Honeycombe8
Honeycombe8's JournalRetail Apocalypse post #3...Now, even Amazon is shuttering doors
NEW YORK (AP) -- Amazon is shutting down all its pop-up shops and focusing on opening more of its bookstores as it rethinks its brick-and-mortar strategy.
The online retail giant has 87 pop-up shops in malls, Whole Foods grocery stores and Kohl's department stores that sell Amazon's Echo voice-activated devices, Kindle tablets and other gadgets.
Amazon did not say when the pop-up shops would shut down, but the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported that they will close down in April.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-close-pop-shops-215921279.html
The Retail Apocalypse continues...more store locations
To add to my recent prior post about the Retail Apocalypse announcements in the last week or two, we can add the following.
Family Dollar will close nearly 400 stores. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/06/investing/family-dollar-stores/index.html
Chico's is closing as many as 80 stores. https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/stock-market-news-today-030619/h_d3fcd18793ce8eedfe13fee15749a421
Kohl's is shrinking stores and leasing out space to gyms and supermarkets. (This sounds like it could be profitable. Bravo, Kohl's.) https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/05/business/kohls-planet-fitness/index.html
"Small is the new big in retail." New stores opening are smaller in big cities, streamlining its presence and cutting costs.
I like Chico's & Kohl's, and other retail stores. I'm not a big enough consumer to keep any business open, though. I hope these stores make it.
Amazon plans to open dozens of grocery stores
The first of these stores will open in Los Angeles as early as the end of 2019, and Amazon is in talks to open locations in shopping centers in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, according to people familiar with the matter cited in the Journal report. The company is also exploring the idea of purchasing regional grocery stores, the paper said.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon-plans-to-open-dozens-of-grocery-stores-wsj-reports/
This is scary. I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to feel that I may see us all living in AmazonWorld before too long. Even worse, I remember feeling sort of this way, when WalMart was expanding in my area. Is everyone going to end up working for either Amazon or WalMart, except at Fortune 500 companies owned by oligarchs?
Oligarchs are taking over everything. This is scary. Just how big does a company need to get? Should the government intervene? If so, on what grounds?
Kavanaugh Shows He's Eager to Tear Down Wall Between Church and State....
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/kavanaugh-separation-church-state-morris-county.html....Yet in 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court flipped the First Amendment on its head by ruling, for the first time ever, that the Constitution sometimes requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church. Its decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer blew a chunk out of the wall between church and state. And on Monday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh announced his intention to demolish the remainder of that wall by invalidating laws that bar government subsidization of religion.
On Monday, Kavanaugh vindicated Sotomayor’s fears by seizing upon a case called Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders v. Freedom From Religion Foundation. In Morris County, 12 churches sought to help restore their facilities with historic preservation funds provided by the county. But the New Jersey Constitution, like the Missouri Constitution, bars direct aid to religion, and a taxpayer, represented by FFRF, sued to enforce this provision. But the New Jersey Supreme Court....(found that) New Jersey taxpayers, the court held, cannot possibly be obligated to subsidize the literal exercise of religion.
Kavanaugh disagreed. Although the Supreme Court declined to hear Morris County, Kavanaugh wrote separately to condemn New Jersey’s “pure discrimination against religion.” In his view, “prohibiting historic preservation grants to religious organizations simply because the organizations are religious would raise serious questions under this Court’s precedents and the Constitution’s fundamental guarantee of equality.” Eventually, Kavanaugh wrote, the court should affirm the “bedrock principle of religious equality” by striking down laws that restrict states’ ability to preserve houses of worship with taxpayer dollars. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined his opinion.
The article goes on to say,
Kavanaugh, Alito, and Gorsuch. The three religious nuts on the S.Ct.
The Retail Apocalypse (major stores closing)
http://money.com/money/5637426/retail-store-closures-2019-jc-penney-sears-gap/
SEARS
J C PENNY
VICTORIA'S SECRET
PAYLESS
GYMBOREE
GAP (OLD NAVY)
ANN TAYLOR
What actor causes you to keep flipping channels, when you see s/he's in the movie?
When you're flipping channels for something to watch, what actor or actress do you see in a program that makes you keep on flippin'?
I'll go first.
Steven Seagal
Chuck Norris
Chris Matthews is on VACATION. He's not being fired!
He's been in New Zealand on vacation.
https://twitter.com/HardballChris/status/1101573669799845893
Cohen Testimony (Rep. Katie Hill): Trump told me to say he didn't know about Daniels payment
Rep. Katie Hill elicits testimony that Trump called him during an interview w/a reporter on the Stormy Daniels (Stephanie Clifford) payment scandal, to tell Cohen to say that Trump didn't know anything about it. Trump had already discussed with Cohen beforehand that that's what the public messaging would be. Cohen also states there were 11 checks from Trump and the org. to repay him for the $130,000.
His initial statements were carefully worded, he said, so as not to be an outright lie. He left out information in his statement, and no one caught it.
(Whether Trump directly told him to lie in that phone call is unclear, since Cohen said at other times that Trump never directly told him that. He'd say, "There was no Russian business." And then they changed his draft of testimony to give Congress to change the date of ending of Moscow negotiations to be much earlier.)
Cohen testimony (Rep. Harley Rouda) elicits that Trump lied under oath about Russian Felix Sater
Rep. Harley Rouda (D-CA). This is testimony regarding Trump lying under oath.
Felix Sater, a convicted Russian mobster, was in business with Trump. Trump testified under oath in a lawsuit involving a Trump business that he barely knew Sater and might not recognize him, if he were in the room. Cohen states that Sater was in business with Trump, and had an office in Trump Tower, on the same floor as Donald Trump, and near Trump's office. In fact, Cohen got that office after Sater left.
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