Wal-Mart is Taking it to the People

What do you do when Inglewood's city council won't let you bring wage-depressing sweatshop-esque jobs and urban blight to a 60 acre abandoned lot? Take it to the people.

The proposal would essentially exempt Wal-Mart from all of Inglewood's planning, zoning and environmental regulations, creating a city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules. Wal-Mart has hired an advertising and public relations firm to market the initiative and is spending more than $1 million to support the measure, known as initiative 04-A.

For its own part, Wal-Mart sees things differently:

"Organized labor is attempting to bully Wal-Mart and its customers," said Peter Kanelos, the Southern California coordinator for Wal-Mart's community affairs division.

Ummm, is that the same organized labor that you have rigorously stomped out of Wal-Mart & its employees? Stange how something that you have completely eviscerated can "bully" you...

Fortunately it appears that Wal-Mart's attempt to usurp the Inglewood city council's power to grant building permits runs afoul of the law. Funny thing how an attempt to circumvent environmental and zoning regulations would be illegal.

Perhaps worst of all, the wage Wal-Mart pays the signature-gathers who helped put the initiative on the ballot exceeds the wage they pay their employees.