On Blogging, Mountains and Molehills, and No Sense of Humor

To listen to some whiners around here, you would think they had never heard of blogging before or just what that entails. Political bloggers are generally a partisan and snarky lot and blog commenters often get very satirical or downright vicious with their words.

For example, a few years ago, former Whitman County Democratic State Committeeman Dave Gibney wrote the following comment on the liberal Washblog:

ALways thought the rapture would be a good thing. All the stuck up assholes would be gone. :)

Gibney's comment was in response to a Washblog contributor who was "disturbed" that Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers attended a "fundamentalist Christian college," writing:

As another layer is peeled away from that American girl facade, instead of a garden variety Reagan conservative Christian, I see another hypocritical fundamentalist.

Now, did anyone make an issue of this comment when Dave threw his hat in the ring for a Pullman City Council appointment? Did anyone demand that the Whitman County Democrats apologize to all Palouse evangelicals because of Gibney's comment. No, of course not. Dave was making a joke. Hence the smiley face. Some might have been offended, but there is no right in the Constitution to not be offended.

Current Whitman County Democratic State Committeeman and former candidate for Whitman County Auditor Nathan Horter has been a diarist at Daily Kos.

Another diarist at Daily Kos, A. Whitney Brown, wrote last year:

Do I still support the individual men and women who have given so much to serve their country? No. I think they’re a bunch of idiots. I also think they’re morally retarded.

Wow. Once again, has anyone demanded an apology from the Whitman County Democrats, assuming Horter must feel the same way about our troops because he "countenances" posts like that by blogging at Daily Kos. No, of course not. That would be guilt by association a la McCarthyism. Theoretically, American political parties have moved beyond that kind of chilling of free speech.

Or have they? Could a local party be so desperate for a victory that they would say or do anything, no matter how exaggerated, how ridiculous or how base to try to win? I think we now know the answer to that question.

The Whitman County Democrats have bigger problems than me right now, and this little campaign of distraction, distortion, and dirt is not going to help.

Say What?

Perhaps 10,000 persons who won't shop there might cause a funding problem. Why is there no discussion about the independent study? Are we looking at another typical Pullman fait accompli?

Thank you PARD for looking out for the future well-being of Pullman and attempting to make the decision makers accountable. It is too bad that the recent independent study could not have been included in your lawsuit. It proved Day's claim regarding traffic and congestion on Bishop Boulevard.

- Roger Pettenger, Letter to the Editor, Moscow-Pullman Daily News, July 25, 2008

Huh?

If thousands of petition signers from Moscow, Australia, Chile, Finland and other places around the globe won't shop at the Pullman Wal-Mart, then there will be no traffic problem on Bishop Boulevard. This has been the basic flaw in PARD's reasoning from Day One. They simply can't have it both ways. It's either Boom Town USA with unbearable traffic or economic blight. Pick one of the above.

Let me put it another way, again. If those "10,000 people" had only donated $4.50 each, then PARD could have paid to have their own traffic study conducted. As it was, they didn't. The Hearing Examiner and the courts looked at the studies conducted by Wal-Mart, the city, and WSDOT, and those studies all came to the conclusion that traffic on Bishop, with Wal-Mart's mitigations, would be fine. Law 101: Present evidence to support your case or go home.

This latest traffic study factored in Wal-Mart's contributions to help control Bishop traffic.. I'm sure the city is grateful to have Wal-Mart help pay for traffic lights (no other Pullman retail business has ever been made paid to pay for traffic lights before), as well as the extra $1 million plus a year in sales tax revenue to help with roadway improvements.

Pettenger and all the rest can just stop their sour grapes. Nothing can be done now. The decision about Wal-Mart cannot be reversed based on evidence presented now The federal and state constitutions prevent such ex post facto and violation of due process effects.

Technorati Tags: wal-mart walmart

"Thompson: City Council did not violate open meeting law

No surprise there. If secret meetings were illegal, then Queen Nancy would be sitting in the Moscow hoosegow for the executive sessions she held in 2006 and 2007 to initiate first a SEPA appeal and later water rights transfers appeals against the Hawkins development.

From yesterday's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson has concluded the Moscow City Council did not violate the Idaho open meeting law in its actions involving the Hawkins Companies settlement agreement.

Moscow resident Dennis Baird filed a complaint with Thompson on Feb. 12 alleging the council violated the state's open meeting law Feb. 4. During that meeting, the council and Mayor Nancy Chaney met in executive session to discuss a settlement agreement, drafted during confidential mediation with Hawkins and other entities, that proposed selling water and sewer services to Hawkins' 700,000-square-foot development in Whitman County, just across the state line from Idaho.

Thompson responded to Baird in a letter dated Friday. He concluded that the council legitimately entered executive session based on the law's allowance for meetings "to discuss the legal ramifications of and legal opinions for pending litigation."

Based on discussion during the Feb. 4 meeting, "it appears that the Council and Mayor discussed with their legal counsel the City's legal options in regard to possible settlement of the pending appeals," Thompson wrote.

Thompson stated that the settlement agreement showed the legal matters and the water and sewer deal are "so intimately intertwined" that the sale could legally be discussed during executive session. The council did not vote to approve the settlement agreement until its regular, open meeting.

Thompson also wrote that the council and mayor could have asked for public input before finalizing their decision on the settlement, but "the Idaho Open Meeting law does not mandate that they receive public input; it only requires that their decision be made in public."