I'm kind of bummed out, because this website is pretty dead, except for my little rants and writings. There are scores of people making this fight happen. I can't name all the people involved, but, here goes: Marlene, David, David, David, Minnie, Estelle, Richard, Jim, Edward, Rose Marie, Larry, Mary, Jane, Lydia, Ving, Helen, Marie, Velia, Jean, John, June, Ron, Jerry, Lucy, Martha, Peggy, Alan, Yuki, Lori, Mabel, Fr. Mike, Alice, Juan, Fr. Ralph, Jose, Artie, Joe, Linda, Carmen, Mike, Gertie, Mary, Grace, Lynda, John, Henry, Anonymous, Anonymous. There are also at least a couple dozen more people at the church whom I don't know, another couple dozen who have gone to meetings who I haven't met, and at least as many as I forgot to include. Rosa for putting up with the stress. All the spouses who have been so supportive. The kids who got registered to support.

If you have someone to thank, you can say so in a comment, your own blog, or a forum posting. Don't let good deeds go unrecognized. Gratitude is contagious.

The Walton family loves to give money to politicians. The site OpenSecrets takes public political contribution information and puts it on the web.

Walton Family at OpenSecrets.org.

Not only that. Wal-Mart, the PAC, have paid $1.5 million to p

A Panda Express is slated to open up in a Wal-Mart in Pahrump, Nevada.

Pahrump might sound familiar, because it's where late night talk show host Art Bell is from. He's well known for his conspiracy and space alien theories.

Notably, PE came out in support of WM during the Planning Commission meeting. How's that for a c

The governer vetoed the bill that would require developers of "big box" retail stores like Wal-Mart to produce an economic impact study to inform local governments about the likely effects of a development upon the local economy. The reports would have detailed the impacts on busineses, wages, public services, and traffic.

He also vetoed, in another bill, a raise in the minimum wage from $6.75 an hour to $7.75 an hour.

California Local Government Information Website has information about local government laws.

At that big meeting, an insulting guy who called us "stupid" claimed that you'd have to suck an exhaust pipe to suffer respiratory damage. I've never heard of anything so stupid.

A recent study by UCLA said that people who live near traffic suffer more from respiratory problems.

Now this new study from USC shows that pollution causes a reduction in lung size.

http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/story.php?id=8212

Folks have been emailing me about the latest Wal-Mart offense: messing with the spiritual energy at Teotihuacan, a pre-historic pyramid just outside Mexico City. A small pre-Hispanic altar was found on the parking lot site. (No, the odds of finding this on the Rosemead site are slim. The soil here appears to be fill, built up on top of the riverbed. Any ancient remains are well below the asphalt.)

A community member asked about Wal-Mart's practice of purchasing life insurance on its workers, aka "dead peasant insurance."

Here's the story.