Politics And Current Events

[columbia]

Via @SenateMajLdr on #RoyMoore "I had hoped Judge Moore would...withdraw. That's obviously not going to happen. If he would be elected he would immediately have an issue with the Ethics Committee which they would take up."

https://twitter.com/MajorCBS/status/938125370276106240

Rumor has it that Moore has already inquired about the Senate internship program.
#Foley

[robbiestoupe]

Patagonia getting ready to invoke the wrath of the Orange One with their hit on Trump's land grab yesterday:

http://www.patagonia.com/home/

Patagonia has become very trendy amongst the wealthy white teens down here in Trump Country, so the blowback will be interesting to see.

I've been watching Ken Burns' National Parks DVDs the past few days. This news made me rage when I heard it this morning.

[eddy]

Source of the post Patagonia has become very trendy amongst the wealthy white teens down here in Trump Country, so the blowback will be interesting to see.

I would have never guessed that. I thought it was pretty much hiking/hippie clothes. I have a few shirts from them and find them expensive but extremely comfortable and warm.

[Viva la Ben]

Russia 'increasing oil exports' to North Korea
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/wor ... 923215001/

[DigitalGypsy66]

I don't get how that's "grim".

I think the insinuation is that more families are falling into lower middle class and hitting stores like DG instead of Target, online shopping, etc. I don't know if it's true or not, but we have 4 DGs within 10 miles of my house and a 5th coming soon.

When I had my side job back over the spring, summer, and fall we did inspections for DG and I asked one of the managers why they were building so many of them and he said that DG basically noticed a market niche between gas stations (go and grab a coke/chips) and Walmart (heavy duty shopping) that was hugely underserved by existing stores.

Yeah, that's exactly what's going on. The Vox article seizes on the income inequality angle, which is also accurate - rural people aren't seeing their incomes rise etc. The full WSJ article is an excellent read, especially for those in or from rural areas:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-dollar ... ding_now_2

EVENSVILLE, Tenn.—The local Dollar General store, built on a rural highway and
surrounded by farmland, sells no fresh meat, greens or fruit. Yet the 7,400-
square-foot steel-sided store has most of what Eddie Watson needs.
The selection echoes a suburban drugstore chain, from shower curtains to breakfast
cereal, toilet paper, plastic toys and camouflage-pattern socks. Refrigerators and
freezers on one wall hold milk, eggs and frozen pizza.
Many items are sold in mini bottles or small bags, keeping costs lower than a trip to
the Wal-Mart Supercenter down the road. The two registers are staffed by one
cashier, except during rush hours after school and after work.
“It’s just closer,” said Mr. Watson, a 53-year-old construction worker who filled his
cart with cans of chicken soup, crackers, cold cuts and toilet paper. “We call this the
Evensville Wal-Mart.’ ’’

The store, 10 miles from the nearest small town, is one of three locations in Rhea
County where Dollar General plans to open stores by next year. More than one in five
people there receive government food assistance, higher than the U.S. average, and
the county has Tennessee’s highest unemployment rate.
Dollar General is expanding because rural America is struggling. With its convenient
locations for frugal shoppers, it has become one of the most profitable retailers in the
U.S. and a lifeline for lower-income customers bypassed by other major chains.
Dollar General Corp.’s 14,000 stores yielded more than double the profit of Macy’s Inc.
on less revenue during its most recent fiscal year. And its $22 billion market value
eclipses the largest U.S. grocery chain, Kroger Co., which has five times the revenue.
The retailer relies on rapid store openings to keep revenue climbing and investors
happy; 2016 marked its 27th consecutive year of sales growth in stores open at least a
year.
While many large retailers are closing locations, Dollar General executives said they
planned to build thousands more stores, mostly in small communities that have
otherwise shown few signs of the U.S. economic recovery.

The more the rural U.S. struggles, company officials said, the more places Dollar
General has found to prosper. “The economy is continuing to create more of our core
customer,” Chief Executive Todd Vasos said in an interview at the company’s
Goodlettsville, Tenn., headquarters.
“We are putting stores today [in areas] that perhaps five years ago were just on the
cusp of probably not being our demographic,” he said, “and it has now turned to being
our demographic.”
Dollar General’s target shoppers come from households earning $40,000 or less. Its
primary competitor, Dollar Tree Inc., has more suburban locations and sells all items
for $1, including unbranded knickknacks that attract shoppers browsing for fun. In
2015, Dollar Tree bought another competing low-price chain, Family Dollar Stores Inc which has more urban
locations.
This lower-end market is better protected from Amazon and competitors that target wealthier shoppers, company
executives and analysts said. Dollar General’s typical shopper “doesn’t look at her pantry or her refrigerator and say, ‘You know, I’m going
to be out of ketchup in the next few days. I’m going to order a few bottles,’” said Mr. Vasos, the company’s chief executive. “The core customer uses the last bit of ketchup at the table the night prior, and either on her way to work or on her way home picks up one bottle.”

Camouflage is a proven winner. This year, Dollar General became the exclusive seller of dog food from the camouflage-gear brand Mossy Oak. “Even off-brand camo does well here,” said the Evensville store manager Justin Ray, who has a display of camouflage merchandise, including pacifiers and pet toys. Coca-Cola Co. created a line of soda cans for the chain this spring that carry such labels as “Service Member” and “Military Spouse” because many Dollar General shoppers have a personal link to the armed forces. Stores started selling cigarettes in 2012, a few years before CVS Health Corp. and Costco Wholesale Corp. moved to phase out tobacco sales.

For decades, Dollar General prices have been marked in 5-cent increments, making it easier for shoppers to estimate the total price of their purchases. “They don’t want to be embarrassed when they get up to the register,” said Mr. Vasos, who started working in retail as an assistant
manager at Eckerd Drug and rose to executive before joining Dollar General in 2008. Many popular brands are packaged in small quantities to keep prices under $10—generally yielding higher profits per item than bulk goods at such warehouse chains as Costco, which sells half-gallon bottles of cooking oil and 7-pound packages of fresh chicken.

Lower-priced items are often a financial necessity for shoppers. At a Dollar General in Nashville, Tenn., store manager Damon Ridley said, he has helped older children put together a dinner menu for their younger siblings with the few dollars they have. “I am more of an outreach manager,” he said.

Rural roots

The founders of Dollar General lived in small-town Kentucky and started the company there in 1955, making the store’s rural locations a natural fit. When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. grew past 3,000 stores in the early 2000s, a strategy surfaced: “We went where they ain’t,” said David Perdue, Dollar General’s chief executive from 2003 to 2007.

That meant opening stores “where Wal-Mart’s 40 miles away and we can meet those people’s needs,” said Mr. Perdue, now Georgia’s junior U.S. senator.

Dollar General doesn’t own most of its stores. It mostly leases steel-sided stores built to its own bare-bones specifications, said Dan Nieser, senior vice president of real estate and store development. The average Dollar General store costs $250,000 to open, compared with several million dollars for the average grocery or big-box store, company executives said.

When Dollar General began adding refrigerated sections to sell frozen and chilled foods, its real-estate team pinched pennies elsewhere. “My team is quite innovative,” Mr. Nieser said.

Dollar-store chains flourished in the wake of the recession. Wal-Mart opened more than 100 mostly rural Wal-Mart Express stores, a chain the company has since closed, selling dozens of the stores to Dollar General last year. Dollar General executives said in 2012 the chain would shift more attention to cities, attempting to assuage investors who worried the company’s growth could stall. “As we look further and further out where our growth opportunities are, we’re going to be in more urban environments versus rural,” then-CEO Rick Dreiling said at an investor meeting that year.

Instead, demand by rural shoppers kept Dollar General’s focus on sparsely populated communities. In 2013, Dollar General refined its formula for new locations, incorporating such data as proximity to a post office or church. The company identified 14,000 spots, with “the highest improvement in opportunities in small town and rural markets,” Mr. Dreiling told analysts in 2014. After the company lost a 2015 battle to buy Family Dollar—the more urban chain— Dollar General decided to speed up its rural expansion.

The company has since opened hundreds of diminutive stores, about the size of a basketball court, that can generate profits in communities with fewer than 1,000 homes, Mr. Vasos said.

Dollar General still dreams of one day conquering metropolitan areas. This year, the
company bought 322 stores from a private-equity firm that had bought them from
Dollar Tree as it sought antitrust approval for the Family Dollar purchase. The
acquisition included stores in Brooklyn, N.Y., Chicago and other cities, locations that
will be a useful testing ground, he said.
The percentage of Dollar General stores in and around cities has fallen slightly over
the last two years to under 30%, a spokeswoman said.

Lost jobs

Dollar General opened its first store in Rhea County near Tennessee’s eastern border
in 1965. It was the company’s 48th store. It opened a second one in the county in 1980
and another in 1998. The county is famous for being the setting for the 1925 Scopes
Monkey Trial, where a teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution.

Last year, a subsidiary of Fujifilm Holdings Corp. , which made photo-developing
chemicals, and an air-conditioner maker owned by Daikin Industries Ltd. closed
plants, shedding about 700 jobs. The plant closures pushed the county’s
unemployment rate to 10.2% in January. By October, it had fallen to 5.4%, still the
highest in the state.

Finnish tire company Nokian Tyres broke ground on a local factory this fall. A hotel
has opened, as have some new restaurants, “but the only retailer expanding is Dollar
General,” said Dennis Tumlin, executive director of the Rhea County economic and
community development group.

After opening the Evensville store last year, Dollar General added another in nearby
Graysville. Across the street, the ramshackle Graysville Market & Deli advertises the
“Cheapest Beer and Cigarettes in Town."

Both Dollar General locations, as well as a third scheduled to open next year, are
located on roads leading to the county seat of Dayton, population 7,250, which has a
Wal-Mart, grocery stores and a Dollar Tree.
Mr. Ray, the Evensville store manager, said most shoppers stop by a few times a week
for a handful of items they need that day. Best sellers include canned Vienna sausages
and frozen pizza. Mr. Ray, who grew up about 10 miles away, said Gain detergent sells
better than Tide because shoppers gravitate to more heavily scented cleaning
products.

Sales at the store are up 17% so far this year compared with last year, a spokeswoman
said.

On a recent weekday, Jackie Buchanan pulled up to the store astride a forest-green
Craftsman riding mower, to buy shampoo and lawnmower-carburetor cleaner. “I’m
just one mile down the road,” said Mr. Buchanan, 51, who is unemployed.
Robin Swift, 48, arrived to buy after-school snacks rather than drive 10 miles to the
Wal-Mart. “It’s a small town,” she said, “and we don’t have another choice.”

It's a really good read, and it was a pain in the ass to copy and paste it with all of the wacky HTML stuff going on.

But our little town has 2-3 Dollar Generals, and at least another three under construction.

[columbia]

As Freddy and DG66 know, there are *many* small "towns" in the South, which only consist of a gas station and a dollar store. Next step up is Chinese restaurant, a low rent grocery store and a Hardees.

They fill a pretty needed niche.

[DigitalGypsy66]

...and dialysis clinics, title and payday loans, and many churches.

[Freddy Rumsen]

I kind of don't pay attention to the economic side of the article because I don't care if J.P. Morgan was President, no economic policy will bring back the kind of mid-level jobs that less-than-educated/intelligent people used to be able to fill, whether Steel, Coal, or Coke.

[Viva la Ben]

Smoker Friendly, and Hot Spot

[NailedPenguin]

Mossy Oak makes dog food now?

[Freddy Rumsen]

"Someday you might be president, you never know," Pres Trump tells youngster on Dad's lap in the Oval Office."

https://twitter.com/markknoller/status/ ... 3144708097

[Troy Loney]

I kind of don't pay attention to the economic side of the article because I don't care if J.P. Morgan was President, no economic policy will bring back the kind of mid-level jobs that less-than-educated/intelligent people used to be able to fill, whether Steel, Coal, or Coke.

If you divide the GDP by the US population, it's $575K.

I don't know how to bring folks up, but there has to be a way for more people to bear fruit from our society.

[tifosi77]

I kind of don't pay attention to the economic side of the article because I don't care if J.P. Morgan was President, no economic policy will bring back the kind of mid-level jobs that less-than-educated/intelligent people used to be able to fill, whether Steel, Coal, or Coke.

Please explain that to the knuckleheads in the Rust Belt that seem to think an industrial rebirth is about to be unleashed.

[Troy Loney]

I kind of don't pay attention to the economic side of the article because I don't care if J.P. Morgan was President, no economic policy will bring back the kind of mid-level jobs that less-than-educated/intelligent people used to be able to fill, whether Steel, Coal, or Coke.

Please explain that to the knuckleheads in the Rust Belt that seem to think an industrial rebirth is about to be unleashed.

And doesn't Trump with his MAGA message completely mute the appropriate mindset for moving people out of their shitty situation?

[grunthy]

I kind of don't pay attention to the economic side of the article because I don't care if J.P. Morgan was President, no economic policy will bring back the kind of mid-level jobs that less-than-educated/intelligent people used to be able to fill, whether Steel, Coal, or Coke.

If you divide the GDP by the US population, it's $575K.

I don't know how to bring folks up, but there has to be a way for more people to bear fruit from our society.

No it isn’t.

[Tomas]

Athletes will be invited to participate under the Olympic flag, and the Olympic anthem will be played during medal ceremonies when applicable.

And, incidentally, Russian hockey team will be allowed to participate (under the Olympics flag). It's not a particularly severe punishment, IMO.

[Troy Loney]

I kind of don't pay attention to the economic side of the article because I don't care if J.P. Morgan was President, no economic policy will bring back the kind of mid-level jobs that less-than-educated/intelligent people used to be able to fill, whether Steel, Coal, or Coke.

If you divide the GDP by the US population, it's $575K.

I don't know how to bring folks up, but there has to be a way for more people to bear fruit from our society.

No it isn’t.

FAKE NEWS. I missed a zero. It's 57,474

[MR25]

That's about double what I'd make in a full year.

[large garlic]

I kind of don't pay attention to the economic side of the article because I don't care if J.P. Morgan was President, no economic policy will bring back the kind of mid-level jobs that less-than-educated/intelligent people used to be able to fill, whether Steel, Coal, or Coke.

Please explain that to the knuckleheads in the Rust Belt that seem to think an industrial rebirth is about to be unleashed.

There was a short segment on local Pittsburgh NPR yesterday talking about what former coal miners were up to. As part of that, they interviewed a woman who is the head of some job re-training program. She said she got a grant from the federal government to re-train 750 laid-off coal miners, and only 220 have signed up. Now, they said one issue is that even though the training program is free, you can't work full time while doing it, but still, plenty of other people are laid off and waiting for Trump to wave his wand and return the coal industry to its former glory.

[Freddy Rumsen]

American politics is so bizarre. Not a single senator opposed the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in June (June!). But the understanding is that it's all for show, pure posturing, except now the President wants to do it and Dems freak out.

https://twitter.com/benjaminhaddad/stat ... 1640784897

[columbia]

Thoughts on the gay wedding cake case?

[Factorial]

American politics is so bizarre. Not a single senator opposed the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in June (June!). But the understanding is that it's all for show, pure posturing, except now the President wants to do it and Dems freak out.

https://twitter.com/benjaminhaddad/stat ... 1640784897

There has to be something different between these two resolutions and why twitter sucks.

[Troy Loney]

Thoughts on the gay wedding cake case?

Ignoring all the libertarian fodder. I find it hard to believe that a wedding cake is a form of speech, I listened to an interview with the guy this morning. He seems like a reasonable guy and made it clear that all other products at the bakery area available, but that he wouldn't do a wedding cake. But allowing something the bible says to override anti discrimination laws would appear to be a bad legal precedent.

[Troy Loney]

American politics is so bizarre. Not a single senator opposed the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in June (June!). But the understanding is that it's all for show, pure posturing, except now the President wants to do it and Dems freak out.

https://twitter.com/benjaminhaddad/stat ... 1640784897

There has to be something different between these two resolutions and why twitter sucks.

Yeah, I'm seeing more a twitter media freak out as opposed to the dems. I assume Schumer hasn't said anything about it.

[Freddy Rumsen]

American politics is so bizarre. Not a single senator opposed the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in June (June!). But the understanding is that it's all for show, pure posturing, except now the President wants to do it and Dems freak out.

https://twitter.com/benjaminhaddad/stat ... 1640784897

There has to be something different between these two resolutions and why twitter sucks.

Benjamin Haddad is a French Muslim who works for a Left-leaning Think Tank so he's just asking a real question.