What did you see?

A moderate, but the, the pe-- I have seen po- penuriousness, uh, that was just shouted at me.

I haven't seen people shopping as carefully in Costco as they were this week in many, many months.

Uh, usually they just reach out, grab a product, throw it in the basket, pile the basket high.

Uh, this time they were only buying essentials.

They were spending lots of time staring at price tag.

I call it price tag gazing, which would cause backups, shopping cart backups.

Are the tourists still there?

Mm.

So, so, um, and the impact of the GM plant was including, uh, GM workers and supporting companies.

12,000 people lost their jobs.

And, uh, I go through Youngstown often on my way to visit grandchildren in the Midwest because I'm retired and I prefer the leisure of driving as opposed to, uh, hopping on an airplane and, you know, waiting in lines and getting canceled, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so Youngstown is about halfway during, uh, for my journey, and it's a beautiful city.

I mean, it's a college town.

It, it ha- it ha- its downtown has wonderful bones, uh, but it has no employment and, and the drugs are still a big problem.

Mm.

Hegs seems unaware of that.

Well, there are all kinds of people in a religion or a faith or a church or sect.

If you can identify a religion, you can also identify cruelty and brutality.

And it's interesting if one looks at Mr. Hegseth, especially with his shirt off.

You see tattoos that are an advertisement, really.

He's in a moral panic.

Well, he's in a moral panic, but he wasn't prepared for that because his approach was this robust, you know, macho form of Christianity that emerged in the Crusades.

Shooting a man in a wheelchair, he thinks is nationalism? Well, I'll set aside Christianity and go, what nationalism?

What is the Black Olive?

The Black Olive is a foreboding-looking diner.

I've driven by it dozens of times and had no inclination to go in because it has windows that are tinted dark like some gangster car.

But I forced myself to go in, and it was lovely.

It was a huge space, seats about 200 people.

It had a good clientele.

It was opened by Turkish immigrants some time ago, the Sivri family.

What's for sale? No, it's not...

Good morning to you, Jim.

Good morning, John.

I was well informed, but both political parties have so confused me that now I don't know if I know anything.

So to your point, I get bombarded every day.

We have a state Senate race and the Republican is named Tom Jones.

And and.

He's running against James Malone, who won a special election campaign in Lancaster County a year ago for state sentencing.

Good day to you, Jim.

Ooh.

Um, so, uh, uh, you know, the president announced yesterday, and I think he started yesterday in Alabama, a 17-state, uh, blitz prior to the midterms to generate enthusiasm among Republicans.

He thinks that enthusiasm has waned because he's not on the ballot.

Uh, every, almost every president thinks that [laughs] during a midterm.

Uh, his blitz, you know, 17 states is a lot.

It's probably the most ever, but Ronald Reagan, uh, he, uh, uh, uh, he visited, uh, 13 states.

And, um, he, uh, he had a very high approval rating at the time.

It all has to do with getting Trump.

And w- were they serving hard liquor or just beer?

Ha- hard liquor.

I was talking to the owner, Jeff Simmons, who's owned the, the, the place for 25 years, and he's...

So he's been through COVID, every kind of challenge, and a big challenge now for both consumers and for small businessmen like him is inflation.

So we, so, uh...

Now, but what he's finding is there's a trend that's, has nothing to do with the economy, where people are drinking less beer and more hard liquor, which is a higher profit margin for the bar.

He can't explain it, but that's happening.

Your measure of the consumer, is the consumer busy? Is the consumer cautious?

And is that changing as the argument reaches the front page? Good day to you, Jim.

Good day.

It is changing because more and more municipalities within the county are adopting regulations that they don't ban AI, but they circumvent the development.

They demand certain construction constraints on the developers before a data center can go forward.

So I think that's sensible.

My position is By all means, accept the data center, but negotiate.

You know, don't let somebody shove a facility down your throat.

Would Barron's find an objection to using the bank analogy to regulate AI?

Good

day.

Good day.

It is changing because more and more municipalities within the county are adopting regulations that they don't ban AI, but they circumvent the development.

They demand certain construction constraints on the developers before a data center can go forward.

So I think that's sensible.

My position is By all means, accept the data center, but negotiate.

Would Barron's find an objection to using the bank analogy to regulate AI?

What did you learn? Good evening to you, Jim.

Uh, good evening, John.

Yeah, Lititz is a classic American tourist town.

Nice shops, pleasant restaurants, has history.

You've mentioned the Moravians.

There's a girls school downtown, Linden Hall, which attracts young women from all over the globe.

On the outside of Lititz is Rock Lititz, which is a giant rock and roll production campus where big stars come in to, uh, practice inside an enclosure that mimics a stadium.

I see.

What did you find? Good evening.

Good evening, John.

Elizabethtown Borough, a cute little turn of the 20th century town.

E-Town College is the primary attraction.

It has some factories.

It has a Dove chocolate factory.

It has, I think, an aluminum producer.

Where is that?

What is

it? $4.26.

It's the highest I've seen it since I've moved to Lancaster County in 2021.

That's And throughout the rest of the county, if you go to Turkey Hill or Wawa, you know, the convenience stores with the gas pumps, it's close to $4.60. It's between $4.50 and $4.60.

So that's taking a big bite out of the disposable income here because we're primarily a suburban community.

You know, Lancaster City is a small city.

But to survive here, you need a car.

Who did you meet? Yeah.

You measure this is genuine or is it the fact that they've spent years being rewarded for doing something that doesn't teach them narrative about human history? They don't know where we came from.

Yeah, they do seem a bit naive.

And yet, I don't dismiss their alarms.

The tendency of AI, in the famous case where the AI was tasked with solving a problem, it grouped with other AI agents It formed essentially a criminal enterprise with a godfather.

It was so intent on solving the problem correctly that it decided that cheating was the most efficient means.

And it covered up its tracks.

The cover-up was worse than the crime.

Are the banks too slippery to walk on? For me,

What is that?

Well, we've had a family farm in East Petersburg, Pennsylvania, for 100 years run by the Charles family.

They raise Angus beef and they grow corn and vegetables during the summer.

And they put a farm stand on the road next to their fields.

And it's very popular.

They've put in a paved parking lot.

They have refrigeration units.

Is that what you're finding at Charles?

How would you describe that human being? Good day to you, Jim.

Good day, John.

Well, two things.

First, the triumph of relativism over a moral or religious code.

So I think relativism has triumphed.

The other thing I've seen, and I look at this partially because I think I have a sense of humor, is that the succeeding generation since the boomers have been trying to move to a form of uniformity while claiming all the time to be highly individualistic so that they form these cultural tribes.

Uh, there are these trends, uh, And if you don't join the trend, you're an outsider and you're not considered an individualist.

Boomers to what is now on the planet Gen Z with Alpha behind them?

Good day, Jim.

Good day.

First, Lancaster County essentially is Trump country, except for Lancaster City.

It's the only blue area in Lancaster County.

And Lancaster City went ahead and embraced two data centers.

And the rest of the county, the Republican stronghold, apparently...

Fears data centers, even though I can't think of any proposals anywhere else in the county, which is a funny phenomenon because I've seen it in Kentucky, too, where people protest at a centers that haven't even been proposed.

Oh, Jim, give it a small idea of what what risk you take when you go to the mailbox in the

Is that correct?

Yes.

We have about 330 homes in my retirement community, which they began construction in 2020, and they just finished construction a few months ago.

In fact, we're paving the streets now, the final paving.

So we're We have a waiting list of people trying to get into this over 55 community.

I had a neighbor put up a house that he bought in 2019 at a sales event for like $350,000.

He put it up for $575,000.

Yeah,

What is it?

Old Philadelphia Pike is called Kitchen Kettle Village.

It's a delightful tourist trap.

It's a collection of 40 shops and restaurants nestled amongst beautiful cornfields.

And Philadelphia Pike is covered with horse apples, so you get the flavor of Amish country.

As one of the store owners in Kitchen Kettle Village told me, it only takes a tank of gas to reach Lancaster from all the major population centers on the East Coast.

And the attraction is not only the verdant countryside, but the fact that the Amish culture is so alien and... mysterious and attractive to a lot of people that it pulls in tourists.

sell, Jim? Food or mementos? What does it look like?

Do you still see a mixed economy? Good day to you.

Good day, John.

It's picked up a little because of back to school.

Now, when you see a lot of people in Costco, that's usually a sign that people are distressed about how high prices elsewhere.

So they've had a steady stream of shopping in Costco.

The gasoline, which is a loss leader for Costco, was $3.69. Outside of Costco, the least expensive was $3.89.

Most of the service stations in Lancaster are selling it for $4.19.

And the parking lot, were the Amish there? Was the parking lot full?

It's...

It's unpredictable almost.

The demand is there.

It's fairly steady, but it has weak spots.

So it's unpredictable.

I think our economy here in Lancaster is probably stronger than in most of the country.

Tourism is still very strong.

Do we go to a diner, a breakfast club? Where are we going? Well,

Yes

... and the, and the Amish are shrewd, so very shrewd business people.

Uh, the economy's okay here.

It's, there's a little, it's uneven.

I mean, I mean, there's weakness, and again, it's okay economy.

Uh, retailers are feeling the impact, uh, but in terms of restaurants and tourism, uh, we're doing okay.

We have a lot of senior citizens, and they have deep pockets, and they're, they're keeping a lot of, uh, restaurants afloat.

And $800,000 from that data center in, in Columbia Borough for the government, which is, uh, you tell me that it's hard times in Columbia Borough for the school district.

What'd you learn about traffic?

[laughs] Oh, it's amazing.

When I checked in on a Saturday night, the hotel was packed because there was a, a, a baseball tournament, youth baseball tournament in town.

Sunday morning, 72 families checked out of the hotel, and then it was em- practically empty.

And the people who work at the hotel told me the hotel business has been, uh, dead during the week.

You know, there are a few exceptional weekends where you have the amusement park visitors, uh, but its business has been terrible during the week.

I went to the, uh, Walmart Supercenter to, to buy some, um, almonds for my trip.

Where is Jeffersonville?

Jim, it's impressive, isn't it, what we don't know about data centers?

It is.

I've been thinking about Columbia, Pennsylvania, in the heart of Trump country.

It's a blue-collar, downtrodden area, and they oppose a data center which would really bail out the town financially.

And I'm trying to identify with these people.

The people who live next to the site have ramshackle row homes that were probably built in the early 1900s.

They're worth less than $200,000, to be generous.

Go ahead,

How's that doing, Jim? We've got about a minute.

Terribly.

And the one in Colombia, it's a Trump country.

67% of the people there voted for Trump.

Somebody proposed building a data center composed of four small buildings on a former site of an airport surrounded by ramshackle housing.

The town came out en masse to oppose it.

because they want some kind of boutique manufacturing.

Yeah.

Do you have a question for Simon, the two smoke eaters?

I do.

You know, when I think of Simon and his lifestyle in France, I think of the book A Year in Province.

And this is the season for sidewalk cafes and growing vegetables.

I'm wondering how much of an impact that smoke had on the local economy.

Was it a significant setback or just a blip?

Jim, what did your sky look like and what was the smell?

Well, the sky looked like gray flannel, no sunshine.