Weird Al and the Mayor

Obnoxious liberal loudmouth Weird Al Norman has made a lucrative career out of reassuring wealthy suburban snobs that their elitist disdain of Wal-Mart and those that shop there is actually "protecting worker's rights" and stopping "urban sprawl." You can hear Norman rant about his hatred of Wal-Mart in person for only $5,000, plus expenses.

Norman is also a paid union shill, running "Battle-Mart" for the Service Employees International Union astroroots front organization "Wal-Mart Watch" and speaking on behalf of big labor all over the country.

Now, Weird Al has turned his sights on our mayor, Glenn Johnson. On his web site, Sprawl Busters, Norman urges "readers" to write to Mayor Johnson and the Pullman City Council urging them to pass a raft of socialistic, business-killing ordinances, much like Moscow did a few years ago.

Norman, who lives 3,000 miles away in Massachusetts (it figures), obviously has no clue that Mayor Johnson, the "Voice of the Cougars," is one of the most beloved and respected figures in the history of our town (he has been elected mayor twice with no opposition.) Norman chides Johnson:

If Wal-Mart is a ‘very good thing,’ why were so many residents upset about this project? These people that you say cost the city lost revenues-—these are your taxpayers, your constituents. You are the Mayor of all Pullman residents, not just the Mayor of Corporate Interests. Zoning decisions do not have to be a win/lose situation. When people believe they are on the losing end of a deal—they are usually right. Pullman was not prepared for a project of this scale. It’s time to bring your zoning code into the 21st century, before more big boxes saturate your city with highway sprawl.”

What a patently absurd allegation. Glenn Johnson is a professor at the same university as are the professors of PARD. He is beholden to no "Corporate Interests."

It is also laughable that Norman calls on Mayor Johnson to respect the feelings of the few dozen of his constituents that make up PARD, while simultaneously calling on people all over the country who are neither taxpayers nor constituents to write the mayor and city council and meddle in Pullman's affairs. This is just like a few years ago when PARD was soliciting donations from all over the country on Norman's website.

Send Weird Al an e-mail here and tell him and his "readers" to keep their snooty noses out of our business. Let's fill up his inbox! You might just get lucky and get a nasty reply from Weird Al himself.

Also, while you're at it, send an e-mail to Mayor Johnson and the Pullman City Council here and express your thanks for staying strong during this process, upholding the will of the majority of the electorate and not caving in to the special interests of a few.

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The War on Wal-Mart Is Over

Spekaing of it being time for PARD to move on, a story in today's New York Times by my old buddy Michael Barbaro indicates that Wal-Mart is winning its battle against the union thugs of the UFCW and the SEIU.

According to Barbaro, union-sponsored attack dog groups Wake-up Walmart and Wal-Mart Watch have dramatically cut back staff and scaled back in-your-face attacks on the retailer.

But Mr. Nassar [of Wal-Mart Watch] and Ms. Scott [of Wake-Up Wal-Mart] acknowledge that the appetite for criticism of Wal-Mart, which seemed insatiable at first, has waned, especially in the news media. “There has been a certain amount of fatigue about writing the Wal-Mart-is-bad story,” said Mr. Nassar. Ms. Scott described “a cooling down of the Wal-Mart story.”

Both said their groups are pursuing different, perhaps less high-profile, strategies than they did in 2005 and 2006. Wal-Mart Watch, for example, wants to be viewed as the best source of outside research on Wal-Mart; WakeUpWalMart.com is reaching out more to regional news outlets, rather than big national newspapers.

Both said they would remain critical when it made sense. “As the company makes changes, it becomes harder to be critical,” Mr. Nassar said, “because our critique has to become more nuanced.”

Of course Americans have tired of Wal-Mart bashing, just as they have in Pullman. It's illogical and elitist, even to the leftist media. The bottom line is that consumers like to buy stuff at low prices, regardless of politics. Wal-Mart reported today a same-store sales increase of 3.9% for May, much higher than analysts had predicted.

Michael and I have both been very critical of efforts by Wal-Mart to pander to the left-wing on issues like minimum wage and global warming. But perhaps Wal-Mart has been very clever in co-opting its critics. As Barbaro states:

The mellowing of the anti-Wal-Mart movement is an unexpected development for the retailer, whose public image and share price were bruised by the well-financed union campaigns. On Friday, when the chain holds its shareholder meeting in Arkansas, investors are likely to applaud Wal-Mart for fending off these detractors.

“It definitely has helped the company,” a retail analyst at Deutsche Bank, Bill Dreher, said. “Those attacks hurt Wal-Mart.”

And in business, it's all about the bottom line, not ideology.

Time has come indeed for PARD to quit....

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