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Retailers worry about soft sales over the holidays

This time of year, Into the Forest is typically bustling with customers rifling through Christmas ornaments, holiday decorations, candles and dolls.

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Economy

  • Local industry skeptical that bill would reform health care

    Disappointment came over Kern health care executives last week as they mulled a new reform plan from Washington that they said lacks tools for containing costs and does little to address a local shortage of government-paid medical practitioners.

  • Kern's unemployment rises to 14.5 percent

    The unemployment rate in Kern County was 14.5 percent in October, up from 14 percent in September, according to figures released by the state Employment Development Department on Friday.

  • SmartMeters to get expedited independent testing

    The state Public Utilities Commission voted Friday to expedite the hiring of a contractor to provide independent testing of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s SmartMeters, the electrical meters that have prompted complaints recently in Bakersfield and elsewhere about unusually high power bills.

  • Jack A. Doremus

    People in Business: A who's who for Nov. 20

    JACK A. DOREMUS has joined Keller Williams Realty on Olive Drive as its Responsible Broker. In his new position, Doremus is to oversee the agency’s three locations in Bakersfield and the one opening this week in Tehachapi. He also becomes Keller Williams’ Productivity Coach, teaching a course intended to provide “financial peace.”

Real Estate

Growth

Kern Business

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    State of the entertainment industry: Splurging on nights out

    Money that used to be spent on dinner and a movie now increasingly is stashed in a savings account or used to pay bills. That’s left restaurants and entertainment venues scrambling for strategies to convince recession-weary consumers to splurge on a night out.

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    Venues get creative: Local theaters stay inventive to survive

    At a time when Kern County is coping with double-digit unemployment and more than half of local mortgages are upside down, catching a play at a local theater would seem to be an extravagance for many. Yet most Bakersfield theaters say either they’ve been unaffected by the recession or ticket sales have improved.

  • Courtenay Edelahrt

    Retail column: Christmas comes early

    One of the best things that ever happened to me was a temporary, one-year job I landed in the mid-1990s. The gig started Dec. 1, so I knew that on Dec. 1 of the following year, I’d be unemployed and broke. Just in time for the holidays.


  • John Cox

    Health care column: Biofeedback not just a 1970s fad

    Nothing evokes the wheat-germ 1970s quite like biofeedback. You remember biofeedback. After a jog and a protein shake, you could drop by a clinic, take off your headband and get wired up to a machine that played back your own muscle tension signals and other biological data over big headphones.

CEO Profiles

Crisp and Cole

  • Private investigator speaks out on Crisp & Cole investigations

    Wrongdoers in the Crisp & Cole case have grown complacent. The FBI, meanwhile, is content to take its time. When finally an indictment comes down, there will be great surprise -- and private relief.

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    Crisp and Cole timeline

    The fallout from Crisp & Cole Real Estate operations eventually included more than 140 troubled properties — mostly homes in the Bakersfield area that wound up foreclosed on — carrying bad loans totaling more than $83 million, according to property records tracked by The Californian for more than a year.

  • Plea deal details fraud scheme

    Excerpts from United States of America, plaintiff, v. Jerald Allen Teixeira, defendant.

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    Teixeira’s mother: Chance to work for Crisp was ‘a job he couldn’t refuse’

    Jerald Teixeira’s mother won’t make a lot of excuses for her son, even as he faces up to 20 years in prison. The McFarland High graduate, who served three years as a Marine before joining the now-disgraced Crisp & Cole real estate firm, pleaded guilty Monday to defrauding mortgage lenders and helping principals in the company get rich through well-placed lies and deceit.