Click to enlarge — The Palm Beach Post/Rachel Mummey
Though lots of folks make a big deal pro and con over Gray Thursday getting out in front of Black Friday for Shopmas goodies – I think the greatest motivation for retailers to bump their marketing ahead is that the whole shopping season is about a week shy of most years. They’re trying to make up for the short time producing a shortfall in projected sales.
Let’s hear it for a consumer-based economy, eh?
Pope Francis condemned trickle-down economics and the world of inequality and exclusion it fosters in the first apostolic exhortation of his papacy:
“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed.”
Many of the pontiff’s criticisms of trickle-down economics are true of the American experience. The policies that began with Ronald Reagan have not benefited middle and working class Americans, while deregulation spawned a reckless financial system that nearly destroyed the financial industry in a historic recession — a recession in which the most affluent have rebounded from far more easily than other Americans. Three decades of high-income tax cuts have proven equally ineffective. The Bush tax cuts aided the wealthy but did not reach the middle and lower classes as promised, resulting instead in “the worst wage and salary growth and total compensation growth of any postwar economic expansion.” In short, the wealth never trickled down…
Would you buy a used car from this man?
Police in Arkansas said a car dealership owner allegedly plotting to have a former employee killed inadvertently telephoned the man while talking to a hit man.
Jonesboro police said Larry Barnett, 68, owner of Legend Motor Company, called a former employee while speaking to a hired killer about having the former employee killed…
Sgt. Doug Formon said the conversation had ended by the time police arrived at the former employee’s home, but the call made from Barnett’s phone was still active.
Police said Barnett allegedly wanted to have the former employee killed because the suspect owed the intended victim a large sum of money.
“I’ve been here now for 25 years and I’ve never recalled a time when a subject has accidentally, if you will, ‘butt-dialed’ someone they’re either trying to commit a crime against or the possible victim of the crime,” Formon said.
Barnett, who police said was also allegedly falsifying documents to get loans for non-existent vehicles, faces charges of conspiracy to commit murder, felony theft greater than $25,000 and felony forgery.
Nice guy. I’ve known Mafiosi in the car business with better business ethics than this thug.
Free enterprise Florida style
The mayor of Hampton, Barry Layne Moore, was arrested Monday afternoon in Polk County after a Bradford County Sheriff’s Office investigation revealed he had obtained and sold oxycodone…
A deputy was given information while working on an unrelated investigation that alleged Moore was selling prescription medication. That led to the extended investigation by the agency’s drug unit.
Polk County Sheriff’s Office deputies served an arrest warrant with a bond of $45,000 for Moore and took him to the Polk County Jail.
“This isn’t Toronto. We will not tolerate illegal drug activity, in my jurisdiction, by anyone to include our elected officials,” Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith said, referring to Mayor Rob Ford who has admitted to smoking crack cocaine.
Capt. Brad Smith, spokesman for the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office, said Moore has been charged with one count of possession of a Schedule I or II drug — in this case, oxycodone — and one count of possession with the intent to sell, both of which are felonies.
Florida family values apparently extend to all levels of government. The governor’s previous business paid the largest fine in history for Medicare fraud. A leading Republican light in Congress was just busted for cocaine use. Now we have the mayor of small town Florida caught in the state’s leading illegal business – selling oxycodone.
America’s corrupt politicians apparently have decided there’s more profit to be made – and pleasure gained – from illegal drug sales than old fashioned theft from taxpayers.
Eideard 