Maybe Hercules should hold a referendum like we did.

Eminent domain has now been officially approved to take private property from one private entity, and give it to another private entity, at the whim of politicians.

So, is it the whim of politicians? Or the will of the citizens? If Hercules held a referendum and the citizens ratified the city's position (which is to say, repeated for your benefit their approval of the master plan that WalMart wants to ignore), would the expressed will of the people of the town count for anything with you? Or would you come up with yet another reason why WalMart's quest for profit trumps the rights of people to control their own cities?

It's true that WalMart could go somewhere else. So why do they feel the need to threaten Hercules with bankruptcy? It may not be a hill you need to die on, but WalMart seems willing to go to the mat to demonstrate that resistance is futile. This a naked power struggle, and if the people of Hercules lose, the precedent it would set would be horrific.

The phrase "draw riff-raff into your neighborhood" is colorful, but stripped of the melodrama there remain solid and conventional concerns about alteration of traffic flow and impact on the local environment. Do you think WalMart will foot the bill for widening the roads to accommodate all the out-of-towners drawn to the megastore? New traffic signals? Pay the salaries of additional traffic cops? Extra street-sweepers for the increased litter? Not bloody likely. WalMart stores are intended to serve an entire region, which they do profitably by concentrating people from all over the region in one central location, concentrating all sorts of problems as well. WalMart not only sucks local businesses dry, it's a parasite on the local infrastructure.

He he he...I just tried to Google "WalMart traffic" and got 11,000,000 hits. Guess I'm not the only one who's noticed the problem.