Comment / By Sofa king wee tar / Dec. 15, 9:16 a.m.

To all the people who fear this “encroachment”; it’s going to be okay, the long bus is just like the short bus, just bigger.

Comment / By Eliza soapboxer / Dec. 15, 10:12 a.m.

Another place to by chemical drenched food wrapped in plastic.

Comment / By when you think of walmart… / Dec. 15, 2:33 p.m.

When you think of walmart, think of their sweatshops full of pre-teen kids working 10 hour days, seven days a week for 12 cents an hour.

Comment / By Jane / Dec. 15, 4:25 p.m.

Walmart just got the Supreme Court to bail it out of a huge discrimination lawsuit against it’s female employees. The majority of Walmart’s minimum wage employees draw on other government services to provide coverage for the benefits and wages they do not get. Walmart tried to ditch hiring older workers when they figured out this raised their health costs. Since management is centralized 98% of the living wage jobs associated with Walmart will not be local. How does Carrington’s rep look in the mirror each morning after that comment?

Comment / By Caught in a lie, bad journalism. / Dec. 15, 6:14 p.m.

““There are some stats our tenant has that clearly show Humboldt County has shoppers that travel north, south and east to shop at their stores already.”

Why didn’t Zach ask to see these stats or in the very least ask him to elaborate??? PRETTY DAMN IMPORTANT THING HE SAID.

Zach continues with his own aside “that’s a lot of cheap lettuce.” Why not note, as opponents of the megastore constantly do, that it’s the most toxic lettuce legally allowed in the nation?

Why didn’t Zach grill anybody involved on the countless statistics that refute their claims that everybody’s been “tickled pink” to see Walmart come to town?

Poor journalism, as heavily bias reporting as it gets.

Comment / By correction… / Dec. 15, 6:16 p.m.

correction, Judy’s poor reporting, I was just reading the other article. BOO! Your team is a bunch of ass kissers.

Comment / By Graham Wellington / Dec. 16, 9:54 a.m.

Kim Starr has been secretly campaigning to have Wal-Mart come to Humboldt. She needs a bulk buy alternative to Costco for all the Kleenex she uses. Boo-hoo-hoo (sniff)

Comment / By uh… / Dec. 16, 12:54 p.m.

Fetishists like 9:54 need to go away. It’s sub-creepy.

Comment / By Patricia / Dec. 16, 1:16 p.m.

I don’t think it is any big mystery why all the secrecy…that’s only way to keep the no-growthers and anti-business people from throwing a tizzy fit. I, for one, am looking forward to Walmart and I hope they force some of our “locals” like Safeway and Ray’s to lower prices.

Comment / By Welcome Wal-Mart / Dec. 16, 10:04 p.m.

Why the secrecy? Maybe because Wal-Mart knows that Humboldt is filled with anti-growth, anti-job, delusional, ideologues who have epileptic fits whenever they hear the name. Will folks be forced at gunpoint to shop, or heaven forbid, work at Walmart? As for sweatshop labor, if you are really so concerned you need to get rid of your computer. Do you know how much the Chinese child slaves are paid to assemble those? Do you know what kind of hours they work or what their living conditions are? Humboldt hasn’t changed, it’s still populated by misinformed hippie-crits, intent on keeping the place a dismal backwater. Sad, really sad.

Comment / By Brian Murphy / Dec. 17, 10:59 a.m.

@##$% WALMART Eureka businesses had better invest in plywood to shutter all the places that will close down for good over the next few years. Walmart will do nothing positive for Eureka or the entire county. Denial and ignorance reign supreme. Might as well just tear down the mall and build a Walmart supercenter. Every retail store that exists today in Eureka and the region will be and can only be negatively affected by this tragedy. 200 piss poor jobs, and some sales tax revenue. What a treat!

Comment / By Brian Murphy / Dec. 17, 11:15 a.m.

If you don’t want to shop at Walmart, then don’t. It wont make any difference. The damage to the community and other businesses in the area will be done no matter how you feel or what you do. The same fools that are glad that Walmart is coming to town and bag on those that oppose Walmart will be putting their foot in there mouth in 5 to 10 years when Eureka turns into the @#$%hole that they hoped for.

Comment / By slie / Dec. 17, 12:29 p.m.

Not all jobs are created equally.

While the creation of a couple hundred jobs sounds great on paper, anyone with a brain can quickly realize that employers that pay terrible wages which require gov’t subsidized programs for their employees to survive will probably not be a great addition to a struggling rural area.

It’s not an issue of anti-growth, it’s more of a refuting of the idea that we should accept ANY growth, regardless of the documented negative consequences associated with that growth.

Comment / By Nimby / Dec. 17, 7:53 p.m.

The Bayshore Mall plans to move Ross dress for less to the empty Borders spot and lease their existing space to Walmart. Combining both spaces will give Walmart the real square footage they want/need, not to mention East and West parking and entrance. Or maybe Ross goes to Hometown buffet’s empty spot and lease the whole sh-bang to the gangbanger. Just thinking inside the b’box….no coastal permit, yo.

Comment / By ALAS / Dec. 18, 12:11 a.m.

Another painfully inept, milquetoast story by the North Coast Journal.

No other retail giant shares the notoriety of Walmart, due solely to their own egregious record of injury to employees and rural economies.

Decades of economic research, books documentary videos, class-action lawsuits, State’s Attorneys General complaints, Supreme Court filings, and not one word about this company’s record???

There’s nothing informative, or positive, about quoting this corporation’s agents to the exclusion of Walmart’s overwhelmingly negative context..IT’S HISTORY!

U.S. media once thrived on community-interest media. Now it’s up to outraged citizens to attempt to inform the public, easily dismissed as isolated “sore losers”.

This is the price we pay for a media paralyzed by fear and favor.

Comment / By Joel Mielke / Dec. 18, 10:04 a.m.

“paralyzed by fear and favor”?

So tell us, Alas, what would Judy Hodgson would be afraid of? And what is the favor is she paralyzed by?

Comment / By Alas / Dec. 18, 11:55 a.m.

Ad revenue plays the largest role in contemporary censorship, I suppose.

Like Walmart, fear and favor in the newsroom is also well-researched, and, like Walmart’s parasitic context, is equally self-censored by media.

Do you have a better explanation for Judy’s coverage of Walmart’s local history without a word regarding the overall context?

A context easily summarized in few words!

It reminds me of the recent book on the Pacific Coast trail by local HSU exec. Reese Hughs…not one word about the collapse of biodiversity or climate change or fresh water depletion, all having major impacts on the trail-experience.

“Keeping it positive” has reached a new low in reporting fundamental truths and contexts in U.S. media.

Comment / By Jane Fish / Dec. 19, 8:56 a.m.

Here is the conundrum. What are the odds that the people ranting about anti-growth policies are anti-outsourcing, anti-taxing, anti-health care reform, etc. The fact is that WalMart is a leader in outsourcing, lobbying for less regulation and taxation, and pushes their workers off onto county and statewide health systems—increasing YOUR costs and using your tax dollar. Buy a pair of socks today a penny cheaper than another store but pay a penny more as a taxpayer. So while you are happily shopping at WalMart you may be undermining all the other “values” and policies which you hold dear and near. You get the low cost bulk option at a cost to all of our futures. You are welcome to call people with other opinions any name you wish but a check on hypocrisy is not only for the liberals in this town.

Comment / By J. Alora / Dec. 19, 11:19 a.m.

For all the Walmart coming out of Humboldt here over the years, I’ve never once seen an explanation as to why Kmart, Target, and Costco are okay and Walmart is not. People just single out Walmart because it’s the biggest, much like the people who bad mouth McDonald’s while eating at Taco Bell.

Comment / By Brian Murphy / Dec. 19, 5:16 p.m.

I dont think that anybody said “Kmart, Target, and Costco are okay. But if you read up and educate your self you will see that there is a clear difference, in many ways.

Comment / By Digging The Hole Deeper / Dec. 19, 8:50 p.m.

If local media educated the communities they “serve” Jane Fish’s excellent synopsis (above) would be clear to all.

Furthermore, Walmart is merely bigger and badder, their record exposed an entire industry!

Communities cannot economically sustain unlimited numbers of poverty-wage, part-time, temporary jobs.

Neither can a nation.

America’s current boom in predator industries; big boxes, dollar stores, Rent-To-Own, bail bonds, check cashing, rental agencies, pawn shops, job scalpers and storage units, cannot sustain an economy 70% dependent upon consumption.

Comment / By slie / Yesterday, 10:33 a.m.

I’m sure the same people who dislike walmart dislike our other big box “neighbors” (corporations are people, remember?) just as much.

But I think a strong argument could be made that there is really no way to justify moving in another gigantic retailer into this area. Unless you’re a corporate profiteer, that is.

But hey, this is capitalism! The good news is that you can vote with your dollar, so they say. Just don’t be surprised when our quaint community becomes more and more of a homogenized dump as the market’s ever expanding hand continues to carve up Humboldt County for the purpose of massive corporate profits.

Comment / By In Reality / Yesterday, 11:27 a.m.

It’s crony capitalism, not “capitalism”.

Capitalism assumes a level playing field of competition, yet, current regulations enforce laws that manufacture unequally equipped subjects. (There’s been more Occupy Eureka protesters arrested than U.S. corporate executives directly responsible for the international economic meltdown).

I’ve visited many rural American cities where Walmart and Home Depot dominate the retail economy.

Unless citizens are willing to drive hours, they have a hard time “voting with their dollars”.

With big box saturation comes fewer choices and, eventually, higher prices.

Comment / By slie / Yesterday, 1:18 p.m.

I think you misunderstood my sarcasm…

Comment / By Joel Mielke / Yesterday, 1:31 p.m.

“Capitalism assumes a level playing field of competition…”?

Comment / By In Reality / Today, 12:42 p.m.

Is it not how the Right always defends their “free-market capitalist economy”?

Work harder and smarter and you have every opportunity of rising to the top.

Ask High Finance, the self-made provocateur extraordinaire.

Comment / By Greg Beach / Today, 12:56 p.m.

Yahoooooo! Home Depot can’t be far behind, and what I wouldn’t give for an Olive Garden or an In and Out Burger. Maybe even a Best Buy! Holy @#$*!