Is Maine anti-business?

Maine Speaker of the House, Glenn Cummings (D-Portland), has proposed a bill that would require developers building any retail establishment larger than 75,000 (big box store) square feet to file an impact study in the community where it will be built. The bill stipulates that the cost of the study will be borne by the developer.

According to Cummings, Maine is seeing development taking place at a rate of ¼ acre per hour and he feels that it’s time to take a look at the issue.

“The one thing we have left—now we don’t have PhD's flowing out of our universities; like some states do, we don’t have people building shoes for 49 cents an hour, like Hong Kong, or Romania—the one thing we have left that’s an international niche—it is a place we want to come to.”

Predictably, this rankles those people who feel that progress in Maine consists of a series of parking lots, interconnecting big box stores, like Lowe’s, Target, Home Depot and of course, our friends with the yellow, smiling face. People like the Maine Merchants Association and the Maine Real Estate and Development Association.

Jim McGregor is opposed to the bill and spoke about his concerns.

"Maine Merchant Associtation’s interest in this bill was no doubt peaked by what it feels is a growing and unjust anti-retailing sentiment in the Maine Legislature. And that LD 1810 is yet another example."

Roxane Cole, President of the Maine Real Estate and Development Association stated that she feels that Maine towns are already capable of determining what’s best for them.

Linda Gifford of the Maine Association of Realtors had this to add.

“Are we open for business in Maine, or are we not open for business in Maine? We think this sends another anti-business, don’t come to Maine message that we’re concerned about.”

All three of these opponents of LD 1810, the bill proposed by Cummings, speak from the short-sighted and damaging perspective that Maine’s future economic health is tied to low-wage, sprawl producing development. This kind of thinking has a long history in Maine, going back to the days when lumber barons and others built their empires from Maine’s plentiful swaths of hardwood and other natural resources, harvested by unskilled laborers with strong backs and power provided by Maine’s abundant rivers. You still see vestiges of that model in the large houses built by these industrial barons, in Bangor, Augusta, Hallowell and other places. In fact, most of Maine's rivers, by the late 1960s and early 1970s were choked with the aftermath and refuse of this economic era.

It seems intuitive to me that this bill, dubbed the Informed Growth Act, would provide local towns and municipalities with the kind of information that they really need, in order to assess the true cost to their communities of the arrival of Wal-Mart, Target, or some other retail behemoth—costs associated with traffic flow, the need to beef up police forces, environmental impacts and how it will affect the local economy in general. This is exactly the type of information that helps local residents to be more informed, educated and better able to assess the true costs of “everyday low prices.”

Susan Porter is the owner of Maine Coast Books, in Damariscotta and one of more than 140 small business owners who have stated their support for the bill.

“What does a developer fear from an impact study, if he honestly believes he is creating prosperity?"

I’ll answer Porter’s question by saying that what developers fear is no longer being able to shove their brand of non-sustainable development down the throats of the communities that they run to, pave over, grab their bag of loot, before running to the next open space, where they reenact the same parasitic scenario.

In my opinion, Cumming’s bill isn’t anti-business, unless, of course, your idea of business is doesn't include developing career options that include jobs that pay living wages, support the healthy growth of Maine communities and enable Maine to compete on the global stage. Retail sector jobs provide support for none of these and in fact, is leading Maine down a path to the bottom that perpetuates an economy that leaves us with two kinds of Mainers; the haves (who exploit low-wage workers and benefit from that model) and the have-nots.

I wrote three long posts that are a pretty good starting point for anyone who wants to understand the concerns that Glenn Cummings, Susan Porter and others have with uncontrolled big box development.

In Big-box bait and switch, Part I, which developed after I read Stacey Mitchell’s excellent book, Big Box Swindle, I lay out my own concerns about the preponderance of big box development that stretches up and down our state, like some kind of mange, fouling our pristine countryside and former open spaces.

If you want to have a sense of big box development run amok, drive to our state’s capital, in Augusta and in particular, the area across from the Augusta Civic Center. That area continues to metastasize, like a cancer. Apparently, Augusta wants more of this, as the west side of town, behind the Senator Inn, where you exit I-95 to access Western Avenue, is now being dug up and paved over, under the guise of economic development and with a new set of big boxes, anchored by a Target store.

I hope Cumming’s bill passes, because I think it’s exactly what Maine needs. The opponents calling it anti-business show their business orientation to be firmly in the camp that says the function of business is to always put profits ahead of people. In my book that’s not healthy for our communities and shows an anti-progressive business sentiment, oriented only towards maximizing profit.

Maine can do much better and ought to, particularly in light of growing concerns about global warming and climate change. Our state ought to take the lead in sustainable development and promote that to the rest of the U.S.

[The majority of information for this post is based upon a feature story that was done by Murray Carpenter, during Friday’s (April 27th) Maine Things Considered Program, on MPNN radio.]

Wal-Mart: Planting flags where the sun don't shine

There are very few companies that mine the vein of pro-American, red-white-and-blue flag-waving patriotism, like Wal-Mart. Walk into any one of its thousands of stores and the pro-American, love-it-or-leave it ambience is readily apparent, right on down to the piped in redneck country tunes playing on the sound system.

Watch any local television station and your bound to have the privilege of viewing one of Wal-Mart’s hokey ads, equating their corporate theft with small town values and extolling the chain’s supposed commitment to community causes—like low-wage jobs, environmental damage and sprawl are values I desire for my little corner of the world!

What bothers me the most and is most ironic, is that the people who have the most to lose by supporting Wal-Mart, merrily drop their hard-earned money on counters in community, after community, all over the country. These duped consumers are the very people that Sam Walton’s heirs keep pitching their disingenuous marketing drivel to.

It reminds me of Thomas Frank’s book, What’s The Matter With Kansas, which came out in 2005. Frank wonders how his fellow Midwesterners—descended from free-soil, abolitionist progressives and prairie socialists—could back a candidate with an agenda like George Bush, who shows little, or no concern for the issues that ought to make these members of the working class deplore this midget of a man? Frank goes on at length about the place that historian Walter Prescott Webb called a “hotbed of persistent radicalism,” the seedbed of Social Security and agrarian reform, yet, it sided with the bosses and backed an ideology that promises the destruction of the liberal state's social-welfare safety net.

Just like Frank, I shake my head and wonder, whenever I drive by a Wal-Mart store and see the human vestiges of 20 plus years of class war, driving their run-down heaps of metal, all being drawn to Wal-Mart's smiley face like flies to shit.

On top of all the obvious reasons why consumers ought to march to their local spawn of Sam Walton and burn it to the ground, the multi-national retailer, whose motto ought to be, “profits, over people, all the time” is currently fighting legislation, which would tighten security at our ports and close some of the gaping holes in security that currently exist. Like always, Wal-Mart’s motive is profit, as if they couldn’t sacrifice a million, or two, to make sure that storage containers were properly scanned.

Since 9-11, Wal-Mart, along with its lobbying group, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, have systematically undercut security by working diligently to defeat proposals and undermine current laws that are designed to make our ports more, not less, secure. These slick lobbyists, with their expensive suits, probably with a flag pin affixed to their lapels, have been working overtime to sway Washington politicians to their position of making sure that Wal-Mart and some of their other clients—large retailers like Sears, Target, Home Depot, Best Buy—don’t have to have their foreign containers properly inspected. The primary reason—profits, at the risk of security for Americans.

Most recently, Wal-Mart, along with the RILA has been lobbying hard to ensure that their containers won’t be required to fall under recent legislation that calls for 100 percent scanning of all containers entering U.S. ports, which was part of a new U.S. House bill. Wal-Mart is claiming that it would needlessly impede the speed of imports potentially hurting Wal-Mart’s profits.

As Jerry once sang, “Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.” Wal-Mart is a master at that practice, while the cameras run—when the whir of the cameras stop, however and the lights go down, good ole’ Wal-Mart takes that very flag and sticks it up America’s hind orifice, while laughing all the way to the bank, with their loot.

Big-box bait and switch, Part III (Can we get there from here?)

This will be my final installment in my brief look at big-box blight, as it spreads across Maine (as well as many other similar areas of the country), felling trees, paving over fields and creating asphalt wastelands where fowl and fauna once roamed. My intention isn’t to be too overly dramatic. For me, however, the Wal-Mart issue is one that really pushes buttons and hits close to home.

I love Maine. Anyone who has read my book, or reads my posts about the Pine Tree State has figured that out by now. I know there is always a danger in standing against what some call progress. It’s easy to be labeled a crank, overly nostalgic, or even, a Luddite. There are times that I wear those badges, with a certain amount of pride. On this issue, however, I know I have company that makes this something more than just my own personal hobby-horse.

We can start with the Brookings Institute Report, Charting Maine's Future: An Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places that has garnered statewide support and praise. With the exception of a handful of the usual naysayers and negative types, the response has been primarily positive. What makes this even more impressive is the bipartisan nature of the support, with most of the state’s leaders and legislative contingent endorsing its findings.

For the people who have been paying attention and in particular, those of us that have lived here over the past 20 years, the explosion in low-density development that characterizes sprawl is quite evident. This is an area that Maine will have to address. Jobs are important, particularly well-paying jobs that pay a living wage for Maine’s workers. Not only Maine, but many other rural areas of the U.S. are finding that their local economies are being strangled by the influx of big-box retailers that exploit the local labor market and inject little or nothing into these communities in the way of social capital.

The Economic Policy Institute has a helpful calculator that offers the ability to find out where the starting point should be in wage structure. If you want to talk economic development and real job creation, I think this is a good starting point. Instead, as is most often the case, local officials are hailed when they create a couple of hundred entry level jobs, paying $8 or $9 an hour. This type of job creation just contributes to the ongoing demise of the middle class and kills any substantive economic growth that benefits people in the long run.

If you haven’t already read Stacy Mitchell’s book, I suggest taking some time this spring to plow through it. It is amazingly readable, given Mitchell’s thorough research and density of material that she packs into the book. In my opinion, it is one of the more important books to read for anyone who desires sustainable local economies and communities where people, rather than profits, are given priority. I also suggest the organization that Mitchell is affiliated with, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

In addition to the EPI’s calculator, their site has a lot of pertinent material that will help you to better understand the dangers inherent in big-box development. Information is power and sites like this one will help you acquire the information that you’ll need to speak intelligently to your friends, neighbors and family members about why you have issues with Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and other similar corporate retailers.

All of us can be agents for positive change in our communities—in fact, we should be striving to be people who are willing to fight for local and regional values, preserving our unique landscape, one which befits the area of the country where we live. We don’t have to succumb to the homogenization that has overtaken so much of the U.S. By banding together with other folks who value their local bookstore, farmer’s market and neighborhood grocery store, or coffee shop, we can be like the two mothers, Eleanor Kinney and Jenny Mayher, in Damariscotta, who cared enough about their small community and its unique character to organize a group of other like-minded residents and as a result, Wal-Mart wasn’t allowed into that area of Midcoast Maine.

I’ll end by saying that there are locally-owned businesses that aren’t much better than the Wal-Marts of this world. In fact, there are businesses owned by Mainers that stock an ample supply of merchandise manufactured in third-world countries and that rely on exploitation of labor in those parts of the world. There are other businesses, while considerably smaller than Wal-Mart that still engage in tactics and seek their own success, at the expense of other smaller businesses. That’s one of the major drawbacks with capitalism’s model. There are always going to be winners and losers.

Given the choice we have, however, I still think we can do better than bowing down before the big-box deities of the retail kingdom. By preserving our local economies, we’re maintaining control over an important area of our daily lives, in a world where control and autonomy is rapidly disappearing.

Big-box Bait and Switch, Part II (the myth of lower prices)

If you ask big-box shoppers why they shop at Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and any other similar store, the most common reason given is lower prices. Because these large retailers have an advantage due to economies of scale and buying clout, it would seem logical, then that they would in fact offer lower prices on most items and goods. On closer inspection however, “always lower prices” may not be the reality.

Wal-Mart, more than any of the other big-box retailers lives by the perception that their prices are lower than anyone else’s. From the smiley faces in their incessant ads to their famous slogan, this mega-retailer has convinced shoppers that they're getting the best deal at Wal-Mart, whether that’s true, or not.

In some instances, Wal-Mart will lower prices in order to drive the competition’s prices down, or worse, put them out of business. After that occurs, stores have then been known to up their so-called “everyday low prices.” Also, Wal-Mart’s prices are cheaper on some items simply because they are of inferior quality. There is no comparison between a shovel whose handle bends and breaks when shoveling heavy snow and one made by Rugg Mfg., or some other high quality U.S. manufacturer.

According to Kenneth Stone, an economist at Iowa State University, all big-box stores utilize what’s called a pricing strategy known as “signposts” and “blinds.” Signposts are items that most consumers know the price of and blinds are those items that most customers have less knowledge of. By keeping the prices lower than the competition on bananas, diapers, four-packs of light bulbs and other items in prominent places, consumers assume that all items (these signposts) have lower prices.

In 2005, Consumer Reports found that on items such as ranges, refrigerators, vacuums and other large appliances, independent retailers out priced all the big-box retailers they surveyed. Also, the magazine also found that consumers rated the independent stores highest in customer service and selection. So why do shoppers continue to flock to the big-box stores at the peril of losing local control, putting U.S. manufacturers out of business and cutting their own economic throats? It’s really baffling and without any clear rational explanation.

Despite clear evidence that Wal-Mart and other big-box chains eliminate competition, destroy manufacturing jobs paying above average wages (with benefits) and on top of that, with evidence indicating that their prices may not always be lower and their selection on many items isn’t up to snuff with independent retailers, it’s tempting to argue that many Americans have become just too damn stupid to know any better.

One area I’m particularly concerned about when it comes to big-box stores and mega-retailers, is bookselling. While perceptions of most consumers is that the local Barnes & Noble, or other chain has a greater selection than the independent bookseller, in fact, chain stores’ merchandising policies tend to focus their attention and dollars on the big-name authors. As a result, new novelists and non-fiction titles get relegated to the back of the store. Midlist authors and their books, if they have succeeded, almost always attribute their success to the independent bookstores.

In our local area, independent stores like Longfellow Books in Portland (an independent in every sense of the word, primarily because of its wonderfully feisty owner, Chris Bowe), Bookland in Brunswick and even smaller stores like BookMarcs in Bangor, have staff picks and highlight titles other than Stephen King’s, or J.K. Rowling’s latest runaway bestseller. Taking nothing away from these authors, there are thousands of other wonderful books, many of them by first-time authors, who would end up selling poorly and ending up out-of-print if not for the bibliophiles that more often than not run the independent stores.

Wal-Mart also tries to act as moral arbiter of a community when it refuses to stock music CDs that have parental guidance stickers, or deal with themes that it deems inappropriate. This kind of censorship isn’t limited to Wal-Mart, either. Blockbuster requires movie makers produce “sanitized” versions of movies that they consider objectionable.

The resulting homogeneity that comes as a result of this shrinking of retail choices doesn’t bode well for innovation, or just plain diversity of products, not to mention how it portends the demise of artistic risk-taking by musicians, writers, and other creative types.

So, if Wal-Mart and the other chain stores are so destructive to our communities, then what can, or should we do to keep them out of our communities? And if they have already set up shop, what are our options as consumers?

I’ll be back with at least one more post to answer these questions and focus some of my own thoughts on what our roles and responsibilities are in these matters.

Big-box Bait and Switch, Part I

It’s difficult to pick one thing and say that it’s the quintessential matter facing us as Americans. But after reading most of Stacy Mitchell’s Big-Box Swindle, I’d challenge anyone to argue what’s a more important economic trend than the systematic gutting of our local business culture and the disappearance of commerce along Main Street USA, as Americans kneel at the altar of the big-box behemoths.

While local, independent book stores close and are replaced by Borders, or Barnes and Noble and locally-owned hardware stores that have been in communities for decades board up their storefronts because they can’t compete with the prices at Home Depot, or Lowe’s, our neighbors continue to accumulate stuff, manufactured off-shore, courtesy of the sweat shops that are necessary for perpetuating our addictions to convenience and everyday low prices. The perpetual pressure brought to bear on locally-owned and community-centered businesses, by these corporate giants chewing up farmland like a virus on steroids, have initiated an economic race to the bottom. Not only have they have pretty much destroyed a proud tradition of locally- owned family businesses, they’ve all but snuffed out manufacturing in the U.S., a traditional occupation that was a foundation of middle-class American prosperity for the first 40 years following World War II.

The loss of both manufacturing jobs and local business autonomy have led to a 20 year decline in the share of national income flowing to the middle class. In all but two states, all new jobs being created pay less than those being lost. This ying and yang of the new economy becomes our daily bread, while at the same time, Americans seem to be helpless to resist shopping ourselves out of any remaining hope of decent jobs, with living wages and benefits.

Mitchell’s book clearly lays out the facts about what’s at stake as big-box stores become bigger and what little prosperity and economic self-reliance remains in our downtowns, if they aren’t boarded up already, is in peril. Mitchell herself, is a senior researcher for The Institute for Local Self Reliance and as such, builds her case fact by fact and anecdote by anecdote.

Her book comes along at an interesting time for me. I’m six months into a job that I’m thoroughly enjoying and actively engaged in some interesting projects. One of these in particular, is locally-focused and is helping to train some people and engage them in a skill-based program that is reaping some positive early results. As I work to help people build a foundation of job skills for the first time and help them take some small, but positive steps in their work lives, I’m also aware that in the community where I’m based, Lewiston (as well as our sister community across the river, Auburn), a plethora of low-wage and low-skill retail jobs have been dumped on both communities in the name of economic development. It seems counter-intuitive on one hand, for business people in the community to decry the skill-level of our workers and then, when skills-based training is provided and the skills of the workforce are upgraded, applaud the efforts of economic development people who ought to know better, as they bring in businesses that are intent on driving down wages and lowering the economic opportunities of people who have already seen their livelihoods turned upside-down when manufacturing jobs, as well as occupations focused on textiles and shoes disappeared, some thirty years earlier.

What’s even more frustrating to me is how many so-called leaders in the community spend so much time patting themselves on the back merely because they’ve managed to open a few boarded-up storefronts, fix a dilapidated arena (at a net yearly loss of $500K) and attract a handful of service industry jobs that still fall short of a living wage, while handing the keys to both communities over to absentee corporate entities like Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, as well as the usual chain culinary establishments. There is only so much disposable income to go around and while a handful of higher-end restaurants have opened and some boutique-style shops have sprung up, those have been in the minority.

Mitchell’s Big-Box Swindle has been a “call-to-arms” for me and has helped me to sense the danger this area faces as we turn over the potential for sustainable growth and forego slower, economic progress, for the pottage of the quick-fix. While job-creation numbers tend to make ignorant bureaucrats genuflect and wax poetic, the lasting damage big-box development will wreak here and in our state capital of Augusta is rarely breached in any of our daily newspapers. While a handful of smart growth advocates preach to the converted, Maine continues to barrel headlong down an economic path of difficult, if not impossible to reverse consequences. While political leadership has never been the state’s forte, it’s hard for me to watch our small businesses, already struggling to survive, lose any hope for the future as large scale, big-box development has been sold, like snake oil of old, to community, after community, all over the state.

I hope to use Mitchell’s book, as well as some other research material she’s made me aware of, to piggy-back on this post with a couple of other related ones over the next week. In fact, I may have found my next writing project, as the subject of people and places being more important than mere profit is an area near and dear to my heart.