Free Republic

James Cash Penney’s words are the embodiment of community minded free enterprise at its best. Penney was born in Hamilton, Missouri, on September 16, 1875. In 1902, he invested $2,000 with the owners of the Golden Rule chain of stores in a one-third partnership in a new Golden Rule store in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Wikipedia reports: "He participated in opening two more stores, and when Callahan and Johnson dissolved their partnership in 1907 he purchased full interest in all three stores. By 1912, there were 34 stores in the Rocky Mountain States. In 1913, he moved the company to the Kearns...

Best Buy fired Enis Sujack, the whistleblower who went public after exposing the manager’s ban on Christian symbols at the workplace. Earlier this month O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) dropped a story featuring a whistleblower from inside Best Buy who released screenshots of a training program. A Citizen Journalist has revealed Best Buy is partnering with McKinsey & Company on a Management Training Program. The program is not open to white applicants. “Candidates must meet the [racial] requirements below” ... The program is only for employees who “identify as Black, Latino, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander.” ... DISCRIMINATION: A Citizen Journalist...

The owners of department store giant JCPenney have reportedly made a multibillion-dollar offer to acquire one of the chain's biggest rivals - Kohl's - two years after filing for bankruptcy and shutting down nearly a third of its stores. The proposal from Simon Property and Canada-based Brookfield Asset Management - which together scooped the shopping mall stalwart out of bankruptcy in December 2020 to the tune of $1.5 billion - offers to buy the store at $68 a share, bringing the total value of the deal to $8.6 billion. A source reportedly told The New York Post, the first to...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—In a genius move to deter looters, a local Target store has disguised itself as a JCPenney. "We got tired of getting completely ransacked every time something happened in the news, so we decided to do something about it," said Store Manager Andy Boreschnoz. "To our knowledge, no one has ever shown interest in looting anything from a JCPenney, so we put up this very convincing banner." Executives from JCPenney disputed the claim, insisting that everyone loves their products. "Looters come from all around the world to loot our quality merchandise," said JCPenney's CEO Marc Rosen. "Please looters!...

A struggle over a gun preceded multiple people sustaining gunshot wounds inside Park City Center mall in Lancaster County, Lancaster police said on Monday. Police believe six shots were fired — including some fired by an armed bystander who emerged from a nearby store and intervened. A female walking by with her family and unconnected with the dispute was among those shot, police said. The gunfire took place on Sunday afternoon inside the section of the mall occupied by JC Penney Lancaster police on Monday morning said a male 16-year-old city resident has been arrested and is awaiting charges. Police...

For years, Bryant Park Grill & Cafe in Midtown Manhattan has been one of the country’s top-grossing restaurants, the star property in Ark Restaurants’ portfolio of 20 restaurants across the United States. But what propelled it to the top has vanished. The tourists are gone, the office towers surrounding it are largely empty and the restaurant’s 1,000-seat dining room is closed. Instead, dinner is cooked and served on its patio, and the scaled-down restaurant brings in about $12,000 a day — an 85 percent plunge in revenue, its chief executive said. Five months into the pandemic, the drastic turn of...

In the heart of Manhattan, national chains including J.C. Penney, Kate Spade, Subway and Le Pain Quotidien have shuttered branches for good. Many other large brands, like Victoria’s Secret and the Gap, have kept their high-profile locations closed in Manhattan, while reopening in other states. Michael Weinstein, the chief executive of Ark Restaurants, said he will never open another restaurant in New York. Of Ark Restaurants’ five Manhattan restaurants, only two have reopened, while its properties in Florida — where the virus is far worse — have expanded outdoor seating with tents and tables into their parking lots, serving almost...

Amazon is reportedly in talks with realtors to buy and remake the US locations of bankrupt Sears and JC Penney into Amazon fulfillment centers. The Wall Street Journal cites sources familiar in reporting that Simon Property Group, a commercial retailer specializing in mall locations, was in talks with the Bezos' bunch to sell the now-vacant department store buildings. These will then be used as smaller, local versions warehouses for Amazon to store products before shipping out to customers. Neither Amazon nor Simon Property Group responded to a request for comment on the report. Those unfamiliar with the 1970s-1990s heyday of...

Bankrupted J.C. Penney announced Thursday the list of the 154 stores it plans to close this summer, with store closing sales kicking off June 12.

Economic conflict between the United States and China and Russia on full display today but first.... Protesters in Maryland's capital of Annapolis today urging a full reopening of the state..... Protesters are Pennsylvania's Capitol Building in Harrisburg today pushing for a reopening of the state.... German authorities afraid as mass protests are set in major cities like Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart Saturday in opposition to the government's coronavirus policy... The United States imposing tighter chip controls on the Chinese tech firm Huawei...... Its also been announced that Taiwan Semiconductor will be opening a factory in the United States.... A German...

New York (CNN Business)JCPenney filed for bankruptcy on Friday, the latest retail giant to see its downfall hastened by the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic was the final blow to a 118-year-old company struggling to overcome a decade of bad decisions, executive instability and damaging market trends.

They were once the giants of American retail, strong enough to survive wars, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the rise of online shopping. But Sears, JCPenney, and others may not be able to survive the CCP virus crisis. “The retailers who were wandering around aimlessly pre-pandemic are going to be substantially less likely to muddle through than they were before,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at the Columbia Business School. During the pandemic, stores have been shuttered. Retailers have furloughed hundreds of thousands of employees and are losing most of their sales. And shoppers have cut...

Super Saturday (Dec. 21) was expected to be a bigger sales day this year than Black Friday and it did not disappoint. Bloomberg reports it was the biggest single day in US retail history: Holiday shopping set records over the weekend, with Super Saturday sales reaching $34.4 billion, the biggest single day in U.S. retail history, according to Customer Growth Partners.“Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers — Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target — Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail research firm…While foot traffic was...

Holiday shopping set records over the weekend, with Super Saturday sales reaching $34.4 billion, the biggest single day in U.S. retail history, according to Customer Growth Partners. “Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers -- Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target -- Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail research firm. Job growth and fatter wallets, along with stronger household finances, have put consumers in a buying mood this season, Johnson said. And more of them are shopping online. As retailers offer improved web platforms, online spending so...

Over 1.5 million families have pledged to stop shopping at Target since it announced it would allow men to enter women’s dressing rooms and bathrooms, putting women and children in danger of sexual assault. . . . Now Target has gone on public record stating they fully and wholeheartedly support the passage of the Equality Act now before Congress, meaning it supports government-sanctioned discrimination against churches and Christian business owners.

Shares of the ailing department store chain JCP, +6.10% crashed on Thursday, dipping as low as 92 cents before closing down 7.5%, at 97 cents — the first time they’ve ever closed below a dollar since the company went public in the late 1970s. [Shares remained below $1 Friday morning.]

Infamous former Turing CEO Martin Shkreli and Howard Schiller, the interim chief executive of the pharmaceutical company Valeant, just faced Congress. Legislators on Thursday wanted them to answer for dramatic drug-price increases that affect the lives of Americans. Shkreli caught national attention when his company purchased a lifesaving drug called Daraprim and then raised the price by over 5,000%. Wall Street was closely watching Schiller; Valeant's stock was a darling until accusations of malfeasance from a short seller and government scrutiny over pricing chopped off a quarter of its stock price last year. At the hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland)...

"News that Turing, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. and other drugmakers have bought rights to old, cheap medicines that are the only treatment for serious diseases and then hiked prices severalfold has angered patients. It's triggered government investigations, politicians' proposals to fight "price gouging," heavy media scrutiny and a big slump in biotech stock prices." "Turing's Shkreli, under fire from all sides, said late last month that he would lower the price of Daraprim, but hasn't so far. A Turing spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment Thursday but recently noted the company is capping patient copayments at $10."

Seventeen years after it was withdrawn from U.S. markets, a synthetic version of the active ingredient in marijuana is going back on sale as a prescription treatment for the vomiting and nausea that often accompany chemotherapy, the drug's manufacturer said Tuesday. Valeant Pharmaceuticals International hopes to begin selling Cesamet in the next two to three weeks, company president Wes Wheeler said. The Costa Mesa, California, company received Food and Drug Administration approval Monday to resume sales of the drug, which it bought from Eli Lilly and Co. in 2004. Valeant currently sells the drug, also called nabilone, in Canada. Lilly...

Bill Ackman has spent the last five years trying to drive the supplement company Herbalife out of business.He took a $1 billion short position in the company in December 2012, after which its stock dropped 10 percent in six seconds, which led to a temporary trading halt.He informed investors at a 3 ½-hour slide show presentation in Manhattan that same month in which he plodded through a 342-slide presentation that characterized the company not as a multilevel firm that marketing energy and diet drinks, vitamins and skin products but as “the best-managed pyramid scheme in the history of the world.”He...