Free Republic

The CEO and public figurehead of Market Basket, one of the region’s most popular grocery store chains, has been put on administrative leave, rekindling memories of a different intra-family squabble in 2014 that shook the company to its core. Arthur T. Demoulas, as well as several other top employees, are being investigated for what the executive committee of the grocery chain’s board of directors is calling “credible allegations” that he was planning “a disruption of the business and operations of Market Basket with a work stoppage.” The company’s board alleges that “Demoulas has also resisted an appropriate succession plan for...

Albertsons, America's second-largest grocery chain, is reportedly informing suppliers that will be affected by the new Trump administration tariffs that it's not the company's problem, according to a recent letter:Albertsons, which owns 2,200 grocery stores across the U.S., sent a letter to suppliers in late March spelling out how it would deal with price hikes. “With few exceptions, we are not accepting cost increases due to tariffs,” the letter read (emphasis in the original). The letter laid out the grocer's reason for the policy was "maintaining the value propositions our customers expect.” In other words, to keep grocery prices low...

House Republicans adopted the budget resolution that will lay the foundation for enacting President Trump’s legislative agenda Tuesday night, just minutes after they initially pulled the measure from the floor. The legislation— which provides a framework for Republican priorities on tax, border, and energy in “one big beautiful bill” — was approved in a 217-215 vote. It now heads to the Senate. It capped a wild evening in the House chamber that saw Republican leaders hold open an unrelated vote for more than an hour to buy time to win over holdouts, announce they were canceling a vote on the...

The American consumer is getting worried about the economy. Economic jitters are showing up across various sentiment surveys as the Trump administration aims to reconfigure America’s trade relationship with the world and inflation shows signs of getting stuck. The latest evidence comes from The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index for February, released Tuesday morning. The index fell to 98.3, falling for the third-straight month and marking the largest monthly decline since August 2021, as expectations for inflation in the year ahead climbed. That coincides with the trends reflected in the University of Michigan’s consumer survey for February. Homebuilders are also...

January 2021, the unelected vote fraud fake president came in. Eggs were 99¢ a dozen. They rapidly went up to three, four, five. Now they are ten dollars a dozen as the illegitimate “administration” leave. Crazy.

Albertsons said Wednesday that it has terminated a $25 billion merger agreement with Kroger and will sue the grocery giant, alleging the company didn’t do enough to get the deal done. Judges in Washington and Oregon on Tuesday blocked the deal, delivering a win to federal regulators and consumer advocates who argued the merger could harm competition, consumers and workers and push prices up. “Rather than fulfill its contractual obligations to ensure that the merger succeeded, Kroger acted in its own financial self-interest, repeatedly providing insufficient divestiture proposals that ignored regulators’ concerns. Kroger’s self-serving conduct, taken at the expense of...

A U.S. District Judge in Oregon has blocked a $25 billion-bid by supermarket giant Kroger to take over rival Albertsons after ruling that the Federal Trade Commission's concerns about the merger's impact on market consolidation were valid. Judge Adrienne Nelson said Tuesday afternoon that a merger between the two companies would end up harming consumers. The two companies "engage in substantial head-to-head competition and the proposed merger would remove that competition," Ferguson wrote. As a result, the proposed merger would likely to lead to outcomes that "unilaterally" harm consumers, and is thus "presumptively unlawful. " Judge Ferguson also ruled the...

I've finally come to FR for help understanding this total conundrum. I'll admit, I am completely baffled. This is in regard to these "senior spending cards", or "Medicare allowance cards"."Prepaid food allowance cards". You cannot go 5 minutes on the net (and 2 minutes on my phone) without seeing an ad for one or more variations of these cards. Supposedly, they are prepaid cards which allow you to buy retail stuff. Groceries, OTC meds, consumables, etc; "All seniors over the age of XX are eligible" [this is 100% false] "It pains me to know that many seniors are missing out...

With Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, Walmart, Target, Aldi and other grocers are competing for a place on holiday tables with turkey dinner deals and other promotions to tempt Americans who haven't recovered from recent food price inflation. Walmart, the nation's largest food retailer, first bundled the makings of a traditional turkey feast into a meal deal three years ago. This year, the 29-item offer, which includes a frozen turkey and ingredients for side dishes, costs less than $55 and is intended to serve eight. That calculates to less than $7 per person. Target's version for four people costs...

For more than two years now, higher prices have been pinching consumers’ wallets and testing their patience — but there’s at least one part of their monthly budget that has more breathing room these days. For the average U.S. worker, it now takes fewer hours of work to afford a week’s worth of groceries than it did five years ago, in August 2019. That’s according to a MarketWatch analysis of wage and inflation data that shows how the price of food relative to wages has fluctuated in recent years. In other words: Despite substantial post-pandemic increases in food costs, wages...

This may well be the dumbest damn thing we've ever seen any candidate suggest to their supporters ... is Tim Walz trying to get someone hurt? Cripes. Watch: Sure, Tim, tell your supporters to go up to people trying to figure out how to afford everything they need for their family to eat for the week and nag them about voting for Kamala. We're sure that will absolutely convince them all to vote for her. Is he stupid or just pretending?

From taxes to spending, Kamala is the most left-wing major party candidate since George McGovern -- who proposed a Universal Basic Income in 1972 and went on to win a single state.But her most hare-brained scheme -- so far -- has been price controls, where she's to the left of McGovern, threatening to punish grocery stores for daring to charge more than their costs.In fact, grocery stores make 1 to 2 pennies on the dollar. Meaning they have to pass along costs that come straight from the Washington money printer.That means price controls would, in short, break food.Price Controls Always...

Democrats proclaim that their convention’s theme is “joy,” but that feeling does not translate to Americans suffering from the Biden-Harris administration’s inflation. There is nothing joyful about paying 22 percent more for groceries since Vice President Kamala Harris took office. Data from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics show that grocery prices jumped 22 percent from January 2021 — when President Joe Biden and Harris first took office — to July 2024. This holds true even though the Biden-Harris White House remains in complete denial, falsely claiming that grocery prices went down. While Americans do not need charts and data...

Greetings, comrade worker: Candidate for Party General Secretary Kamala Harris has promised to punish the hoarders and wreckers driving up grocery prices. All hail the might of Soviet labor! That’s the latest bonkers proposal from Komrade Kamala Harris, unveiled in her marquee speech on the economy Friday — socialist price controls on groceries. Because the sky-high grocery prices average Americans have seen since she’s been in office couldn’t be the result of her boss’s disastrous economic policies. No, they must be caused by price-gouging corporate overlords who for some reason want customers to buy less of their products. The data...

Washington Post: Kamala Harris to propose ban on ‘price gouging’ for food, groceries https://washingtonpost.com/business/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-economic-policy-2024/Me: The Maduro diet: How most Venezuelans lost an average of 43 pounds in two years https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2020/07/15/43-pounds/

CHICAGO — Nearly a year after Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration floated the possibility of opening a municipally owned grocery store to help improve food access on the South and West sides, a feasibility study created for the city describes a municipal grocery model as “necessary, feasible, and implementable.” The study recommends the city pursue some version of a municipally owned store or stores — and finds such stores could even turn a profit. It also suggests the city not attempt to operate a supermarket itself, but rather partner with a for-profit operator, a non-profit operator or a co-op. Private grocers...

During an interview on Tuesday for Wednesday’s BET News interview special “Black America Votes: The Biden Interview,” President Joe Biden said that his economic policies haven’t resonated with people “because the Republican Party and the MAGA Republicans have been opposed to it, and they’ve been beating up on it.” And because “it’s just taking time for people to see it. And the other thing is, there’s not been a very good job done about saying, this new billion-dollar bridge going over there is brought to you by Joe Biden.” But some of his policy agenda has “resonated for those who...

Grocery store prices are changing faster than ever before — literally. This month, Walmart became the latest retailer to announce it’s replacing the price stickers in its aisles with electronic shelf labels. The new labels allow employees to change prices as often as every ten seconds.“If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream. If there's something that’s close to the expiration date, we can lower the price — that’s the good news,” said Phil Lempert, a grocery industry analyst. Apps like Uber already use surge pricing, in which higher demand leads to higher prices...

Washington, Arizona, Colorado, California, and Oregon would see the biggest number of stores flipped to C&S.. Kroger and Albertsons have released a list of hundreds of stores that would be divested to C&S Wholesale Grocers if federal regulators approve its proposed $24.6 billion merger deal, and the states with the largest numbers include Washington, Arizona, and Colorado. Under the proposal, Kroger and Albertsons would divest stores in Washington (124), Arizona (101), Colorado (91), California (63), Oregon (62), Illinois (35), Texas (28), Nevada (16), and Alaska (18). Several states would see 10 or fewer stores divested, including: Idaho (10), New Mexico...

President Joe Biden stubbornly refused to admit Americans' struggles with inflation might cost him the election in a rare interview Wednesday. A growing economy could inspire confidence in Biden's leadership ahead of the election, but the issue of persistent inflation could ruin that. Biden, who was in Wisconsin to tout his record on the economy and to announce an investment by Microsoft to build a factory, defended his handling of inflation.