[Vision2020] Michael O'Neal's blathering

[roger hayes]

>

Reading Michael O'Neals tripe made me laugh. It is obviously satire. No 
one could make so many errors in logic without out having their tongue 
firmly in cheek.  But here's another real thought from a proud aging 
person (sorry, not a hippie). What happens if, in the case of a fire at 
this sprawl mall if Moscow cannot supply the vast quantity and 
sufficient pressure legally contracted? Hawkins will sue our city "Big 
Time."  Oh, they wouldn't do that, some would say. There too nice of a 
corporation to injure this little town, eh? Think again folks.  In 
order to prevent this from happening Moscow water may have to set aside 
a quantity agreed to. This might adversely affect our own city's 
ability to deal with its own emergency needs. In perpetuity!

Roger Hayes


>
> Michael J O'Neal, MPDN 1/19/08
>
> It's hard to keep crybabies quiet.
>
> The back story to this scrap of wisdom runs thus. An out-of-area 
> developer,
> the Hawkins Companies, wants to put in a retail development just west 
> of
> Moscow. Five Moscow councilmen, three of them recently elected after 
> running
> on an openly pro-business platform, are now officially a nefarious 
> cabal,
> the "Hawkins Five," dubbed so on this page because they voted to sell 
> water
> to the developer after closed-door mediations.
>
> Now *the United States has this thing called representative 
> government*.
> Voters, expressing preferences at the polls, elect people to office, 
> then
> turn over to those people decision-making authority. That way, 
> everything
> doesn't become a referendum. Every time a decision has to be made, we 
> don't
> have to run to the polls, or sit in hothouse meeting halls picking up 
> the
> flu from the guy with the wet cough behind us.
>
> But *there's a class of people in Moscow who don't like representative
> government, for it gives misguided little people license to vote*. 
> Those
> voters in turn have *the temerity to elect to office candidates who 
> are not
> aging hippies whose notion of economic development is coffee stands 
> (which
> use water) and tattoo parlors*.
>
> What's their problem? For starters, the developers are from Boise. 
> That must
> mean they're curly-mustachioed, cigar-chomping carpetbaggers, in town 
> to
> offer the rest of us 40 acres and a mule in exchange for our water.
> Reasonably, though, *the developers believe that business owners might 
> want
> to tidy up after us and that employees and shoppers should wash their 
> hands
> after flushing*.
>
> But *these are all salutary activities*. People would presumably be 
> doing
> them anyhow, somewhere (one hopes), thus using water from the same 
> aquifer,
> unless of course they're really good at holding it so they can go use 
> water
> from someone else's aquifer. But then they'd be burning gas, melting 
> the
> polar ice caps, and drowning the giant Palouse earthworm - the point 
> being
> that *we all exist, so every single one of us uses resources no matter 
> what
> we do and where we do it. And if we don't have to leave carbon 
> footprints
> between here and Lewiston or Spokane to do it, something's been 
> gained*.
>
> *Further, these establishments might sell things people actually want, 
> need,
> and can afford, without turning to the Internet, as many currently do, 
> thus
> shipping away dollars and the tax revenues they generate*. It's likely 
> that
> *most of the products they'd sell won't be made of hemp or bamboo - or 
> made
> in co-ops redolent with patchouli*. So that means they represent 
> sprawl.
>
> The usual gambit employed by people who don't like a decision is to 
> grumble
> about process. Closed doors for them are always a bad sign, as they 
> are for
> my cat. But as I've tried to explain to my cat, mediations are always
> closed. People are more inclined to mediate (another salutary 
> activity) when
> they know that a card they show behind closed doors won't get trumped 
> later
> in a lawsuit.
>
> *So the crybabies, who didn't get their way in the last City Council
> election, want to "recall" the newly elected councilmen*. They intone
> solemnly that there should have been more "public discussion" and that 
> the
> Hawkins Five (one quakes at the very name) has "betrayed the public 
> trust" -
> by doing what the little people elected them to do. *Of course, the 
> process
> included no vigorous "public discussion" when the mayor unilaterally 
> filed a
> petition to quash Hawkins, but this mote of hypocrisy escapes the 
> notice of
> the hemp-and-bamboo crowd*.
>
> Meanwhile, the little people are cattle. We're told that the 
> councilmen who
> voted in Hawkins' favor were "ushered into office by the Greater Moscow
> Alliance," more cigar-chompers bent on selling off the Palouse in 
> pieces to
> the highest bidders. *Many of us little people find smug, elitist 
> comments
> like this a slap in the face. The council members were ushered into 
> office
> not by the GMA but by the citizens who chose to vote for them*. The GMA
> didn't even exist when two of the Hawkins lapdogs were elected.
>
> *But the voters, lobotomized by the GMA, were wrong. The people the 
> voters
> voted for voted in favor of something some people don't like. So of 
> course
> we must throw the sonsabitches out*.
>
> *Get out the (organic) teething biscuits*.
>
> Tellin' it like it is
> GS
> -