Round 10 on Wal-Mart

I have a love-hate relationship with Iowa City sometimes. It's a great community, with such a vibrant center for the arts, great schools, wonderful resources available to students of all levels thanks to the University of Iowa. But occasionally, it falls down on its face with idiocy like: this.

The Iowa City Council is still debating on whether or not to allow an expanded Wal-Mart to be built on the south side of town. They've been going round and round on this issue for what seems like years now and no one has managed to kick in some common sense and tell the City Council to let Wal-Mart build the damn store. Why? Well, Gary Sanders is why... I've never met Gary Sanders and I'm not sure I'd want too, but I do remember than in high school, when our newspaper (The Little Hawk) did a humor page with an Amish theme (not sophisticated humor, mind you- but we were in high school) we got a blistering letter of complaint from none other than Gary Sanders- (and I'm 99% sure this is the same exact guy) who apparently has a lot of time on his hands if he's going to take the time to read a high school newspaper and compose a strongly worded letter to us.

But Wal-Mart... I don't get it. This is where the cloying, nauseating liberalism of Iowa City runs counter-productive towards the good of the community. The Left hates Wal-Mart- it's the epitomy of all that is evil and wrong in the world, therefore it should not be built here, in our utopian, Liberal community of Iowa City. That's the unspoken thesis- the spoken thesis is that Wal-Mart destroys 'main street' America and would damage business downtown.

What a load of bullshit. Sure, Wal-Mart may have an economic impact on Main Street America in general- and it may put some businesses out of business. But not in Iowa City's case. Iowa City screwed its own downtown long ago- we lost the mall to Coralville, which killed downtown. We didn't bother to make a play for a Convention Center (because what with the University holding so many conferences, that wouldn't have been useful at all.) and we chased out sensible businesses like Hardees, Burger King and Pizza Hut and replaced them with... bars.

The developmental problems facing downtown Iowa City have nothing to do with Wal-Mart and everything to do with some of the stupidity we see from liberal activists (such as Sanders) and the City Council. Moen, Mondinaro and company are intent on a campaign of 'upscaling' Iowa City, putting in swank apartments and hotels like the Vetro, while very nice and perhaps a useful addition to the downtown- did we really need the Tait's Natural Foods or whatever it was? How was the useful? The downtown population isn't rich doctors- it's ordinary townies and students- people on a budget. A Hy-Vee downtown would be awesome. A burger joint downtown would make a killing. Some forethought and attempts to diversify business would also help.

In short: the problems facing downtown Iowa City are largely self-made. And an expanded Wal-Mart on the south side isn't going to do any more damage than the City's short sightedness has already done. Plus, given this liberal hatred of Wal-Mart- what, one has to wonder, happens to people without the money to shop at Target?

Don't get me wrong: I'm not a huge fan of Wal-Mart. I worked there for about ten minutes last summer and there's room to criticize them. But the fact of the matter is for all the criticism, quite often, they've got the cheapest deals in down. And I'm a poor grad student, so I vote with my pocketbook. (And I sleep fine at night. Principle is all wonderful, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter much if you're broke.) And in a University town, it'd be nice to see the City Council make a nod to students and people without money (and people with too much time on their hands) who try and stop Wal-Mart from providing cheap, quality goods to people that don't have a lot of money to throw around.

Plus, Wal-Mart, like all companies responds very well to the needs of its customers. Imagine my shock, when walking through the aisles of the corporate Death Star, I found Fair Trade Coffee.

That's a telling side that anti-Wal-Mart, anti-corporate activists might want to consider: if you shout loud enough, Wal-Mart might just listen.