I had prayed that someone from PARD would be foolish enough to publicly attack Radio Shack owner Dale Hammerly by name, in addition to the cowardly, anonymous attacks they have made on the Daily News website. Now everyone can see how they really feel about "local business." It's all about Wal-Mart hatred, not "Mom and Pop." I can only imagine the torrent of anti-PARD letters this is going to set off.
And I should have known it would be the supremely arrogant and ever loquacious Chris Lupke. Nice move, Poindexter. But you might as well enjoy it while it lasts. And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Jack McCullough, and Attorneys Fees followed with him. From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:
Market has spoken with its silenceTechnorati Tags: wal-mart walmart
One of the nicest things about Pullman is that it preserves the small-town appeal lost to most of America these days. It's a place where the person at the bank who decides whether I get a loan, the person who cuts my hair, who bags my groceries, who sold me my truck, and who sold me my home all know me by my first name.
It came as an unpleasant surprise, therefore, that Dale Hammerly, in whose RadioShack I've made many purchases (and hope to continue to), would write so churlish a letter (Opinion, Nov. 16), wondering aloud why the "silent majority" in Pullman were not outraged over the prolonged wait for a gigantic Wal-Mart Supercenter to grace our horizon on Bishop Boulevard.
I believe I can answer his question regarding this deafening silence: Most Pullmanites have little appetite for such a superfluous addition to the retail landscape, and many recognize Wal-Mart's real and well-documented harms to communities like ours.
Leaving aside the litany of self-contradictions pervading Hammerly's letter (that Wal-Mart is free-market when it predicates its reputed cheap prices on the backs of a work force in part reliant on government-subsidized health insurance, that it will increase local tax revenues when we taxpayers are footing the bill for this subsidy, that the free market somehow magically granted China the MFN status necessary for Wal-Mart to establish its sweatshops abroad, and that big-box retail duplicated in Pullman would form a regional magnet), I was most taken aback by Hammerly's ungracious call for those who recognize Wal-Mart's inhumanity to "pack up and ship out." That could be bad for business, for if all who disdain Wal-Mart were to "ship out" of Pullman there would scarcely be enough of us left to shop at your store.
Christopher Lupke, Pullman
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