My Anti-Wal-Mart Nomenclature

Big Box Retailer
A large store around 200,000 sq ft with a lot of departments. Imagine the old Gemco or Fedco on steroids, or Home Depot sized Target crossed with a supermarket. There's a big Albertsons in, I think, West Covina, that might qualify. A Big Box is like the old idea of the "city center" where shopping is concentrated, except in this situation, Wal-Mart owns almost all of the businesses, and is the landlord.

Big Box Retail in some detail.

Astroturf
A fake "grassroots" group that's put together by a big business or political interest group to give the impression that there's popular support for their position. Rosemead PRIDE is organized by Mike Lewis, a consultant for Wal-Mart. It is an "astroturf" group.
Grassroots
Describes anything political that starts from "the people" or individuals who organize themselves into a group, usually, to represent their own interests. Save Our Community is a grassroots group. (Grassroots does often imply environmental or liberal groups, but there are also conservative grassroots groups.)
Predatory Pricing
The practice of finding out what your competitor pays for a specific, popular item, and then setting your price at that price... or below it. Wal-Mart can do this because it has a lot of money, and can wait out the competition until it goes under, or can try to profit by selling the customer other things that are profitable. Wal-Mart has been accused of predatory pricing.
Automation
An effective way to increase productivity is to implement automation. The best example of retail automation is McDonald's, where the work of "cooking" has been replaced with the work of "reheating." Automation has also been called (insultingly) de-skilling.
Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs)
A contract specifying benefits that go to the community surrounding a development. A CBA negotiated with the Staples Center stipulated that a number of jobs go to people who live near the center, and that the wages would be a "living wage". The Rosemead Wal-Mart development has no such contract. At the County presentation, they stated that the City does not tell its businesses what to pay its workers or how to do business.

For more info on CBAs, see Policylink.

The General Plan
A General Plan is a document prepared by a city that describes how land will be used in the future. For example, it could say that shopping would be concentrated up near Valley and Rosemead, and offices would be down near Walnut Grove and Rush. (As it currently says.)
Zoning
Zoning is a legal definition of what kind of land uses are permissible on a specific parcel. Different types of zones are defined; for example, Residential, Commercial, Agricultural, Manufacturing. A parcel with Residential zoning allows for homes. Zoning is a tool to implement the General Plan.
Spot Zoning
Altering the zoning to fit a specific development. In this specific case, the zoning is not being altered. Rather, there's a request to amend the General Plan. This appears to be a more drastic change than changing the zoning.
Lawsuit
Every city says this about lawsuits: PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that if you file a lawsuit challenging any final decision on any public hearing item listed in this agenda, the issues in the lawsuit may be limited to the issues which were raised at the public hearing or presented in writing to the City at or before the public hearing.  PLEASE TAKE FURTHER NOTICE that Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.6 imposes a 90-day deadline for the filing of any lawsuit challenging final action on an agenda item which is subject to Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.5.
Cathedral City, California
A legend in the anti-Wal-Mart world. This city had a Wal-Mart for ten years, and, once the redevelopment debts were paid off, and the city thought it'd be rolling in the dough, Wal-Mart revealed plans to shut down its store, and to open one in neighboring Palm Desert, right on the City's border. Today, Cathedral City is begging Palm Desert to share some of the tax revenue.
Antitrust
Business laws regulating competition. People are starting to accuse Wal-Mart of being a monopoly, because it's the largest corporation in the world, and owns 40% of the retailer market, by some counts. For some legal advice to businesses about antitrust laws, see antitrust.org. At present, the federal administrations, both Republican and Democrat, tend to be relaxed about antitrust. See this essay about Microsoft.
Living Wage
A term for a wage, calcluated by a formula, that is supposed to be enough for someone to subsist locally. Few entry level jobs pay a living wage. That might be okay. Far too many long-term jobs don't either. That leads to significant social problems.
Competitive Wages
A Wal-Mart way to say "we pay whatever other stores pay starting workers". They try to keep the pay close to that number.
Open Door Policy
Wal-Mart has correctly identified that bad communication leads to disgruntled, suspicious workers. So they implemented an open door policy. On the other hand, workers are discouraged from talking to each other. That might be called a "zipped lip policy."