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Account frozen...

Without a ski-mask? Now, that'd be progress!
What's next? They'll say they're not a terrorist organization anymore? :)

Without a ski-mask? Now, that'd be progress!
What's next? They'll say they're not a terrorist organization anymore? :)

That would be like making Martin McGuinness Minister for Education in Northern Ireland! Oh wait. They did that.

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Reality Internet Personality

The Wal-Martification of America

LEONARD PITTS
THE MIAMI HERALD

January 30, 2006

I don't expect you to shed any tears about Aron's closing.

Unless you grew up in L.A. as I did, you've probably never even heard of it. Aron's was this used record and CD store that I discovered 30 years ago. It was a quirky place, an audiophile heaven where there was never any telling what offbeat treasure you might find.

More to the point, it was “my” place, a store where I spent endless hours browsing for rarities and oddities you could never find elsewhere. To this day, no trip back to L.A. is complete without an afternoon at Aron's.

Or at least, that used to be the case. Recently I read online in the Los Angeles Times that Aron's will soon be closing its doors.

The paper played it as a sign of hard times in the music industry, noting that the number of independent music stores has dropped by half in the last 10 years. But for my money, the demise of Aron's is symptomatic of something larger: Mom and Pop are dying. Or at least, starting to smell funny.

You remember Mom and Pop, right? Mr. and Mrs. Small Business? Used to own that diner down the street, that coffee shop around the corner, that record store across town? Used to run that bookstore with the long aisles of dusty paperbacks where you could while away a rainy afternoon browsing to your heart's content. They gave the neighborhood personality. They gave it soul.

Then somebody bought them out, knocked down the building and put up a Wal-Mart. Or a Starbucks. Or a box store with low prices, huge selection, and all the soul of tuna fish on white bread. And one by one those storied places, yours and mine, winked out of existence.

At this point, the Commerce Department would want me to remind you that the vast majority of businesses in this country are still small ones. Which is true, but also misleading. In 2002, the last year for which numbers are available, the Census Bureau reported that music stores racked up $7.2 billion in sales. Of that, just under $5 billion, roughly 70 percent, was generated by only seven chains, each employing a thousand people or more. In 1992, by contrast, big music stores accounted for “only” 60 percent of the market.

Similarly, general interest bookstores reported sales of almost $9.5 billion in 2002, roughly 80 percent of which was generated by four large chains. In 1992, the mega chains accounted for less than half the bookstore market.

The big are eating the small. Indeed, ask Bob Perry of Blue Note Records in North Miami Beach what business is like for independent music sellers like him and the first word out of his mouth is, “Sucks.”

“It's very, very bad,” he adds. Perry says his store thrives only because he's diversified: he sells posters, memorabilia and does Internet auctions.

This is not the business page, I know. But this lament is not for lost business. Rather, it's for a loss of – here's that word again – soul. Meaning the things that once made our communities unique.

Drive across the country these days and “unique” is not a word that comes often to mind. Increasingly, Richmond could be Rochester could be Dayton could be Duluth. We shop at cookie-cutter stores in cookie-cutter malls and eat at cookie-cutter restaurants, not because the food is special but because it is familiar.

A former colleague called it the Wal-Martification of America. It's as good a term as any for the process by which we become uniform. And regionalisms – that thing they say only in Cincy, that funky bookstore in lower Manhattan, that dish you can get only in that little dive in Jackson – become fewer and farther between.

Progress is inexorable, so I suppose there's nothing to do but wave Mom and Pop goodbye and mourn what they represent, a world before Velcro and digital clocks where families watched TV together and neighbors knew one another by name.

Not to sentimentalize. Time passes, yes. Things change.

But man, Aron's was my place. And I'm sorry, but amazon.com just ain't the same.

Without a ski-mask? Now, that'd be progress!
What's next? They'll say they're not a terrorist organization anymore? :)

That would be like making Martin McGuinness Minister for Education in Northern Ireland! Oh wait. They did that.

Yeah... Expect him to receive The Nobel Peace Price next... It's the safest path to it: kill some thousands, then avoid being caught and killed a few decades, and receive the peace price! But you have to kill many thousands. A few dozens only makes you a criminal serial killer. Millions dead is too much; you'll not get away with that. No, a few thousands is perfect... And a political agenda, of course.

But I guess the 1998 winners block IRA's chances of getting the price this soon.

'You remember Mom and Pop, right? Mr. and Mrs. Small Business? Used to own that diner down the street, that coffee shop around the corner, that record store across town? Used to run that bookstore with the long aisles of dusty paperbacks where you could while away a rainy afternoon browsing to your heart's content. They gave the neighborhood personality. They gave it soul. Then somebody bought them out, knocked down the building and put up a Wal-Mart. Or a Starbucks.'

Are you sure this isn't just another fable? Haven't Wal-Mart and Starbucks been around forever? What's all this Mom and Pop stuff you speak of? ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

You remember Mom and Pop, right? Mr. and Mrs. Small Business? Used to own that diner down the street, that coffee shop around the corner, that record store across town? Used to run that bookstore with the long aisles of dusty paperbacks where you could while away a rainy afternoon browsing to your heart's content. They gave the neighborhood personality. They gave it soul.

They also gave the neighborhood prices so high that as soon as their customers could go somewhere else and get the same product cheaper, they did so. In droves. Why? Because that "soul" wasn't worth a thing to them.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Back then, the manufacturers price was actually the cheapest, then with every hand the merchandise passed through the price was 'marked up'. Hence, the inevitable high price to the consumer...

Nowadays, the manufacturers price is actually the highest, but the retailers get huge discounts enabling the consumer to actually pay less than even the manufacturers original price... Go figure...

Maybe if the Mom and Pops had that same deal back then, we wouldn't be flooded with the big corporate chains today... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Nowadays, the manufacturers price is actually the highest, but the retailers get huge discounts enabling the consumer to actually pay less than even the manufacturers original price...

What? The manufacturer sells it at a loss?

Even were that the case, that's an even better deal for the consumer.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Nowadays, the manufacturers price is actually the highest, but the retailers get huge discounts enabling the consumer to actually pay less than even the manufacturers original price...

Or perhaps the MSRP is artificially inflated so they can give those huge discounts.

The only real downside to this 'system' is that big corporations can now control who is in business and who is not in business by regulating who gets the discounts and who does not get the discounts... Hence, no more Mom and Pops... Go figure... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps
New York Times Editorial
Published: January 29, 2006


Sept. 11 could have been prevented.
Only bad guys are spied on.
The spying is legal.
Just trust us.
The rules needed to be changed.
War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.
Other presidents did it.

Too many people, Mr. Saenger, think the Constitution consists of the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment, but those amendments are simply additions to the Constitution and should not be seen as being in conflict with the original articles of the Constitution. Article II creates a strong executive headed by the president who is "commander-in-chief" of the Armed Forces. This gives the president certain powers in conducting a war that he might not otherwise have in the peace-time execution of the laws of the country.

The FISA Court was set up to approve peace-time wiretaps that affect national security (not domestic crimes), but the Congress has granted the President war powers in both the War on Terror and the Iraq War, which changes everything. This is a simple explaination of why the NY Times author is on the wrong track about this issue.

'This gives the president certain powers in conducting a war that he might not otherwise have in the peace-time execution of the laws of the country.'


Now we all know why this war was waged...
And if you think this war is ever going to end...
Well...
WAKE UP !!!

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

WAKE UP !!!

I'm awake. But I'm not the average "Turn-the-other-cheek"-guy. When you whack a bugs nest, you have to expect some escapes. More whacking is needed until all the little bugs are mush.

'This gives the president certain powers in conducting a war that he might not otherwise have in the peace-time execution of the laws of the country.'


Now we all know why this war was waged...
And if you think this war is ever going to end...
Well...
WAKE UP !!!

The Congress gave the president these powers overwhelmingly, even the Democrats voted for the legislation. If you have something intelligent to say about this, please let us in on your reasoning. If you are simply going to slam the President, well, Pauly-poo beat you to it. So far, between the two of us, you're the only one who is asleep.

'If you are simply going to slam the President'


I would never slam the President...

Something tells me if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, things would be very different... And I do mean, very different... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

'This gives the president certain powers in conducting a war that he might not otherwise have in the peace-time execution of the laws of the country.'


Now we all know why this war was waged...
And if you think this war is ever going to end...
Well...
WAKE UP !!!

The Congress gave the president these powers overwhelmingly, even the Democrats voted for the legislation. If you have something intelligent to say about this, please let us in on your reasoning. If you are simply going to slam the President, well, Pauly-poo beat you to it. So far, between the two of us, you're the only one who is asleep.

I think there is a huge difference between what the congress intended to give the president with this legislation, and what he does with it.
You could simply say: the democrats (and afaik some republicans as well) fell for the "trust me" and didn't read the fine print, so now they have to live with it. But afaik it's even disputed, that anything else than Afghanistan was is this bill, and that the indefinitely extension of it is only wishful thinking of those in the white house.

But if a president of my country would take a neverending war to get dictatorial powers, I would expect of the democrats (not in partisan meaning, but in word sense) to resist!

But if a president of my country would take a neverending war to get dictatorial powers, I would expect of the democrats (not in partisan meaning, but in word sense) to resist!

Ahem... 1933... :)

But if a president of my country would take a neverending war to get dictatorial powers, I would expect of the democrats (not in partisan meaning, but in word sense) to resist!

Ahem... 1933... :)

That's what I'm talking about!
But I would not compare GWB with him, that's not appropriate.
I even try to avoid any analogies with those bastards, as it's a kind of killer argument and usually not very target-oriented.