearing after that in the Whitman County Superior Court). I’m sure they will appeal the site plan decision as well, in which case both appeals will be heard together. I’ll detail the road ahead in a future post.

I loved in the Daily News headline where it said, "PARD may appeal decision" Hmmmm. Ya think?

All in all, it was yet another depressing week for PARD. The Wal-Mart approval process continued to march forward and in last Tuesday’s primary, Ann Heath walloped PARD council candidate Judy Krueger by 13 percentage points. I’m sure we will soon see even more desperate spin by PARD that they have “won the battle for public opinion.”

Memo to Joel Mills

Joel Mills, of the Lewiston Tribune, should check with his sister paper on the Palouse before writing any more misguided blurbs like this:

"...none of the [Ward 3 city council] candidates opposed or supported the Wal-Mart outright."

In today's edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Michelle Dupler wrote the following about Judy Krueger's campaign:

She [Krueger] continues to feel strongly that Wal-Mart is an important issue for voters. Pioneer Hill resident Jeff Bohlscheid agreed, saying his vote for Krueger was strongly influenced by her opposition to the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter.

"I'm not really happy with that being in town," Bohlscheid said. "I'm tired of junk. Just low quality, poor quality items. Wal-Mart is just promoting cheap, poor-quality stuff that breaks."

Ah, another well-articulated argument against Wal-Mart. Opponents are always visceral, elitist, and completely misinformed. Perhaps Mr. Bohlscheid only shops at Macy's and Nordstrom, but Wal-Mart offers thousands of name brand items, and yes at cheap prices. That has been their recipe for unprecedented success.

Joel Mills had better leave the Pullman political reporting to those who know it best and learn not to take candidate's statements at face value.

Election Results - Updated with Mail-In Ballots

As of September 21, 4:01 PM, with 55 of 56 precincts reporting:

Proposition 1 - Whitman County Adult Jail and Juvenile Detention Sales and Use Tax

YES 2,590 votes 54.42 %

NO 2,169 votes 45.57 %

City of Pullman; Ward 3 Pos. 3

ANN HEATH 236 votes 52.09 %

DONALD HEIL 38 votes 8.38 %

JUDY KRUEGER 166 votes 39.07 %

Voter turnout was a paltry 18%.

So, Proposition 1 passes by a fairly comfortable margin.

More importantly Ann Heath polled more votes than her two opponents combined. Even if Judy Krueger gets all of Don Heil's support (such as it was), she faces an uphill battle. Guess the trolley idea didn't excite too many voters. It's still pretty close, though. Ann will need our help in November, when as expected, she will face off Judy Krueger once again.

Flip Flop, Flip Flop

The most famous political aphorism of 2004 was "I actually voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

Now it seems Judy Krueger, Ward 3 city council candidate, is channelling Senator John Kerry. She is trying to deny that she is opposed to Wal-Mart and is backing away from the extremist stance of the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development, of which she is a member.

In today's Lewiston Tribune, Krueger is quoted as saying that the proposed Wal-Mart location is unsuitable because it lies in between two quiet residential neighborhoods and that she wants to attract retail businesses to Pullman, but in a planned way that avoids sprawl. In other words, "I don't like the idea of Wal-Mart and the only place in town it can be located doesn't work, but other than that, I'm not condemning Wal-Mart." This is what is called a "non-denial denial." She has made similar statements to the Triubune and the Daily News previously. I guess she is learning to become a politician.

Besides the fact that the proposed Wal-Mart location is on the extreme southern edge of town in the middle of a wheat field, not "in between two quiet residential neighborhoods," anyone can clearly see that what Krueger is claiming is disingenuous. Of course she is against Wal-Mart. Ms. Krueger is self-admittedly a board member of the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development which is currently pursuing legal action to STOP Wal-Mart, not have it "relocated" (to where, Almota?). Judy Krueger wrote the letter from PARD to Mayor Johnson requesting a "public meeting" about Wal-Mart. PARD has discussed that the denial of this meeting could be the basis for a future law suit against the city.

Active PARD members are involved in her campaign and are writing letters to the editor in support of Krueger. Just look above at what was on the middle of the PARD table at the National Lentil Festival (in between the "Say No to Wal-Mart" and "One Wal-Mart is Enough" signs, oh brother). Why not just come out and admit it rather than saying she doesn't "really want to get hung up on it"? It's the whole reason she is running fo the council, just as Wal-Mart foes are doing over in Stanwood, WA.

As the writer Douglas Adams put it: "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."

Only a Lewiston reporter could claim that "none of the candidates opposed or supported the Wal-Mart outright." I think everyone in Pullman knows the Ward 3 council race is essentially a referendum on Wal-Mart. Ann Heath said in last Saturday's Daily News that Wal-Mart was "consistent with the city's comprehensive plan", while Judy Krueger said Wal-Mart was the "antithesis of smart growth." How much more outright do politicians get? Are these ostriches or news reporters? I love how our local media takes everything at face value, without any challenge or investigation. Wher have you gone, Woodward and Bernstein?

If Judy Krueger had polled 52% of the vote last night versus 39%, you can bet the media would be playing up the Wal-Mart aspect ("Residents Overwhelmingly Express Opposition to Wal-Mart") instead of printing the pablum about Krueger.

Of course, Judy Krueger only got 39% of the vote, and that is why she is desperately saying anything she can to revive her DOA campaign.