GOP Failure Watch Part III

If you want to bash Hillary take it to a different thread.

I really can only speak for this region, but for the most part, WALMART had little to do with putting local stores out of business, particularly in smaller towns.
One of the things about Mom & Pop stores is that if Mom & Pop are successful enough to send their 1-5 kids off to college, the likelihood that one or any of them want to come back to Smalltown America and run the business gets smaller and smaller with each generation. There's something to about working 12-16 hour days that puts a lot of people off.

The small town I lived in in Minnesota fought off a WalMart, and I think it's helped the local economy to this day. But I think that's because, for some reason, a few kids like coming back after college and putting in the 12-16 hour days to keep things going.

On the other hand, the town I grew up in is probably helped by the WalMart. The Mom&Pops were pretty much put out of business by the mall back in the 70s. All WalMart did was kick the shit out of the chain stores at the mall. The businesses that survived the mall were pretty much able to survive WalMart.

Are there any smaller stores like Alco or Menards or some localized chain store there? I've seen both work and not work.

Pretty much my experience growing up. The regional precursors to WalMart, malls and redistribution of population/wealth to the "new" side of town killed downtown businesses and Mom & Pops, WalMart was the only store that built on the "old" side of town

Yeah, I think the mom & pop stores being shut down is a red herring.

My concerns about Wal-Mart and big box stores are more about their effects on the supply chain, labor and efficiency of infrastructure spending. Of course, these issues don't carry the same nostalgic appeal.

Bigsoccer poster Dogface could answer with updated accuracy, but when we lived there, there were three grocery stores: one a local chain, one a locally owned one, and one really excellent food coop. There were chain fast food places, but that's it.

There was a larger town 15 miles away that had pretty much everything, including a WalMart. So it wasn't like the local stores were saved from competition with the chains. But they did okay, at least 20 years ago.

The town I grew up in still has a pretty desolate downtown, but it also has two coffeehouses that could make a go of it in any city. That's something I don't think a WalMart will ever produce.

Can't prove a causal connection, but it actually happened here-- Walmart opened, everyplace I used to patronize closed over the next couple of years.

Of course the center of town was all tourist shops already, and the mom-and-pops were scattered all over, including in what passed for malls, so this might not have been the typical experience.

I take exception to that

Well, yes, if you ignore the parts of the Democratic party you don't like, then sure, it starts to look a lot more like the one you prefer.

You told me to look at the party platforms from the '60s, and they say nothing about segregation as a preferred policy, and are defined by the same kind of progressivism that define the party's leadership today.

Yes, I acknowledge that the Dixiecrats existed and that they were sizable in nature, and that their departure from the Democratic Party ceded the advantage in the South to the GOP. But they left because their POV was marginalized. I mean, have you looked at the Democratic Party platform from the 60s?

I didn't mention anything about the democratic party, did I... but, as you've asked, there's no WAY Obama would introduce anything on the level of change to that enacted in 'the great society' and, bear in mind, some of the most significant changes since then, (the subject you raised), have been to roll back some of the advances made at that time and to further the agenda of the right, sometimes with direct implementation by people who were nominally left-wing.

The combination of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and benefit reductions/'forced labour' for the poor can only be sensibly interpreted as anti-working class and a move to the right and in contrast to many other countries that have EXTENDED benefits to the poor.

Still, I suppose that counts as a change.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...y-virginia_n_1854573.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Conservative former Rep. Virgil Goode will appear on Virginia's presidential ballot after state election officials rejected a Republican-led effort to keep him off. Republicans fear Goode will drain votes from their candidate, Mitt Romney, in a swing state where polls show a deadlocked race.

awesome. the state that made it hard for Republican candidates to get on the ballot in the primary get this guy.

WTF goes on in this woman's mind?

Makes you wonder what Ken sees in her, doesn't it...

Beg to differ.. Barbie is waaaaay smarter than Batsh!t Bachmann

Heere's the article...

Aaaand heeere's the picture...



Nothin' fabulous about this.

You realize if he never did the Monday Night Football thing, he'd be as significant as Ted Nugent. Then again, he is as significant as Ted Nugent.

Yes, both parties are a problem, says former GOP rep Mickey Edwards, but the extreme partisanship? "Newt began this process of 'you look at someone on the other side not as a fellow member of Congress, but as an enemy to be vanquished'."



One should feel free to lift a quote or two from the article to put it in the DemFail thread... Such as the part about how he was gerrymandered out of office...

He's certainly sold 10 records for every one Nugent has. Probably 100. That's a type of significance anyway...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19462506

Definitely belongs in the Fail thread. As a runner and someone who has run a marathon, you don't forget your first time or PB.

http://www.paulryantimecalculator.com/