Dick's Sporting Goods in the news again for another bad reason...

Dick's reported a 23% loss in profits over last year and the stock has cratered down from $150/share to $108/share...

So the woke company that has been in the news for being an anti-gun sporting goods store that sells guns is back in the news. This time as they help to prove that liberal policies make bad business policies.

While their sales were not all that bad, profit is down because of retail theft. In other words, the latest crime wave that the left quite literally defends is now taking a big bite out of the profits of many stores.

While I feel bad for the mom and pop grocer who can no longer support their business due to lack of any policing or prosecution of retail theft, I don't feel bad for a company like Dick's. The people running the show there are more interested in DEI and being political than they are in earning higher profits. They no doubt welcome some retail theft in order to give back to the criminal community.

Meanwhile, we are seeing a rash of investors openly criticizing leadership that uses DEI as a gauge for business decisions and in some cases are even filing lawsuits claiming that they are not living up to their fiduciary responsibilities. It has long been held that the main responsibility for a CEO and the acting management of publicly traded companies is to make a profit for their shareholders. There is no argument to be made that they can play with other people's money and push their own woke political policies on the company. That being said it seems that more and more companies have leadership that are doing so.

We'll see where this goes for Dicks and retail in general. The allowance of "some" retail theft without consequences has only pushed those thieves into developing more advanced and more well planned larger assaults. Give then an inch and they will take a mile. Unless something is done your brick and mortar portion of retail will be over and the only way to purchase anything will be to have it delivered. I give if less than five years before some major retail organization decides to go 100% away from actual stores and moves entirely into Amazon style shipping. By major, I am talking someone like Walmart, Costco, Lowes, or Target. Once that starts to snowball, it is only a matter of time before our malls are shuttered.