Fabrics retailer Joann files for bankruptcy

Source: CNN

“Joann, the 81-year-old fabric and craft retailer, has filed for bankruptcy as it struggles with customers cutting back on discretionary spending. In a statement Monday, the Ohio-based company said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and has secured $132 million in fresh funding that helps reduce its debt in half, which had ballooned to $1 billion. Its roughly 850 stores and website will remain open for business. Joann’s revenue has been on the decline in recent years, except for a brief pandemic boom during the height of Covid when people stuck at home spent more money on arts and crafts. However, that has since faded, and inflation has soared, prompting customers to spend less on non-essential items.” (03/18/24)

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/business/joann-fabric-bankruptcy/index.html

Trump: Another Special-Interest-Pandering Politician

Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman

“Trump promises to slam a 100-percent tariff on imported cars. He announced this not to a group of prospective car buyers but to a group of car makers. So what else is new? Car buyers, who outnumber the well-organized car makers but are not themselves organized, would have to pay more for cars they do not want if Trump got his way. That’s the point. This is America first? No, it is not. It is ‘An Interest Group Whose Votes I Want’ First versus everyone else. That’s always the case with protectionism. Stopping consumers from buying whatever they want helps some (in the short term) at the expense of the rest. Calling the favored group ‘America’ is self-serving special pleading. Trump’s good at that. He thinks he knows better than you.” (03/18/24)

https://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2024/03/trump-another-special-interest.html

Why Leftism [sic] Fails: An Historical Study, part 2

Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis

“Let me continue this series on the Persian empire based upon the words of historian Will Durant (see article one in this series). Again, we must study history to determine what works. If we practice what has succeeded in the past, we will see true ‘progress’ — not just by following the good, but by rejecting the bad, the mistakes countless generations before us have made. But Leftists [sic] want to revise history. Notice what they are doing with our own. According to the liberal [sic] ‘scholar,’ the Founding Fathers were not great men who built a solid foundation for a successful country. They were ‘terrorists,’ ‘elitists,’ ‘racists,’ or ‘slave owners,’ who oppressed other people and exploited resources for their own selfish aggrandizement. Leftism [sic] must tear down in order to build up what they want.” (03/18/24)

https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2024/03/18/why-leftism-fails-an-historical-study-part-two-n2636615

Cubans stage rare street protest over power blackouts

Source: BBC News [UK state media]

“Hundreds of people in Cuba’s second-largest city, Santiago, staged a rare public protest on Sunday over chronic power blackouts and food shortages. The island is facing its worst economic crisis for three decades, with large parts of Cuba being left without power for more than 14 hours a day. Videos on social media show people chanting ‘power and food’. Its president blames the situation on US sanctions, but critics say it is down to government mismanagement. Since 1960, the US has maintained an economic embargo against Cuba which puts strict rules on trade between the countries. The economy in Cuba, a communist-run island with a population of about 11 million, has been in dire straits in recent years. The coronavirus pandemic put further strain on the cash-strapped nation, which has led to vast shortages of food, fuel and medicine.” (03/18/24)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68595885

Australia: Uber agrees to $178 million extortion payment

Source: United Press International

“Uber has agreed to pay a $178 million to settle a class action lawsuit involving thousands of Australian drivers who lost income and license values over the rideshare giant’s business practices. The case, which was to be tried before the Supreme Court of Victoria starting Monday, was filed by attorneys with the Maurice Blackburn Lawyers firm in 2019 on behalf of 8,000 taxi and hire car drivers. The lawsuit argued that Uber acted unlawfully when it began operating in Australia by failing to meet specific regulations on operating passenger transportation services to the detriment of their clients.” (03/18/24)

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2024/03/18/australia-Uber-settlement/1071710741167/

If Kyiv fell, would Moldova have been next? If Kyiv fell, would Moldova have been next?

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Giorgio Cafiero

“Amid the USSR’s implosion in the early 1990s, Russian-speaking separatists in Transnistria feared growing Moldovan nationalism and the possibility of Moldova, which had just declared independence, reunifying with Romania. Russian troops and Cossack fighters helped Transnistrian paramilitary groups fight Moldovan forces in the Transnistria War (1990-92), which killed up to 700 people. To this day the conflict remains frozen. Since 1992, officials in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, and Tiraspol have prevented military clashes. Over the past three decades, the Moldova-Transnistria file has not concerned Washington too much. That is until recently. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 raised concerns about this frozen conflict unfreezing.” (03/18/24)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-transnistria-ukraine/

Free Speech Beyond the Marketplace

Source: Law & Liberty
by Elizabeth Amato

“In March 2020, Waylon Bailey posted on Facebook a joke about zombies, and how his local sheriff’s office in Forest Hill, Louisiana had orders to shoot the infected. Appealing to Brad Pitt’s character from World War Z, Bailey added the hashtag #weneedyoubradpitt. A few hours later, the sheriff’s office arrested him and charged him with terrorism under a state law that forbade spreading information with the intent of causing panic. The district court convicted Bailey and ruled that disseminating false information in the early days of the pandemic was like yelling ‘fire in a crowded theater.’ … These five little words, ‘fire in a crowded theater,’ are invoked like a magical talisman to justify, by analogy, the regulation of false speech and lies.” (03/18/24)

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/free-speech-beyond-the-marketplace/