Wal-Mart Caves On Federal Mandates

Wal-Mart has allowed itself to be bullied once again into supporting another plank in the leftist agenda.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest private employer, announced in a letter to President Obama today that it will support a requirement that all businesses provide health insurance coverage as part of sweeping health reform legislation.

The endorsement of the so-called employer mandate represents a dramatic reversal for the retailing giant and a boost for the White House as it tries to inject momentum into its top domestic priority.

“We are for shared responsibility,” Wal-Mart President and CEO Mike Duke wrote. “Not every business can make the same contributions, but everyone must make some contribution.”

Send PARD The Bill

It’s time to drive the victory home. With the Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development still threatening to obstruct the construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, both Wal-Mart and Pullman should step on their opponents’ throat and put an end to PARD and its meddling. In its effort to prevent the construction of a Wal-Mart in Pullman, PARD has lost city council elections and every legal appeal it has filed and has just about reached the end of the legal road. It’s time they paid the toll.

Just over a week ago, the State of Washington Division III Court of Appeals denied PARD’s latest effort to prevent the construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter. In its decision the court wrote: “There is no evidence in the record that the proposed Wal-Mart is likely to have a significant adverse impact on the physical environment in downtown Pullman. The fact that some identified local businesses will compete with Wal-Mart does not support a conclusion of economic blight.”

If the court ruled on PARD’s complaint that building a Wal-Mart would attract “undesirable social elements” to Pullman, I did not read about it in any news reports. From my standpoint, Washington State University attracts enough undesirable social elements in the form of far left leaning faculty, such as those who formed PARD, but I wouldn’t oppose WSU’s expansion on those grounds.

The only legal option still left open to PARD is an appeal to the Washington State Supreme Court. The clock is ticking as PARD only has 30 days to file their appeal. Wal-Mart expressed confidence that the Court of Appeals ruling left no room for an appeal, but Wal-Mart and Pullman could preempt the possibility of yet another frivolous appeal without having to wait 30 days, by pursuing recovery of legal fees from PARD.

According to Wal-Mart spokeswoman Jennifer Holder, the company is entitled to recover legal fees incurred during its nearly 4-year battle with PARD. If that’s true, then it makes sense to this legal layman that the City of Pullman could do so as well. At the last accounting I am aware of, back in 2006, Pullman had spent $20,000 fighting PARD’s appeals. That number has certainly gone far higher. And I would imagine that Wal-Mart has spent considerably more than Pullman. Presenting PARD with the bill would probably go a long way toward discouraging any further gratuitous trouble-making.

Considering that PARD’s members have so far managed to have their fun with little cost to themselves, taking a generous slice out of PARD’s hide would probably cool their enthusiasm for any further obstructionism. Wal-Mart is a savvy corporation that knows how the media would portray such a strategy. I can see it now: Here’s Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer turning its limitless resources against a small group of idealists who were only trying to protect their town’s identity. But, if the City of Pullman led the way, then Wal-Mart could simply piggyback its claims against PARD with Pullman’s. In fact, a strong case could be made that failing to recover its costs from PARD would constitute fiscal negligence on the city’s part.

PARD has not only forced Pullman and Wal-Mart to incur legal expenses, but its nearly 4 years of obstruction has cost Pullman a fortune in revenues that would have started pouring into the city’s coffers more than 2 years ago. In addition, the city has lost a considerable amount of indirect revenue that the increased indirect economic activity would have generated.

Pullman has suffered economically in another way as well. Unlike the sanctimonious snobs who stand in the way of Wal-Mart, most Americans, including those in Pullman care, about the prices they pay. As Mark Twain tried to explain in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” lowering prices is the same as putting more money in people’s pocket. Having a Wal-Mart come to town essentially gives everyone a raise by stretching their dollars.

PARD insists that it is not quitting just yet. And while PARD is still pondering whether or not to waste more taxpayer money on another appeal, PARD chairman T.V. Reed darkly hinted at, “other things, besides legal options.”
What does he have in mind – emulating Rachel Corrie by standing in front of a tractor? Earth First-like eco-sabotage?

Whatever nefarious schemes might be swirling around in the minds of the PARDners, I have little doubt that they would be calmed considerably were they presented with a six figure legal bill.

Wal-Mart Sales Up

What if they gave a recession and not everybody chose to participate?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says sales of groceries and items such as flat-screen TVs boosted its same-store sales in April above Wall Street expectations.

The world's largest retailer said same-store sales rose 3.2 percent, easily beating Wall Street's 2.1 percent growth forecast. Including fuel, same-store sales climbed 3.8 percent.

The sales figure, which counts only stores open at least one year, is considered a key measure of a retailer's fiscal health.

Same-store sales rose 2.6 percent at namesake Wal-Mart stores and 6.6 percent at Sam's Club, excluding fuel.

Total sales for the four weeks ended May 2 rose 10 percent to $29.18 billion.

Moscow Pullman Border War Cease Fire

My, what a difference an election makes. And thanks to the most recent Moscow City Council election, peace in the valley might be at hand. As George Bush once noted, democracies do not wage war upon each other. And now that democracy has flexed its muscles in Moscow, Idaho, the looming border war may be averted after all.
Moscow has not been friendly to business these last few years. When given the opportunity to have a Wal-Mart Supercenter, Moscow turned it down. The Wal-Mart will now be sited just across the city line in Latah County. A hostile business climate drove a car dealership to seek refuge across the state border in Whitman County.
And finally, when the Boise-based Hawkins Company sought to invest in the Palouse economy, it chose to settle in business friendly Whitman County, right on the state line and just beyond the jurisdiction of Moscow’s mayor and city council. Now Lowe’s Building Center and other businesses will be opening their doors in the Moscow-Pullman corridor, drawing customers from Idaho, but paying taxes only to Whitman County and the state of Washington. The message was clear. Businesses wanted to conduct business with Moscow’s residents, even if Moscow’s political establishment was anti-business.
But Moscow’s politburo was not content to simply exercise its anti-business agenda within the city limits. Moscow’s city government, under the leadership of Mayor Nancy Chaney and the recently deposed Linda Pall, Kit Craine and Aaron Ament, decided to do all they could to obstruct development on the Washington side of the state line by refusing to sell water and sewer services to Hawkins and to appeal water rights transfers needed for the development to take place.
If the duly elected Chaneyites wish to impose an incense and sand candle economy upon the residents of Moscow who voted them into office, that’s between them and Moscow’s voters. But when they started trying to dictate terms to people outside their legal jurisdiction and over people who cannot vote them out of office, then them’s fightin’ words.
Fortunately, the Greater Moscow Alliance fielded three candidates who believed in both economic and religious liberty and who convinced enough Moscow voters to steer the city away from the progressive precipice.
I expect to see a shabby and disheveled Aaron Ament on a Moscow street corner one of these days holding up a hand-lettered cardboard sign reading, “Will disparage people of faith for food.”
For the moment anyway, Moscow’s graying and plumping anti-capitalist hippies and flower children have had their dangerous and age-inappropriate toys taken from them. I’m not sure that I would ever trust an ex-hippie with the reins of government. The new city council is willing to revisit the issue of selling water and sewer services to the Hawkins Company, although the last surviving vestige of Moscow’s leftist axis, Tom Lamar, expressed his discomfort with Moscow selling such services across state line.
“To me, it doesn’t seem right to be selling our services outside the city limits. If it’s development taking place in Moscow I feel differently about providing water or sewer rights.”
Unfortunately, he has no qualms when it comes to imposing Moscow’s progressive agenda across state lines. “I don’t think it is good to put this development in the corridor,” he said.
I don’t recall that he had any problems with Moscow’s appeal of the water rights transfers. Unfortunately the recent election cannot directly influence that. The appeal is apparently out of the city council’s hands and is solely at the discretion (or lack thereof) of Mayor Chaney, so a full and lasting peace may be a ways off yet.
I really can’t imagine what there is to preserve in the Moscow-Pullman corridor. Sure, a creek runs through it, but for part of the year, it’s nothing more than Moscow’s treated sewage effluent. The rock quarries, asphalt plants and gravel pits that now blight the landscape aren’t all that attractive to the eye.
The proposed services extension from Pullman to the Idaho border now under consideration would facilitate greater business expansion along the corridor and would boost both cities’ economies.
In other words, planned growth in the corridor would benefit Moscow and Pullman. And in one form or another, the growth will occur. A less hostile Moscow would permit a more controlled and harmonious growth. The world doesn’t stop for left wing economic Luddites.