How The Grift Of Economic Development Hurts YOU – And Sucks Up Farmland

After the video we posted with Julianne Romanello about the Grift of Economic Development (YouTube, Rumble), a comment was posted to the Facebook livestream by a neighbor who lives nearby. It was such an eye-opener, I felt I had to reproduce it on the blog in its entirety. Thank you Lisa O’Brien for the comment below:

This is absolutely true. My eyes were first opened to this by watching the movie, “Walmart: the High Cost of Low Price”. We had no Walmarts in the Bay Area at that time, so I always wondered what this magical place was like. (Hey, we had Trader Joe’s and IKEA. We were doin’ fine.) I learned so much from that documentary, mostly how one large corporation can destroy a small town in under a month.

It became a struggle for me to support capitalism for quite some time.

In my own small town in the Bay Area, I saw this as well. I lived in an actual “diverse” area filled with “ethnic” restaurants run by immigrants straight off the boats of the countries they fled. I watched those wonderful businesses fold one by one, crushed by the weight of California’s tax- and litigation-happy governance. Some survived for a surprisingly long period of time, but none survived forever. Unlike Walmart.

Fast-forward to our life here in OK: when we moved to an unincorporated area near the Guthrie/Edmond border (but not Guthrie. Or Edmond. Or Arcadia), there were cows grazing off the exit from I-35. You could drive the miles it took to get to our house without ever seeing another car. Ever. I know this, because I made a grand gesture of 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘵 every single time we’d exit off the freeway. Never another car. Ever. What a delightful and refreshing change from the traffic of California! Just look at them COWS, everyone! Woot!

Today, nine short years later–and truthfully, it was happening 5 years ago–we are often backed-up while exiting that same exit off I-35. The new Diamond cloverleaf roundabout fancy exchange we were promised (to be finished in 2020!) to help alleviate traffic has, shockingly, not happened. Not even a little bit.

But you know what DID happen? Sit down–this will be so surprising! We got a new school. There are 𝘴𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭 new “planned communities” with names like “Babbling Brook Havens” and “Lonely White Pine Estates” and “Mountain Meadows Fancy-House Place” or whatever  where fields and cows used to exist. Yet another Dollar General went up, even though there didn’t appear to be a need for it. An OnCue was built where once stood an old, abandoned house; the perfect backdrop for an amazing photo shoot. There are new fast-food restaurants, many of them, with plans to build 𝘢𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘹𝘦𝘴 in the same space as the fast food places, ostensibly to ensure no one has to walk far to become as unhealthy as ever.

They cut down an entire wooded area on the NW side of the freeway, and that blighted eyesore has sat there for several years now, not providing shelter for critters or oxygen for anyone.

And still–no Diamond Cloverleaf to lessen the burden of traffic. My husband has to leave 15 minutes earlier than he did in 2015 to arrive at the same time.

I’m seeing the exact results of what this video discusses right before my eyes, at this very moment in time. While I’m grateful we have our little spot in an area that backs up to someone else’s acreage–thus decreasing the chance we may be staring down the barrel of yet another Taco Bell anytime soon–I am no longer as complacent or naïve as I was 9 years ago. And that makes me so sad.