Wal-Mart: The next green PAC?

It's not news that large companies hold tremendous monetary sway over our politics, especially unabashedly red ones like Wal-Mart.

But this from Green Wombat is a new twist: Wal-Mart might be responsible for nudging Republican hopefuls for 2008 toward green-washing at least, if not full green cred. They developed a sales survey of their green(-ish) products and found that "18.62 percent of residents in Republican-leaning states are making green purchases at its stores versus 18.68 percent of shoppers in Democrat-dominated states. (Of course, given the demographic of Wal-Mart's customer base, there's probably far more green blue-staters - those legions of Whole Foods shoppers who wouldn't step foot in a Wal-Mart.)." There's also that word 'resident'; I'm not sure if that's Wal-Mart's or Green Wombat's, and it could be quite different if they used 'Wal-Mart shoppers.' Regardless, they then distributed that finding to the GOP, stressing that "the environment will be a hot topic for next year's election."

Given their penchant for gathering accurate information, and their superlative clout in both the political and business worlds, this is an interesting complement to the internally-directed green actions Wal-Mart's been taking the past few years. Whatever their reasons, they are not just chipping away at all the bad juju they've produced, they're also turning themselves (and hence the entire big-box retail industry) toward a much more efficient and sustainable road.

A victory for Traverse City

Great news for supercool Traverse City Film Festival attendees (of which I hope to one day count myself - a local paper described it as "the best thing to happen here since the Ice Age left us Lake Michigan.") and downtown Traverse City via Cinema Treasures: the venerable State Theater will be re-opened year-round, showing independent and smaller-venue films.

This is a good model for other essential redevelopment efforts in the state, as it nimbly drew together stakeholders like Michael Moore and his Festival board, the Rotary Charities of Traverse City (the previous owners), and even Carmike Cinemas, Georgia-based owners of larger mainstream theaters in the area.

M and I recently traveled to TC for a wedding held in the recently-renovated Opera House also downtown, a well-done and worthwhile effort. We drove past the State and I remember thinking it'd be a cool destination in an otherwise shopping-centric tourist town if someone could get it polished up. Nice to see it will happen.

UPDATE: Even though the State just hosted the Film Festival, some more work will be done (in addition to the new screen, sound system, and projectors) and it will have a grand opening November 17. If you'd like a change of pace, they're looking for a new manager.

And, if you'd like a run-down of some new queue potentials, see Chad's review of the 2007 festival.

I have some of these laying around too...

...but they didn't get as much traction.

image courtesy of Defective Yeti

where do I sign up?

Screw the circus. I wanna run away and join the air races. If any almost-forgotten sport's time has come again, it's this one, which could make NASCAR look like the tentative shuffling of old men.

If you're lucky enough to be out there, one's coming up in San Diego...

http://www.redbullairrace.com/

UPDATE: Or,... if you're lucky enough to be in Detroit, one's coming here as well!! YES! The Super Bowl was cool, but really, nowhere near as cool as high speed, right angle flying through pylons over water.

!!!

I dunno how you says it, but I likes it!

also, the cover art is reminiscent in its strange complexity and compelling detail of the 70s album covers my tiny eyes would investigate for long stretches on the floor of the living room. do little kids do that anymore?