MaxRedline

Wayfair

You see or hear their ads pretty regularly in broadcasts, but they're a real case of "buyer beware":

An Illinois man claims Wayfair sold him a headboard riddled with bedbugs — but now he may have to convince an arbitrator, not a judge, that the online furniture retailer did him wrong. Ronald Gorny wanted to press a class-action case against the company, alleging he wasn’t the only one to buy infested goods from the site, and then get ignored.

Nope; it goes to arbitration instead. On the plus side, cases in arbitration rule in the customer's favor around 32% of the time, whereas in court it's more like 11%. Extermination, once you have them in your home, generally runs around $1200 and can take eight or nine hours, as they heat the house to 130 degrees the bugs die at temps above 118. It's probably safer - and less expensive - to stash your new bedding outside until a nice summer day rolls around.

Then toss it into your car, roll the windows up, and let everything cook for an hour or so.

 

PG&E To Bay Area: How's No Power Work For You?

Pacific Gas & Electric is taking preventative measures this weekend as fire season kicks into high gear by shutting off power to several communities in California's Bay Area. PG&E said it will be shutting down power to parts of Yolo, Napa and Sonoma counties on Saturday.

Maybe they ought to do more preventive maintenance, so they wouldn't need to shut down the grid. Just a thought.

Although it'd be amusing if they just shut down power to Pelosi's place....

 

Mall Meltdowns

Remember when malls were hot? Now they're not:

Retailers’ earnings season has gone from bad to worse. The bleeding intensified last week, with shares of Abercrombie & Fitch plummeting 26% on Wednesday, the biggest percentage decline since the company went public. PVH Corp., owner of brands including Van Heusen, Tommy Hilfilger, and Calvin Klein, dropped 10% that day, too. On Thursday, women’s wear chain J.Jill was down a jaw-dropping 53% and on Friday, Gap Inc. slid 9%.

It is hard to miss what all of these retailers have in common: They are mall-based.

Frankly, I can't remember the last time I set foot in a mall, even though there's a big one about a mile from the house. Wife used to work there, years ago. That was at B. Dalton, which I believe has gone out of business.

When I buy anything other than groceries, it's usually online. I still like to shop for food, though - when I cook, I want it to be great.

 

Changes

Among the companies making packaging changes is Procter & Gamble, which created a toilet-paper roll designed to appeal to people who live alone and may have limited storage space, Ellen Byron reported for The Wall Street Journal.

At nearly three times the size of a conventional toilet-paper roll, the new Charmin Forever Roll is massive.

These things can last three months or more, although you may need to reinforce a wall or the floor to handle them. Fortunately, Procter and Gamble thought of that:

The Forever Roll even comes with its own hardware.

Charmin has a $30 Forever Roll "starter kit" on its website that includes a brushed-stainless-steel roll holder, either free-standing or wall-mounted, and three rolls.

First-World issues (or tissues).

 

Knife Capital

The best knives in the USA are made here in Portland Oregon - and nearby suburbs.

Seki City, Japan, and Solingen, Germany, are cutlery contenders, but especially for pocketknives, sporting and utility blades, Portland is the world leader. “Oregon has the highest concentration of cutlery jobs in the nation,” says Amy Vander Vliet, a regional economist with the Oregon Employment Department. “Cutlery employment is about five times more concentrated here than the nation as a whole.”

And unlike the U.K., we don't have many knife attacks - even though our craftsmen produce some of the sharpest and most durable blades available today.

We do have that nutcase who killed a couple of guys and stabbed another on a Tri-Met line a couple of years back; his trial starts soon, but he's kind of an outlier. I think that the family of one of the guys he killed is suing for $10 million. Good luck on that...he'll never have two nickels to rub together. The operative term for him is "loser".

 

 

Fire Sale

Lefty Salon Media is going away:

Salon Media says they have reached an 11th hour deal to sell the company and its flagship property Salon.com for $5 million. In an SEC filing, Salon also revealed its position was dire and that it would face imminent “bankruptcy and liquidation” if the deal should fall through.

Emails to the company are bounced back; indicating that they're already shutting things down.

The left-leaning Web site was launched in San Francisco in 1995, staffed largely by refugees from a newspaper strike at the San Francisco Examiner. It went public in June 1999 valued at $107 million, but has lost money ever since.

For years, John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems, and William Hambrecht, a venture capitalist (and father of former CFO Elizabeth) who was involved in the IPOs of Google, Amazon, Apple and Adobe Systems, injected cash to offset mounting losses.

“From Salon’s founding until the end of 2015, the most recent data available, Warnock and Hambrecht have given the company nearly $20 million in cash advances, and Warnock also personally guaranteed a $1 million line of credit.”

I guess their Leftist messaging simply didn't resonate, and the sugar daddies finally stopped throwing money into the pit.

Besides, the two are 78 and 84 now; probably looking for better ways to spend their cash, at this point.

 

Jest Business

Entire New Orleans Times-Picayune staff axed after sale to competitor

The Newhouse family sold the 182-year-old daily The Times-Picayune and its website, nola.com, to a scrappy New Orleans competitor, and the entire staff is being laid off. That has stirred worries across the other papers in the family’s Advance Publications empire.

The Oregonian is owned by Advance, which has sold the paper's Southwest Portland building and printing plant, and has taken it from a daily newspaper to a four-times-a week tabloid consisting primarily of advertising.

No big loss if everyone gets laid off here.

 

Newsom, Tiresome

California's governor wonders why gasoline prices are so high in the state. Really!

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to know why California’s gasoline prices are higher than in the rest of the country, blaming potential “inappropriate industry practices” Tuesday rather than the state’s higher taxes and tougher environmental regulations.

Newsom asked the California Energy Commission for an analysis of the state’s gas prices by May 15. California drivers were paying an average of $4.03 a gallon Tuesday, or $1.18 more than the national average, according to AAA.

Voters there are increasingly venting, and the pretty boy's going to get to the bottom of this. Sure he will....

The population of California is around 40 million people and the last refinery in the state was built in the 1970s, when the population was around 20 million. The combined total of Federal and State excise taxes on gas in CA is 65.7 cents/gallon. To add insult to injury, they then apply sales tax on top of that, which varies between 7.25% and 10.25%, depending on the city/county in which the purchase is made. Costs associated with licensing, regulatory compliance, staffing, property taxes, and more all have to be covered as well.

Even pretty boy should be able to connect the dots.

 

 

About Time

Law enforcement officials have long tried to stem the opioid crisis in America with criminal charges for street dealers and cartel kingpins who traffic in drugs like fentanyl and oxycodone. Now, for the first time, federal authorities are bringing the same kind of felony drug-trafficking charges against a major pharmaceutical distributor and two of its former executives for their role in fanning the crisis.

Company reps admit that they "made mistakes".

I've never quite understood how some people become addicted to oxycodone. Back when I had cancer surgery, I was prescribed the stuff. Took it for about two days; hated it. Seemed better to just tolerate the post-surgical pain.

 

Disease Outbreaks

Wednesday night, 500 people rampaged through downtown [Chicago] looting, destroying property, attacking white people, defying police, stopping traffic, threatening tourists, and created lots of mayhem and chaos.

All on video. Some of which you can find here.

If local media is to be believed, race had nothing to do with the fact that every single one of the rioters was black. 

Colorblindness is a difficult malady. Like many others, there appears to be no cure.

In other health news:

What is the point of having health insurance that you can’t use? This is the question raised by high-deductible health plans, which are becoming increasingly common. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, deductibles have increased eight times faster than wages since 2008.

I'm still looking for the $2500 savings that Barry promised...among the many other things that the Great Orator pledged to us. Thanks, Obama!

And then there are dentists:

Don't even get me started on them.

Ever wondered why dentists want to have you come in four times a year?

It's all about the Benjamins, baby.