Failing the Smell Test

Next week, I intend to address at length “Baghdad Chris” Lupke’s unhinged rants that appeared today in both the Daily Evergreen and the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (I’m so glad we have no liberal bias in our local media, aren’t you? When is the last time a POSITIVE story outside of Washington and Idaho about Wal-Mart made the front page?).

A couple of things he wrote, however, are outright lies and need to be refuted.

First of all, in the Evergreen, Lupke said the city’s revenue shortfalls “were caused precisely by the vote of those who now erroneously suggest that Wal-Mart would be our panacea”. That is libelous tripe. In the Daily News he amplified that statement by saying “Supposedly, a Wal-Mart in Pullman is going to replenish the municipal tax coffers in the wake of ill-advised initiatives that have drained our city’s revenues”.

That’s right, all of us Pullman Wal-Mart "promoters" got together with Tim Eyman and the evil old bastards in Arkansas seven years ago to figure out a way we could bring in Wal-Mart to Pullman to set Lake Erie on fire and steal from our grandmothers. This is PARD’s answer to our sales tax leakage problem: Blame it on the Wal-Mart supporters.

Secondly, he wrote in the Daily News, “The city of Pullman, for example, recently announced plans to boost utility taxes to pay for the storm water runoff caused by paving over this vast tract of land.”

No!! The city has to raise utility rates to cover expenses related to improving the city’s sewage treatment plant to address higher pollutant standards promulgated by the Department of Ecology. I quote from a front page Daily News story on January 2:

"Eliminating those pollutants to the satisfaction of the Washington State Department of Ecology could cost local government a lot of money. Some of that money will have to be recouped from residents as utility fees, said Mark Workman, Pullman's public works director."

You think the city would raise rates for something not even built yet? Absurd. If you want to blame anybody, blame the environmentalists, not Wal-Mart. Speaking of "vast tracts of asphalt”, how many do you figure there are altogether up on campus. Does it not rain on them as well? What was that Napoleon? “Friggin idiot?!”

This was the man, remember, that chafed at statements made about PARD by Chuck Millham and demanded the Daily News do “fact checking” before publishing. Lupke's steaming pile of bovine fecal material doesn't pass the smell test.