Free Republic

It costs $60 per year for a Costco membership. $120 per year if you have an “executive” membership.

I remember several decades ago talking to a Kmart executive shortly after Walmart had eclipsed Kmart as the largest retailer. He mentioned a decision the beancounters had made to eliminate the in store lunch counters because they were losing money.

Apparently during the day non-working female shoppers were meeting at the lunch counters for lunch. These in-store restaurants were losing money. After K-mart eliminate the lunch counters as a cost savings, store traffic and sales dropped. The bean counters, only looking at the losses didn’t understand they were social centers that attracting shoppers to congregate, socialize, and most importantly spend money in the store.

Likewise Kmart eliminated its signature “blue light special” which featured heavily discounted products. This in-store promotional program created excitement and sales in the store. Again the bean counters could see only the lose on the featured item, not the full price merchandise begin checked out with the blue light special.

James Sinegal, the founder of Costco, was a visionary who understood the mindset of Costco customers. The CFO, sitting in his/her office staring at a spreadsheet on a PC knows little about the psychology of the customer roaming the store. Sinegal understood the hot dog brought customers to the store who spend hundreds of dollars on other very profitable items each time they visit a Costco store and savor the $1.50 hot dog.

Many of America’s once great retailers have disappeared over the past 50 years (Sears, Kmart, Woolworth) after narrow minded beancounters and private equity owners put cost cutting over the customer experience.

Long live the $1.50 hot dog. The day the price increases to $2.00, $2.50 or whatever, you will know Costco has started down the slippery cost reduction slope to extinction.

The loyalty of companies ended when the lawyers and bean counters took over US corporations in the 1970’s and 1980’s from the marketing/sales and production/R&D executives. Financial people and lawyers do not make thing or sell things and therefore do not driver innovation or customer satisfaction which is critical to the success of a business.

The 1980’s brought a wave of financial manipulation by Wall Street investment banks and hostile takeovers by corporate raiders. Takeovers resulted in massive downsizing of acquired companies and asset stripping that destroy jobs and once great businesses. The 1990’s brought “free trade” and the outsourcing of US manufacturing to other nations resulting in the destruction of the blue collar middle class.

Corporate loyalty died on the vine of financial greed driven by Wall Street banks, financial corporate executives, and the politicians who enabled them. They fundamentally changed the capitalist system in the USA. Loyalty died with the millions of jobs erased by the raiders and the globalists.

“I thought Trump resided in Florida. No problem there.”

Depends on where his guns are located and Florida law. Many states deny felons the right to own guns. However, perhaps Trump can turn in his guns to the sheriff (i.e. authority) in Florida instead of to New York.

Likely Trump’s guns are very expensive. Often guns in the possession of authorities “disappear”. I wouldn’t trust NY to ever return them if they get possession.

If Trump is reelected, his Vice President will be the most likely GOP candidate for President at the end of his term. Therefore, agreement on policy is critical.

Ronald Reagan picked George H.W. Bush as his running mate for political, not ideological reasons. For this reason the Reagan Revolution lasted only the 8 years Reagan was in office. Bush followed Reagan, even running as the “third term of Reagan”. However, as soon as he entered office he removed the true conservatives from the White House and governed as a globalist moderate.

We saw the same thing with Pence. Pence went back to his RINO roots.

For MAGA to survive Trump’s final four years, his VP must be committed to America First, individual freedom, small government, and strict border control.

Nicki Haley is a party hack, not a committed fighter for liberty.

Has McConnell weighed in yet on the conviction?

Pollution, particularly the emission of poisonous cancer causing chemicals, is a much bigger issue for the health of the planet than climate change. In the 1970’s and 1980’s US industry and public utilities made tremendous strides eliminating industrial and utility pollution from the air and waterways of the US. After spending millions on pollution control and treatment efforts, many industries by 1990 were putting cleaner water into the environment than the water they brought into the factory.

The high cost of environment compliance in the 1970’s and 1980’s increased production costs in the US. Once the US Congress removed tariffs and quotas in the 1990’s one of the factors that made US industry uncompetitive was the high cost of pollution control. New competing factories in Asia were not built with the same pollution control equipment as the US factories they replaced. Today rivers in China and other countries the US imports goods from are poisoned with industrial chemicals, sewage, and radioactive waster. This pollution flows into the ocean and is carried worldwide by currents.

The intellectual idiots making policy in this nation have destroyed the US industrial infrastructure that took 100 years to build. Now they want to reduce the masses to an 19th century standard of living in order to save the climate which doesn’t need saving.

Why aren’t these “scientists”, politicians, pundits, and billionaires (Bill Gates) demanding China and other nations impose the same climate rules, regulations, and edicts on their own countries? Why is there no concern about the poisons China puts in its rivers that show up in the fish caught off the US coasts?

When Bill Gates grounds his fleet of private jets, sells his yacht, downsizes to a single 1500 square foot home, and provides proof he has lived 5 consecutive years with the climate footprint he is demanding for the masses, it may be time to give some thought to climate change. As long as Gates, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Paul Krugmann, Hollywood celebrities condemn the masses to the lifestyle of medieval serfs while living lives of conspicuous consumption, climate change hysteria is nothing more than an excuse to destroy individual liberty.

“And where is the GOP pointing this out? Crickets as usual from those losers.”

As long as they get to insert earmarks for favored donors into 2000 page spending bills, and are exempt from insider trading rules, our GOP politicians are happy.

“Republicans should wrap it around him like plastic industrial heat sheet wrap.”

Would these be the same Republicans who have been 100% supportive of globalist initiatives, who refused to vote money to build the border wall during the Trump administration, and who collaborate with Democrats in keep the border open?

“HAS ANYONE ANYTIME IN HISTORY FIXED A PONZI SCHEME?”

They always go on until they can no longer attract new patsies at which time the perpetrator of the scam sometimes is tried and goes to jail (Bernie Madoff).

Not unlike governments that continue to print paper money, backed by nothing, until it is worthless. Typically the government then falls.

” . . . the worthless GOPe/uniparty will do nothing. “

The current situation with the two parties reminds me of the auto rental business of the 1960’s and 1970’s where Hertz was #1 and Avis was #2. Avis’s motto was “We Try Harder”. Yet Avis could never beat Hertz.

It makes one believe in the uniparty with the GOP playing the role of #2, claiming to “try” but constantly failing.

“Biden’s executive order prompted suspicion among some Republican lawmakers,. . . .”

At what point does suspicion trigger a sternly worded letter to Biden?

How many Jan 6 mothers are in jail?

“Mewzilla’s point is a valid one, that incompetent people hate competent people. They don’t like to be shown up.”

A wise HR person I knew once gave some wise advice to a colleague who had delegated a hiring decision to an average performing subordinate. The HR manager said, “C students never hire A students”. If you don’t exercise some oversight, your organization will be weakened.

Unfortunately the founders did not list a right to private property in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Had they done so much of the progress the left has enjoyed infringing on property rights over the past 100 years would have been avoided.

Whatever you call them - leftists, communists, socialists, collectivists, progressives — they sincerely believe the central government is supreme to the individual. Rights and privileges are doled out to citizens by government. In addition, while they never overtly admit it, progressives believe the product of the work of citizens (i.e. their incomes) is the property of the state. Through the tax system the state determines how much of the income of the individual citizen the citizen will be allowed to keep. Essentially collectivism assumes the individual is a slave to the state.

Who else can they run?

When you are already running a cadaver, almost any substitute will be an improvement.

Twice since 1976 the Democrats have run a southern state governor who was not a national figure. Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992. Both ran as moderate and highly effective governors. Both won. Neither governed as a moderate but the press did a masterful job of helping to define them for the campaign. The Democrat voter base turned out in large numbers and enough moderates were persuaded so the unknown Democrat won by capturing southern states that normally vote Republican.

Current North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper is a possible replacement. He won elections for governor twice, in 2016 and 2020. Trump won NC by small margins in both years. Cooper won the governor’s position by larger margins with Trump on the top of the ballot. NC is a critical state with 16 Electoral College votes and Cooper is still a popular governor among moderates and Democrats. He is a good public speaker and effective debater. There is no hint of personal scandal with him. The NC economy is strong and people are moving in droves to the state.

If Roy Cooper became the Democrat candidate at the convention Trump’s entire campaign strategy blows up. He suddenly faces a very healthy and active 66 year old which makes Trump’s age an issue. There is no hint of corruption with Cooper or his family. By all economic measures Cooper has been effective running one of the fastest growing sunbelt states with a GOP majority legislature. He can easily run as a successful sensible moderate which will be attractive to independent voters and Republican women who dislike Trump. Cooper has none of the negative attributes of Biden. Plus he comes across well on television and can confidently talk issues on his feet.

As a Washington outsider he can diffuse Trump’s number one issue, the border, by simply acknowledging it is a big problem and needs “new thinking”. Imagine him turning to Trump in a debate and saying, “I’m open to listening to all ideas for fixing the border problems. The day after I am elected, why don’t we meet for a few hours and talk about your ideas in detail.

As for debates, Trump would suddenly find himself facing a formidable candidate happy to have multiple debates, including on Fox News. Imagine Trump in full attack mode criticizing Cooper for all of the failings of the Biden administration. Cooper can look at Trump, smile and say, “I’m not Joe Biden”.

Looking at Electoral College votes Cooper has the potential to secure North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Arizona for the Democrats. Add solid Democrat states and he walks into office. He is the perfect stealth candidate to win election as a moderate and govern as a strong progressive.

I prefer not to die for Ukraine.

“What they’re saying is that the citizens don’t control the government but the government controls the citizens. Exactly upside down.”

What it says is the tyrants wearing black robes no longer administer the law as written in the Constitution or passed by the elected legislature. They have become the dictatorial enforcers for the unelected regulatory bureaucracy.

“That is why you signed up at FR, to tell people to leave it up to democrat voters and for us to just stay out of it?”

I am not discouraging anyone from voting. Just be aware of what the people you vote for are and are not doing.

The power of the purse is the greatest power in the Constitution. This is the power to fund and defund every program, department, and bureaucrat’s salary. Cut off the funding and the EPA cannot shut mandate electric vehicles or shut down the fossil fuel industry. Cut off funding for gain of function research and the taxpayer won’t be helping a foreign lab create the next pandemic. Cut off the funding for Planned Parenthood and there will be fewer abortions. Cut off the funding of leftist social justice organizations and a huge source of revenue supporting left wing politicians will end. Cut off federal funding of the student loan program and there will be no federal student loans fir the president to forgive. Cut off funding of never ending foreign wars we can’t afford and let the rest of the world deal with its problems. Would the world really be any different today if we hadn’t spent trillions conquering, ruling, and then walking away from Afghanistan and Iraq?

The national debt is increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days. Every dollar of that spending is appropriated by Congress. Every appropriations bill is required by the Constitution to originate in the House of Representatives. Republicans have controlled the House, and the appropriations process since January 2023. How many Democrat programs have bern defunded since then? How many billions in discretionary slush funds the president and bureaucrats are free to spend have been eliminated? None. The Democrats have every dollar they want to spend. The same thing happened in the two years the Republicans controlled the House during Trump’s term. The same thing when the Republicans controlled the House during the Bush presidency, and during the Obama years. None of the failed Democrat social programs were defunded. None of the government grants to leftist social justice groups and consulting firms were ended. Instead the national debt kept climbing and the bureaucracy kept growing.

So keep voting. Hope for that day when that GOP Congress critter you elect will actually vote against the obscene, budget busting, last minute omnibus appropriations budget Congress passes every year to avoid a government shutdown. The average Republican Congressman will vote for the big spending bill, then send out a letter to constituents saying he fought the hard fight but in the end had to vote for a less than perfect bill so the all important federal government won’t shut down. Afterward he and his fellow representatives will go out to dinner, congratulating themselves for once again fooling the sheep. Over the next few days tens of thousands of dollars will flow into congressional campaign funds from donors benefiting from the millions in earmarks inserted into the huge bill by staff members just before the vote.

Good conservative citizens will vote for the reelection of their representatives and the cycle will continue until one day the US Treasury conducts a bond auction to fund another trillion in debt snd there are no buyers. On that day the music stops playing and some really hard choices, none of them good and all involving real pain, have to be made by the men and women we have voted into power for decades.

If Trump pardons the January 6 protestors, and the Dems control the House and Senate, he will almost certainly be immediately impeached and tried in the Senate.

“Who do you suggest we vote for, then? If we don’t vote for a Republican or Democrat, one of them will win anyway.”

The result will be the same.