Winter cricket and bridge thread - Held over by popular demand

I think Tim Kaine deserves another chance.

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You mean to tell me the “yeah we did it, so what?” defense didn’t work?

Glad this worked out for you :+1:

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I remember some news article, or maybe it was just a long Reddit post from a few years ago, that explained why malls are dying…

Found it!

https://np.reddit.com/r/dayton/comments/6m250y/dayton_mall/dk00eqc/?context=3

Indoor malls were never supposed to be a long term thing. Long story short they were tax shelters and never supposed to be a lasting thing in a town.

With that said outdoor malls like the Greene are what people want and it’s taking over.

Let me preface this with the fact that malls started in the 1950s. they started losing popularity in the 70s and then the 80s brought them back into popularity where they started dying again in the mid to late 90s because of changing consumer demands.

I live in West Dayton, I was around for the Salem malls pride and glory days and its decline. As a white dude I got tired of hearing everyone say (be it here or even on Dayton facebook pages) “you know who ruined the Salem mall? I won’t say it but we all know” So I finally got tired of the thinly veiled racism that for whatever reasons oozes out of the suburbs in this city that tends to blame the buses (RTA) or black people for everything wrong in the city. As the Salem mall was dying in the mid to late 90s plenty of other malls climbed onto their death beds and begin their spiral downwards right along with the Salem Mall. Now violence is a reason that some malls had some decline in sales but it’s not the reason for their closures. You’ll read more about that later.

With that said here’s the answer to your question strap in there’s a lot to it and it has little to nothing to do with race.

In the mid 1950s there was a mild recession. Congress wanted to boost the economy. So they gave tax breaks to capital investments in manufacturing. The tax break was referred by some as “accelerated depreciation” as straight-line depreciation was replaced. If you built a new building on new real estate, you’ll get a tax break right away instead of waiting decades for it to depreciate. The laws were wide and loose so nearly any new construction qualified for this tax break.

So you’re looking to build something to qualify for this tax break. City and suburb construction is expensive but construction on the fringe isn’t expensive as no one wants that land and it’s wide open spaces. So you construct this new fancy thing called a mall. Some guy in Minnesota did it, he’s built a few of them and they’re all the rage. It’s a new fancy thing that everyone wants to experience. It’s an indoor village shopping center and could even be a community center. Malls are huge, and it’s going to get a huge tax break while giving you multiple rental incomes from one place.

So you construct a building, get rent income from it, pay no taxes on that rent income because of new tax law. Tax time comes around they use the new tax law to say “well this building cost me $500 million to make but the depreciation is so bad because it’s accelerated under this new tax law. I’m losing $150 million dollars this year. even though I made $99 million in profit from rent.” Thus you would get a $150 million dollar tax break on all of your income including that $99 million in profit because it was less than the depreciation. Well lets say you made $148 million that year from all your properties with a $150 million dollar write off on your taxes you’re swimming in tax free profit from that mall. *Note these numbers are inflated to get the point across.

So on paper that year you got good write offs and maybe even made it look like you lost money to keep as much income as you could. You have a tax free / nearly tax free building, you have nearly tax free income from that building and your other income from other buildings has a lower tax rate now because your claiming losses on that mall. Lets say it’s been 30 years and you’re done being a mall owner. Tax breaks in a sense paid for that mall to be built and netted you a huge profit. You want to retire to Boca Raton. So what do you do? What any upstanding citizen would do, you sell that mall for tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in pure sweet profit since Uncle Sam paid for it’s construction (in a sense) via tax breaks.

Now the rube that bought it from you in 1982 at the beginning height of a new wave of mall popularity is about to learn a real hard lesson in 1984ish. Congress reinstates straight-line depreciation of commercial property. Meaning no more tax breaks like there was. The new owner of the mall doesn’t car; malls are popular again. People are building more malls, it’s what the people want! Come the mid 90s that mall owner is about to realize, people aren’t showing up as much, every year less and less people show. Malls are expensive and he can’t write off the $450 million dollars he paid to buy that mall per se. He can’t get a break from that huge air condition and heating bill that a mall has. He can’t force people in the door to buy stuff. He can’t afford to maintain the mall. He’s losing tenants, he doesn’t redo the roof as it needs done. He just has it patched time and time again. The back stores roofs are leaking so instead of renewing those leases worth say $12k a year he evicts those stores or moves them into a new wing and walls off the old wing of the mall because a new roof is $25k

People are bored with malls, people want a new shopping experience. Malls have changed and tried to adjust to the 80s kids older more mature taste but teens are really the heartbeat of a mall. So they have nothing to buy anymore more. The middle age and up people or even the parents want better deals, more selection and easier shopping experience. Once again over saturation is a factor.

People are tired of having to walk an entire mall for the one item they want. Tired of finding parking. Strip malls, single chain department stores, Outlet stores, online shopping and outdoor malls are what the people want. They’ll get strip malls, loads of strips malls but outdoor malls are still 15 years away from being a trend or even developed in most cities.

The tax breaks are over, people aren’t coming in the door and the new mall owner has one choice. Raise rent sky high in hopes that the stores will stay and help him foot the bills. Retired Diane can’t afford to run her fine China and Silverwares store and pay $5k to rent a small store. She’s a small local business; so she closes up shop. Bobs sports card and comics does the same he can get a store front in a busy strip mall for $2k a month and get twice the floor space. “Hipster Vinyl records” is a small mall chain only record store and they don’t have it in their profit margin to pay the rent, as rent is being raised at over saturated dying malls all over the country; they file bankruptcy.

Other major corporate stores have contracts with the mall saying “you promised this much foot traffic and the fact that the mall will never be at less than 95% store capacity.” or things like “you promised this much revenue and said that the other anchor stores would never close” So the first anchor store close down because the mall has been at 80% store capacity for over two years and they’re not meeting their contractual obligations.

This will keep happening until the mall owner drops rent and store restrictions in a desperate attempt to entice stores to come back… In reality all this new lower rent and restrictions will do is allow for cheap stores to get a foot hold. Like: “Neckbeard Mikes mail order ninja shit” , “Sister cousins rebel flag apparel” , “Shaynas hair and nail supplies” " Grand China Dragon pottery", “Real Fake Doors” “Trash Diggers 2nd hand used goods” and “Ants In My Eyes Johnson Electronics” to open up. These are generally people that didn’t think their business plan out. These are people that get loans impulsively and open a shop.

Now the mall appeals to lower end clients and is a glorified flea market. Low end clients (regardless of race) bring crime with them. Poverty = crime. Here’s a study from Harvard about it The two remaining anchor stores tell the mall "you’re not meeting our agreement and we’re losing money operating this store. So we’re closing down this Sears this year and next year when our lease is up Macy is leaving as well. The time comes and Macys being the last anchor store closes. Now the mall is gushing arterial spray all over the cities economy. The few remaining stores ride out their lease for a few months. Finally when their leases are up, the mall closes and the people that want to shop at malls will go to the mall that still open and thriving in town usually the one mall that was built by a major highway or intersection. Suburban malls will always be the first to die out.

Keep in mind all my numbers, reasoning, terms and stores were exaggerated for effect most people built a mall and sold it off within 5 to 20 years.

TL:DR Tax Loop hole allowed for real estate to be a nearly tax free endeavor that allowed people to claim losses on other income as well to make a ton of profit and then sell off the building for a huge profit. Malls became over saturated in towns and people wanted a new way to shop be it online, outdoor males, “outlet” malls etc.

I typed this from a phone so I apologize for typos. I’ll edit later from a PC.

Edit: /u/TerryMathews brought up a great point about maintenance I forgot about and added in it via italics.

Edit 2: I’m still trying to find time to properly edit this. I’ve done some minor tweaking here and there to grammar. This became larger than I ever expected. I was thinking “alight, 30 people at most will see this but I don’t care” I never thought this many people would see it. I do apologize for all the typos and grammar errors. I assure you I’m aware of them and I’m college educated it’s hard typing that much and being grammatically correct on a phone.

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When you try to own the libs but your brain is too scrambled

With all of the talk about taking down statues, Walker decided to file his bill about Byrd. He acknowledged it was more tit-for-tat rather than about a statue memorializing Byrd, who is well-known for his painful role in Virginia’s history.

Byrd is considered the architect of Massive Resistance, a set of policies that aggressively pushed back against racial integration of public schools following the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

“If we’re going to do this, then I’m going to request to remove the Harry Byrd statue,” Walker said. “He was a Democrat and advocated for Massive Resistance.”

Quite a few Democrats said they looked forward to voting for Walker’s bill.

“I’d love to vote for the bill,” said Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax.

Walker didn’t want the Byrd statue taken down, so he requested it no longer be considered by the legislature.

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https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/syrian-rebel-spokesperson-arrested-france-war-crimes

This guy’s not gonna do well at trial, I think:
Sincerely, Little Girl

No, I did not do war crimes. I played only with puppy and gathered nuts from forest, like young girl in story for children.

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Looks like he would fit right in at most NRA meetings and rallies.

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Jaysh al-Islam’s relationship with the United States has remained mixed, though the group has been generally supportive of the U.S. presence in Syria.[ citation needed ] Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a speech in Aspen, Colorado on 28 June 2016, mentioned Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham as “subgroups” of “the terrorists” ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra. US Obama administration officials disapproved this mention and told The Washington Post , who speculated that Kerry’s comment may have been accidental, that it was inaccurate and could harm U.S. government efforts to convince the Russian and the Syrian governments not to attack Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham. The Post also reported that “Syrian [opposition] groups” saw Kerry’s comments as an example of how the Obama administration has slowly moved toward the Russian view of Syria, which includes painting all opposition groups as terrorist organizations in order to justify attacking them.[92]
The US State Department in July 2016 confirmed that the US administration’s policy with regard to Jaysh al-Islam had not changed: Jaysh was and is not a UN-designated terrorist group, is opposed to ISIL, and is not allied to Nusra.[93]

On 1 November 2015, an opposition media outlet, Shaam News Network, posted a video showing Jaysh al-Islam militants had locked people in cages and spread out 100 cages containing about 7 captives each through Eastern Ghouta, northeast of Damascus, to use them as human shields against Syrian government air raids.

London, earlier today:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1224025845586702336

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I still think this is the best response to terror attacks in London

https://mobile.twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1224049077375193093

Who’s the teams guys? Who’s favourite :rofl: and who’s my money going on :pray:

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Lucky guy… Drinking on the street here is illegal :roll_eyes:

Doubt he’s gonna get written up for that in the aftermath of a terror attack lol

Yeah I know… I just like to moan about it, especially later in the summer. :rofl:

Still waiting on tips for the Superbbowl :eyes:

That’s a really good post.

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https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1224071403437248514

joni ernst is already talking about impeaching joe biden

and actually claimed trump will have learned a valuable lesson and go through official channels next time when everyone who uses brain cells knows he’s going to do whatever he wants and you’re going to cover for all of it.

Will be hard to knock off but she’s up in 2020

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I could name 25 gambling movies, but I’d be hard pressed to name 25 good ones. Tentatively clicking this link…

Hard Eight was good, I enjoyed that they showed the darkside… :v:

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Cincinnati Kid is the best gambling movie as long as you pretend that the last hand is the Kid running A-K flush into a boat instead of quads into SF.

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