Free Republic

Competition in the U.S. grocery sector is about to get more fierce. Discount grocery chain Aldi is expected to unveil on Monday plans to invest $5 billion to open nearly 900 stores and remodel hundreds more in the U.S. The expansion, over the next five years, puts the German grocer on track to becoming the third-largest food retailer in the U.S. by store count, behind the larger Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kroger Co., and a growing threat to traditional food retailers. Aldi said it is expected to have a total of 2,500 locations across the U.S. by 2022. Its plan...

I have been tracking .22 rimfire ammunition and availability for some time. The .22 Long Rifle bubble has lasted for years. With the election of President Trump, I expected the bubble to bust. Instead, it has been deflating, like a balloon with a pinhole leak. The demand for .22 ammunition has been so great that a 20% increase in supply, and a Second Amendment friendly administration did not bust the bubble. Instead, they stopped the growth, poked a hole in the bubble, and started a downward spiral of prices. At Cal Ranch Supply, I expected there to be some .22...

SHANGHAI China is betting on new, small-scale nuclear reactor designs that could be used in isolated regions, on ships and even aircraft as part of an ambitious plan to wrest control of the global nuclear market.Within weeks, state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) is set to launch a small modular reactor (SMR) dubbed the "Nimble Dragon" with a pilot plant on the island province of Hainan, according to company officials. Unlike new large scale reactors that cost upward of $10 billion per unit and need large safety zones, SMRs create less toxic waste and can be built in a single...

Defense Secretary James Mattis and his Qatari counterpart, Defense Minister Khalid al-Attiyah have signed a $12 billion arms deal today in Washington, a move made particularly high-profile because of the ongoing blockade imposed on Qatar by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The agreement is for the purchase of a number of F-15 fighter jets, a sale which the Pentagon says will ensure that Qatar has “state-of-the-art” defensive capabilities. Qatar is the richest nation on the planet in per-capital GDP, but a very small nation to be spending $12 billion on warplanes. Over the past couple of decades, oil-rich Gulf Arab states...

According to Oxford Economics, 65,000 US rail jobs are under threat due to import form China of the freight rail cars into the country. If the United States allows some of China’s largest producers of freight rail cars into the country, they could end up eliminating up to 65,000 U.S. jobs. Thanks to the subsidies provided to Chinese state enterprises. “China’s economy produced $21.27 trillion in 2016 (based on purchasing power parity). It’s the world’s largest economy. The European Union is second, at $19.1 trillion. The United States fell to third place, producing $18.5 trillion. China has 1.37 billion people,...

Digi-Key Electronics announced its future plans to create over 1,000 new jobs and build a 1,000,000-square-foot building expansion facility located adjacent to its current headquarters in Thief River Falls MN. Huge cost and competitive hurdles needed to be overcome compared to other location options, but “The State of Minnesota and local Thief River Falls and Pennington County leaders took decisive action to support our growth”, according to Dave Doherty, Digi-Key’s president and chief operating officer. Local Representative and Assistant House Majority Leader Dan Fabian along with Representative Deb Kiel and Senators Mark Johnson and David Tomassoni, worked with legislative leaders...

Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, says Wednesday’s shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, officers, and others at a congressional baseball practice makes him “so worried about the life of the President of the United States.” In an interview on the Fox Business Network Wednesday, Marcus said “I wish that the president would sit down with the leadership of the Democratic Party and say guys, let’s cut it out. Let’s get together and let’s start working together and accomplish what has to be accomplished.” James T. Hodgkinson of Illinois fired dozens of rounds at some 45 Republican members of...

President Donald Trump wants to blow out the number of apprentices working for U.S. companies — but it doesn't look like he'll spend the money to do it. Apprenticeships blend on-the-job work with paid classroom instruction, and they usually last two to six years. The federal government has regulated and certified apprenticeships since 1937, but the jobs were not actively promoted by more recent presidents until the Obama administration. Trump wants to create 5 million new apprenticeships over the next five years, which would be almost 10 times the total that exist now. But the money he has appropriated to...

Select Comfort Corp. will establish a technical support contact center near New Orleans, in the Elmwood business corridor of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. The company will lease more than 28,000 feet of commercial space in an existing building for its new center at 1333 South Clearview Parkway in Elmwood, Louisiana. The project will create 225 new direct jobs, according to Louisiana Economic Development. “Select Comfort is an impressive, fast-growing company that is the innovation leader in the mattress industry,” Governor John Bel Edwards said. “With our talented workforce and healthy business climate, Louisiana is a great fit for innovative consumer brands....

The New York Works initiative aims to create a total of 100,000 new jobs, in areas ranging from tech to creative and cultural sectors. New York artists seeking studios, nonprofits facing rising rents, and musicians seeking rehearsal spaces may have some reasons to be hopeful about the future. In a new initiative called New York Works, the city government aims to cultivate creative sector jobs and to provide artists with workspaces. On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the New York Works initiative, which aims to create 100,000 well-paying jobs (think $50,000 a year or a realistic starting point to...

This one is almost too ridiculous to believe. Recently a new bill was introduced on the floor of the US Senate entitled, pleasantly, “Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017.” https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1241/text#toc-idea0e9489fc8f46379f95bb56c8bbbda5 You can probably already guess its contents. Cash is evil. Bitcoin is evil. Now they’ve gone so far to include prepaid mobile phones, retail gift vouchers, or even electronic coupons. Evil, evil, and evil. These people are certifiably insane. Among the bill’s sweeping provisions, the government aims to greatly extend its authority to seize your assets through “Civil Asset Forfeiture”. Civil Asset Forfeiture rules allow the...

I have been monitoring the availability of .22 rimfire ammunition at Wal-Mart stores whenever one is convenient or I am visiting one. The availability of .22 ammunition has been creeping up for about a year, but the pace has been variable and slow. I was surprised to see four buckets of Golden Bullet .22 Long Rifles at the local Wal-Mart, with 1,400 rounds each, available for $73.64 or 5.26 cents per round.  The hundred round boxes were much more expensive at $7.76 per box, or 7.76 cents per round. Together the buckets and boxes amounted to 6,400 rounds. What...

Introduction Today, we take a look at the two online retail titans, consider how each business model differs and delve into the trends shaped by the financial results. The biggest difference between the two is that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) primarily sells directly to consumers, building a network of warehouse and distribution centers with a goal of ever-improving fulfillment. Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), on the other hand, is less capital intensive and provides only a platform from which other businesses can sell directly to consumers. While both offer a platform for other sellers, AMZN is more focused on the logistics and engaging directly with...

President Donald J. Trump was born on June 14, 1946, a day also celebrated as the birthday of the Continental Army (1775) and the United States Flag (1777). It’s a good day to be a patriot. At this writing, as he celebrates his 71st birthday, Donald Trump has been in office for less than five months. If the 100-day mark in a presidency is too early to judge a presidency, then so is this, so we mustn’t try. There is still room for almost all possible outcomes at the end of his four years (or eight). It is, however, a...

This cycle’s main bubble is in government bonds and fiat currencies, with a dash of large-cap tech thrown in for variety. But like a hurricane spawning tornadoes at its periphery, this Money Bubble is creating secondary bubbles like student debt and subprime auto loans that are impressively destructive in their own right. An example of how extreme things have gotten is US housing, which — as the previous decade’s main bubble — wasn’t supposed to be a problem this time around. But apparently no sector is immune from all that excess central bank liquidity. As today’s Wall Street Journal notes,...

group of U.S.-listed oil companies wrote down their proved reserves in the Canadian oilsands by nearly eight billion barrels in 2016, as energy firms continue to defer investments in major heavy oil projects. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, a data-gathering agency, tracked 68 oil companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges and found that their total proved reserves declined for the second consecutive year, according to a study released Monday. The debooking of Canadian oilsands assets accounted for the largest portion of declining reserves over the year, at nearly eight billion barrels. The next highest was Latin America, which saw a...

“A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe. And we know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers— “One: When they find a leader. This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders. “Two: When the populace recognizes its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning. “Three: When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage. They must never even believe that escape is possible!” ― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune The preacher has a flaw...

Mark Ruffalo, Marvel Studio’s “Hulk,” is pushing millions of fans to pressure NBC executives to stop hiring “white conservative” talent. Hollywood’s current “Bruce Banner” is angry that right-leaning and conservative commentators like Nicole Wallace, Hugh Hewitt, and George Will are allowed airtime on NBC and MSNBC. The actor, known for supporting the campaigns of Democrat politicians and environmental groups, is urging over 3 million Twitter followers to quash the shift by Andrew Lack, the chairman of NBC News and MSNBC. “Sign the petition: Tell @MSNBC @NBCNews to stop the white conservative hiring spree,” Mr. Ruffalo tweeted over the weekend. “Lack...

President Trump is trying to focus this week on one thing: Jobs, jobs and more jobs. The White House is dubbing it "workforce development week" and has filled the president's schedule with workplace visits, speeches and roundtable discussions on the subject. The aim is to present a fix to a big U.S. problem: job skills. What's clear: Trump wants to make a big commitment to expand apprenticeship programs. What's unclear: How his budget will pay for it and whether apprenticeships alone can fix the country's massive job skills gap. Trump's budget proposal allocates $90 million for grants to apprenticeships, but...

" ... The national smoking rate has fallen to historic lows, with just 15 percent of adults still smoking. But the socioeconomic gap has never been bigger. ..." "... Among the nation’s less-educated people — those with a high-school-equivalency diploma — the smoking rate remains more than 40 percent ..."