I live in the western part of the state and have stores in the Piedmont as well. I have most certainly seen an uptick in business this year that has been very welcomed. Many of the companies that have fallen by the way side such as the ones you've mentioned have been due to their own refusal to make critical adjustments since the economy has changed so significantly over the past 8 years. For example, in my industry, furniture and bedding, the old way of doing business was to fill up your warehouse with inventory, put our your advertising and wait for the customers to come and buy. Credit was easy and you could essentially pay for it as you sold it. Now if you find a furniture store that is still run that way, their doors are either shuttered or on their way to being shuttered. While different in each industry, many companies have simply refused to change the way they do business and that mistake has been costly for many.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was an American investigative reporter best known for his 1996 Dark Alliance series of articles (about CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking into the US) written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. Their smuggled cocaine was distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespreadcrack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel. Webb charged that the Reagan administration shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to raise money for the Contras, especially after Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited direct Contra funding. Webb's reporting generated fierce controversy, and the San Jose Mercury News backed away from the story, effectively ending Webb's career as a mainstream-media journalist. In 2004 he was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head, which the coroner's office judged a suicide. Though he was criticized and shunned by the mainstream journalism community,[2] in 2013 Nick Schou, a journalist writing for the LA Weekly who wrote the book Kill the Messenger, stated that Webb's reportage was eventually vindicated;[3] since his death mainstream news organizations, such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, have reversed course and defended his "Dark Alliance" series. Esquire wrote that a report from the CIA inspector general "subsequently confirmed the pillars of Webb's findings."[4] Geneva Overholser, who served as the ombudsman forThe Washington Post, wrote that major media outlets including the Washington Post had "shown more passion for sniffing out the flaws in the Mercury News 's answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves."[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/10/gary-webb-dark-alliance_n_5961748.html Key Figures In CIA-Crack Cocaine Scandal Begin To Come Forward More than 18 years have passed since Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with his “Dark Alliance” newspaper series investigating the connections between the CIA, a crack cocaine explosion in the predominantly African-American neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, and the Nicaraguan Contra fighters -- scandalous implications that outraged LA’s black community, severely damaged the intelligence agency's reputation and launched a number of federal investigations. It did not end well for Webb, however. Major media, led by The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, worked to discredit his story. Under intense pressure, Webb's top editor abandoned him. Webb was drummed out of journalism. One LA Times reporter recently apologized for his leading role in the assault on Webb, but it came too late. Webb died in 2004 from an apparent suicide. Obituaries referred to his investigation as "discredited."
Thanks for the info. It did ring a bell so I looked up some stuff. It seems like Webb discovered some important links between intelligence agents and cartels but overreached and made unsupportable claims that his paper later had to retract. His story wasn't buried by the media, but attacked ferociously because there were huge holes in it that tended to make his legitimate discoveries be discredited. This article in the American Journalism Review seemed like the most objective overview of the story. http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=3874
agreed, but his crime was for crossing the line as a journalist, that doesnt mean the connections are false.
I am sure they aren't. The CIA's responsibility is to have covert connections with contacts all over the world including some serious slimeballs. Whatever it takes to get the job done. The CIA was focused on getting rid of the Sandinistas and turned a blind eye on drug criminals. Evidence exists and Webb uncovered it. But there is no evidence that they were selling drugs in LA or had any agenda about intentionally putting drugs into the black community.
Rick Ross was selling drugs in LA and putting it into the black communities. Rick Ross made close to a billion dollars selling crack in LA and later, across the US. The CIA had their sunglasses on pretending like they were seeing nothing.
