Strictly speaking this is not a Wal Mart issue, but I think it is appropriate in the If-Not-Wal-Mart-Why-Not vein. The article originally appeared in in the Fall 1999 issue of Colorlines. David Beach at Eco City Cleveland reposted it as part of Eco City’s broader anti-sprawl/urban redevelopment /smart growth theme.

In his intro, Beach wrote:

In Northeast Ohio – one of the most racially segregated metropolitan areas in the nation – race has been a powerful force shaping the region. To promote greater dialog on this important subject, we reprint the following interview with John Powell in which he takes the provocative stance thatbringing racial justice awareness to regionalism is the single most important civil rights task facing us today.

Powell is director of the Kirwan Institute For The Study Of Race And Ethnicity. He says:

Regionalism is the notion that you should think about, fight for, and administer resources at a regional and not just a city or federal level. The economy, the infrastructure (transportation, utilities, etc.), and the labor market all function on a regional level.

In general a region can be thought of as a city and its suburbs, what the census calls a metropolitan statistical area. That is why regionalism is sometimes called metropolitics by people like Myron Orfield.

Deeper in the interview, Powell says:

In most cases, the cities actually subsidize the suburbs, which in turn suck resources out of the cities. Cities need to fight for equal resources – housing, transportation, jobs, and education – with the suburbs. Cities cannot raise the money they need to deal with issues of concentrated poverty simply within the cities.

When I suggested a village approach to Steelyard Commons on Wednesday, 1 June and Saturday, 4 June, my explicit intent was to create not only a mixed-use community but also a mixed economic class community. Powell points to one community that adopted such a plan. He says:

Montgomery County, outside Washington, DC, adopted a mixed-income housing plan. Their plan requires that 15 percent of new housing has to be below market rate and half of those need to be public housing. They thus distribute public housing throughout the community rather than concentrating it in a few neighborhoods.

It can be done by bringing some jobs and businesses to the community itself. But we also have to have the option of having people move to where those opportunities currently exist outside of the inner cities.

The conversation over Steelyard Commons began as a very specific one but it has begun to touch broader regional issues. What other issues do we need to be talking about that connect all of this?

On a closely related issue, The No Cleveland Wal Mart group is a White and predominantly male group. Do we have blinders on that are causing us to miss other connections? How do we make the conversation more inclusive and comprehensive?

One of the reasons I’m going to Ohio Department Of Transportation meeting next week is to see if I can find some answers to these questions.

Hope to see you there.

My Soundtrack: Commoner’s Crown by Steeleye Span.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… The Hanged Man’s Song by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… Another End of the World by James Richardson; On My Screen… Troy (*) directed by Wolfgang Petersen, screenplay by David Benioff.

My Soundtrack: Greatest Hits by Simon And Garfunkel.

A month ago in It’s A Start… I entered into what I thought of as Phase II of diversifying my NEO Blog Roll. Phase I focused on gender balance and there were so many to pick from that I finally gave up and expanded the roll from 20 to 26 because I couldn’t bear to cut some great bloggers. In Phase II I set out to find the non-European voices in the local blogosphere. That was a lot tougher.

The bad news is that I only found four voices:

Jimi Izrael
Diary Of A Mad Cleveland Filmaker
Scholarmama and
Liberal Portions

The good news is that I found all four delightful.

Two of these bloggers chose to tell me why it was that the Blogosphere is so $%^& waspy.

Jim Izrael told me:

There is a really simple, obvious reason there are, generally. not a lot of black bloggers. Freedoom. There is a real fear among blacks, generally, when it comes to losing your job. Byron Crawford and I talked about this when I interviewed him, which is posted on my blog. It isn”t that black people don”t want to blog, but there is a real fear that anything they write could be held against them in the real world – i.e. employment world.

Scholarmama felt some of the same pressures and wrote:

I took a long time before I began to post, because as an alien, I felt that it might be unsafe for me to air my political views.

If anyone comes up with other voices I should be listening to, let me know.

These four voices brought my NEO Blog Roll to a total of 29. It is with anticipation that I add a 30th voice to the group: Let The Lady Speak.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled surfing.

My Soundtrack: Best Of by Carly Simon.

[Update: Just as I was posting this, Tim Russo sent me the following notice:

Thursday, June 16, 2005. Quigley Road Connector Public Meeting 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. MetroHealth Medical Center, Scott Auditorium, 2500 MetroHealth Drive.

ODOT will present the Preliminary Design for the construction of an extension of Quigley Road to Interstate 71 at West 14th Street. The Connector is the first component of the Innerbelt Plan scheduled to the constructed, as soon as 2006. This project, particularly the Quigley Road Connector, is a critical element in the Steelyard Commons project. We should be there.

You’re right Tim, we should be. I will be.]

Thursday evening a car rear-ended a horse-drawn buggy in Geauga County. Fortunately no one was killed but six children were injured seriously enough to warrant transport to Rainbow Babies and Children Hospital.

No. I am not in any way suggesting that this is the sole fault of the folks in Bentonville, but it does illustrate how complex issues surrounding suburban sprawl can be.

According to Buggy-Car Crash Renews Calls For Safety Measures by Maggi Martin and Austin Arceo in this morning’s Plain Dealer:

An Amish businessman said the Middlefield area has embraced safety measures but needs more buggy lanes to protect the slow-moving Amish from traffic streaming into a new Wal-Mart.

Did Wal Mart development staff consider the issue of Amish traffic when it picked the location for this particular store? Except maybe to ponder what products the store might stock that would be of interest to the Amish, I doubt it.

But others have been concerned about the issue. Martin and Arceo write:

An Ohio Department of Public Safety study in 2000 recommended that the state require strobe lights and minimum ages for buggy drivers, but neither recommendation has been enacted.

Again, that is not Wal Mart’s fault. But do you think that it might have diverted a portion of the $10 billion in profits it raked in last year to be a good neighbor and offer to fund a part of the cost of enacting the recommendations?

It’s been many, many years since I ever got around on a horse, but I do bike a lot. I know the attitude of that minority of drivers who despise anything that makes them slow down.

I wonder how the traffic load on the roads leading to this Wal Mart have changed since it opened? What are the access roads to Steelyard Commons like? How will foot and bike traffic (particularly that of children) be effected?

Anybody looking at this?

My Soundtrack: Signals by Rush.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… The Hanged Man’s Song by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… The Calf-Path by Sam Walter Foss; On My Screen… Troy (*) directed by Wolfgang Petersen, screenplay by David Benioff.

My Soundtrack: Live Bullet by Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band.

[Note, back in 1983, I welded the magnet on a 15-inch Technic woofer in a $500 speaker stack playing Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man from this album.]

[Update: 0440, 11 June. The ever insightful Whymrhymer suggests that Howard Dean’s statement attempts to tar the Republican Party with racism. I think it’s more about class. Be sure to read both our comments.]

What are Democrats so @#$%^&* afraid of? Yesterday Howard Dean, head of the Democratic party, made a statement in Washington before a forum of journalist that is, as far as I can see, a true statement.

Dean said that the Republican party is:

Not very friendly to different kinds of people, they are a pretty monolithic party … it’s pretty much a white, Christian party.

What part of that statement is false?

Here are some interesting numbers courtesy of Americablog:

Of 3,643 Republicans serving in the state legislatures, only 44 are minorities, or 1.2 percent.

President Bush’s home state leads the way. Texas, with a minority population of 47 percent, has 106 Republicans in the state legislature, but there are 0 blacks and 0 Hispanics among them.

Looks pretty white to me. Anybody have figures on the numbers of Jews, Muslims, Catholics (oops, sorry, they are Christians too, even if a chunk of the religious wrong doesn’t think so), Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists, etc., etc., who are elected Republicans in legislatures?

I’ve said a lot of bad things about Howard Dean, but I’m starting to like him more and more. At least he doesn’t seem to be running every utterance through focus groups.

My Soundtrack: Moving Pictures by Rush.

The New Republic Online in it’s 9 June edition steps up on the Wal Mart and health care question. Prompted by the Maryland State Legislature’s foiled attempt to make the behemoth from Bentonville stop foisting the health care of its employees off on the state’s taxpayers, Jonathan Cohn writes in Health Inspection:

Poor Wal-Mart is feeling a little bit, well, picked upon. Sure, the company just generated $285 billion in sales and $10 billion in profits. And, yes, it is rapidly expanding into such far-flung places as China.
But, here in the United States, Wal-Mart’s growth plans have suddenly run into political opposition from labor unions and liberal politicians who, according to the company, aren’t being fair.

What’s more, the coverage that Wal-Mart does offer frequently includes large deductibles that leave employees exposed to heavy out-of-pocket costs. Labor activists and their allies say that such a profitable company owes its workers more than that.

According to Cohn, at the company’s annual meeting last Friday Susan Chambers, a Wal Mart vice president took the offensive on the health care issue. Chambers said:

The health care issue is much broader than Wal-Mart. Maliciously targeting one company doesn’t address this issue. It doesn’t provide one person with insurance or take one person off the list of America’s uninsured. It doesn’t offer solutions.

And Cohn agrees with her, kind of:

In one sense, that statement is correct: The problems of the U.S. health care system really are a lot bigger than one company and require much broader solutions. Unfortunately, companies like Wal-Mart have historically obstructed those solutions. And they’re still doing so today.

Cohn does an excellent job of sketching out how we got to where we are today with health care in the United States. In his concluding paragraphs however, he gets to the meat when he talks about business’ desire to elminate the present employer-funded health care system.

The catch is that gutting the employer system requires a whole different set of reforms. It is extraordinarily difficult for somebody with previous medical conditions or a relatively low income to buy private health insurance today.

Wal-Mart is entitled to its opinion, of course. But, as long as it blocks real health care reform, then it deserves every bit of grief it’s getting.

What he said.

My Soundtrack: Arawe by Daniel Ponce.

The New Republic this week, fronts its report on Tom Delay’s very impressive network in Washington. Nobody can organize the way Delay has. Not since Boss Tweed or perhaps Richard Dailey has a poltician lined up the ducks so effectively. In Tammany Fall, John B. Judis writes:

By the late ’90s, lobbying firms and trade associations were coming to DeLay’s office to have their new hires cleared.

The ex-staffers on K Street didn’t act like conventional lobbyists, who represent the interests of their clients. When DeLay staffers left his office for K Street, they continued to represent his interests as well as those of their clients.

And, of course, it’s all about the money. Judis continues deeper in the article:

The heart of DeLay’s fund-raising has always been ARMPAC, which he founded before the 1994 election to buy support from fellow Republicans… Its directors have played musical chairs between DeLay’s offices and the Alexander Strategy Group, to which, at one point, ARMPAC paid rent.

[snip]

ARMPAC was wildly successful. From 1998 to 2004, it raised $14.3 million, which it dispensed to the National Republican Congressional Committee and Republican House members. But DeLay was never satisfied with ARMPAC, which had to disclose its contributors and limit the size of their hard money contributions.

So, after the 1998 election, DeLay, Buckham, Ellis, and Gallant set up three dubious fund-raising vehicles: the U.S. Family Network, Americans for Economic Growth, and the Republican Majority Issues Committee. USFN and AEG were registered as tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations that didn’t have to report their contributors but did have to devote the bulk of their time to nonpolitical activities.

Burdis goes deeper and deeper in to how Delay locked up so much money in Washinton that he has become a godfather like figure dispensing favors in exchange for what ever he really wants.

I’ve always oppossed the whole K Street lobbyist network. I know I’m being a dreamer here, but somehow I think talking to members of Congress should be on an individual basis. You know, the whole one person, one vote thing? It would just seem to be more, oh, I don’t know, democratic?

My Soundtrack: The Pachelbel Canon And Other Baroque Favorites by various. Performed by The Tornoto Chamber Orchestra, Boyd Neel conducting.

We’ve all heard of the Mozart Effect, the idea that playing Mozart will make our children smarter, happier, able to leap tall building in a single bound. Compliments of cello virtuoso and future dictator for life of the world (be afraid boys, be very afraid) Mere comes these musical observations.

Liszt Effect: Child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.

Bruckner Effect: Child speaks very slowly and repeats himself frequently. Gains reputation for profundity.

Wagner Effect: Child becomes a megalomaniac. May eventually marry his sister.

Mahler Effect: Child continually screams – at great length and volume – that he’s dying.

Schoenberg Effect: Child never repeats a word until he’s used all the other words in his vocabulary. Sometimes talks backwards. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child blames them for their inability to
understand him.

Babbitt Effect: Child gibbers nonsense all the time. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child doesn’t care because all his playmates think he’s cool.

Ives Effect: the child develops a remarkable ability to carry on several separate conversations at once.

Glass Effect: the child tends to repeat himself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Stravinsky Effect: the child is prone to savage, guttural and profane outbursts that often lead to fighting and pandemonium in the preschool.

Brahms Effect: the child is able to speak beautifully as long as his sentences contain a multiple of three words (3, 6, 9, 12, etc). However, his sentences containing 4 or 8 words are strangely uninspired.

And then of course, the Cage Effect: child says nothing for 4 minutes, 33 seconds. Preferred by 9 out of 10 classroom teachers.

My Soundtrack: Canon In D Major by Johann Pachelbel. Performed by the Jean-Francois Paillard Chamber Orchestra.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… The Hanged Man’s Song by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… The Summer I Was Sixteen by Geraldine Connolly; On My Screen… Touching Evil: A Pupil Of Murder (***) directed by Sheree Folkson, screenplay by Mike Cullen.

My Soundtrack: Octave by The Moody Blues.

Time to shovel out the blog pile. It has been way too long since I’ve looked at the list of things that struck my fancy for one reason or another as potential blog topics. I confess that I have no idea any longer why I found particular items interesting, but there had to be something there that grabbed my attention. So, in no particular order and without further ado, 1… 2… 3… heave…

Fuzzy Coffee.
Baby Aiden Stein.
Feminist Blogs.
Foundation For Individual Rights In Education.
662 Music Videos.
Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist.
Geographic Society Plans DNA Study On Migration.
Mack White.
Medwyn Goodall Music.
Lucas Glad To Leave Star Wars Behind.
Nonreading Generation Of Writers Needs 12-Step Program.
There Is No Demand For Messages.
The Author’s Daughter.
Save Darfur.
Ford Campaign Begins With Astroturfing.
The Shelia Variations.
Photographer for White House child sex ring arrested…

My Soundtrack: Bat Out Of Hell by Meat Loaf.

Wal Mart does not like bad publicity. Back on Saturday, 14 May in Cleveland Dodges A Wal Mart Bullet…? I discussed this nefarious full-page advertisement run by the giant retailer in the Arizona Daily Sun. Now the word is out that Wal Mart has quietly distanced itself from the underlings responsible for the advertisement.

According to Michael Barbaro’s Wal-Mart’s Ariz. PR Executive Resigns in this morning’s Washington Post:

The Wal-Mart community affairs director for Arizona and Southern California, whose office approved an advertisement that appeared to equate a local zoning proposal with Nazi book-burning, has resigned, the giant retailer said.

The firm Wal-Mart hired to design the ad said it had severed its six-year relationship with the company as well.

S. Robson Walton should be commended for his response. According to the Post, Walton said of the issue at the company’s annual meeting last Friday:

We’re just a bunch of humans trying to run this company. We make mistakes.”

In addition, writes Barbaro:

In a letter to ADL leaders about the ad, sent in mid-May, Wal-Mart said it had “taken corrective action to make sure this does not happen again.”

Simple words but straight and to the point.

My Soundtrack: Wynton Marsalis by Wynton Marsalis.

In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… Die In Plain Sight by Elizabeth Lowell; On My Nightstand… Life Of Pi by Yann Martel; On My Computer… Small Pleasures by Greg Pape; On My Screen… Touching Evil: A Pupil Of Murder (***) directed by Sheree Folkson, screenplay by Mike Cullen.

My Soundtrack: Houses Of The Holy by Led Zeppelin.

[Update: 2207 EDT, 10 June. A coalition of citizen activist groups running the gamut of social and political issues will ask Congress to file a Resolution of Inquiry, the first necessary legal step to determine whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in misleading the country about his decision to go to war in Iraq.]

[Update: 1357 EDT, 10 June. My every-sharp friend Whymrhymer offers a source to answer some of my questions. On 17 May, Matthew Clark at the Christain Science Monitor asked the question: Why Has ‘Downing Street Memo’ Story Been A ‘Dud’ In US? Why indeed?

A quote from Thomas Patrick Carroll at Front Page Magazine in the final graph caught my attention. Writes Carroll:

But there is another aspect to this whole affair that is more troubling. We are now over three years into the war against militant Islam. It is simply inexcusable for opinion makers and public intellectuals (e.g., those who made such a fuss about the “revelations” in the Downing Street memo) not to grasp the strategic imperatives behind what we are doing in Iraq and elsewhere.

It”s certainly okay to disagree with our strategy, but for supposedly sophisticated commentators to miss the entire point and continue raving about WMD and UN sanctions is simply beyond the pale. Regardless of whether they support or oppose the Bush Doctrine and attendant strategies, critics have a responsibility to acknowledge those strategies and the goal of a new Middle East toward which they are driving.

I have a hard time understanding why focusing on the Bush administration’s fabricated reasons for destroying thousands of American lives is now beyond the pale. I wonder if Carroll remember a little incident in the Gulf of Tonkin.]

This really puzzles me. Why aren’t people calling for a Congressional investigation and the impeachment of President Bush for lying to America about his reasons for destroying thousands of American service personnel’s lives and expending billions of dollars of tax-payer’s money? Do we simply not care? Do we only express outrage when it involves oral sex, cigars and a blue dress?

How can it be any more clear than this:

SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02
cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam’s regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August. The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun “spikes of activity” to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change. The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary. The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN. John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)

MATTHEW RYCROFT

My Soundtrack: American Pie by Don McLean.

Economic concern over the Wal Mart invasion has reached India where Mohan Guruswamy, writing for The Hindu Business Line asks the question: Is Wal-Mart What The Doctor Prescribes?.

Guruswamy writes:

But is Wal-Mart what the good doctor would prescribe for us given our present condition? Very simply, it is all about jobs. Unlike foreign direct investment (FDI) in manufacturing or information technology or financial services, all of which create jobs, FDI in retail would entail job losses on a massive scale.

The profile of India’s retail sector with its overwhelming preponderance of small and self-employed retailers is a direct consequence of our inability to provide gainful employment to the millions who join the workforce each year.

And what will happen when those millions find that their jobs have been eliminated by a Big Box?

My Soundtrack: Picture This by Huey Lewis and the News.