Posted: March 7, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
By Christopher Harper
Just up the road from our home in Muncy, Pennsylvania, sits the skeleton of the former Lycoming Mall, which recently locked its doors after nearly 45 years in business.
The mall, which opened in 1978, had more than 80 outlets. Many now defunct stores were once located there: Hess’s, Woolworth, Deb, KB Toys, Bon-Ton, Baker’s Shoes, Christopher & Banks, and others.
The issues that led to the closure of the Lycoming Mall plague many malls throughout the country: the impact of Covid and online buying.
While the country’s most popular malls continue to perform relatively well, with steady foot traffic and occupancy, hundreds of others are grappling with significant vacancies, fewer visitors, and uncertain futures.
American malls are a story of haves and have-nots. The real estate analytics firm Green Street estimates that at the 1,000 U.S. malls it tracks, there are about 750 vacant anchor boxes — vast spaces that once housed chains like Sears, Nordstrom, and Macy’s. Those are difficult to fill in regular times, but the past few years have made it extraordinarily tough.
A slew of bankruptcies, including J.C. Penney and Brooks Brothers, fueled closures. Some retailers decided to shutter their least-profitable stores, causing another exodus. More than 12,000 stores announced closures in 2020, according to CoStar Group, a data provider for the real estate industry.
Many people have a deep nostalgia for their local mall. It was often a place for teens to hang out after school, a source for back-to-school clothing, or the locale of a first job.
One of the local news sites collected stories from people about the Lycoming Mall.
“I got my Cabbage Patch doll there. I took classes in the community room to teach me how to walk in heels and put on makeup. I performed in the hole that was in the center of the mall at one time (baton twirling). I got belly button rings from Spencer’s. I got books for my daughter from the bookstore and took her to Boardwalk for fun. I have chased my grandkids around in that mall. So many memories,” said Bobbimarie Allen.
Fortunately, a group of local developers plans to create a mixed residential and shopping area in the Lycoming Mall, so the vast area won’t be an eyesore in a few years!
I wasn’t aware of the suit against Pfizer claiming they violated their contract with the Government over the COVID vaccine and thus doesn’t have immunity over their delivered vaccine. Given the ads constantly be running on radio about watching for signs of heart issues that are sponsored by them (ads we didn’t see three years ago) they might be worried but all of this depends on how the court defines “Save and effective”. If they make sure it’s defined in their favor it all doesn’t matter.
In Minnesota they’re having fun adjusting definitions of “woman” as a Transgender Powerlifter has won in court against the US Powerlifting federation. Apparently under Minnesota law, at least according to the court, to stop a man who believes himself to be a woman from competing against other woman is discriminatory and traumatic.
Hey if at least one justice on the Supreme Court can’t under oath define what a woman is how do you expect judges on the Minnesota courts to do so.
If they lose their appeals my advice is to drop all segregation by sex in powerlifting. I suspect once the prospects finishing in a medal round disappear so will these “woman” from competition.
Over at Legal Insurrection there is a piece about Germany banning protests against abortion as the “40 days for life” movement has come there and made quite a splash.
The left fear is always a good sign but there was something in the piece that jumped out at me:
Currently, abortion is illegal in Germany, but women and their doctors do not face penalties if the pregnancy poses a health risk to the woman or in cases of rape. There is also a loophole under which an abortion may be carried out within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (14 weeks since the last period) after mandatory counseling.
emphasis mine
That seems a rather flexible definition of the word “illegal” in my books, but to a person of a certain age Germans finding a loophole allowing them to kill undesirables is almost tradition.
The Twitter files keep coming out an the government’s use of the word “disinformation” to justify their actions is looking worse and worse as the New Neo reports:
Maybe GEC’s involvement was a secret, but it was no secret – to anyone paying attention – that vast numbers of Twitter accounts were being censored for fairly ordinary viewpoints, the majority of them on the right. It wasn’t limited to Twitter, either – YouTube was heavily involved.
I can vouch for the Youtube censorship but to me the real key line of the story (other than this being,surprise an Obama initiative is this:
The center has a budget of roughly $74 million and “reportedly gave to at least 39 different organizations, whose names were redacted” in an inspector general report.
I submit and suggest that this was, and still is, all about funding leftist front groups to point to their political enemies to have them censored.
Land of the free my ***
Just over two thousands years ago Jesus Christ said:
you will know the truth, and the truth will set you fre
Only the dying leftist Fake News industry canceled me (for out-of-context news of course). Social media and banking unaffected. Personal life improved. Never been more popular in my life. Zero pushback in person. Black and White conservatives solidly supporting me.
This makes this particular bit about the Scott Adams story, via Roger Kimball, particularly interesting:
Oh, the howls of outrage that comment elicited! The woke beast was awake and on the prowl. “Dilbert has been cancelled from all newspapers, websites, calendars, and books,” Adams said. Why? “Because I gave some advice everyone agreed with. (My syndication partner canceled me.)”
Once whetted, the appetite of the woke beast is insatiable. A day or two later, Adams reported, “My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist. Still no disagreement about my point of view. My book agent canceled me too.”`
It is true, by the way, that “everyone agrees” with the point that Adams made. Everyone knows it is true. But no one is supposed to admit that it is true. Adams made it all worse by observing that “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps . . . then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” Oh, wait. I got my notes confused. That wasn’t Scott Adams. That was the professional black Jesse Jackson in 1993.
Perhaps the word “cancelled” might have to be redefined
For all of you cynics who says there is no real choice in most elections, next month’s runoff race for Chicago mayoral election proves you wrong.
The unpopular and incompetent incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, finished third in last week’s first round of voting, collecting an anemic 17 percent of the vote in a nine-candidate field. Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas took first place with 33 percent of the vote and Cook County commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson in second with 21 percent of the tally.
Chicago’s municipal elections are non-partisan, but the remaining candidates are Democrats.
Vallas has been largely successful in other education jobs, including posts in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Bridgeport, Connecticut–but he has butted heads repeatedly with teachers’ unions, most notably the far-left Chicago Teachers Union, which has strongly backed Johnson’s candidacy. And that’s not all. Johnson, who earns over $100,000-a-year as a Cook County commissioner, also has collected nearly $400,000 as a legislative coordinator for the CTU over the past five years.
So not only is Johnson in the pocket of the Chicago Teachers Union, the CTU is in Johnson’s pocket.
As of this writing, Johnson has not said if he will quit his CTU post and stop cashing that paycheck.
According to the Illinois Policy Institute, over the first two months of 2023, Johnson’s campaign was the recipient of over $4 million in contributions. Over half of that came from the Chicago Teachers Union and its affiliated unions. Of the rest, most of that cash was contributed by other unions, while just five percent of his campaign funds came from other sources.
Watch out, taxpayers.
Johnson favors, as does the CTU, an array of anti-business and anti-consumer taxes and fees, including the hated employee head tax that Mayor Rahm Emanuel eliminated in 2014, although Johnson only wants large companies to pay for a new head tax.
The 2020 riots devastated Chicago’s main shopping and tourism district, North Michigan Avenue. Johnson supports “new user fees for high-end commercial districts frequented by the wealthy, suburbanites, tourists and business travelers.” Such fees will finish off North Michigan Avenue and similar areas. I used to work in the hospitality industry, and Chicago’s hotel taxes, the highest in the nation, were frequently used by officials in other cities to lure conventions away–Johnson wants to hike those hotel taxes by 66 percent. The COVID-19 has devastated ridership on Metra, the Chicago metropolitan area’s public train system, Johnson wants to institute a suburban commuter tax for Metra riders.
Johnson also backs a real estate transfer tax on high-end homes, a financial transaction tax, and maybe, a 3.5 percent municipal income tax on wealthy Chicagoans. In regard to the city income tax, which the Chicago Teachers Union supports, he said that it was a mistake by another far-left group, presumably United Working Families, to wrongly says he backs it.
Fine, that very well may be true. But late last month, on his Fox Chicago Flannery Fired Up show, host Mike Flannery asked Johnson five times if he backs a city income tax. Johnson deflected–he refused to answer “Yes” or “No.”
Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, and St. Louis are among the failed cities with a municipal income tax.
Most Chicagoans believe that crime is the biggest issue in the city. Where does Johnson stand on crime and the police?
Since then, Johnson has waffled, he says many 911 calls are over domestic disturbances. Quite true. But the day after Election Day, a Chicago Police officer, Andre Vasquez-Lasso, was murdered by an 18-year-old gang member. Vasquez-Lasso was responding to a domestic disturbance call.
Last week, when former Chicago Police superintendant Garry McCarthy was asked by Amy Jacobson on WIND’s Morning Answer about Johnson’s support for sending social workers to respond to such domestic altercation calls, he replied, “We’re gonna end up with some dead social workers.”
And if Chicago elects Brandon Johnson mayor next month–remember, Vallas only received only one-third of the vote last week—get ready for an emptying city. The Detroit-doom scenario for Chicago is not far-fetched.
I’ll end with an apocryphal story about an Illinois governor, Adlai Stevenson, who twice was the Democratic nominee for president.
“Every thinking person in America will be voting for you,” someone remarked to Stevenson. The governor replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do—I need a majority.”
Let’s not go Brandon.
John Ruberry regularly blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.
Major Hogan: [tosses a coin to Sharpe] What’s that, Sharpe?
Richard Sharpe: A shilling, sir.
Major Hogan: The King’s Shilling, Sharpe. Our last shilling. London’s late, the Army’s broke, and we owe the lads two months’ wages… What do you do when you’re out of cash, Sharpe?
Richard Sharpe: Do without, sir.
Sharpe’s Rifles 1993
Spent a day and a half with friends crashing over for a birthday (very odd to do so without DaWife, it almost never happens) so I’ve not been close to events over the last 48 hours so I was rather surprised when I walked into DaHouse this morning just after midnight, turned on the TV and saw this ad:
It’s a very clever ad and I endorse the sentiment expressed. A lot of other people must as well since they apparently sold 100,000 bars within 12 hours so I headed over to their web site to see what they were offering.
And that’s when I saw that their base chocolate bar was $6.99
$6.99? In contrast at my local market basket a Hershey’s bar goes for about $2.
Not to worry though you can choose to order 4 bars and pay$25 or $6.25 a bar
or if that’s too much you can buy 10 bars and pay $45.99 or $4.59 a bar
but the real bargain is a 24 pack which sets you back $100. So not only are you only paying a 25% premium to tweak Hershey but you get free shipping unlike those previous orders that don’t get to the $80 free shipping threshold.
You know I’m not a fan of wokeness but most normal Americans can’t afford to spend $100 on chocolate. That’s three water bills, or 3/4 of an electric bill or 2 1/2 fill ups of my car. I’m not going to blow that amount on candy just to poke these guys in the eye.
Apparently a lot of guys can and if Jeremy’s can find people in this economy who can, more power to them that’s free enterprise.
Me I’ll just buy a different brand without the 350% premium or do without. Just as effective but without the capital outlay.
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