Lemon’s Party Over: Musk Cancels Don Lemon After “CNN, But On Social Media” Interview
Fired CNN propagandist Don Lemon says that Elon Musk “has canceled the partnership I had with X … he informed me of his decision hours after an interview I conducted with him on Friday.”
The interview with Musk is slated to be the debut episode of The Don Lemon Show. According to Lemon, the interview will now run as planned on YouTube, where future episodes will be released.
Both Musk and X responded to Lemon’s post
“X is a platform that champions free speech, and we’re proud to provide an open environment for diverse voices and perspectives,” the company’s @XBusiness account said, adding that Lemon is “welcome to publish its content on X, without censorship,” but that “like any enterprise, we reserve the right to make decisions about our business partnerships, and after careful consideration, X decided not to enter into a commercial partnership with the show.“
When asked to elaborate, Musk said that Lemon’s approach was “basically just “CNN, but on social media”, which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.
“Instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity,” Musk added.
His approach was basically just “CNN, but on social media”, which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.
And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity.
Putin Warns West Russia ‘Ready’ For Nuclear War, But Says ‘Never Been A Need’
Just ahead of Russia’s March 15 presidential elections, Vladimir Putin has reiterated Wednesday that his country stands ready to use nuclear weapons should the state’s existence be threatened, but so far “there has never been such a need.”
The new warning of Russia’s nuclear ‘readiness’ accompanied with acknowledgement that nuclear war is not imminent appeared further reaction to the West taking up the question of sending troops to Ukraine, after France’s Macron raised the issue last month. There have also been fresh attack from Ukraine on Russia’s energy infrastructure this week.
“Apart from (US President Joe) Biden, there are enough other experts in the sphere of Russian-American relations and strategic restraint. So I don’t think that everything is going to go head-on here, but we are ready for it,” Putin said in the fresh remarks given to Rossiya-1.
Putin said further of Washington that it too is developing its strategic forces but this doesn’t mean it’s ready to “launch a nuclear war tomorrow.”
“They are now setting tasks to increase this modernity, innovation, they have a corresponding plan. We know about it too. They are developing all their components. So are we,” Putin explained. “Weapons exist in order to use them. We have our own principles.”
Importantly, FT noted that “Putin also claimed that he had not considered using a tactical nuclear weapon at Russia’s lowest point in Ukraine in the autumn of 2022 when his forces made humiliating retreats in the eastern regions of Kharkiv and Kherson.”
While none of this marks any kind of change in Russia’s nuclear doctrine or posture, it demonstrates that President Putin is taking threats from NATO countries to escalate their involvement seriously. Among the more interesting excerpts from the interview is his comparison of US and Russian strategic arsenals and advancement:
President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia’s nuclear triad — its three-pronged arsenal of weapons launched from land, sea and air — was “much more” advanced than that of the United States.
“Our triad, the nuclear triad, it is more modern than any other triad. Only we and the Americans actually have such triads. And we have advanced much more here,” Putin said in an interview on state TV.
Ukraine has also been engaged in riskier cross-border attacks of late, possibly at the urging or direction of its Western backers. On Tuesday there was a ground assault by pro-Ukraine paramilitary groups in the Belgorod region which Russia’s military said it defeated. It even reportedly involved the paramilitaries using tanks.
There is a reason why Putin is threatening with nuclear weapons today. Russia was exposed to several attacks yesterday against oil refineries.
Also yesterday armed Russian freedom fighters carried out cross-border incursions. pic.twitter.com/5YGrohuEF2
On the question of sacrifices made by Russians, most especially fallen troops and their grieving families during the war, Putin commented in the interview as follows: “Look, every human life is priceless, every one. And the loss of a loved one for a family, for any family, is a huge grief… [but] if we abandon these people today, then tomorrow our losses may increase many times over, and our children will have no future.”
He continued, “…because we will feel insecure, we will be a third- or fourth-rate country, no one will take us into account, if we can’t protect ourselves. And the consequences could be catastrophic for Russian statehood.”
* * *
Below: Putin on the question of peace negotiations with Ukraine…
Putin: “It would be ridiculous for us to start negotiating with Ukraine just because it’s running out of ammunition.”
Republican leadership of the House cutting off military supplies to Ukraine has made Putin drop his pretense about desiring peace talks. He wants it all. pic.twitter.com/rlcmtaJz9U
I’d be remiss this morning if I didn’t put down some of my quick thoughts from watching Special Counsel Robert Hur’s testimony in front of Congress yesterday.
For those who missed it, Hur provided testimony yesterday on his inquiry into President Joe Biden’s improper handling of confidential documents. Serving as the special counsel, he addressed the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, he clearly stated that his investigation “did not exonerate” the president.
For the record, I’m mostly in the same camp as Representative Matt Gaetz, who said yesterday during the hearing that he wasn’t interested in seeing President Biden nor President Trump charged for mishandling classified documents.
The left’s justification for the August 8, 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago and the recovery of classified documents from President Trump’s estate hasn’t so much revolved around the idea that Trump committed a crime by taking them, but rather that he lied when he was asked about them and refused when he was given several opportunities to turn the documents over.
FBI Raid on Mar-A-Lago / Getty Images
Not unlike the numerous other court proceedings against Mr. Trump, which to be honest, seem mostly frivolous, the left has sworn up and down that Trump’s mishandling of these documents is part of a larger pattern of general incompetence and wrongdoing.
In fact, Congressman Adam Schiff, who now continues to perpetuate the Russian collusion hoax despite the fact that nearly all evidence to date proves that he’s the one peddling a conspiracy theory, even took to the airwaves this week to say that if Trump was elected president, he thinks that he shouldn’t have access to certain confidential information.
To be frank, I’m not here to argue whether or not Trump’s handling of these documents constituted incompetence. Rather, I’m writing about what was revealed to be an absolutely devastating double standard made clear by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s testimony with regard to President Biden’s handling of classified documents yesterday.
You can watch the full testimony for yourself here. But what you need to know is that the revelations put forth during the hearing all but confirmedthat President Biden was guilty of far more egregious mishandling of classified documents than President Trump ever was. And the resulting lack of motivation to handle Biden’s case in the same way that Trump’s case was handled once again raises questions, to even those in the center-left of the aisle, if we are administering a two-tiered system of justice.
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Yesterday’s hearing revealed that President Biden kept classified documents at at least six different locations (Penn Biden Center, Biden’s garage, Biden’s basement den, his main floor office, his third floor den, at the University of Delaware and at the Biden Institute) . The hearing also revealed that Biden lied, not only when he was asked about it by the special counsel, but also to the American public.
Additionally, Biden admitted on tape that the documents he had were classified, and it was made clear that his motive for retaining the documents was so that his ghostwriter could prepare a book that he was getting paid $8 million for.
And throughout the testimony, Democrats tried to do damage control but came up short.
Now, in any type of semi-objective world, how do these actions not at least rise to the seriousness of the actions of President Trump? For me, it seems like they are far more egregious than what President Trump was being accused of.
I also know that there’s going to be a constituency of people that try to make this a wash and write off the facts that came to light yesterday.
“They all do it, all politicians are corrupt,” people will say.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that statement, except for the fact that it would normally be a wash, but only one presidential candidate appears to be facing criminal charges while the other is being let out the back door for what could be argued to be far worse conduct.
As I said on my last podcast about the state of the union, the bolder the double standard becomes, the further towards the center go the votes that Democrats see eroded from their base. As I said on my podcast, the Democrats simply don’t have any finesse.
Political dirty tricks, October surprises and the like come with the territory in the world of politics in the United States. But there’s always been some element of finesse to them. If you’re going to try and paint one person to be far more evil than the other, you have to do it in a way that doesn’t overdo it and become obvious. You have to let people think they’re figuring it out for themselves.
There’s no finesse involved in throwing 100 different charges against the wall and then having corrupt prosecutors try to pursue them with their work-boyfriend. There’s no finesse involved in telling the public Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation when everybody could see the photos for themselves. There’s no finesse involved in faking the entire Russian collusion hoax, and finally, there’s no finesse involved when pursuing a candidate publicly for actions that arguably pale in comparison to those of the president ostensibly going after him.
This lack of finesse can also be called sloppiness. How many times in a movie have you seen somebody pulling off a scheme, then getting too confident and “sloppy” before blowing their cover? This is exactly what the Democrats are doing and it is costing them the crucial undecided votes that don’t simply pledge allegiance to one party or the other. Yesterday’s hearing was proof that they have become swollen with hubris and drunk on their own power — and in November, the American public might call them out on it.
“Sir, you can’t take those documents with you!”
“It’s OK! I’m a Democrat!”
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The BOJ “Has Made Up Its Mind To Hike Rates” After Union Wage Negotations Lead To Surge In Pay
After a decade of NIRP and unlimited bond buying to keep the Japanese bond market – and economy – from disintegrating, the BOJ may have no choice but to hike rates as soon as next week. The reason: inflation in “deflationary” Japan is now not only on par with the US, but wage growth is surging and threatening to spark a wage-price spiral even as the clueless, cartoonish central bank is keeping rates negative, buying bonds and stocks to prop up the market, and generally doing everything in its power to unleash hyperinflation and currency collapse.
So with all attention on the Japanese labor union wage requests, overnight companies including Toyota, Honda, Nippon Steel and ANA Holdings all granted workers their biggest pay rise in more than three decades, underlining the inflationary trend and bolstering the case for the Bank of Japan to begin raising interest rates. Indeed, with the peak day arriving today for major companies to respond to union wage hike increases, media outlets have reported that most companies had already agreed to the full amount or more than labor unions wage hike requests without waiting for the March 13 deadline.
As the FT reports, galvanized by the sharp rise in living costs and a deepening labour shortage, the country’s trade unions have negotiated an increase in wages that is certain to exceed the rate of inflation, marking a milestone in a country where real wages have stagnated since the late 1990s.
With the shunto spring wage negotiations largely concluding on Wednesday, economists expect large companies to give their unionized workers an average wage increase of more than 4%, compared with 3.6% last year. That would be the biggest rise since 1992.
Perhaps the most iconic Japanese company of all, and the one which serves as an example for the rest of corporate Japan, Toyota said it had fully accepted its labor union’s request for a monthly pay increase of up to ¥28,440 ($193), the largest amount since comparable figures were first made available in 1999.
“We wanted to firmly cover for the impact from rising prices,” said Takanori Azuma, Toyota’s chief human resources officer, adding that the increases in monthly salary and bonus payments were at a record level.
Others went even further:
Nippon Steel agreed to an 11.8% increase in base salary, exceeding its trade union’s request for the biggest jump in monthly pay since 1979.
ANA gave its workers an average wage increase of 5.6% on Monday, the highest for the airline since 1991.
Honda last month agreed to a 5.6% annual pay bump, the highest since 1989.
NEC granted a 4.3% rise in base pay, the highest ever since the current wage negotiation system began in 1998.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries agreed to an 8.3% annual pay hike, its highest since 2005.
Combined with strong government pressure, the sharp rise in prices caused by the war in Ukraine and the global energy crisis had already led to large gains in wages during last year’s negotiations. But trade unions had failed to secure pay rises that would cover accelerating inflation while the gains did not spread evenly to small and medium-sized enterprises, which employ about 70 per cent of Japan’s workforce.
The wage negotiations had been closely followed by investors this year as solid wage growth is crucial for the Bank of Japan to muster enough confidence to begin unwinding its ultra-loose monetary policy measures. And despite recent weak economic data, which saw Japan’s economy enter a recession last month (only to be revised right back out yesterday) analysts believe the strong shunto results should allow the central bank to end its negative interest rate policy as soon as next week or April at the latest.
“It was extremely hard to demand higher wages when prices were not going up,” said Akihiko Matsuura, president of UA Zensen, one of the country’s largest trade unions with more than 1.8mn members in retail, food, chemicals and other sectors. “We need to bring 30 years of wage stagnation to an end.”
The union, which represents mostly workers at small and medium-sized businesses, has called for a 6% total wage increase, roughly double the rate of headline inflation, including 4% in base salary. Ahead of Wednesday, retailer Aeon agreed with the union to raise the hourly wage for roughly 400,000 of its part-time employees by an average of 7 per cent this spring in a sign that wage increases were trickling down to society at large.
“The big test is next year as to whether companies will fully respond to the demands of unions even when prices will not rise very much,” said Matsuura. Headline inflation averaged 3.2% last year but has slowed to 2.2% in January on the back of a decline in the imported cost of energy.
But even as inflation pressure declines, companies are still likely to face demands to raise wages as they struggle to find younger workers, further empowering the unions. Japanese workers rarely take to the streets to demand higher wages or better working conditions, but several strikes have occurred this year as companies have failed to meet the demands of unions.
Commenting on the upcoming BOJ actions, Bank of America said that “despite hand-wringing over March vs April”, the BOJ has “effectively made up its mind to move by the end of the spring” and expects that “even if the BOJ ends up holding in March, it will send a much more explicit signal that it is thinking of moving at its next policy meeting” on April 25-26. The bank also expects:
Hike in the current policy rate of -0.1% to a range of 0 to 0.1%, and a removal of the commitment to keep long-term rates at 0.1%.
removal of yield curve control.
removal of the commitment to keep expanding the monetary base.
formal end to risk asset purchases (mostly equity ETFs, it is unlikely the BOJ can ever stop backstopping the bond market)
Going back to the coming wave of higher wages, the Goldman exhibit below shows a list of companies with relatively large labor union memberships and for which wage hikes can be calculated based on media reports up to 5pm JST on March 13 (list includes some companies that have not announced a wage agreement yet).
Since many companies agreed to the full requested amount, the weighted average of the list broadly comes in line with the collected request data by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC-RENGO) announced on March 7, calling for base pay rise of 4.3%, and headline wage hike of 5.9% including scheduled wage growth (weighted average basis). As noted above, they far surpass the 2023 final agreed wage hike of 2.1% and 3.6% respectively.
JTUC-RENGO will collect today’s agreement and release the aggregate initial wage hike data on the evening of March 15. Last year, many companies agreed to the full base pay rise request (+2.8%) on the peak reply day, but the initial aggregate data released by JTUC-RENGO came in at +2.33%. It could be the case that companies who could not meet the unions’ request or smaller companies were not covered in media reports on the peak reply day.
That said, this year’s wage agreement is undoubtedly strong, and the first impression from responses on March 13 is that there could be considerable upside to Goldman’s shunto forecasts (base pay rise: 2.5%, headline shunto wage growth: 4.1%). The ultimate agreement on base pay rise could settle above 3%, and truly supercharge Japanese inflation.
Here Goldman joins BofA and notes that with the strong wage agreement, “we see even stronger likelihood of BOJ removing NIRP at the March or April meeting, although this does not necessarily point to higher probability for the March meeting” although Goldman warns that signals by the BOJ are not sufficiently strong to suggest a March hike, and will continue to closely monitor communications by the BOJ. Either way, a rate hike is now just a matter of time.
More in the full notes from BofA and Goldman.available to pro subs.
House Passes TikTok Divestment Bill; Massie Rails Against
Update (1040ET): The House has passed the TikTok divestment bill by a vote of 352-65-1.
There were 15 Republicans who voted against it, and 50 Democrats.
It heads to the Senate next, where it already enjoys the support of Senate Intel Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) and Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-FL).
“We were encouraged by today’s strong bipartisan vote… and look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law,” the pair said in a statement.
The top two senators on Senate Intel are now supporting the TikTok bill. That is a massive coup for lawmakers who want ByteDance to divest its holdings in TikTok https://t.co/d2zYuPSVsS
As noted below, Biden says he’ll sign it if Congress can put it on his desk.
* * *
Voting on the ‘TikTok’ bill has begun in the House, where it needs at least 2/3 of the vote to pass.
Prior to the vote, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took to the floor to rail against the bill, saying that “there’s some of us who feel that – intentionally, or unintentionally, this legislation to ban TikTok is actually a trojan horse.
“Some of us are concerned that there are First Amendment implications here. Americans have the right to view information, and don’t need to be protected by the government from information.”
Watch:
I’m currently on the floor managing the debate AGAINST the TikTok ban. This is my opening statement. Tune in to CSPAN live now for more. pic.twitter.com/yFqdYt4Pxd
This week the House will hold a vote on a bipartisan billthat would prevent the social media app TikTok from appearing in app stores unless it’s able to be “fully divested” from Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance.
Following a unanimous vote on March 7, The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (H.R.7521) advanced from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and will now receive a full vote on Wednesday at around 10 a.m. according to Reuters.
The bill was introduced on March 5 by 19 members of the House Select Committee on the CCP – including Chair Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL).
The bill also has the support of President Biden, who said “I’ll sign it” if Congress puts it on his desk.
Trojan Horse?
The rushed bill, seemingly out of nowhere – and just weeks after the Biden campaign made a TikTok account (and posted to it) on Super Bowl Sunday, has raised concerns over government overreach.
On Tuesday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) noted on X, “The so-called TikTok ban is a trojan horse” that would give the President the power to “ban WEB SITES,” not just apps.
“If you think this isn’t a Trojan horse and will only apply to TikTok and foreign-adversary social media companies, then contemplate why someone thought it was important to get a very specific exclusion for their internet based business written into the bill,” he added.
If you think this isn’t a Trojan horse and will only apply to TikTok and foreign-adversary social media companies, then contemplate why someone thought it was important to get a very specific exclusion for their internet based business written into the bill: pic.twitter.com/LnHsmEgtt9
A foreign adversary controlled application is defined as; a website or app that is “operated directly or indirectly”
by a “foreign adversary” by which the President and or Attorney General determines is a threat to the national security of the United States. pic.twitter.com/yWnq6Vigbw
Expanding on this was The Federalist‘s Sean Davis, who wrote in a lengthy post on X (emphasis ours):
Here’s what’s actually going on with the TikTok fight right now.
Deep State toadies are taking advantage of anti-China sentiment to transfer TikTok’s surveillance apparatus from China’s evil surveillance state to the U.S. government’s evil surveillance state.
TikTok isn’t going to be banned, because neither the CCP-run Chinese government nor the CCP-owned U.S. government wants to lose such a valuable tool for spying on Americans and poisoning the minds of their children. Instead, the corrupt U.S. intelligence bureaucracy wants control of TikTok, which is why it included the divestment mandate.
Only a handful of U.S. companies are capable of buying and managing TikTok, and they already function as appendages of the Deep State surveillance apparatus.
It’s not that the U.S. government wants to protect you from spying and data theft and manipulation. If only. No, the people behind the Russian collusion hoax, and the Kavanaugh hoax, and the natural origin COVID hoax, and the illegal warrantless spying, and the forced transing of your children—they want to be the ones spying on you and stealing your data and poisoning the minds of your children.
Now, should a spying and subversion tool used by our communist enemies to destroy us be banned? Yeah, obviously, for the same reason that we never would’ve allowed the Soviet Union to infiltrate our homes with their own radios and television sets during the Cold War. But that’s not what’s happening here.
Your government won’t even shoot down a Communist Chinese spy balloon, or prevent the Communist Chinese government from gobbling up your farmland, or stop the Communist Chinese government from stealing the products you make, dumping them into your market at below-market prices, and then driving you out of business. Heck, when the literal Chinese spy chief bought off the Biden family by funneling a million dollars to Hunter Biden, DOJ didn’t even bat an eyelash.
There’s no evidence anywhere that the regime that currently controls America has any interest in fighting off China’s attempts to cripple our country economically, militarily, or diplomatically. But suddenly they want you to believe they’re deeply concerned about TikTok.
I’m just not buying it, and neither should you.
Mea Culpa
While TikTok has been long accused of curating degenerate content to feed the minds of Western youth, this, and worse, is what all social media platforms have been doing for years.
And with regards to the ongoing chess game to decide the fate of TikTok – on one hand, the Wall Street Journal just reported that the company believed they had scored a recent victory, including the Biden campaign embracing the platform, yet “Behind the scenes in Washington, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Biden administration officials had been quietly planning new legislation to ban TikTok or force its sale to a non-Chinese owner.”
On the other hand, Donald Trump – who has previously pushed to ban TikTok, came out against the bill (after meeting with Billionaire TikTok investor Jeff Yass who holds a 15% stake in ByteDance) – leading some to suggest that the former president had “sold out.“
We also learned from Politico that former Trump Aide Kellyanne Conway has begun lobbying for TikTok on behalf of the conservative Club for Growth – of which Yass is a large financial backer – and at whose retreat Trump praised Yass as “fantastic.”
So, lots of chess going on and forces at work.
Yet, after further consideration, this Tyler got it wrong. As ZeroHedge commenter PrintCash pointed out on Monday, this is both a free speech issue and a matter of limited government vs. legislative overreach that – based on the above, appears to set the stage for widespread abuse.
The official data showed a smaller draw than API (but not a build as expected). Gasoline stocks plunged…
Source: Bloomberg
The Biden administration continued its 600-700k barrel weekly addition to the SPR (13th week in a row)…
Source: Bloomberg
US Crude production decline once again…
Source: Bloomberg
WTI was hovering just above $79.50 ahead of the official data and dipped below on the smaller crude draw…
And as crude prices rise, wholesale gasoline prices are soaring… and so are pump prices…
Source: Bloomberg
There’s a risk that premium gasoline prices could reach a multi-year high this year, said Mukesh Sahdev, head of oil trading and downstream research at Rystad Energy AS.
“There’s not a lot President Biden can do in time for the election, if this happens” he said.
“Strategic petroleum reserves are low, and there are few levers for the US government to pull to lower gasoline prices.”
Of course, we are sure Biden will blame gas stations if prices go up.
After over three years of complaining about Donald Trump contesting the 2020 election, a Rasmussen poll has found that a majority of Democrat voters oppose certifying the 2024 election should Trump emerge victorious.
The survey found that should Trump win the election in November, and at this point it is difficult to bet against it, fifty seven percent of Democrat voters would oppose certifying the result, and close to two thirds of voters who identify as ‘liberal’ would oppose the result.
That’s not very Democratic is it?
57% of Democrats think Democrats should refuse to certify the election if Trump wins.
The poll asked the question “Some Democrats in Congress have said that if Trump wins this year’s election, they will vote against certifying the election results because of Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Do you support or oppose Democrats refusing to certify the election results if Trump wins?”
The majority of Democrat voters said they would support the move.
Incredibly, in the same poll, just 24 percent of Democrat voters said Republicans should have objected to the 2020 results if they believed they were fraudulent.
It’s literally the same thing.
Liberals: “If we could just jail Trump, get rid of MAGA, end the Electoral College, stack the Supreme Court, ban voter ID, and censor free speech we could save democracy.”
In perhaps a more telling revelation, however, the poll found that overall, only 35 percent of all voters would support opposing certifying a Trump victory.
The survey also found that among those voters who strongly support Biden, close to three quarters disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision to prevent states from removing Trump from ballots.
72% of Biden Strong Approvers disagree with the SCOTUS in its decision to prevent states from removing Trump from ballots.
Trump polled higher than Biden on all issues except abortion and climate change.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.
Dollar Tree Shares Plunge After Earnings Miss, Plans 600 Store Closure Amid Customer Spending Pullback
Shares of Dollar Tree Inc. are sliding Wednesday premarket. The discount retailer missed fourth-quarter profit expectations and offered a dismal outlook for the first quarter as shoppers spend less. The retailer plans to shutter more than 600 stores.
Dollar Tree posted adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter of $2.55 per share on revenue of $8.63 billion. Analysts polled by Bloomberg had anticipated $2.66 per share on revenue of $8.67 billion.
Here’s a snapshot of the fourth quarter (courtesy of Bloomberg):
Adjusted EPS $2.55, estimate $2.66
Loss per share $7.85 vs. EPS $2.04 y/y
Net sales $8.63 billion, +12% y/y, estimate $8.67 billion
Dollar Tree net sales $4.96 billion, +15% y/y, estimate $4.91 billion
Family Dollar net sales $3.67 billion, +7.4% y/y, estimate $3.73 billion
Gross profit margin 32.1% vs. 30.9% y/y, estimate 32.1%
Dollar Tree gross margin 39% vs. 36.7% y/y, estimate 37.7%
Family Dollar gross margin 22.8% vs. 23.6% y/y, estimate 24.7%
Total location count 16,774, +2.7% y/y, estimate 16,793
Dollar Tree Locations 8,415, +3.5% y/y, estimate 8,391
Family Dollar locations 8,359, +1.9% y/y, estimate 8,368
While same-store sales increased by 3%, beating estimates of 2.8%, the retailer said the average ticket size declined by 1.5%, indicating consumers are pulling back on spending in the era of failed Bidenomics.
As of last quarter, Dollar Tree operated 16,770 stores across 48 states and Canada. In the previous quarter, it “initiated a comprehensive store portfolio optimization review which involved identifying stores for closure, relocation, or re-bannering based on an evaluation of current market conditions and individual store performance, among other factors.”
The store optimization strategy will result in the closure of 600 Family Dollar stores in the first half of this year. Additionally, 370 Family Dollar and 30 Dollar Tree stores will close over the next several years at the end of each store’s current lease term.
Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Jennifer Bartashus and Jibril Lawal wrote in a note that store closures appear to be “a prudent decision, but echoes the move to close 400 stores in 2019.”
The analysts added: “Nearly $2 billion in assorted impairment charges suggests widespread efforts to improve operations have had mixed results and that the right formula remains elusive.”
Shares of Dollar Tree are down nearly 7% in premarket trading in New York.
Looking ahead, the company expects first-quarter sales earnings per share between $1.33 and $1.48, well below analysts surveyed by Bloomberg of $1.70.
In many countries, the drastic step of shutting down the internet is employed in response to actual or potential unrest. Shutdowns generally occur when someone (usually a government) intentionally disrupts the internet or social media networks. The measure has been widely criticized as too drastic a curbing of freedom of expression and an encroachment of peoples’ everyday lives especially if it is done to shut down dissent.
In India – the country that cuts internet access the most – shutdowns have in the past clustered in Kashmir and Rajasthan, where they have been used during protests (and preemptively when protests were expected), but also during exams. In 2023, ethnic tensions in Manipur state led to most targeted shutdowns employed by the government.
All 2023 Indian internet blockages and shutdowns affected around 59 million people for a total of almost 8,000 hours – the highest in the world when combined according to Top10VPN. In Ethiopia, Myanmar and Iran, the suppression of dissent, protest and in one instant the Orthodox church, have caused almost equally long user hours of internet blocks.
With President Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan set to extend more student loan relief to borrowers this summer, the federal government is pretending it can wave a magic wand to make debts disappear. But the truth of student debt “relief” is that they’re simply shifting the burden to everyone else, robbing Peter to pay Paul and funneling more steam into an inflation pressure cooker that’s already set to burst.
Starting July 1st, new rules go into effect that change the discretionary income requirements for their payment plans from 10% to only 5% for undergraduates, leading to lower payments for millions. Some borrowers will even have their owed balances revert to zero.
What the plan doesn’t describe, predictably, is how that burden will be shifted to the rest of the country by stealing value out of their pockets via new taxes or increased inflation, which still simmering well above levels seen in early 2020 before the Fed printed trillions in Covid “stimulus” money. They’re rewarding students who took out loans they can’t afford and punishing those who paid their way or repaid their loans, attending school while living within their means. And they’re stealing from the entire country to finance it.
Biden actually claims that a continuing Covid “emergency” is what gives him the authority to offer student loan forgiveness to begin with. As with any “temporary” measure that gives state power a pretense to grow, or gives them an excuse to collect more revenue (I’m looking at you, federal income tax), COVID-19 continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for power and revenue-hungry politicians even as the CDC reclassifies the virus as a threat similar to the seasonal flu.
The SAVE plan takes the burden of billions of dollars in owed payments away from students and adds it to a national debt that’s already ballooning to the tune of a mind-boggling trillion dollars every 3 months. If all student loan debt were forgiven, according to the Brookings Institution, it would surpass the cumulative totals for the past 20 years for multiple existing tax credits and welfare programs:
“Forgiving all student debt would be a transfer larger than the amounts the nation has spent over the past 20 years on unemployment insurance, larger than the amount it has spent on the Earned Income Tax Credit, and larger than the amount it has spent on food stamps.”
Ironically enough, adding hundreds of billions to the national debt from Biden’s program is likely to cause the most pain to the very demographics the Biden administration claims to be helping with its plan: poor people, anyone who skipped college entirely or paid their loans back, and other already overly-indebted young adults, whose purchasing power is being rapidly eroded by out-of-control government spending and central bank monetary shenanigans. It effectively transfers even more wealth from the poor to the wealthy, a trend that Covid-era measures have taken to new extremes.
As Ron Paul pointed out in a recent op-ed for the Eurasia Review:
“…these loans will be paid off in part by taxpayers who did not go to college, paid their own way through school, or have already paid off their student loans. Since those with college degrees tend to earn more over time than those without them, this program redistributes wealth from lower to higher income Americans.”
Even some progressives are taking aim at the plan, not because it shifts the debt burden to other Americans, but because it will require cutting welfare or sacrificing other expensive social programs promised by Biden such as universal pre-K. For these critics, the issue isn’t so much that spending and debt are totally out of control, but that they’re being funneled into the wrong issues.
Progressive “solutions” always seem to take the form of slogans like “tax the wealthy,” a feel-good bromide that for lawmakers always seems to translate into increased taxes for the middle and lower-upper class. Meanwhile, the .01% continue to avoid taxes through offshore accounts, money laundering trickery dressed up as philanthropy, and general de facto ownership of the system through channels like political donations and aggressive lobbying.
If new waves of college applicants expect loan forgiveness plans to continue, it also encourages schools to continue raising tuition and motivates prospective students to continue with even more irresponsible borrowing.
This puts pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates lower to help accommodate waves of new student loan applicants from sparkly-eyed young borrowers who figure they’ll never really have to pay the money back.
With the Fed already expected to cut rates this year despite inflation not being properly under control, the loan forgiveness scheme is just one of many factors conspiring to cause inflation to start running hotter again, spiraling out of control, as the entire country is forced to pay the hidden tax of price increases for all their basic needs.
