Dollar Store CEOs Fail at CEOing, Blame the Poors
April 12: The stupid economy … Johnson to Mar-a-Lago … Leonard Leo subpoena … Georgia election probe …
If you want to know why Family Dollar and Dollar Tree are closing 1,000 locations, or why 99 Cents Only is going out of business, just ask the executives who run them and are so smart and skilled and generally geniusy that they’re paid literally millions of dollars.
“Family Dollar is a victim of the macro environment out there,” said Dollar Tree CEO Rick Dreiling. And, yes, Dollar Tree owns Family Dollar.
Meanwhile, 99 Cents Only Interim CEO Mike Simoncic blamed “...rising levels of shrink [shoplifting, etc.], persistent inflationary pressures and other macroeconomic headwinds, all of which have greatly hindered the Company's ability to operate.”
Damn you, rising levels of shrink and macro-economic climate change! Why must you victimize and hinder America’s innocent massive companies?!?
As CNN put it, “Both companies said inflation and shoplifting have contributed to their troubles.”
Let us ponder that for a moment. The entire premise of these stores is that they’re the cheapest places to buy shit. Which means, if there’s inflation, that should mean even more people now have no choice but to buy from you.
And “shoplifting” is so played out by now that any time an executive says the word, I’m inclined to assume that the letters “CEO” stand for “KKK.”
Oh, Wall Street also blamed the end of pandemic-era relief funds for poor families to buy food. Meaning, poor families had less to spend at dollar stores. In other words, capitalism just needed a little more socialism.
This is the kind of thing I’ve reported on before. Familiar companies with every advantage in the world — size, brand loyalty, supply chains, lawyers, regulatory capture, you name it — go under and then blame poor Black urban people. I mean, that was literally the play for all of Wall Street when they broke the world’s economy in 2008.
Maybe that’s why we got more than a million views when we did this video with Dan Rather explaining who really kneecapped Toys ‘R Us.
Anyway, to CNN’s immense credit, here’s the headline to their story about all these failing dollar stores:
The story is full of rich, creamy bon mots from Wall Street analysts gleefully shivving the overpaid executives responsible for utterly botching management of these companies. Dear Newsfucker, I recommend it.
For instance, 99 Cents Only utterly failed to invest in improving its shitty stores or adjusting to that whole internet thing. How come?
When 99 Cents Only went private in 2011, it had the second-highest profit margin among similar stores and literally more sales per square foot than anyone. Within five years, it was losing money.
That’s because it went private with a leveraged buyout — meaning the buyers didn’t have to put up all the money, they could borrow — and then the “buyers” told the company they had just bought, “Here’s the IOU for buying you: You pay it off.”
Struggling to pay off $1.6 billion in brand-new debt, 99 Cents Only couldn’t make investments to compete, because all it had left was 99 cents only.
So when you see all these stories about how stores selling cheap shit “couldn’t survive in the current economy” — of wages outpacing inflation and unemployment lows on a streak unseen in modern history — consider that we might be getting sold a bill of goods.
Johnson Takes Ukraine Case to Mar-a-Lago
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is going to sunny Mar-a-Lago today to enjoy leisurely hours of poolside drinks and some parasailing kissing ass.
That’s because his goal is to convince D4FRFP1 Donald Trump to give his blessing to holding a vote on military aid for Ukraine. An overwhelming majority of members of Congress support more weapons for Ukraine — which is running out of ammo to defend shit like the massive power station Russia just took out — but Johnson won’t hold a vote on it while a tiny minority threaten to take his speakership if he does. #Democracy
Reportedly, Johnson has been talking to the Biden White House about structuring the aid as loans, or trying to use frozen Russian bank assets. Where’d he get that idea? Glad you asked. Care to step into my rabbit hole? Mind the step…
On March 28, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Tweeted (I’m not even pretending to call it X anymore) that he had spoken with Johnson and “discussed…using frozen Russian assets.”
As I reported earlier this week, in January, Johnson met with Ukrainian evangelicals (tied to the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, obviously) who sold Johnson on the idea that the war in Ukraine is a battle for religious freedom.
Last week, Zelenskyy met with a religious group including at least three of those evangelicals who met with Johnson — and told them how much Ukraine needs them to get the word out … especially to international leaders in other countries. (The evangelicals wanted more prayer breakfasts. And they promised Americans that Christians will get to shape Ukraine’s future if they help it have one.)
I’ve been googling “Ukraine” + “religious freedom” for a while now to gauge whether there’s an uptick. There’s an uptick. The message is getting out.
So, I don’t like predictions, but I won’t be surprised if:
Ukraine agrees to ease up on orthodox Christian leaders accused of serving as Russian mouthpieces; this has been a big sticking point for MAGA Republicans who argue it’s Ukraine that’s persecuting Christians,
The “religious freedom” narrative expands even more,
Trump, hungry to appease evangelicals after aborting their abortion ban, at least hints that it’s okay to back military aid for Ukraine,
MAGA Republicans fall in line or at least drop their threat to abort Johnson’s speakership,
Evangelical Christians get a disproportionate say over Ukraine’s future despite making up just 2% of its population.
One thing to note about my rare predictions: They are rarely right.
But at the moment, precious few people seem to understand that this scenario is even possible.
(I should add that Johnson is pushing for more concessions from Democrats ... as if Democrats are the ones blocking the aid. As long as no one realizes Johnson can play the “religious freedom” card, Johnson remains in a stronger position to leverage Democrats into caving on shit like uber-militarizing the border and opening the spigots for Liquefied “Natural” Gas.)
Leonard Leo Subpoenaed
It’s the dream headline for the left, and the nightmare headline for anyone who hates typing syllables that have an “e” right next to another vowel. But enough about mee.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have issued a subpoena to Leonard Leo, a leader of the Federalist Society, which the founding fathers empowered in the Constitution to pick federal judges when Republicans control the White House. Leo has told the Judiciary Committee to take long walk off a short pier on a big island owned by Justice Clarence Thomas’s bestest friend.
The subpoena is part of an effort by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) to get more information about how billionaires are plying Thomas (and others) with lavish vacations and all kinds of rich-bro stuff.
Which, when you think about it, is kinda weird, because we already know all about it, thanks primarily to ProPublica’s reporting.
As with oh so many things, the issue/problem isn’t secret crimes, it’s what’s public and legal. The scandal isn’t law-breaking. The scandal is the actions that we’ve made legal.
Anyway, Leo is the handmaiden for the billionaires who think The Handmaid’s Tale is a DIY manual. It’s unlikely that Democrats have the votes to enforce their subpoena, so at the moment we’re probably at a standoff. Except that Leo and the Federalist Society can keep doing that voodoo that they do so well.
Crime Watch
ATTEMPTED LARCENY Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R-GA) is under investigation for allegedly trying to help D4FRFP Donald Trump steal the 2020 presidential election.
At the time, Jones was a state senator. One thing he was not was a presidential elector. Which is weird because he claimed he was when he signed onto the bogus and also made-up “electorate certificate” that would’ve handed the state and the House of Representatives a thing they could wave around as if it were a receipt for the White House.
The reason it took so long to investigate a guy who 100% did the thing he allegedly did isn’t that Attorney General Merrick Garland was involved (that’s a little joke for all you Garland-haters!) — it’s because Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from the case.
(That was because she held a fundraiser for Jones’s opponent and called Jones a target.)
Prosecutor Peter Skandalakis has been appointed by Skandalakis himself to investigate the case, because he runs the state Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council. All told, 19 people, including Trump, pleaded not guilty in the case. Four have taken plea deals in return for testifying against their fellow election thieves.
Campaign Watch
AG (NOT ATTORNEY GENERAL, THE OTHER AG) D4FRFP Donald Trump reportedly is looking at Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture if Trump gets represidented.
Now, you might say that the USDA will be the absolute least of our problems under Represident Trump. And, fair. But, say I, all the more reason to make sure that folks who aren’t invested in abortion issues or The Fate of Democracy™ know what’s in store for them. And that includes farmers.
Well, small farmers. The industrial-farming complex freaking luuuurv Miller.
Not because he’s an absolute funhouse mirror picture of maximal MAGA beclownification. It’s because Miller lets factory farms run rampant. The USDA under Miller wouldn’t be a case of regulatory capture or even regulatory surrender, it’d be full-blown regulatory defection/treason.
You can read about Miller’s cartoonery all over the place, but it’s important to keep in mind this is about more than radical unprofessionalism. It’s about the concrete impact Miller would have on farmers. I wrote about him and the abysmal state of the regulatory regimen that’s supposed to protect small farmers by preventing factory farms from posing as organic. Miller had a supporting role, so I hope you’ll check it out.
TCB
CROW-ING My TFN exclusive about Ukraine was the lead story in this week’s edition of the CROW newsletter. The Christian Right Observer Weekly rounds up all kinds of stories that it’s observed about the Christian right. Weekly! I recommend checking them out.
NICOLE SANDLER Don’t forget to join me Monday for the weekly edition of “The Fucking News” on The Nicole Sandler Show, weekdays at 5pm eastern.
You can stay in touch with me and The Fucking News over the weekend and all times ever mostly on Twitter but also on Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Spoutible. We are verging on self-parody with all these platforms, I realize, but we gotta be ready for whoever takes Twitter’s crown, right? Right?!?
Have a great weekend! Go get ‘em, kids…!
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.
Damn it! I shop at the Dollar Tree regularly, being retired. Some stores are quite shabby and the workers few and probably underpaid. But this makes no fucking sense! More people are using these stores. Thanks for covering. I protest, loudly!!
Investment firms buy corporations and then run them into the ground. Oh, and the economic propaganda is getting old fast😕