Office of the CEO
Consolidated Widget International

Dear Mayor Bieter:

We’ve been looking closely at your community, as well as several other potential locations, for a major expansion of our widget manufacturing firm. (Our widgets are the best on the market, which is growing exponentially.)

Boise was the “short list,” based on your college football team and your generous community support of the Special Olympics. Also because you are such a bike-friendly community; our employees are both community and outdoor minded.

I regret to inform you that we’ve narrowed our plans down to either Little Rock or Cincinatti. For you see, although college athletics, community and the outdoors are all significant, we feel we can only attract the very best Widget people if we can offer them a Streetcar, as well.

Best of luck to you and your pathetic little streetcar-less burg.

Sincerely yours,
John Dough
Consolidated Widget

It doesn’t matter how much you try to convince people that a sow’s ear is a silk purse. Eventually someone notices what is coming out from the other end of the pig. It is really frustrating to spend public tax dollars on something many of us don’t want! The Broncos are a great team, but can’t play at the level of some of the big mid-west and southern teams. This is not meant to be negative, just the real world. And the streetcar, Bieter is just plain nuts!! That was meant to be negative!

A correction: In our editorial on the Canyon County jail, Sheriff Chris Smith said a couple of private businesses have approached him about supporting a bond. We were advocating the use of private funding, not public dollars, as your headline says.
–Kevin Richert, editorial page editor

EDITOR NOTE–We have fixed the headline.

The fact is, these PR campaigns are effective. Otherwise, our representatives on the City Council wouldn’t be willing to spend so much of our money on them. Moreover, most of the general public won’t find out about these guys misappropriating $90,000 of our money because the local news media (aside from the local talk radio shows) only gives the briefest mention of what Team Dave is doing.

No wonder Boise voters didn’t bother to show up at the polls to throw these guys out of office!

And all this time I thought liberals were against torture! The lack of response from Bieter to the community, the “spinning” of the discussion, and “telling us” what the majority of Boiseans want is certainly “tortuous” to any level of common sense or logic!! Water boarding would seem like a picnic compared to what these idiots are trying to force down our throats!!

PR worked for invading Iraq. What’s the big deal?

PS (from Get a Clue) – The PR really helped up this week. TCU, who declined PR, moved up and BSU dropped to #6. And, I thought this was good perspective from an ESPN reporter today:
Posted by ESPN.com’s Ted Miller

What did we learn from Week 10 of Pac-10 action?

1. The Pac-10 is out of the nation title hunt (again): With Oregon’s defeat at Stanford, every Pac-10 team now has at least two losses. That’s not going to get a team to the late game in Pasadena. Athletic directors and conference administrators might want to think about two things: 1. Less ambitious nonconference scheduling; 2. End the nine-game, round-robin conference schedule. The way to remain unbeaten — or to maximize win potential in the conference, top to bottom — is to play schedules like most of the teams that are presently unbeaten play. On the positive side, the Oregon vs. Boise State rankings debate is likely solved. At least in terms of its meaning within the BCS picture.

What cost a streetcar? More lost jobs, early retirements for solid workers, more taxes, disrupted streets and businesses? In all seriousness, the PR dollars being spent in this state on frivolous projects during a recession are an absolute rape of taxpayers. As a contractor, I could do the job for a third of the cost. However, I don’t believe in the project. I hope the petition calling for a vote on the issue is successful and that voters get a clue and halt the effort before their jobs fall victim to elitist nonsense. Way too much emphasis and money spent on football. Unemployment figures rise weekly, foreclosures continue to climb, etc. To pretend that all is well is reason enough to dump insincere incumbents who continue the farce. 2010, 2011, 2012.

KJ Bronco:
1) Where is your name?
2) Even if GV was 11 man, your scenrio is just dumb. Again, get a clue.
3) My brother is an administrator at TCU in athletics and he just confirmed for me an hour ago that are NOT have not been using PR firm tactics. So, get your facts straight. They have been playing better teams and doing everything right to become a BCS school. Hiring a PR firm when you can’t control the outcome each weak is just stupid. And, mark my words. This will come back to haunt BSU in the butt.
4) Finally, they went DOWN to #6 from #5. Wow, the PR firm is working wonders. Now the whole world is aware of their weak schedule and their weak showing on Friday night.

Why to they think the answer to the jail problem is more and bigger . They could learn from “Sheriff Joe” in Arizona. Why don’t they? Why do they need bunks to sleep on? The homeless don’t. What’s wrong with mats on the floor. I asked the Statesman. They won’t print my letter !