What could they, as a business have done differently to avoid this? Literally nothing. Their fate was sealed when they suffered the hostile take-over. The process of being loaded up with massive debt by the private equity firm as a means of looting the company did them in. If that hadn’t happened, they’d still be…

The really sad thing is, business-wise, they’re doing fine. As pointed out, the bankruptcy is entirely due to vulture capitalists doing a hostile take-over, looting the company and loading it up with billions of dollars of debt. It wasn’t possible for them to overcome that, even as a highly profitable business.

I support this dream.

Vulture capitalism strikes again.

It was less about shooting themselves in the foot and more about shooting themselves in the head. In 2005 private equity firms bought the company - and as part of that process, stuck the company with over five billion dollars of debt. They tried to take the company public in 2010, but that didn’t fly. They apparently…

The irony is their dire situation has nothing to do with sales (which are apparently still strong). It’s entirely down to the private equity firms that extracted money from the company and weighted it down with massive, unsustainable debt. They didn’t care that they bankrupted the company, they made their money.

“I know that Amazon does play a big part in this”

The saddest part is people were going to these stores - sales continue to be strong, even in the face of online sales. It’s not Amazon that did the company in, it was the damn private-equity firms parasitizing it. If the company hadn’t been saddled with massive, completely unnecessary debts, they would have been fine.

“so-called “alt-lite” movement (alt-righters who claim not to be antisemitic or Neo-Nazi)”

The bit about employees is laughable - employee compensation is so totally divorced from company profitability - but I’d really like to hear the ESA try to justify that claim about how customers are supposed to benefit. That doesn’t even begin to make sense.

“the amount of corporate tax paid in the US was ridiculous”

They don’t see race. Or age. Or the suspect they’re looking for - so I guess anyone will do.

Excuse me, I’m just having a rage stroke. Again.

That Mapbox list is... not so useful. It gives me two surprising ISP options for my area, beside Comcast and AT&T. One I hadn’t heard of, and it turns out it’s an expensive wireless provider focusing on rural areas. (I live in the middle of Silicon Valley.) The other, I was surprised to see listed because I didn’t…

Yeah, the irony is that acting like Trump isn’t an idiot is a sure sign of partisan hackery that makes that person unable to deal with reality, so they were just proving their basic competence...

Yeah, it seems weird to go after the agents for stating something that’s demonstrably true and is frequently stated by members of Trump’s own party - and members of his administration.

What’s weird about that to me is why 21% of the non-evangelical voters voted for someone other than for Jones. Assuming a percent or two went to write-in votes, that’s still about a fifth of non-evangelicals voting for the evangelical theocratic candidate who is a child molester hostile to women’s rights. Were they in…

Given that the issue wasn’t with white women so much as white evangelical women, it’s specifically something toxic about white evangelical culture (since most of the black voters in that state also identify as evangelical but overwhelmingly voted for Jones). On the other hand, I’m struggling to figure out what the…

Except that A) books can easily cost $60 or more (although, granted, books are not a great point of comparison because retail prices are dependent on printing costs and different markets), and B) even with DVDs, there’s no correlation between movie length or blockbuster status and price - in fact, videos of the big…

You’re missing his point: a movie ticket costs - and more significantly is expectd to cost - the same regardless of whether it’s an indie romantic comedy or a monster studio blockbuster, whether it’s an hour and twenty minutes long or three hours. A novel costs the same whether it’s a easy read that you can breeze…