Saturday, May 9, 2015

Saturday, May9, 2015

SUNSHINE THE BEST DISINFECTANT?: Crony capitalism at work.
There are many connections to be made between the corporate world all of them orchestrated and executed by lobbyists. I would contend that lobbyists are in fact the engine of the corruption of capitalism. It is the lobbyist who advances the interests of the corporate client by any legal means possible. It is the lobbyist who plans and initiates regulations, tax laws, government influence or anything else that can influence federal action advancing the fortunes of his client usually at the expense of competitors, the functioning of the free market.

THE AUTHOR HAS IT ABOUT RIGHT: This is not brain surgery. Just ask Ben Carson.

ONE OF STEYN'S BEST PIECES: Very, very trenchant. Gotta love the But Boys, including O'Reilly.

PATHETIC: This is called feeding the beast of "white privilege" victimhood, and is utterly racist. When do these people grow up?

AND PEOPLE SAY THE USSR WASN'T IMPERIALIST? There are plenty of Communist still around, many in the environmental movement.

THEY DON'T CALL HIM MOONBEAM FOR NOTHING: You get the government you deserve and, the voters will get what they want, good and hard.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

CHARLEY HURT SAYS IT BEST:

All the mayhem unfolding in Baltimore is nothing short of an unspeakable American tragedy. Laid bare are the failures of cradle-to-grave social policies held so dear by politicians in both parties, but embraced and celebrated most lustily by Democrats.

These self-proclaimed Robin Hoods and do-gooders have issued open and unashamed invitations to the most vulnerable in society to become completely dependent upon government for everything from food to cellphones to home heating oil. Left in the wake is the utter annihilation of families and the destruction of cohesive neighborhoods.

Complete dependency comes at such a high and bitter cost. All in return for what really amounts to a sad pittance of welfare payments. It is a twisted mockery of the American dream.

All the while, urban hucksters skim off their take and politicians — drunk off their own florid false promises — clap one another on the back and congratulate one another for their “compassion” for the poor.

In truth, peddling welfare and total dependency upon the government is every bit as toxic as peddling meth and crack in these very same neighborhoods.

Actually, it is even worse than peddling drugs. Drugs most directly ensnare willing participants in an evil scheme. The government’s crushing welfare cartel dishonestly ensnares the best, brightest and most responsible of these neighborhoods — the very people who might otherwise be leading their families and neighbors into real prosperity and out of the dusty clutches of government welfare.

It has been more than six years of President Obama’s “progressive” policies and many, many decades more of the same “progressive” policies in Baltimore and Maryland.

Money pours into the city’s public education system — with negligible improvement. Corrupt and incompetent administrators waste the money and game the system as a job provider for adults rather than a means for educating children.

Reports reveal that President Obama’s “stimulus” program dumped some $467 million into Baltimore schools. To what end?

Things are so bad that the only halfway celebrated person in the past few weeks is a single mother who spied her son in a mask, tossing rocks and rioting. She marched over and into the mayhem and began violently punching, slapping and flailing her son on national television.

Perhaps understandable in a seriously detached sort of way. But also not exactly the sort of antics that would win anybody a mother of the year award if it happened in our own neighborhood.

Baltimore is a petri dish of liberal policies taken to their furthest extreme. If you are looking for liberalism’s idealistic utopia, it is Baltimore. Baltimore is as close to a perfect execution of all their most beloved policies. And now they want to handle all your health care needs — whether you want them to or not.

• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com and on Twitter at @charleshurt.

Monday, May 4, 2015

IN A JUST WORLD THESE GRIFTERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL:If you want to understand America's decline it's all here in Peter Schweitzer's book. The Clinton's are beneath contempt an anyone who supports them deserves to keep their company forever, intimately, in the hereafter.

ABOUT WHAT WE EXPECT:The only word to describe this behavior: revolting

FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS AND MUSLIMS: Are they incompatible? Surely seems so.

GOTTA LOVE THE THE LIB SHILLS:The NYTimes is soooo predictable. Wonder if they'd be outraged if Hil murdered an innocent person in broad daylight? Wait a minute…she did, in fact four persons and they still covered for her. Pretty sickening.

Friday, May 1, 2015

TIME TO ABANDON THE FEDERAL RESERVE: It bears repeating the Austrians have been opposed to the FRS forever, and they are right.

IS HE OR ISN'T HE A MARXIST??Wonder if this issue will ever be determined. However, they guy is definitely no free enterprise capitalist.

JARRETT 2008: Black privilege at work. Funny, it always seems to involve the government.

UNFAMILIAR WITH WEBSITE BUT…

Major U.S. Retailers Are Closing More Than 6,000 Stores

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/02/2015 19:00 -0400

Best Buy

Fitch

JCPenney

Recession

Sears

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

If the U.S. economy really is improving, then why are big U.S. retailers permanently shutting down thousands of stores? The “retail apocalypse” that I have written about so frequently appears to be accelerating. As you will see below, major U.S. retailers have announced that they are closing more than 6,000 locations, but economic conditions in this country are still fairly stable. So if this is happening already, what are things going to look like once the next recession strikes? For a long time, I have been pointing to 2015 as a major “turning point” for the U.S. economy, and I still feel that way. And since I started The Economic Collapse Blog at the end of 2009, I have never seen as many indications that we are headed into another major economic downturn as I do right now. If retailers are closing this many stores already, what are our malls and shopping centers going to look like a few years from now?

The list below comes from information compiled by About.com, but I have only included major retailers that have announced plans to close at least 10 stores. Most of these closures will take place this year, but in some instances the closures are scheduled to be phased in over a number of years. As you can see, the number of stores that are being permanently shut down is absolutely staggering…

180 Abercrombie & Fitch (by 2015)

75 Aeropostale (through January 2015)

150 American Eagle Outfitters (through 2017)

223 Barnes & Noble (through 2023)

265 Body Central / Body Shop

66 Bottom Dollar Food

25 Build-A-Bear (through 2015)

32 C. Wonder

21 Cache

120 Chico’s (through 2017)

200 Children’s Place (through 2017)

17 Christopher & Banks

70 Coach (fiscal 2015)

70 Coco’s /Carrows

300 Deb Shops

92 Delia’s

340 Dollar Tree/Family Dollar

39 Einstein Bros. Bagels

50 Express (through 2015)

31 Frederick’s of Hollywood

50 Fresh & Easy Grocey Stores

14 Friendly’s

65 Future Shop (Best Buy Canada)

54 Golf Galaxy (by 2016)

50 Guess (through 2015)

26 Gymboree

40 JCPenney

127 Jones New York Outlet

10 Just Baked

28 Kate Spade Saturday & Jack Spade

14 Macy’s

400 Office Depot/Office Max (by 2016)

63 Pep Boys (“in the coming years”)

100 Pier One (by 2017)

20 Pick ’n Save (by 2017)

1,784 Radio Shack

13 Ruby Tuesday

77 Sears

10 SpartanNash Grocery Stores

55 Staples (2015)

133 Target, Canada (bankruptcy)

31 Tiger Direct

200 Walgreens (by 2017)

10 West Marine

338 Wet Seal

80 Wolverine World Wide (2015 – Stride Rite & Keds)

So why is this happening?

Without a doubt, Internet retailing is taking a huge toll on brick and mortar stores, and this is a trend that is not going to end any time soon.

But as Thad Beversdorf has pointed out, we have also seen a stunning decline in true discretionary consumer spending over the past six months…

What we find is that over the past 6 months we had a tremendous drop in true discretionary consumer spending. Within the overall downtrend we do see a bit of a rally in February but quite ominously that rally failed and the bottom absolutely fell out. Again the importance is it confirms the fundamental theory that consumer spending is showing the initial signs of a severe pull back. A worrying signal to be certain as we would expect this pull back to begin impacting other areas of consumer spending. The reason is that American consumers typically do not voluntarily pull back like that on spending but do so because they have run out of credit. And if credit is running thin it will surely be felt in all spending.

The truth is that middle class U.S. consumers are tapped out. Most families are just scraping by financially from month to month. For most Americans, there simply is not a whole lot of extra money left over to go shopping with these days.

In fact, at this point approximately one out of every four Americans spend at least half of their incomes just on rent…

More than one in four Americans are spending at least half of their family income on rent – leaving little money left to purchase groceries, buy clothing or put gas in the car, new figures have revealed.

A staggering 11.25 million households consume 50 percent or more of their income on housing and utilities, according to an analysis of Census data by nonprofit firm, Enterprise Community Partners.

And 1.8 million of these households spend at least 70 percent of their paychecks on rent.

The surging cost of rental housing has affected a rising number of families since the Great Recession hit in 2007. Officials define housing costs in excess of 30 percent of income as burdensome.

For decades, the U.S. economy was powered by a free spending middle class that had plenty of discretionary income to throw around. But now that the middle class is being systematically destroyed, that paradigm is changing. Americans families simply do not have the same resources that they once did, and that spells big trouble for retailers.

As you read this article, the United States still has more retail space per person than any other nation on the planet. But as stores close by the thousands, “space available” signs are going to be popping up everywhere. This is especially going to be true in poor and lower middle class neighborhoods. Especially after what we just witnessed in Baltimore, many retailers are not going to hesitate to shut down underperforming locations in impoverished areas.

And remember, the next major economic crisis has not even arrived yet. Once it does, the business environment in this country is going to change dramatically, and a few years from now America is going to look far different than it does right now.

Average:

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

HE'S GOT IT EXACTLY RIGHT: Hard to run away from the facts. It's all about black identity politics. And, the blacks will continue to fail at all levels until they reject everything Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Reverend Wright have been teaching them for decades. They need a real Moses.

And this is more of the same indictment of identity politics.

EXCELLENT ARTICLE ON CAPITALISM: Glenn Reynolds is a bonafide treasure of common sense.

THIS IS INSPIRATIONAL:A VERY GOOD IDEA FOR ALL US GEEZERS.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

DOES ANYONE IN THIS COUNTRY CARE ABOUT CORRUPTION?? Neither the bulk of the media, nor the Democrat Party nor a pretty good slice of the Republican Party give a rat's ass about corruption. So, where will this all end up? The whole thing with the Clintons, going back to Watergate, is so egregious one can hardly imagine this foundation scandal can or will be ignored. However, look for massive campaigns of misinformation from the Clintons and their loyal followers everywhere, and look for Hillary to step aside from the campaign and announce she will fight these scurrilous right wing charges and lies to clear her granddaughter's future name. These power-mad autocratic, fascists will not go down without a fight. And remember the complicity of America's leading corporations, none of whom will want their precious brand names besmirched because they failed to do due diligence on their payola to the Clintons. There are so many very powerful potential losers in this fiasco the coverup planning and execution will make the planning for Overlord look like child's play.

THE EPITOME OF CRONY CAPITALISM: Sounds like big corporations and big government are equally at fault.

HERE'S FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Why so many facilities just for "peaceful' ATOMIC ENERGY.

Iran's Nuclear Installations 2015

Olli Heinonen and Simon Henderson

Also available in

April 6, 2015

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Thursday April 24, 2015

NYTIMES DOES INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING WELL, ON OCCASION: This should not be going on.