Amen! Damn ads are driving me to an early grave.

Quite some time ago, I went into a Circuit City store, looking for (something). They had a lot of (somethings) - most of which I simply didn't want, because they were, to put it nicely, junk. And no one was even close to helpful, no information, no nothing.

I left, I have not been back.

And maybe you want to try Firefox, AdBlock Plus, and NoScript. Makes many sites far more tolerable.

The Circuit City at which my daughter worked has closed it doors, along with 155 other stores. The laid off workers - including her - got nothing. No thanks, no bonus, no nothing. And for those who stuck it out til the bitter end on a promise of a .75 per hour incentive to stay, well, they didn't get that either. Goodbye Circuit City!

Pretty cute to make money off a defunct company's ads.

I found myself thinking about a time, say about fifty years ago, when people did a lot of things themselves, like painting and changing the car's oil, because labor was expensive. Shoes were mended, clothes patched, radios repaired, engines rebuilt. And the people that represented that expensive labor lived decently.

What troubles me is I can't figure out how these lower-cost stores and services are better than the old way.

What is wrong with a protectionist system that imposes tariffs on imports, and taxes excessive profits? The collapse of the Soviet economy is not proof of the incompetence of sheltering labor, since China was even more communist than Russia. A better reason is probably the relatively justifiable paranoia of Stalin that begat a secretive arms race against a scary new superpower, America.

Let's imagine all other countries did not exist, and we were on our own. There are no Japanese imports, no luxury German cars or sporty BMWs. There are no slave-labor clothes or lettuce, or cheap fuel for our cars from convenient dictatorships. Why should this be an impossible scenario? What would be different in our lives?

It is true that there has been trade as long as there has been civilization, but most of it benefited the few. The societies where it was necessary, as Jared Diamond showed in his recent book, "Collapse", collapsed when the trade dried up for one reason or another. Is it wise to depend so on the rest of the world?

We have let the few owners cry "Free Trade" as if it were a human right, only intended for the enhancement of ordinary people's lives, when it turns out to be for the few owners' wealth, and inherently impoverished the rest of us, after the owners have made their bundle.

My son worked for them a few years ago. They had a 'policy' that said if an employee was caught stealing, if he or she gave up another name of a thief, it would help. Well, my son's name was given up. He was not a thief..but he turned out to be a very angry employee. At first he was stunned and speechless. Then he was pissed beyond belief. He quit and went to work for Sears. He is now working for NASD. A financial wachdog whose CEO is Ms. Schapiro who has been tapped as the head of the Obama SEC.
What goes around sometimes really does come around. It is time for cheaters and liars to 'come to Jesus'. I am sick of the crap. We need to make these people accountable.

Circuit City stinks. So do the ads. And Josh should make sure that whatever ad agency he's using has collected from CC, otherwise he's going to wind up a creditor. I doubt Cicrcuit City emerges from Chapter 11.