Now It's A Fight: Government Shutdown Blocks New Craft Beers

Vermont has a LOT of craft breweries, and the government shutdown
is preventing them all from rolling out new brews. This is
a problem nationwide because of the Washington stupidity. 

This week, I learned of a new, terrible effect of the long partial federal government shutdown.

Breweries, including all of Vermont's many craft breweries can't release new beers to the public.

There's an obscure federal agency called the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) that must approve all new beers and their labels before they can be sold.  It's an arm of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

This agency is shut down. It's a bit of a crisis for breweries because now is the time of year they prepare to release their summer beers. That's a big marketing push, and if breweries can't release the summer stuff, they can't sell it, and we can't try it.

Yes, I know this is a much smaller crisis than the fact that hundreds of thousands of workers are not getting paid and face potential financial ruin. It's also not as important that public safety is compromised, and unsupervised national parks are being trashed by legions of idiots.

Brewers are saying if the government reopens this week, they might be able to get their summer products on store shelves in May. A little late, but still OK. If the government is shut down longer than that, it might be August before those new summer beers hit the shelves. At that point, why bother?

Even when or if the federal bureau opens, there's going to be a big backlog of new beer applications they're going to have to deal with.

This won't just hurt breweries, Rob Burns of Night Shift Brewing in Everett, Massachusetts told NBC  News. "Business is really so unpredictable and fragile and things that are completely out of control can have a big impact,"

The business model for most craft breweries is to constantly churn out new, innovative beers people love to try, notes Esquire. The government shutdown is, well, shutting down that tap. Craft Brewing in the United States is now a $76 billion industry. This will not be good.

This is particularly bad in Vermont, which is sort of the Napa Valley of craft beers. The Vermont Brewers Association says as of 2017, says the industry in the state has an overall economic impact of $378.2 million. Of that, $126.7 million is direct to tourism, and the industry accounts for $107.8 million in labor income.

Vermont has 11.49 breweries per capita, which is first in the nation.

A shorter government shutdown in 2013 had Vermont brewers pulling out their hair, VPR reported at the time. It has to be much worse now.

New Hampshire City Not Sure About Name Of New Business

Pho is a delicious Vietnamese soup. Some people in New Hampshire
aren't pleased, though, with how Pho is used in the name
of a soon-to-be open restaurant in Keene. 

One of the tricks of opening a new business is coming up with a name for your enterprise.

You want it to be memorable, so you get name recognition. You don't want it to be too offensive, at least usually, and you want the business name to succinctly tell people what you're up to.

Owners of a new restaurant in Keene, New Hampshire thought they came up with the perfect moniker for their business.

It's a Vietnamese restaurant. They started with a play on the word "Pho" which is a Vietnamese soup. "Pho" is pronounced "fuh."  Remember, this restaurant is in Keene. The restaurant isn't open yet, but owners put up a sign saying it's coming. So the name of the restaurant?

"Pho Keene Great."

Yeah, I know what that sounds like and so do you.

According to the Associated Press, Keene City Manager Elizabeth Dragon said restaurant owner Isabelle Jolie didn't have permission to put up the sign, and it might run afoul of city regulations because it's intended to sound like profanity.

The restaurant owners put up a poll on Facebook asking people if they thought the name is offensive. Most respondents said it isn't.

The Facebook post read: "We liked the name because it's lighthearted and fun. It's a name that reflects Vietnam's national dish, comfort food and our most popular culinary product, pho."

Jolie and Dragon are scheduled to meet to figure this kerfuffle out. Stay tuned.

"Black Panther" Opens To Boffo Reviews And Big Crowds, But Racists VERY Unhappy

It seems like everybody loves the new film "Black Panther,"
that is except a small group of pathetic little white supremacists.

The superhero movie "Black Panther"  is setting box office records for an opening week.  Critics LOVE the movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I will. It sounds terrific.  

However, this being the United States, the racists are trying to spoil the party. They always do. They very often fail, of course, so it makes it fun to mock these morons.

Still, it's incredibly disgusting we have to live with these white supremacists idiots. And I'm being understated when I say it like that.

It's important to check in with these odious morons, though, remind ourselves that we always must keep our guard up, and always resist the Nazis among us.

These scumbags started with Rotten Tomatoes reviews. They tried to make the "Black Panther" reviews really negative. I'll get into that first, then tell you even something worse.

Rotten Tomatoes is the online web site in which you, yes, you, can review movies. In general, Rotten Tomatoes is a fairly good indication of how much or little the general public likes a particular film.  That makes it a not bad guide to help you decide which movie you're going to see tonight.

Most Rotten Tomatoes critics, including the professional ones, thought "Black Panther" was terrific. In fact, it got the highest Rotten Tomatoes score for any superhero film.   As of Thursday, "Black Panther had a very nice 77 percent viewer approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Which means the racists failed again. They're so stupid.

As reported by CNN and numerous other media outlets, there was a move among the white supremacists among us.

Notice how the white supremacists tried to be cute. "Black Panther" is a Marvel Comic franchise. A lot of other popular movies come from the DC Comics franchise. The racists tried to spin this as just a friendly rivalry between Marvel and DC fans.

That element was probably in there, but I haven't heard of other organized movements on Facebook or elsewhere to discredit a superhero movie because of a comic book franchise competition.

As CNN says: "But given that "Black Panther" has an all-black cast and the storyline includes themes of race, many saw the move as more nefarious thatn just a friendly rivalry."

Then, of course it got worse.  As numerous outlets like Vox and  Huffington Post reported:

"Since Thursday, numerous false reports have bubbled up on social media claiming that white viewers were physically attacked by black fans at showings of the movie. Twitter and Facebook users have been taking images from unrelated incidents and reposting them, falsely claiming that they are photos of themselves or loved ones after racially motivated attacks."

I'm not sure of the purpose of these social media postings, other that to stir up the basest base of racists and Nazis, and to dupe the most gullible. And only the very most gullible, apparently.

The photos white people supposedly "beaten" by African-Americans at "Black Panther" showings come from such strange places and its so easy to trace them to their original, non-fake news sources.

One of them was a previously widely distributed photo of Rob Porter's ex-wife with a black eye.  Porter, you might recall, is the White House aide recently forced out of a job because of history with abuse of women.

Another fake photo was a still from the show "The Walking Dead." Another was a stock photo of a bloody paper towel.

The best revenge against this tiny army of small minded racists is how well "Black Panther" is doing at the box office.

As of Thursday, "Black Panther" is raking in the dough at the box office, and is destined to be one of the most lucrative movies on record, says Variety and many other media reports.

I'm sure almost everyone who goes to see "Black Panther" is not thinking about sticking it to the white supremacists. But in this context, it's still wicked fun to see this movie's popularity surge.

Trump IS Running America Like A Business

Trump got into the Oval Office in part because people wanted
to have the government run like a business. Trump, and many
of the people who voted for him, are discovering why this
method isn't such a good idea.

Frustrated with high taxes and government waste, a lot of people tell us they're sick of the way Washington is run. 

Why can't the government be run more like a business?

That's why a lot of people voted for Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Well, I'm pleased displeased to report that the United States government is being run exactly like a business.  Not a very well run business, mind you, but a business.

I hope you're happy

Traditionally, western democracies are run in such a way that everyone is in this together. You have rights - voting, free speech, government services, etc - and you have responsibilities.  You vote, pay your taxes, don't violate the laws and you contribute to society.

A business is different. If you're running a business, you try to maximize profits. And you shed the parts of your business that are not making money. Everything is dispensible. Including people. It's cold, dispassionate decision making.

So let's look at how things are going in our government, which really does seem to be running like a business now that Trump, Mr. "Art of the Deal" is running the show.

The process has been a mess, with deals and counterdeals and doubts and recriminations. This Washington DC "corporate board room" is admittably pretty dysfunctional.

The bottom line is they were looking at repealing Obamacare and replacing it with....something else.

This something else would mean that people who are poor, elderly, sick, don't work are denied health coverage.

Oh, I know the GOP will tell you that the free market will take care of these people, that they'll get insurance one way or another.

That's just PR - another important part of running a business.

But we have to deal with reality. Let's face it: The poor, elderly, sick, disabled, etc. are not profitable.

They don't really have much in the way of incomes. Which means there's no money they can be cheated out of . They're expensive, what with all those health issues. Why put up with such a losing part of the corporaton?

So cut them off. Without health insurance and any other social net kind of protection, they'll die off earlier. They'll go away. They won't be a burden on the bottom line. Write 'em off!

Of course you'll never hear the likes of Paul Ryan put things in those terms. Bad PR. (See above) Most people don't have this cold, calculating attitude. But some of the most successful corporate people do, and if some people die in the process that's just business. Gotta make a profit!

When you're running a business you've got to protect yourself from competition. You don't want some frisky upstart to screw up your business model.

That's probably a good share of why the EPA is so anti-environmental, why the EPA chief denies climate change, and the Secretary of State is an oil executive.

There's all those entrenched oil companies making oodles of money, and that could be threatened by those damn climate change activists and alternative energy upstart companies.

What if somehow, the products made by the clean energy companies become wildly popular, inexpensive and easy to use?

Those oil companies would be stuck with little income and tons of oil sitting "uselessly" in the ground.

With Trump being friendly and cooperative, and probably an investor in oil, why not use the White House as a business model to make sure those upstart competitors don't siphon profits away?

Secretiveness is a hallmark of running a business. You don't want competitors or regulators finding out what you're doing. If they do, they'll take advantage.ll

Speaking of regulations, rulemaking is why government shouldn't be run like a business.

Most of the time, businesses are regulated by laws and regulation that prevent, say, cheating customers, polluting the atmosphere, swindling stockholders, that kind of thing.

Regulations cost money. That's why the Republicans are (seriously!) talking about getting rid of things like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education.

Sure, that's politicians giving a hand to their business constitutents, but it benefits them, too. (See: campaign contributions.)

Plus, the Trump administration is full of people from industries and business, including Trump himself, who will personally financially benefit from fewer regulations.

Abolishing the Education Department would really be a win for the Corporate White House. Uneducated people, which is what they want, tend not to ask critical questions, or even know which questions to ask.

Again, if some of the rest of us suffer because of pollution problems, lack of education or some other anti-regulation effect, too bad. We should just shut up and allow these corporate titans to make their billions.

Us 99 percenters are dispensable, apparently.

It's turning out to be hard, though to run the United States government like a business. We saw that with the imploded attempt to get rid of Obamacare, which, as noted above, would have made it impossible for millions of us to get health insurance.

Activist stockholders can be annoying to the Corporate Titans, but voters in a democracy are even "worse."

As Congressional Republicans worked to abolish Obamacare, voters screamed and hollored and lobbied and harassed the politicans who would do them harm in the name of personal profits.

Betray voters like this and a politician might find himself or herself eventually out of a job. Plus that pesky judicial system occasionally stymies the corporate profit making machine in government by pointing out that some of what they're doing is unconstitutional.

I guess the Constitution is a hinderance to unbridled profit taking in government.

Oh well.

The health care "overhaul" turned into an embarrasing disaster for the "businesslike" GOP that should have known better.

Corporate chiefs like Trump and his minions are used to barking orders and getting what they want.

Trump isn't as powerful as he thinks he is. We all know his thin skin and snowflake like insecurity makes him weak.

And, we hope, he's beginning to prove he's no match for a constitutional Republic.

Update: Nation's Oldest Familhy Run Newspaper No Longer Owned By A Family

Amid a month of strife, the Rutland Herald in Vermont
has been sold to a Maine media company.

Last week I talked about the apparent financial crisis at the Rutland Herald in Vermont, which is, or was, the oldest family owned newspaper in Vermont.

Late last night, we learned what was really going on amid the bounced paychecks and other signs of monetary strife.

The owners of the newspaper, and its sister publication, the Barre-Montpelier TImes Argus, sold it it to a Maine media company.

I don't know if this is good or bad, but at least the Herald survives for now, apparently.

The whole episode once again illustrates how newspapers are struggling. Sure, there are a lot of on line media outlets and local newspapers are usually a part of that.

But as noted earlier, newspapers have not figured out how to be profitable online, even as print versions go by the wayside.

On Vermont Public Radio's Vermont Edition news and talk show today, David Mindich, a journalism professor at St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont said local newspapers like the Rutland Herald are a critical way to shine a needed light on local government and root out corruption.

These days, media profitability depends upon reader clicks, the number of times people cruising the Internet stop at a particular story.

More often than not, it's fluff, and not the important stuff that goes on. Mindich told Vermont Public Radio that editors need to be sure they're pushing important stories not just the "cat riding around on the Roomba story."

Even if everybody is paying attention to the cat on the Roomba and not the city councilor on the take.

Here's why:

It's true more people will read the cat on the Roomba story over the city councilor taking bribes from the construction contractor.

But a few people will read about the city councilor, which is fodder for the prosecutors, the political opponents and activists who would keep that city councilor in check.

If we lose the local papers to the clickbait fluff, the crooked city councilor will get away with (maybe literally) murder.

Is that the world in which we want to live?

Ugh. Hallloween In July As Stores Keeping Pushing Seasons Earlier And Earlier

Just some of the extensive selection of Halloween
candy at a Shaw's Supermarket in Colchester,
Vermont on July 31. Couldn't find stuff
I needed for summer, though.  

Every holiday is getting earlier and earlier, at least in the eyes of retailers.

Sunday, July 31, I stopped into a Shaw's supermarket in Colchester, Vermont to buy, among other things, some sun screen. Because I work outdoors frequently and need the protection.

I finally found some buried on a back shelf somewhere, but it was hard. Why? Because there was aisle after aisle of Halloween candy, but nothing you would need for summer.

I'm not finding much good information on line as to why stores put out seasonal goods so early. I'm sure it's a way for them to make more money.

It's infuriating, though. I buy things when I need them. I think most people do. Around August 1, I'm apt to buy sun screen, bug spray, a new pair of shorts to replace the ones I ripped rolling around in the grass with the dogs. Things like that.

But most retailers have decided I can't buy this stuff I need. I'm expected to plan ahead, and know precisely how much bug spray and sun screen I'll need for the summer way back in March. I'm supposed to be psychic. Because we're required, say the Retail Gods, to buy things six months before we actually need them. 

The summer stuff is not on store shelves now, when I want and need it.

Merchants claim it's out fault, that consumers demand that they stock items ever earlier every year.

I don't think that's true, though. Oh sure, there's a few weirdos who like to shop for back to school items a month before school lets out in May. A few other weenies think it's all Christmas all the time and shop for the holiday year round.

What's really going on is they stock things way, way earlier, training us to buy way, way early. But then we misplace the summer stuff we had to buy in February, or the kids get into the Halloween candy in August, a month after we were forced to purchase it, so we have to buy more

That way, the stores make more money.

The early season stuff is also stores wanting to get our attention first.

"The marketplace is so competitive that they can't take a chance that people are going to spend their $50 somewhere else," Purdue University retail management pofessor Richard Feinberg told NPR in 2011. 

Let's face it. Retailers hate us, and just want our money. They don't want us to buy things during the season when we need it, because that's not much of a money maker.

Retailers and their season creep sucks.

Is Kay Jewelers Stealing Diamonds From Customer?

Do some employees of Kay jewelers steal, or
at least do incredibly clumsy work?
A growing drumbeat says yes. 

Every kiss begins with cubic zirconia, apparently.

CBS Money Watch has a disturbing story about allegations that Kay Jewelers is taking expensive diamonds and gems from jewelry people bring in for servicing and replacing them with chief knockoffs.

Aimee Picchi (a fellow Vermonter!) writes that a number of people have reported the thefts. There's even a Boycott Kay Jewelers Facebook page. 

The Facebook page consists mostly of people complaining of shoddy work on jewelry at Kay's and other chain jewelers owned by parent company Signet Jewelers.

CBS Money Watch cites a report in BuzzFeed News about one woman, Chrissy Clarius, who took her $4,300 engagement ring to Kay Jewelers every six months as part of their gemstone guarantee program.

When nobody could find the diamond's certification number at one trip to Kay's, Clarius grew suspicious, took her ring to another jeweler and found the diamond had been replaced by moissanite, a cheap stone.

I really hope employees at Kay's are not stealing diamonds. According to CBS Money Watch, Kay released a statement saying they have "rigorous processes in place to help ensure this won't happen." The jewelry chain said it is "actively reviewing this issue."

BuzzFeed News also reports Kay is facing an onslaught of consumer complaints from people who bring in their jewelry for repairs and get them back looking worse than before the repair.

To me, all this sounds like a retail chain cutting corners with inexperienced workers, cheap goods and crappy customer service, all in the name of maximizing profits.

Like many (but not all!) companies, I suspect Kay is burning themselves with short term, quarter-by-quarter thinking. That sometimes temporarily results in ever increasing profits.

That is, until consumers get the memo on how people think the stores are crappy. Then there's a cascading series of financial troubles that can bring down these types of retailers. I noticed Picchi cited stock prices falling as much as 11 percent last week due to disappointing earnings for Signet Jewelers

The CEOs and top mucky-mucks tend to come out of this type of situation with huge bank accounts from their sky high executive pay, leaving a trail of unemployed former workers, angry customers and angry shareholders when things go south.

There outta be a law....

Bar Manager Thankfully Blows Off Woman Who Says Heart Attack Victim "Ruined" Dinner

Kilroy's Downtown Indy
handled a situation involving a
customer's heart attack just right.
Too bad one its patrons didn't. 

Imagine you're out for a nice New Year's Eve dinner in a very busy but nice bar and restaurant, and a woman near you suddenly suffers a nasty heart attack.

I'm thinking you'd do something like call 911, give CPR if you know it, back away to let paramedics rescue her, try to comfort the heart attack victim's friends and family, or at the very least, not complain if it takes a little longer to get your next drink because, you know, the lady suffering the heart attack is probably the priority at the moment.

If you were a woman named Holly Jones who was at Kilroy's Downtown Indy in Indianapolis on New Year's Eve, you'd whine that the heart attack victim ruined your New Year's Eve, and that the staff at the restaurant should have made Holly the priority, not the lady having a heart attack.

Wrote Holly on a Facebook post that has gone viral and has also since been deleted:

"I will never go bak to this location for New Year's Eve!!! After the way we were treated whe we spent $700+ and having our meal ruined by watching a dead person being wheeled out from an overdose my night has been ruined!!! Every year we come to Kilroy's to enjoy New Years Eve and tonight we were screamed at and had the manager walk away from us while (we) were trying to figure out our bill being messed up 

The manager also told us someone dying was more important than us being there making us feel like our business didn't matter, but I guess allowing a Junkie in the building to overdose on your property is more important than paying customers who are spending a lot of money!! 

By the way, before you go looking for Holly Jones on Facebook to yell back at her, forget it, she's taken herself off line. There are other people named Holly Jones on Facebook that are getting hate messages over this, but none of the Holly Jones' on Facebook now had anything to do with this incident.

All the Holly Jones' on Facebook now are nice people who would not act like this. So please leave them alone.

By the way, Bad Holly claimed right before taking down her Facebook page that somebody else hacked into her account and wrote that nasty post, but I don't buy it.

A couple weeks ago, I posted something on this here blog thingy that maybe, just maybe, the customer in retail and eating establishments shouldn't be

It sound like Kilroy's manager, Chris Burton heard me and he responded to Bad Holly it just the perfect way on the restaurant's Facebook page:

"First of all, the 'overdosing junkie' that you speak of was a 70-year-old woman who had a heart attack. Thankfully, she was revived at the hospital and survived. It sounds like you were very concerned about her so I thought you should know."

 (SNARK!))

Burton goes on:

"This poor lady, who was celebrating New Year's Eve with her husband and son, had to be placed onthe floor of a completely packed bar and have her shirt removed in front of everyone so the paramedics could work on her.

But I completely understand why you think being an intoxicated (expletive) that didn't understand your bill should take priority over a human life. I especially appreciate you making your server (who doesnt curse) cry as well. I'm sure she really enjoyed working on New Year's Eve just to deal withi people such as yourself."

Burton also said that his restaurant will do fine if Bad Holly never comes back, "because we wouldn't wnt anyone as cold hearted and nasty as you returning."  

The restaurant is also promoting a GoFundMe page to help with the heart attack victim's medical bills.

Bad Holly apparently works at an Indianapolis hair salon, so you'd think she'd know a thing or two about customer service. I guess not. Note that the hair salon itself was not involved in this incident, expresses support for the heart attack victim and will deal with Bad Holly internally.

Not surprisingly, people have been flocking to Kilroy's Facebook page to praise Burton.

According to the Indy Star, people tend to spout on the Internet without thinking about the consequences. It certainly blew back on Bad Holly.

The Indy Star notes that Burton's response was not only kind, but made good business sense, since it sends the message that it cares about the vast majority of people who are nothing like Bad Holly.

The way I figure it, if I'm ever in Indianapolis, I'm heading straight to Kilroy's for a lunch and a drink. Sounds like a very cool place.

This Apartment Complex Must Be AWFUL If Owners Threaten To Charge Tenants $10,000 For Bad Reviews

Windemere Cay apartments in Florida tried
to obtain right to fine tenants $10,000 for negative reviews
and tried to claim copyrights for any photos
tenants took in or at the complex.  

Owners of an apartment complex in Florida are deservedly being ripped to shreds on social media, and now on main stream media for their threats to charge tenants big money if they criticize the place on line.  

The apartment complex owners also laughably tried to say they own the copywright on any photos tenants take in, or of the building.

The publication arstechnica.com broke the story, and it's one of the most hamhanded attempts I've see to control what people say on line.

Businesses or other entities who say they will fine people for posting negative reviews are on extremely shaky legal ground. An online retailer, KlearGear had to pay more than $300,000 to a couple that KlearGear tried to fine because the pair wrote a negative review.

Plus, if these outfits have to threaten people with hefty fines for criticizing their goods or services, the logical conclusion, fair or not, is that these goods or services are pretty lousy.

Still, we do see people trying this stunt anyway.

The apartment complex, called Windemere Cay says it abandoned the policy a year ago, but a tenant said he was handed a lease agreement with the conditions earlier this month.

Other conditions of the lease agreement are way, way over the top. The owners of the apartment building claimed the copywright to "any and all written or photographic works regarding the Owner, the Unit, the property or the apartments."

So if your kid has a birthday party in one of the apartments and you snap some pictures of the goings on, the apartment landlords own the photos.

Or so they think, anyway.

The apartment managers should hope they don't get sued over these attempts at controlling tenants' speech, law experts say.

According to Arstechnica:

"'Not only is such a contract unenforceable, but it could expose anyone promulgating it to legal repercussions,' Santa Clara University Law Professor Eric Goldman explained.

'It would be a terrible idea to enforce this in court. A judge is going to shred it,' Goldman said."

The fee Windemere Cay proposed for dissing the place on social media was pretty steep --- $10,000 to be paid within five business days.

Like that would ever happen.

Arstechica also says businesses that try to enforce these contracts might run afoul of federal law because of unfair and deceptive business practices.

What gets me is how the managers at Windemere Cay didn't think there would be a firestorm, even thought they seemed to understand a boneheaded move on social media could cost them.

In the lease agreement they tried to foist on tenants, the document said of negative social media posts "Such postings can cripple a business by creating a false impression in the eyes of consumers. The damages resulting from this false impression can include potentially millions of dollars in economic losses........"

They didn't think Windemere Cay would get a lot of negativity when this proposed lease agreement came to light? They're not that smart, are they?

Forbes magazine had four straightforward rules to avoid social media firestorms that are really just common sense.  One is to not go screaming to the attorneys and launch a lawsuit against critics. That just amplifies what a jerk you are.

Also, reach out directly to the people complaining to try to make things right. You might even turn that person  into your advocate if you treat them well. Even when you make a small mistake with a customer and they call you on it, fix the problem fast. And make it easy for customers to reach you if they have a question or concern.

Pretty basic, right?

With all the publicity, I don't imagine Windemere Cay will try to enforce the lease.  

Still, if I ever move to Florida, though, I can tell you I won't be looking for a place to live at Windemere Cay.

Turns Out There Are LOTS Of Rude Name Changers At Comcast

Consumerist said last year Comcast was the nation's worst
company. Not sure what this year will bring.  

Lots of people kind of chuckled and shook their heads last week when a Comcast customer reported that somebody there changed her first name on her account to "Asshole."

It took practically an act of Congress to get this fixed, and it finally did get fixed after the person, who apparently really isn't an asshole, went to the press.

Despite Comcast's poor customer service record, that had to be one rogue employee just being a troll, right?

Well, maybe not. Consumerist reports that a number of other people have come forward with news that Comcast has changed the names their parents gave them and dubbed them things like "dummy" and "whore."

Journalist and consumer advocate Christopher Elliott has been all over this, and has found quite a few examples of Comcast calling its customers mean names.

Way back in 2005, Comcast called one woman a "bitch dog" on her bill. And in the several days after Elliot disclosed that recent customer was called an "asshole," other people who have had dealings with Comcast have come forward.

In December, someone at Comcast changed the first nae of Julie Swano to "Whore."

She said she talked to many so-called customer service reps on a variety of issues for the next month. She wondered why all those people saw that "whore" name and didn't change it until she confronted Comcast with the name problem on January 6.

Another Comcast customer, Carolina Heredia, said the cable provider changed her name to "Dummy" in her online account, Elliott says. 

Heredia said Comcast offered no apologies ore explanation as to why her name was changed like that.

Just today, Consumerist reported another Comcast customer came forward, saying the company changed her name to "Super Bitch."

The name changing can't be by one rogue employee, there had to be several.

I don't know whether any of the customers involved were actually pains in the neck or just normal people trying to get a problem resolved.  Employees at all businesses mumble under their breath about customers they believe are frustrating.

But changing their names to insults on billing records and requiring an act of Congress to change the names back to normal?

What, these Comcast workers never got past middle school?

As is always the case with these public relations disasters, a spokesman for Comcast, this time Tom Karinshake a senior vice president for Comcast customer service, apologized and said systems would be put in place to prevent such things in the future.

"We're retraining our teams on the importance of making name changes properly," Karinshak said.

Good idea. But these insults and incredibly poor service to Comcast customers keep coming out of the woodwork. Remember that epic phone call when one customer wanted to end service.

The drama in that call went on forever

According to The Verge, which did a fairly exhaustive investigation on Comcast last summer, the cable giant doesn't have a lot of incentive for customer service, given their near-monopoly status in many communities. No competition, no incentive to do better.

Plus they shower campaign contributions on politicians.

The Verge had this to say:

"Comcast spends more than $2 billion a year on customer service, a painfully large number for a publicly tradec company eager to maximize shareholder returns. That is perhaps why Comcast pushes its employees in customer service and tech support to make sales  - a skewed incentive when customers are calling in with a problem.

The company also overbooks technicians, leading to late and missed appointments, an relies heavily on contract labor, where quality control can be difficult."

OK, pro-business types, your turn. If the free market is the way to go, and competition makes things better for everybody, why do all these so-called pro-business, free market types let outfits like Comcast be such an monopoly?

Why do they support its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable to make an even bigger monopoly, and why do they oppose local government efforts' to create their own little public utility broadband and cable services?

If anybody's got some good answers, I'll post 'em.

Everything That's Wrong With Major American Business

JetBlue is going to a fee system that other airlines use
to torture us. Because Wall Street wants JetBlue to make
bigger profits for them. The American Way I guess.Add caption

A few weeks ago, Wall Street analysts said they were not all that crazy about JetBlue.

The problem? They are "overly brand conscious and customer focused."

JetBlue is making money hand over fist. But not to the extend of other airlines, and not to the extent of what fat cat shareholders want. They want more money to add to their billions.

To do that, they have to make flying for us minions as rough as possible. And as expensive as possible.

It's not good enough to be profitable and treat people like human beings, i.e. fairly. You must, MUST screw them as much as possible.

Apparently, it's the American Way.

The fee system that airlines have horribly imposed on us is designed expressly to given us the most unpleasant flying experience possible while maximizing profits to the extreme.
Here's how the New Yorker describes this evil system:

"If fees are great for airlines, what about for us? Does it make a difference if an airline collects its cash in fees as opposed to through ticket sales?

The airlines, and some economists, argue that the rise of the fee model is good for travellers. You only pay for what you want, and you can therefore save money, if you, for instance, don't mind sitting in the middle seats in the back, waiting in line to board, or bringing your own food.

That's why American Airlines calls its fees program 'Your Choice' and suggests that it makes the 'travel experiencce even more convenient, cost-effective, flexible and personalized.'

But the fee model comes with systematic costs that are not immediately obvious. Here's the thing: in order for fees to work there needs to be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as 'calculated misery.'"

In other words, the more horrible the airlines make flying, the more they torture us, the more they insist on trying to make a 200 pound person like me sit in a seat designed for a 75-pounder, the more we will pay to accept escape from the torture and the more money they'll make.

Where will this trend end? "Hey, pay a $300 'no whipping' fee and we won't give you 100 lashes before you board."

I think airline executives would go for that, if aggravated assault wasn't still illegal. But don't worry. Congress will make it legal. If it contributes to corporate profits, which means they get more campaign money from the corporations.

This gets us back to JetBlue. That airline was trying to treat its customers with a basic level of respect. But nope, the Wall Street overlords will have none of that. Not of more profits can be squeezed out so they can buy that third beach house in the Hamptons.

Of course the free market types say if we don't like it, we can just go to the competition. But all of the so-called competition is under orders from Wall Street to commit exactly the same abuse on customers. So there really is no "competition."

As the New Yorker put it:

"When an airline like JetBlue is punished for merely trying to treat all of its passengers decently, something isn't right."

Look, I'm totally on board with one basic concept of capitalism.  Corporations must make profits. They provide a service we want, we pay for it, and they make money. Investors are happy, we're happy for getting the service we want, and live goes on wonderfully. Awesome! I love it!

What I don't love is the ethos that has taken over Corporate America. Instead of having us pay reasonable prices in exchange for goods and services, and have us coming back for more, the larger corporations by and large treat most of us with contempt.

That the 1% regards the rest of us as the enemythat has to be crushed, taken advantage of, left penniless and then discarded.

Of course, with that business model, how do they expect to make money once we're all spent?

 

I'm Sadly Watching Gannett Torture My Former Colleagues, Journalists And The Public

Gannett's rather ironic logo.  

UPDATE : Seven Days Newspaper has a little more inside info from the ridiculousness at Gannett,  here at the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press.

In the article, a reporter who unsuccessfully reapplied for a job recounts the experience.

It's infuriating.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: 

Maybe I have survivor's guilt.

Gannett, the media company that has itself been in the news lately with its layoffs and, um, creative management, jettisoned me in August 2013.

It was part of their wave of layoffs. They're always laying off people, it seems.

I hate to say it, but they did me a favor, especially considering what I see going on at Gannett nowadays.  Still, watching Gannett corporate head honchos do what they're doing makes me sad.

Gannett management is acting like a train engineer having a major mental breakdown and causing a real train wreck. Their victims are its journalists, and the news consuming public.

Gannett has 82 daily newspapers across the country and more than 440 non-daily publications in 30 states and Guam, says the company Web site. 

It's no secret the journalism profession has changed incredibly and newspapers are suffering. Gannett can easily be forgiven for struggling with the changing industry and how to keep readers and its newspapers and Web sites relevant.

What's inexcusable is the incredibly boneheaded, cruel and self-defeating way they're going about it.

From what I hear, and to a lesser extent, from what I remember working there, they keep reducing resources and staff, forcing the remaining people to do more work with less time and fewer means to get the job done. Plus the employees have to pour more time into social media, the web and all the other bells and whistles meant to keep readers engaged.

Everyone there is stretched too thin. The result is a poorer quality newspaper and web site, which drives away readers, which reduces revenue, which goes on and on and turns the company's newspaper division into a death spiral.

They seem incredibly intent on driving away readers and revenue, rather than attract it.  I know here in Vermont, I hear over and over again that the Gannett-owned Burlington Free Press is not worth their time anymore.

Which is a total shame, because the remaining journalists at the Free Press are totally top notch. If they were given the opportunity to actually do their jobs, the articles in the Free Press would be totally ground breaking, engaging, important, and would change Vermont for the better, all the time, every day.

One of the more succinct reactions to Gannett's boneheadedness is from blogger Jeff Pearlman, who titled a recent post: "Dear Gannett: Fuck Yourself. Love, Jeff."

Pearlman captures Gannett's self-inflicted downward spiral perfectly:

"Gannett folks shrug, say it's a byproduct of the modern newspaper as a ghost. Yet who created that ghost? Who stripped down the products, then stripped them again and again? Wo ripped the hearts and souls out of newspapers? Who ended investigative reporting? Who did this to the newspaper business?

Answer: Gannett"

The layoffs, the cookie-cutter approach Gannett management applied to journalism, the internal bureaucracy. Gannett seems to manage via panic. They think quarter to quarter, to please the shareholders who demand profits each quarter.

What Gannett fails to do, in my opinion, is think long term, to position itself in a new media landscape over the long haul.  Which makes Gannett's self promotion as a media innovator puzzling.

Recently, things got so much worse.  I guess Gannett management had to drive home the fact that the industry has changed and Gannett employees must change with it. That part, I'm OK with.

But they are going about it by forcing employees to reapply for their own jobs. It's demoralizing, humiliating, stupid, a waste of time, and damages the paper and the community.

Why not retrain workers for today's realities? And you don't have to be kind about it. The employees that show they are in the game end up staying, and the ones that won't change and grow with the job leave?

I'd guarantee that almost all Gannett employees who are respected enough, and given enough resources, not to mention pay, would embrace all this re-training wholeheartedly.

But nope, they're forcing employees to reapply.

Here in Vermont, one reporter, Lynn Monty, was laid off because she declined to reapply for a position. She understandably found the process degrading and insulting.

I'm not worried about Monty. She's a talented and passionate journalist who will land on her feet. But Monty's exit captured the attention of such national media watchers as Jim Romenesko, which further helps blacken the reputation of Gannett as a soul crusher and a model of weird management incompetence.

Monty's experience has been repeated all up and down the Gannett chain.

At the Cincinnati Enquirer, several journalists left rather than reapply for these supposedly reconfigured jobs, says the Cincinnati Business Courier.  

"Veteran employees told the Courier they are heading for the door because they would rather take a buyout package than go through another round of upheaval and the indignity of reapplying for jobs at a company they've worked at for decades."

The Arizona Republic is going through the same thing, and the accounts of what's going on there, as they appeared in the Phoenix New Times is grim. 

Gannett is splitting its business into two, a newspaper division and one for its television and non-journalism Web sites. I wonder if this upheaval is a tortured way to spin the newspaper end of the business into something value-less? Something that can be jettisoned more easily?

Gannett is certainly jettisoning staff pretty easily.

Looking back, I think Gannett was right to get rid of me last year. You want to work for a company at which you care whether they succeed or not. Gannett has created an atmosphere where I don't think that employees care whether Gannett fails.

Face it. Morale stinks. More than stinks. It's not there anymore.

I was in that boat. Like most journalists, I cared about the quality of my work, and wanted to demonstrate that through my work. Gannett, with its cutbacks and lack of resources, wasn't letting me do that.

The management at the Burlington Free Press tried their best to support us journalists and turn out the best product we could given the constricted circumstances. I have to give the editors at the Free Press tons of credit for that.

But the corporate overlords at Gannett made things impossible.

I, too stopped caring whether Gannett succeeds. So it's good that I'm out of there.

Now I've cobbled together a couple jobs and am getting by. And most importantly, I care for both the quality of my work AND I care whether the companies I work for succeed and thrive.

It's too bad Gannett seems to care a lot about its shareholders, but doesn't care much about its employees.

More importantly, Gannett doesn't seem to care much about the communities it serves.

For that, Gannett unfortunately deserves its apparent slow, painful death. It's just sad they're taking so many good people down with the ship. 

Newspapers Want You To Pay Extra For Papers That Have LOTS Of Advertising

Newspapers might charge
you extra for those big, fat
Black Friday editions
the day after Thanksgiving 

Lord knows the newspaper industry is going through some tough times and they need to cut expenses and gain revenue as much as they can.

Newspapers are laying off staffers left and right. (I was one of those victims of newspaper layoffs in the summer of 2013, but I'm not feeling so much like a victim at this point.)

But the following seems like too much:

Those of you who are still getting print newspapers delivered to your door might be in for a surprise on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Newspapers on Black Friday are usually stuffed with tons and tons and TONS of advertising, inserts and flyers to get you all set for the Christmas shopping season.

A number of newspapers, says media watcher Jim Romenesko, will charge you extra for the paper with all the extra advertising. They're calling these fat, advertising stuffed papers, "premium issues"

Oooh! Premium! We all want to get charged extra for all
those extra ads the newspapers are making extra money on.

Let's get this straight:  Newspapers get a needed extra revenue boost at Thanksgiving through many advertisers. And readers now get to pay extra for the privilege of pawing through all those advertisements to see if they can find any nuggets of news in those newspapers.

The logic from the newspapers is you get all these nice wonderful coupons from advertisers, so you save money, if you go shopping at the advertisers' stores.  The newspapers are trying to grab that money back from you for their own bottom line.

Granted, we're not talking a lot of money for newspaper subscribers here. Maybe a couple bucks.

But this extra charge for "premium papers" has the potential to drive readers away. The point of all those advertisers advertising is to catch the eyeballs of readers. But if those readers are driven away, there's no eyeballs, hence no reason to advertise in the paper.

Next Thanksgiving, maybe these advertisers will find somewhere else to tell us all about their wild, wonderful Christmas season deals, rather than your local paper. So less revenue comes in. There's more layoffs. Less news, less advertising, and the newspapers' downward spiral continues.

It makes you wonder whether newspapers so desperate they are trying to commit suicide?

To me, this is more evidence that journalism will survive, but many print newspapers, and their parent media companies, might not.

Online Store Practically Threatens To Break The Knees Of Customers Who Complain

A scummy online retailer threatened this woman
Thankfully, she's fighting back.  

Consumerist, that web site full of stories about retail and service businesses that don't quite understand the concept of customer service, has really topped itself this time.

They're telling us about an outfit called OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com which has a terms of service rule demanding customers not even threaten to complain about it, or they'll pay, pay, pay and pay. 

That's a new level of ridiculous, and probably unenforceable tyrannical terms of service rules.

Here's the "best" part of OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com's rules:

"You agree not to file any complaint, chargeback, claim, dispute, or make any public foru post, review, Better Business Bureau complaint, social media post, or any public statement regarding the order, our website or any issue regarding your order, for any reason, with this 90 day period, or to threaten to do so within the 90 day period, or it is a breach of the terms of sale, creating liability for damages in the aount of $250, plus any additional fees, damages, both consequential and incidental, calculated on an ongoing basis."

That's right, even if you casually threaten to post something whiny about OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com on Facebook,  or something,  and not even bother to post the complaint, they'll still go after you for $250.

This goes beyond some of the other ridiculous terms of service I've written about.   At least those tried to collect only when somebody actually complained, and one of these businesses backed down when the publicity hit, saying the rules were just a joke. 

Unlike some other outrageous terms of service fine print from other companies, this one from OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com apparently isn't a joke or an empty threat to make people think twice about complaining.

OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com went after a Wisconsin customer, Cindy Cox who was unhappy with them.

Says Consumerist: "The company told her in an email that not only would she be hit for the $250 penalty but that her account would be sent to a collections agency, which would 'put a negative mart on your credit for 7 years and will also result in calls to your home and/or work."

They also threatened her with further billing on an hourly basis. The customer said she had the right to contact her credit card company about the purchase, and these jerks responded that she now owed them unspecified monetary "damages" above and beyond the $250.

The customer also got a threatening email that read in part: "You are playing games with the wrong people and have made a very bad mistake given the legally binding contract we have in place. One we have successfully enforced on many individuals, the same we will do with you."

Gawd, this is worse than a plot line in "The Sopranos."

I have no idea wither OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com has actually gone after people like they said they have, but boy is this company stupid.

You know inevitably one of the customers the company abused would go to the media, or the media would find out, as happened here. This negative publicity can't be helping this bad outfit.

Plus, as they often do in cases like this, Public Citizen is helping the customer sue OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com, which will only drag out the misery for the company, and maybe with any luck, drive them out of business.

Scumbags that they are.

Says Public Citizen: 

"The lawsuit asks the court to declare that Cox doers not owe Accessory Outlet a debt because the terms of sale were hidden on its website, are unreasonably favorable to Accessory Outlet and were never presented to or accepted by Cox when she made her purchase."

I'm not a lawyer, but it sure seems to be Public Citizen and their client have a strong case.

Here's more evidence of how bad OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com is, according to Consumerist.  The company  claims to have endorsements from the Better Business Bureau and Angie's List. However, both organizations say uh-uh.

The Better Business Bureau actually gives Accessort Outlet an "F" rating, and Angie's List doesn't give them any props, because they have no reviews of this outfit to begin with, Consumerists says.

So I think this might be the beginning of the end for OnlineAccessoryOutlet.com, which would be a very good thing, based on what I'm reading about them.

That might be happening already. I couldn't get into their Web site Friday morning. An error message said their site was "undergoing maintenance."

Stupid People Making Scenes In Restaurants Because They're Idiots

The customer is most certainly NOT always right.

Whirled Pies in Eugene, OR survived an
attempt by some wacko to set the place
on fire using his moonshine because staff there
opted not to serve him more booze because
he was already wasted.  

I say this because every time I turn around, I learn of some new idiot making a scene in a restaurant or some other business because they don't get their way, the big babies.

Out in Eugene, Oregon, staff at Whirled Pies, a pizza parlor, asked a couple to leave after they had too much to drink, reports television station KMTR in Eugene.

They didn't take it well. Whirled Pies staff, who were closing up shop for the night anyway, escorted them to the door.

The guy came back five minutes later, heaved a planter through the glass front door, terrified the staff and tried to set the place on fire using the moonshine he brought with him and a restaurant curtain he tried to use as a wick for his hillbilly Molotov cocktail.

Luckily, the fire didn't really get going and Whirled Pies wasn't that badly damaged.

The people at Whirled Pies at least have a bit of a sense of humor over the whole episode, posting the following message on their Facebook page:

"Special this weekend, flame thrower pizza with spicy garlic cream sauce, house made sausage, and green chiles. Come help us get things back to normal. Thanks for all the well wishes and crucial community support."

However, things aren't going so well for our mad moonshine guy, Matthew Curtis Bossard, 32, and his lovely companion, Leticia Kagele, face a variety of charges.

Plus, I doubt they will ever be allowed in to Whirled Pies to enjoy their yummy pizza.

I've always been simultaneously fascinated and appalled by people like these clowns at Whirled Pies who go totally off in public over the stupidest things.

Are they ill? Drama queens? Attention seekers? Perpetually angry losers.

For some reason, McDonald's always seems the most likely venue for an idiot to start yelling and screaming or acting weirdly for no good reason, making a fool of themselves.

Take this hefty woman in some McDonald's somewhere putting on quite a performance over, well I'm not sure, either a botched order or a dispute over change for the order. But it's quite a scene in this video, taken about a year ago. (Maybe she should win an Oscar for this presentation.)

Fox News On The Hunt For Those Dastardly Anti-Business Kids Movies. This Time: Lego.

Thank goodness for Fox News, and Fox Business News for once again rescuing the kids of This Great Nation from a movie that that could encourage the innocent children to not fawn over billionaire corporate executives.

Fox Business News says "The Lego Movie"
is indoctrinating our kids into hating CEOs
and the American Way of Life!  

As we all well know, we must teach our children to expect slave wages and to be expected to work 100 hours a week as adults so those poor unfortunate billionaires can become trillionaires.

But it turns out,  Fox Business News has uncovered the latest evil plot by those evil Hollywood liberals. It's in the children's feature "The Lego Movie."

I haven't seen the movie, so I might be a little fuzzy on the facts, but apparently, a villian in the movie runs some sort of corporation.

Charles Payne of Fox Business News is pained that the villian is, Sigh! once again a CEO. Says he:

"Why is the head of a corporation, where they hire people, people go to work, they pay their rent, their mortgage, they put their kids through college, they feed their families, they give to charities, they give to churches - why would the CEO be an easy target?" Payne wondered.

Um, maybe because the standard movie plot device is the main characters triumph over someone or something much more powerful than they, and CEOs tend to be powerful?

Yeah, I know, that's my Marxism or something talking. (Never mind that I'm pretty much a card carrying Capitalist. I just not capitalist enough for our friend Charles Payne.)

I think Payne just wants to ignore the fact, that a zillion commentators have noted before I got around to it here:

Not to be Captain Obvious, but the movie is in part one great big advertisement for Legos. Presumably the CEO of the company that makes Legos thought it was a swell idea to tie his product in with a popular movie.

It worked. "The Lego Movie" is boffo at the box office, Lego is going to sell stuff hand over fist, he's going to make a lot of money, presumably the workers at Lego are thusly going to keep their jobs, their houses and will feed their families.

Capitalism wins and the CEO of Lego is a hero! Hurray!

Fox Business has been on the patrol a lot in recent years guarding us from such Marxist indoctrination or our children in the form of movies like "The Lorax,"  "The Muppet Movie" and "Wall-e."

Back in 2012, Lou Dobbs at Fox Business News had this (comical, at least to me!) take on the dangers of "The Lorax."

"Hollywood is once again trying to indoctrinate our children," Dobbs warned.

See! I told you the Marxist were indoctrinating our children!

Go on, Lou:

Lou Dobbs said The Lorax was "demonizing the 1% and espousing green energy policies"

Green energy policies! Oh, the EVIL! God forbid our children grow up and get well paying jobs making wind turbines and solar energy installations!

Then those kids working on wind turbines and solar energy will get decent paychecks because the CEOs of the wind and solar companies had the smarts to create these companies because they, are, um, Capitalists.

Hmmm.

We also had the Great Muppet Wars of 2011, when Fox News said "The Muppet Movie" demonized the oil industry.

(The Muppets did it in a sneaky way, too, by not actually mentioning the oil industry in the movie, but still, the subversion was there. Fox News says so)

And this did turn into a war, especially when Miss Piggy responded to Fox News by saying the anti-oil charge against The Muppet Movie was "almost as laughable as accusing Fox News of being news."

Oh, those leftist Muppets will stop at NOTHING when turning our children into commies!

It is true CEOs are often protrayed as villians and rarely seen as heroes in movies, as USA Today points out. But aren't they being a teensy, weensy bit defensive?

After all CEOs tend to have a lot of perks that protect them from the rabble: Money, power and prestige among them. And after all, CEOs are a good source of villian ideas. Most are pretty honest, but a few are spectacularly crooked.

Jeff Skilling of Enron, anyone?

Anyway, as I said, thank goodness for Fox News. I'm sure they'll keep protecting us from that brand of capitalism the movie studios torture us with by selling movies and product tie ins and overpriced popcorn in movie theaters.

How To Advertise Your Business: Have Person Dress Up As Banana And Carry AK-47

Derek Poe, owner of a business called Golden Triangle Tactical had a problem.

Maybe Golden Triangle Tactical should have
hired a Minion, with their love of bananas
(and sometimes guns) to advertise their store.  

He was moving the location of the business and he need to let his customers know of the change.

Yes, he could have taken out ads in the newspaper, radio, TV and social media and he probably did some of those things.

But what better way to advertise the move than to have a teenager stand outside the store's new location dressed as a banana and carrying an AK-47?

That's precisely what Poe did to advertise his business move, according to television station KBMT in Beaumont, Texas.

Well, I suppose a murderous looking banana is one way to attract attention. To be fair, the AK-47 wasn't loaded and the banana teenager wasn't threatening anyone with it.

I'm not sure what a store selling guns and such has to do with bananas, but what do I know? As long as the people buying the guns are't bananas in the head

The teen was cited for violating a Beaumont city ordinance that bars soliciting business on the side of the road. But with an open carry permit, it looks as if the AK-47 was legal, so the kid's not in that much trouble.

Hey, and the advertising ploy worked. Now, with the publicity, a lot more people, including you, know about Golden Triangle Tactical.

World's Worst Restauranteur Hates "Freaks and F***gots" And Almost Everyone Else

If the top item on your life's bucket list is to enjoy a restaurant meal at Gary's Chicaros in Enid, Oklahoma, you'd better hurry up, big time.

Gary James, owner of Gary's Chicaros in
Enid, Oklahoma, might soon be facing
some legal issues over alleged discrimination.  

The place has been in business for 44 years, but I predict it will close soon.

Why? Because it seems the owner of the place, Gary James, appears to hate almost everybody, according to television station KFOR in Oklahoma City. 

It now seems inevitable that someone will file a discrimination complaint against the restaurant and you will no longer have the chance to sit down to some grub and listen to Gary James um, compelling thoughts on gays, blacks, lazy people, people with disabilities and a host of other n'er do wells he hates.

This whole thing started recently when a customer named Matt Gard, who said he'd been stopping by Gary's Chicaros for years, was turned away because he now has a disability.  Though James said something about Gard's friends being loud, but who knows?

Gard told KFOR that James doesn't like to serve people with disabilities, minorities, gay people and others. It's really quite a list.

For his part, James pretty much admited to KFOR he doesn't like people with disabilities.

"Well, if you work, you own a business, pay your taxes, you're more than welcome here. If you're on welfare, stay at home and spend my money there."

Um, if they're spending your money, Gary James, wouldn't you want them to spend it in your restaurant, so you get some of it back?

In 2009, he told News9 in Oklahoma that he is not homophobic or racist, he just doesn't want gay people in his restaurant. 

He also said at the time that anyone who wears a hat inside a building is gay. Um, I know plenty of people who I've seen wearing hats inside buildings, and I never thought they were gay. Neither did they.

Maybe they have different rules and signals in Oklahoma. The closest I've been to Oklahoma is South Dakota, which is pretty much as Midwestern as the Sooner State. I've eaten in restaurants in South Dakota where plenty of guys were wearing hats and few, if any, seemed gay to me.

And I thought I had a pretty good gaydar. But not as good as Gary James' apparently.

There was a flurry of attention toward James and his attitudes toward all kinds of people Different From Him back in 2009 when he was running for Enid City Council, but that attention died with a wimper.

This time, however, that pesky Internet is flaring up big time with the latest stuff that's going on with Gary James' attitudes. What started as a good local story from KFOR has now swept across the Internet. Popular aggragate sites like Gawker and Wonkette have seized on it, and it will be minutes before the main stream media catches up with it.

So there will be an outcry. Someone will file a discrimination lawsuit and Gary's Chicaros will probably be no more. (Already, KFOR posted a helpful link on their Gary Chicaros story to the Oklahoma Attorney General's office)

Gary James will become a hero to the allegedly oppressed far right wing and the rest of us will forget about him.

But some of us will have fun with him first.  Already it's started.  For instance, the Gary's Chicanos Facebook page has been hacked.

It is now listed on Facebook as a gay bar and fake "reviews" are pouring in with (definitely untrue but sarcastic and hilarious) stories about how Gary James likes having, um, intimate contact with certain male customers.

So, next time you're in Enid, Oklahoma, it looks as if you'll need to find another place for food and cocktails, because Gary Chicaros days seem to be numbered.

Airlines Shrinking Seats To Grow Bottom Line

Your bottom is getting an extra tight squeeze in smaller airline seats to fatten airliners' bottom line.

Chalk it up to the good old quest for profitability. I guess torturing passengers, especially beefy ones, is a good way for airlines to make money.

C'mon airlines! You can't  squeeze big guys
like this into seats with just barely enough
capacity for toddlers.  

There's two reasons for the trend. More people can flt on a plane. More people, more tickets, more money.

Also, the airline is more likely to upsell you to more expensive seats that are roomier if they make you terribly, terribly uncomfortable first.

Torturing again: If they make your life as miserable as possible, you're more apt to pay money to feel better. Even if you can't really afford it.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article on the shrinking seats on airplanes:

"This doesn't sit well with many travelers, particularly those who are large or overweight. Arm rests and aisles are also getting slimmed ot wedge in the extra seat, meaning more elbows get bumped. And while seats are now being designed more ergonomically, with better cushions and head rests, the improvements don't stop people from rubbing shoulders."

Airlines are also saying if they ply passengers with snacks, movies, and other distractions, they won't really notice their discomfort.

Yeah, right.

My questions is where does it end? Will airlines put everybody in shrink wrap to make them smaller so they can fit more bodies on?

This kind of news about the already shoddy experience of flying makes me think of Star Trek. Can't we just teleport to wherever we want to go and leave the airlines out of it?

As long as the teleporting machine is large enough to accommodate a big guy