Can't say I'm not surprised this hasn't been posted. What a treat! Enjoy all! <br>
<br>
<br>
Michael J O'Neal, MPDN 1/19/08<br>
<br>
<p>It's hard to keep crybabies quiet.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Now <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
United States has this thing called representative government</span></strong>.
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. </p>
<p>But <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">there's
a class of people in Moscow who don't like representative government, for it
gives misguided little people license to vote</span></strong>. Those voters in
turn have <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">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</span></strong>.</p>
<p>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, <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">the
developers believe that business owners might want to tidy up after us and that
employees and shoppers should wash their hands after flushing</span></strong>. </p>
<p>But <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">these
are all salutary activities</span></strong>. 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 <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">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</span></strong>. </p>
<p><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">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</span></strong>. It's likely
that <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">most of
the products they'd sell won't be made of hemp or bamboo - or made in co-ops
redolent with patchouli</span></strong>. So that means they represent sprawl. </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">So the
crybabies, who didn't get their way in the last City Council election, want to
"recall" the newly elected councilmen</span></strong>. 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. <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">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</span></strong>.</p>
<p>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. <strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">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</span></strong>. The GMA didn't even
exist when two of the Hawkins lapdogs were elected. </p>
<p><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">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</span></strong>.</p>
<p><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">Get out
the (organic) teething biscuits</span></strong>.</p>
<br>
Tellin' it like it is<br>
GS<br>