ASK KEN LANGONE
Ken Langone is always on CNBC claiming he created 300,000 jobs by putting up his big box stores. He fails to mention that Home Depot also put out of business, local small and medium size lumber yards, window companies, paint stores, hardware stores and other small local businesses unfortunate to be in the death zone radius of the big box.
The wreckage did not stop there. Small regional suppliers and manufacturers were also impacted. Those smaller regional companies could not supply the vast needs of a Home Depot. That business went to cut throat larger national and international suppliers that now had an opportunity to muscle into local markets. They in turn fought with each other and outsourced supply to factories and mills in China further causing economic wreckage to American manufacturers, killing American jobs at every step of the process. Some of the "newly created” jobs went to the refugees from the local discontinued businesses. You could see their sad faces in their orange vests rushing from aisle to aisle wondering how they became an “associate” at the big friendly Home Depot.
I would bet 10,000 wood chips that Ken Langone, on net, destroyed more jobs than he created. it makes sense as the magic of the market did it’s magic for him and made the few at the top billions. Some Chinese entrepreneurs made their millions and good old Charlie is down at aisle 14 looking for some galvanized brads.
All that is fine, but spare us the bullshit about how wonderful these massive listed companies are and how they need additional incentives to expand. They have all the natural incentives necessary embedded in each and everyone one of us. It is called greed.
Hey, maybe those transit taxes can go to pay for more schools like this:
ReplyDeletePaki Madrassa Horror: Raid Reveals Children chained and beaten in Taliban "Jihad-factory"
With its white walls displaying Koranic verses, the ground floor of the Al-Arabiya Aloom Jamia Masjid Zikirya Madrassa looked like any of the other thousands of Islamic seminaries in Pakistan.
To walk downstairs to its basement, however, was to descend into a hellish world where children were chained to the walls, beaten and held alongside shackled drug addicts.
The raid on the religious school in a Karachi suburb, which freed 88 students, some as young as six, has exposed the brutal reality of life in unregulated madrassas and the desperation of families who send children to them.
Gul Khan, 14, the youngest of six, was beaten so hard that his back would bleed. Last night he told reporters that he would rather return to the basement than go home to the widowed mother who sent him there.
"I was a thief, so my mother decided to admit me," he said. His father, a homeless drug addict, is dead. For her part, Gul's mother said she wished the police had left her son where they found him.
Sanaa TV, a local station, showed footage of the raid and the chained students, who danced and cried as police began to free them.
'We were kept in chains and hung upside down and beaten with sticks if we didn't comply. We were told that we would be given training to fight in Afghanistan,' one boy said.
Another told how Taliban fighters had visited the seminary, led prayers and told them to prepare for battle. Others told reporters that they were electrocuted, a claim police are investigating.
At the local police station, several hours after the raid, many of the rescued people were still in chains because police could not find the keys. Some parents paid substantial amounts to enrol their children at the seminary and correspondents say that in some cases parents actually applied the chains which imprisoned their children.
Students have described the brutal regime inside the seminary - some spoke to the media while still wearing their chains. One said he was beaten 200 times, while another said they were told they would be sent to join the jihad and if they tried to escape they would get 200 lashes...
A tad more organized that the Penn State affair, aye?
ReplyDelete"We're ready to defend. We've always been ready to defend," attorney Joe Amendola said outside the Centre County Courthouse after the hearing. "Today's waiver has nothing to do with conceding anything. There have been no plea negotiations. There will be no plea negotiations. This is a fight to the death. This is the fight of Jerry Sandusky's life."
As to Mr Lnagone, he did create 300,000 jobs, as he claims.
ReplyDeleteThat this is not a "net" number, not part of his accounting process.
As Deuce relates.
Same goes with regards Walmart.
Big government likes big business, having no time for the "small fry". Those folk that cannot afford to fund reelection campaigns.
Big mass retailers have done more to wreck domestic manufacturing only surpassed by the federal government.
ReplyDeletewhich one of the candidates understands what is obvious to the peons?
ReplyDeleteGary Johnson
ReplyDeleteWhich is one reason the Republicans froze him out of their part of the game.
ReplyDeleteRabbi Joshua Hammerman says:
ReplyDeleteIf Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell ’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.
It's already been yanked from Jewish Week, but the thing about the Innertubes, someone has a copy of the original somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWUKAN, China - Thousands of residents of a Chinese village under police blockade rallied on Thursday to demand the government take action over illegal land grabs and the death in custody of a local leader.
(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits dropped to a 3-1/2-year low last week, suggesting a weak U.S. economy is gradually improving even though factory data proved more mixed.
ReplyDeleteInitial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 366,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the lowest level since May 2008, and confounded economist' expectations for a rise to 390,000.
In a separate reports, two regional Fed business surveys showed stronger than expected growth in December.
It is amazing how the Republicans have fractured the Tea Party. They did the Democrat’s work for them. The Tea Party scared them but the empire stuck back.
ReplyDeleteI am becoming increasingly convinced it is more important to break the two party stranglehold than the selection of any candidate from either party. Think Bush/Obama. I can only hope that Mike Bloomberg jumps in and Ron Paul does as well. A four way race.
Drudge is running a story about Putin claiming the US killed Gadafi . There has been a lot of comments about Putin and Russian politics in US papers. I find it amusing to see US media commenting on Russian politics when practically zero Americans know the first thing about the realities of life or politics inside Russia. While I would be curious what leads him to believe American SF were on the scene of Gadafis street execution, he is absolutely correct when he says the US is responsible for the killing. Were it not for our attack on his fleeing motorcade, that bloody scene in which many more humans apart from Gadafi himself were ruthlessly and wrongfully killed in a hideous fashion, never would have happened. NATO already had been drawing plans for withdrawal and an end to its involvement before the capture/murder took place.
ReplyDeleteThe Colonel is dead, good riddance to bad rubbage.
ReplyDeleteIf the US did it, more credit for positive foreign policy results must be posted, to Mr Obama's account.
Rather than the French, Brits and Eyetalians.
The Colonel was a State Sponsor of terror.
ReplyDeleteThat he and members of his entourage are now dead, cause for celebration.
Much like the demise of Osama.
Whatever the realities of politics, in Russia, it is beyond question that the US is fully integrated in the efforts to destabilize their society.
ReplyDeleteImplementing that destabilization through the subsidization of the Afghan drug trade and the increased opium production that has occurred, under the US/Karzai. A regime that was installed and maintained by US force of arms, in Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteJERUSALEM - Defying a crackdown on Jewish extremists ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vandals set fire to a mosque in the West Bank on Thursday and defaced it with Hebrew graffiti ...
Michelle Bachmann wants to close the US embassy in Iran, and I say, YEAH! YOU GO GIRL!
ReplyDelete(moron)
Drudge is running a story about Putin claiming the US killed Gadafi .
ReplyDeleteYeah, so what? We killed Isoroku Yamamoto too.
WalMart doesn't give all that much to politics, couple million a cycle, I read, and equally, nearly, between both parties. Sometimes they back an individual too. Costco, bigger than Sam's Club, doesn't give anything to politics.
ReplyDeleteThe majority of these WalMart stores come to a community or not, depending on the community, which controls the local zoning board and city council.
We here were for WalMart, before we were against WalMart, now we are for WalMart again.
WalMart built originally, then wanted to go SuperStore, denied, said fuck you, closed the original store, went 9 miles away, where they had a big fight there too, finally prevailing, and now, our folk having learned how very much they contribute in taxes,and voting out the anti-superstore ordinance, now they are back here building a......SuperStore.
b
We have no business having an embassy in Iran.
ReplyDeleteBachmann, 2012!
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We here were for WalMart, before we were against WalMart, now we are for WalMart again.
ReplyDeleteO'Donnell wouldn't like this, when you change your mind you're supposed to stick with it.
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Not only does the state get 6% on the WalMart sales, there is also some sort of tax on inventory.
ReplyDeleteb
Those that split their donations almost equally between the two Federal Socialist political parties, know the reality of politics, in the US.
ReplyDeleteMrs Clinton was a Walmart Board member, back in the day. Proving, conclusively, Walmart's lack of interest in politcs.
Mrs Clinton served on the Walmart Board for six years.
ReplyDeleteHillary Clinton was paid $18,000 each year she served on the board, plus $1,500 for each meeting she attended. By 1993 she had accumulated at least $100,000 in Wal-Mart stock, according to Bill Clinton's federal financial disclosure forms that year.
If Idaho has an inventory tax, it applies to all retail businesses, not just Walmart, along with that 6% sale tax that Walmart pays, as do all the other retailers in the State.
ReplyDeletewww.idahobizhelp.org/glossary.htm
ReplyDeleteHowever, Idaho does issue permits and accounts, such as sales tax or Idaho income tax withholding. .... Idaho does not collect a state inventory tax. ...
You remind me:
ReplyDeleteA young college student from Maui based her thesis on an analysis of how much money is lost due to off-island ownership, the economic impacts, taking into account stuff like the multipler effect, taxes, etc.
Was going to send it to Lowell Kalapa, the Hawaiian Economic Guru, but forgot.
Hopefully I can still find it on the net version of Maui News and get it to him.
The previous Mayor did her part by putting a bunch of local bed and breakfast operators out of business.
What were their profits now get sent off to the Big Box Hotel chains HQ's on the mainland.
Typo alert:
ReplyDelete"No Mr. Langone of Home Depot, you did *NOT* create 300,000 jobs "
I would guess many of the rules, regulations, and restrictions that Mr. Langone says would keep him from building another business like Home Depot have similar impacts on smaller businesses,
ReplyDelete...right?
Poll: Dramatic drop in Gingrich support in Iowa
ReplyDeleteDES MOINES -- A new survey from pollster Scott Rasmussen shows support for Newt Gingrich in Iowa has fallen sharply in recent days. The poll shows the former House speaker with the support of 20 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers -- down from 32 percent in the last Rasmussen survey released November 15.
Gingrich has now fallen into second place in the Iowa race, behind Mitt Romney, who is at 23 percent, up from 19 percent in the last Rasmussen survey.
The complete poll results are: Romney, 23 percent; Gingrich 20 percent; Ron Paul, 18 percent; Rick Perry 10 percent; Michele Bachmann, 9 percent; Rick Santorum, 6 percent; and Jon Huntsman, 5 percent. Ten percent of likely caucus-goers said they support some other candidate or are not sure how they will vote.
SHE CAN'T WAIT: MICHELLE TAKES OFF TO HAWAII...
ReplyDeleteENTOURAGE OF MILITARY FLEET, LIMOS...
FLASHBACK: Obama exec order seeks to cut unnecessary travel...
In alleging the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office committed federal and constitutional violations, a 22-page Justice Department letter described "a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos at MCSO that reaches the highest levels of the agency."
ReplyDeleteIn the sheriff's jail, for example, detention officers invoked offensive slurs and profanities against Hispanics, calling them "wetbacks," "Mexican bitches," and "stupid Mexicans," the Justice Department letter said.
"Sheriff Arpaio's own actions have helped nurture MCSO's culture of bias," said the letter, written to the Maricopa County attorney. For example, the sheriff apparently endorsed one constituent's letter asking for a "round-up" at one Phoenix street corner of "dark-skin(ned)" people: Arpaio told a member of his command staff in a note to "(h)ave someone handle this," the Justice Department said.
"We are also reviewing allegations that MCSO has failed to investigate a large number of sex crimes," Assistant Attorney Thomas E. Perez told reporters during a press conference Thursday.
The sheriff's office has acknowledged to federal authorities that 432 case of sexual assault and child molestation were not properly investigated over a three-year period ending in 2007, and many of the victims apparently were Latinas, the Justice Department said.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn rebellious Wukan, China, a rare sight: No authorities
ReplyDeleteA 56-year-old carpenter named Huang Deping leaned forward in his chair and said that no matter what happened, "the point is not that they (officials) fled, the point is that we fought them until they left."
Do not worry about big government Rat, for they are always looking out for your best interests!!
ReplyDeleteThe Sound of One President Caving
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
For a while, the administration encouraged people to think that President Obama would take a stand against the unnecessary and very dangerous provisions that Congress jammed into the annual National Defense Authorization Act. He threatened to veto the whole bill in order to block new rules that would mandate the military custody of most terrorist suspects, and officially sanction their indefinite detention, without due process.
Yesterday, the president backed down, completely. The White House announced that he was satisfied with a slightly watered-down version of the bill that was approved by conferees from both houses and would sign it.
http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/the-sound-of-one-president-caving/
Regarding those sales taxes, in Idaho or elsewhere, the retailer, like Walmart, does not pay the tax, it merely acts as a tax collector for the State.
ReplyDeleteThe consumer pays the tax, Walmart does not.
Just another indicator, ash, of the resilience of our one party system.
ReplyDeleteThe
ReplyDelete“Withholder General of the United States"
ReplyDeleteUS War in Iraq Declared Officially Over
That is a $150 Billion/Yr Expense Off the Books.
ReplyDeleteOne to go.
and that 150 billion number came from...
ReplyDelete...where?
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ReplyDeleteThe Sound of One President Caving
A day or two ago I posted that Obama's promised veto of the military bill if it included the detention provisions would be one good reason for voting for Obama.
Obviously, I was a bit optimistic. Obama is a dick just like the rest of the boys in OZ.
1984 redux.
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I was thinking of you when I posted it Quirk.
ReplyDeleteWhat would Quirk's detention policy be wrt Enemy Combatants?
ReplyDelete