More capitol lunacy, and other stuff

The legislature blackens my mornings with their antics, as dutifully reported by the pretend journalists over at WJBO radio. But no matter about that triviality, for the offenses of our solons are putrid beyond all hell.

Each day brings more potential depredations upon our lives and our freedoms. No talk is uttered of retrenchment, of living within one's means, of permanently doing less with less. Instead the cry is about "evil" budget cuts to public "education" and the protection of bureaucratic privilege, i.e. civil service merit increases.

Hey folks, guess what? I haven't received a pay increase in five years. Between inflation and taxes, that's tantamount to a shrinking income. Yet I'm not up in arms, declaring with fatted lips that I am "owed" an income increase by society, for whose "benefit" my "services" are performed. Unlike our capitol critter friends, regular folks understand that a dollar earned is equivalent to value produced for that dollar.

For those with hands outstretched in perpetual need, (apologies to EON Productions) being handed the world on a silver platter is not enough. The vacuum pit of subsidy demands more, and always delivers less in return.

Gotta love it.

--

More corpses litter the retail boneyard as the depression grinds on to its bitter conclusion.

But I ask, what about SearsKmart??

A few years back Kmart was bankrupt and on the ropes, a failed merchandiser, about two hair breaths' length from complete evaporation. Sears was healthier but hardly any better, a shell of its former glory akin to Montgomery Ward in its last days.

When these two failed firms were combined, I noted at the time that it was the equivalent of propping up two rotten sheaths of wheat, to keep each other from collapsing into ash.

So in an age of retail death, when formerly indomitable soulless national corporate conglomerates crash and burn on a daily basis, what lies in store for this reprehensible combination?

Failure and more failure, most likely. But it thankfully will have few repurcussions here. The Capital Region has only two Sears stores which are generally mostly empty whenever I visit; and one lone Kmart straggler store in an outlying exurb, rendering the Stick essentially Kmartfrei. (Though there are many dead boxes which litter the suburban landscape here that formerly housed the retailer.) Wise souls here conduct their retail business at the House of Sam (Walton, that is).

--

One last question, because inquiring minds want to know:

Will "the new GM" be similar to "the new NBC" circa 1979 and to-day?

Because I wouldn't want to go there with a 100 foot pole, if you know what I mean.

(Sorry, couldn't resist kicking a failure while it's down, and likely unable to get up again.)