living wage theater
The curtain is coming down on one of the longest running liberal pantomines in Ithaca. Somewhere off in the wings, Walmart is slouching towards I-town, having vanquished the anti-development forces arrayed like a bunch of puny denim-armored St. Georges' shadowboxing that old price chopping monster. You can almost imagine the beast's smiley faced gorgon's head just brimming with this huge, complacent grin. The last feeble salvo in the battle has just been fired by valiant Pete Meyers of the Living Wage Council in a letter to both local newspapers. You can read it in the Jan 5th issue of the Ithaca Crimes.
Ezra's got to chuckle. He's been watching this tired old drama on and off for the last 15 years. The first round went to the hippies amd liberals. As stadium sized big boxes sprang up all over the country, Ithacans sucessfully resisted the siren call of big retail. They had a mall, a couple of strip plazas, some fast food joints and that's pretty much how it stayed for years and years. Woolworth's pulled out of downtown Ithaca and the illuminati had their way, forgoing the promise of tax revenue and magnet stores, turning the space into the new public library. Of course, the cost of running a library that size forced the County to cut services and reduce hours. Nonetheless, the anti-development forces were supremo.
Then Al Cohen came along. Al was a politican's politican. He smiled and waved at you even if you had just rolled into town for the first in a '54 Studebaker with your couch tied to your trunk. You were a potential voter. Al loved people, especially developers and chain store scouts. He loved to get free tickets to football games, free rent from club owners, free motorcycles, free blenders, free anything. Al wheeled and dealed while Carolyn Peterson and her liberal Fall Creek property-owning buddies just sat around, bobbing their heads like spring operated canaries. Before you knew it, Rt 13 was all parcelled up, tax abatements were passed out like jelly beans and Home Depot, Lowes, Bed & Bath, Barnes & Noble etc etcetera rolled into town, changing the appearance of Ithaca forever.
Sure the progressives fulminated, wrote reams of letters, tossed gravel at a couple of bull dozers. But the deed was done. Everybody out in the 'burbs had bought SUV's and they all needed somewhere to go on weekends.
So, meanwhile on the last barricade, Pete Meyers is writing," In fact, Wal-mart not only creates jobs, it also destroys jobs. A study of 1,750 counties where Wal-Mart opened a store showed that after five years retail employment in these counties has increased by an average of only 50 jobs." That's 50 more jobs than Pete Meyers and his cronies created, running their all-volunteer Peace and Justice Gift Shop above Autumn Leaves. Maybe Pete is afraid that Wal-Mart will open their own Peace and Justice Gift Shop and compete with his operation.
Pete continues, " A Congressional study estimates that a Wal-Mart store like the one in Ithaca will result in taxpayes having to pay $750,000/year for things like housing assistance, Title I expenses, health care programs, tax crdits and deductions for low-income families and low income energy assistance that many Wal-Mart employees may be eligible for. Pete must have gone to school up on the hill at Ezra Cornell's School of Sophistry. Holey moley, Pete, you're not even a tax payer, having no known source of income. You're probably a tax resister, fercyingoutloud. Why are you worried about the taxpayers? And doesn't the fact that there were no jobs for people prior to Wal-Mart moving in mean that all that money was going out anyway for welfare and low income maintenance? Hey, look again, Pete. Half the city eats at Loaves & Fishes, the local soup kitchen. Maybe some of the folks who work for Wal-Mart will stop coming around to the kitchen and start eating at the company lunch counter. And, Pete, by the way, people around Ithaca could use those 50 jobs!
Ezra is no patron of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is what it is. It supplies cheap shit to the masses who have all been suckered into believing that being able to buy cheap shit is the real meaning of life. Whoopdedoo. Ezra just wants to know why progressive do-gooders like Pete Meyers were never able to come up with an alternative economic model for Ithaca that would make Wal-Mart the unappealing option for thousands of consumers and their families. That is, if you overlook the swap shops, the trendy boutiques, the snooty bookstores, the bagelries, the co-ops that charge $3.00 for an organic avocado, the shopper's world that provisioned Ithaca prior to malls, fast food huts and big box paradises. Come on, Pete. Not everybody gets a free lunch!
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 9:19 PM
