Televangelists Want People To Die Of Covid-19 So They Can Get Richer

Scamevangelist says if your church is taking coronavirus precautions, that
church is not really a religion. Obviously, if your church suggests
precautions, God would probably want you to go along with them. 

Everybody is an understandable, correct tizzy over the dangerous conornavirus, as I'm sure you're all experiencing.

One of many patterns I'm noticing is how evil televangelists and conspiracy theorists are through this whole thing.

I've always known most of these types are scum of the Earth, but to use a pandemic to get rich using scams, no matter how many people die as a result, is just....just.....I can't even come up with the word.

We give life prison sentences or the death penalty to mass murderers. Aren't these people doing exactly the same. Except not with a gun, but with words aimed at the gullible.

I've got just a few examples. Let's start with one dude named Jonathan Shuttlesworth.

Here's what he said about churches that close down and/or limit services.

"Shame on every European full gospel church, bunch of sissies, that shut down during this thing. Catholic Church not having holy water in the lobby - how holy is the water then?  That should be a sign to you that your whole religion's a fraud.  Any faith that doesn't work in real life is a fake faith. Totally fake.

If you're putting out pamphlets and telling everybody to use Purell before they come into the sanctuary and don't greet anyone, you should just turn in your ministry credentials and burn your church down -- turn it into a casino or something. You're a loser. Bunch of pansies. No balls."

Shuttlesworth has a solution to this though. Join his church!

If you join Shuttlesworth's ministry, he says. Just join up and send him all your cash, you will be given a supernatural protection from the coronavirus. So that's the scam.  So people will give this idiot donations, think they're protected, get infected and spread the virus to anyone who unwittingly comes in close contact with them.

Nice, huh?

Scammer Jim Bakker tried to sell a fake "cure" for Covid-19.
There's lots of cease and desist letters over this out there 

Same is true with Jim Bakker. You probably remember him, or his wife. He's been scamming for a long, long time.  Here's a recap, put succinctly by NPR:

"Bakker gained fame in the 1970s and '80s as the host of The PTL Club, a Christian television program he hosted with his then-wife, Tammy Faye. He stepped down from PTL after a sex scandal and later spent several years in prison after a jury found that he had defrauded his viewers out of millions of dollars."

Bakker's out of prison now for that.  So he's scamming people in a much more deadly way than his crimes earlier.

He's hawking a product called Silver Solution.  As NPR reports, Bakker had a guest on his show back on February 12 named Sherrill Sellman and implied it can cure illnesses associated with this virus.  "Well, let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the cornavirus, but it has been tested on other strains fothe coronavirus and has been able to eliminated it within 12 hours....Totally eliminate it. Kills it. Deactivates it."

Missouri filed a lawsuit against Bakker and his production compant to stop them from advertising and selling Silver Solution.  New York State issued a cease and desist against Bakker for this item.  Also, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission warned Bakker that he and his cohorts were selling unapproved new drugs in violation of the law, reports NPR.

Bakker has since taken down advertisements for Silver Solution, but Missouri is still pursuing the case because they worry Bakker might quietly start selling the stuff once attention to it starts to die down.

Creepy scamevangelist Kenneth Copeland says he can protect you from
the virus if you let him bless you by putting your hand on your TV
screen when hes on. 

Then we have the oh so creepy looking "televangelist" Kenneth Copeland, who told his viewers to put their hands on their TV screens in order to get God's protection from this virus.

Once people did that, Copeland instructed them to say "I take it, I have it. It's mine. I thank you and praise you for it."  Then I'm sure Copeland did his usual money beg for his grateful, but still very unsafe viewers.

But, according to Copeland, his viewers shouldn't be afraid because Jesus. Or Copeland. I don't know. Anyway, he said this weirdness:  "Fear is not OK. It is sin. It is a magnet for sickness and disease. The moment you begin to fear about anything, the devil goes to work on you. You are giving the devil a pathway to your body."

Got that? Coronovirus isn't a virus. It's the devil.  So an eventual vaccine won't help?

You might remember Copeland from early 2018 when he bought a private Gulfstream jet for $5.8 million.  He did so because he once called flying in a commercial airplane as "getting in a long tube with a bunch of demons." 

Anyway, I'm being Captain Obvious here. If you really want advice about coronovirus, televangelists won't help you.  Go to the CDC or better yet, the World Health Organization (WHO) if you want to learn ways to protect yourself.

If God were really speaking through these scamevangelists, I'm betting he'd be telling you to go to WHO, too.

Televangelist Didn't Think This Scammy Money Beg Through

Rich scammer Paula White wants you to not pay your electric bills, and
instead give that money to her.  

Paula White, one of the most prominent scamevantelists televangelists recently had a money beg that I'm sure she didn't quite think through.

According to Alternet.org quoting Mother Jones, White, leader of her Florida-based (of course!) Supernatural Ministry School (Yes! That's the name!) said her followers could secure God's favor by sending her church as much money as possible.

That includes not bothering to pay their electric bills and send money earmarked for the utilities to her instead.  

She especially urged her followers who pay their monthly electric bills to Florida Power and Light (FPL, as it's known in the Sunshine State) to give it to her church instead. Why? Because if they don't, they're treating the utility better than they treat God, reports Alternet.org.

"Instead of writing (that check) to the house of God as I'm instructed to, then what I'm saying spiritually is, 'FPL, I hae now established a spiritual law that put ou first,' White explained to her flock. 'So, FPL, save my family, FPL, deliver my drug addicted son. FPL, kill this cancer that doctors say is in my body.'"

There is a lot of things to unpack here. First of all, I'm unaware of Florida Power and Light ever promising to eradicate drug addiction or cure cancer. I checked their press releases and didn't find any of those claims.

Like most utilities in America, all FPL promises is they'll keep providing electrical service to your house as long as you pay your monthly bill. It's pretty simple, really.

I'm also going to put my often-used Captain Obvious hat on here. A lot of White's followers keep up with her by watching TV or listening to her online.  That becomes a lot more difficult for people whose electricity is cut off because they didn't pay their bills.

White is one of the leading scammers in a very scammy "faith" called the "Prosperity Gospel."

According to Dictionary.com, Prosperity Gospel is "a modern version or according to some, perversion of the gospel according to which the full blessings of God available to those who approach Him in faith and obedience include wealth, health and power."

The more blunt and obvious definition of this is, Prosperity Gospel is a scam in which charismatic shysters tell you to give them boatloads of cash and if you do, God will shower you with money, tacky swag and an ugly McMansion somewhere in suburban Birmingham, Alabama,  Or something like that.

Yes, yes, I know that's a perversion of real Christianity. But people fall for it. There's a sucker born every minute.  Including Donald Trump, who's probably in on the scam, since he's in on a lot of scams. I say this because Trump has declared Paula White one of his spiritual advisors.

As Mother Jones points out, both Trump and White are "twice-divorced, with a history of marital infidelities and bankruptcy, but possessing remarkable TV savvy."

Paula White is a piece of work, anyway, as I'm sure you've gathered. You have to hand it to her, she does hustle to make some good income from the gullible.

As Christian Post reported nearly four years ago, White began selling "Resurrection Seeds" that would give you eternal life for the low, low price of $1,144.

But wait! There's more!

Back in 2019, White demanded that her followers give her their January salary, reports Newsweek.  I imagine that most of her gullible followers aren't rich.  That's why they follow the "Prosperity Gospel."  They're sick of being poor and out of desperation they see this as their ticket.

It does seem White is getting very rich off her scams. She's been the subject of two Congressional investigations into her doings, but so far, there's been no action.

Of course, everything and everybody Trump touches dies, so we'll see what her future brings. While her most ardent followers sit in the dark and wait, having not paid their electric bill.

Jan Crouch, Televangelist With Very Interesting Hair, Has Died

I mocked televangelist Jan Crouch for her, um,
amazing hair and makeup, but to me she
was also a tragic figure. She died recently at age 78. 

The subject of what is so far, mystifyingly the most popular post in the history of this here blog thingy has died.

Jan Crouch was the subject of my February, 2012 post: "The Televangelist With The, Um, Amazing Hair," in which I contemplated the remarkable structure, if you can call it that, of her hair and wigs.

We learned this morning that Crouch died of a massive stroke at the age of 78.  

I guess it's a requirement that female televangelists have elaborate makeup and hair. Crouch's makeup, by the way, was as amazing as her hair.

Another requirement in third rate cable televangelism TV, Crouch became mired in infighting, lawsuits and allegations of criminal activity.

Crouch was the co-founder of Trinity Broadcasting, which pushed what is to me a very scammy sort of televangelism. Basically: Give all your money to me, and God will then reward you with material riches.

Though I'm not a Bible expert, I don't think that's the gist of the Holy Book, but what do I know?

I know it's mean of me to kick round Jan Crouch when she's just passed away.  It's true I didn't respect her.

However, I felt a bit sorry for her when I wrote that post about her hair in 2012 and I feel sorry for her now.

She seemed obsessed with gaudy, showy moneyed ickiness. I wonder if she was at all spiritual, and in her quest for money, did she miss out on what really matters in life.

At the end, she was estranged from much of her family, due to the infighting. Her grandchildren wrote pleading messages to her, saying that they loved her, but the grandchildren were kept away from her, due to the fighting and lawsuits about all the money the "ministry" raked in.

Jan Crouch's wigs were certainly works of art, of sorts. The artful beauty of love and compassion and just experience life as a human being seemed to elude her.

Which makes this subject of my mockery also a tragic cautionary tale.

California (Thankfully) Disparages Nondisparagement Clauses

A new California law would outlaw over the top
non-disparagement clauses like this one.  

Kudos to California, which just passed a law making it illegal for companies to have so called disparagement clauses. 

The clauses companies try to use so they can   shut you up or fine you for lots of money if you have the gall to complain about their shabby products or services.

This was becoming a real problem. Still is, in fact.

Outfits like KlearGear and Accessory Outlet got HUGE bad publicity this year over these disparagement clauses, because they fined people and tried to ruin their credit ratings over relatively mild on-line criticisms.

You'd think the bad publicity and the public outcry and derision against companies like these would make them change their ways. After all, who in their right mind would want to do business with them if they are practically extortionists?

But customer service seemed not to be in their business plans, so lawmakers, at least in California, had to step in.

According to TechDirt, the new California law makes it illegal to prevent a "a consumer's right to make any statement regarding the seller or lessor or its employees or agents, or concerning the goods and services."

It's also now illegal in California to try to collect fines or penalties from a customer who criticizes a company.

The first violaton would cost a compnay $2,500 and "flagrant" violations could run up to $10,000.

TechDirt points out one problem with the otherwise good California law: It's sometimes awfully hard to track down the scumbags behind the scummy outfits that would go after someone financially who complains about shoddy products or services.

Says TechDirt:

".....there's more than a few companies combining crappy service with hefty fines that don't seem to actually exist outside of a Mailboxes Etc. address. Laws are tough to enforce when you can't find anyone to hold accountable. The worst part is that by the time most consumers discover they're dealing with a company that will charge them for negative reviews, these companies already have their credit card information and can start adding these charges to their balances."

The bottom line: It's up to us as consumers, and the media, to find out which companies have these ridiculous non-disparagement clauses and go after them.

Plus, it would be nice if there were a federal law similar to California's which would cover consumers nationwide.

Are "Click Farms" The Latest (Dishonest, Abusive) Way To Get Ahead On The Internet?

Web sites, on line companies and such live and die by the number of "clicks" they get.

Workers in Dhaka toil at a "click farm" the latest
way to cheat via the Internet 

In other words, the more people who visit the sites, the more ad revenue is generated and the richer the proprietors of the web sites and businesses get.

So of course, people cheat to get more clicks.

There are computer programs that generate lots of fake clicks, but the folks at search engines like Google have ways of sniffing out these scammy operations, and punish the guilty accordingly by making sure they are not among the first thing people see when searching for the company.

So, it's come to this: Click farms. It's the latest of man scams that always seem to sweep the Internet.

It's something I'd never heard of until recently, but here's how it works:

People in foreign countries get barely paid to sit in drab rooms and click on sites, day in and day out. Imagine how boring that is: Click on a site, back out, click on another, just to increase the number of times a site has been visited

According to the Associated Press, the offshore click farms are where "workers tap, tap, tap the thumbs up botton, view videos or retweet comments to inflate social media numbers. 

Since Facebook launched almost 10 years ago, users have sought to expand their social networks for financial gain, winning friends, bragging rights and professional clout. And social media companies ite the levels of engagement to tout their value. 

But an Associated Press examination has found a growing global marketplace for fake clicks, which tech companies struggle to police. Online records, industry studies and interviews show companies are capitalizing on the opportunity to make millions of dollars by duping social media.

"The CEO of Dhaka-based social media promotions firm Unique IT World said he ahs paid workers to manually click on clients' social media pages, making it harder for Facebook, Google and others to catch them. 'These accounts are not fake, they were genuine,' Shaiful Islam said."

According to The Guardian, toiling at overseas click farms is drudgery, and not a way to get rich:

"For the workers, though, it is miserable work, sitting at screens in dingy rooms facing a blank wall, with windows covered by bars, and sometimes working through the night. For that, they could have to generate 1,000 likes or follow 1,000 people on Twitter to earn a single U.S. dollar." 

It's cheating, but it's hard to catch.  Still, people are working on it.

And just like everything else on the Internet, a good public shaming can result if somebody is using a click farm to pretend they are more popular than they are.

According to the Associated Press:

"David Burch, at TubeMogul, a video marketin firm based in Emeryville, Calif., said buying clicks to promote clients is a grave error. "It's bad business," he said. "and if an advertiser ever found out you did that, they'd never do business with you again." 

Hilarious Instructional Video On How To Mess With Phone Scammer

A video a woman took of herself interacting with a phone scammer is totally worth a hilarious look.

Amy Wellman of Scottsdale Arizona clearly
couldn't believe how dumb the phone scammer
she was talking to was.  

Let's face it, most of us don't fall for scammers trying to get our bank account information, and the calls, emails, etc. are beyond annoying.

But the Arizona woman decided to have just a bit of fun with it. She scammed the scammer, who totally fell for it.

The woman, Amy Wellman, 24, of Scottsdale, said the opportunity to make a fool of the scammer was too good to pass up, says television station KPHO.

While scamming the scammer, Wellman adopted the persona of a not very bright person. The person on the other line was the one who was supremely stupid, given that she fell for Wellman's contention that the name of her bank is Piggy Bank, and that her mailing address is "Dickberry Lane."

In an airhead, sing song voice, Wellman kept interrupting the scammer with comments like "I'm going to quit my job now that I'm getting all this money."

The scammer warns her that using the windfall for illegal or evil purposes is not allowed, but assures Wellman that using the money to buy weed is OK.

The video is 12 minutes long, but it's worth watching for laugh out loud hilarity, and to give you ideas on how to manage scammers the next time they contact you. Here's the video:

If you needed any more proof that a lot of people will do anything to save a buck, we take you to Sacramento, and other areas.

Why? Well, any retailer knows how expensive it is to set up a brick and mortar store. The lease payments. The taxes, the electric bill.

From Cockeyed.com, a rogue shoe store masquerading as
a garage sale takes oer this Sacramento yard.  

In Sacramento, according to Consumerist, rogue retailers just pay homeowners some cash and pretend to set up a garage sale on their driveway. 

Instead of that old coffee maker, the scuffed up old toys, the womens clothes that went out of style around 1986 and the floral pattern couch that never did match the orange shag carpeting, retailers just put their wares on somebody's driveway.

Citing Cockeyed.com, Consumerist laid out how this worked, at least in Sacramento.

According to Cockeyed, a pregnant woman offered a homeowner $25 if she could borrow their Sacramento yard for a garage sale.

The homeowner naive agreed, and soon, a box truck showed up and unloaded the entire contents of a shoe store on the hapless homeowners lawn. 

The homeowner said she felt tricked, obviously, but was too scared to shut it down. She did agree to have a sale on her lawn, and she didn't want to argue with these sketchy shoe store entrepreneurs.

A sign spinner waved down traffic, cars snarled the once quiet neighborhood and it was chaos for an afternoon.

The impromptu store packed up and left at the end of the day, according to Cockeyed, but in a crime that may or may not be related to the rogue store, batteries were stolen from a couple cars in the neighborhood the next night.

To combat illegal "stores" masquerading as lawn sales, many communities limit the number of yard sales a person can have to one or a handful a year.

The people with the rogue stores know this, so they hop from place to place running these scams.

I wonder how many of the shoes for sale at this impromptu retail store were stolen from warehouses or other retailers.

So, if somebody comes up to your house and asks to borrow your property for a yard sale, do the Nancy Reagan and Just Say No.

These Scammers of the Elderly Deserve An Especially Harsh Place in Hell

Scams targeting the elderly have always been a scourge and it will never go away.

Usually, the victims are pressured into buying something they neither want nor need.

According to Consumerist, one outfit is even worse: They bill elderly targets for something they never ordered, with or without pressure, and use hardball, scary tactics to collect the money the victims don't owe.

The FTC says it's on the case against what it
says is among the worst of scammers targeting the elderly. 

The Federal Trade Commission is going after the (alleged!) crooks at the company called Instant Response Systems.

According to the New York Times, the company called tens of thousands of elderly targets, including many who were on the federal Do Not Call list, which bars unsolicited telemarketing calls.

When victims try to dispute the charges, or cancel checks or put a stop on credit card payments, the company just tried to scare them into paying. The bills were often $1,000 or more.

One woman got this letter from Instant Response Systems:

"You gave us your banking information by telephone and authorized us to use it to collect your promised payment. However, when we submitted the payment to your bank, it "bounced'...
You have embarrassed us and damage our reputation. We had to pay bank fees, in addition to accounting, manpower, and other costs. We will NOT absorb these cost or pass them on to our paying subscribers
We suggest that you consult an attorney and ask about the criminal and civil consequences of bouncing checks."

So far, I haven't seen any responses to the allegations from Instant Response Systems.  But if what the Federal Trade Commission says is true, the people who run this "company" deserve a special place in hell.

Let's scam money away from elderly people on limited, fixed incomes and then terrorize them if they don't pay us. Most people would not sleep at night if they did something like this, but I guess the world is also full of psychpaths.

Let's hope for once, so called white colllar crime leads to long jail terms if people with Instant Response Systems are indeed guilty of these misdeeds.

Fees, Fees, Everywhere Some Fees Invade Everything

First it was the airlines, who screw us over with their byzantine system of fees. Hotels do it, too.

Now, restaurants have gotten into the act. An outfit called Miller's Ale House in Winter Park, Fla. started putting a fee on everybody's bill marked "Revaudage PUF," according to television station WESH. 

The "Revaudage" referred to the development the restaurant was in and "PUF" is "Personal Usage Fee" the television station said. The fee was for maintenance of the property. Customers were using the property, after all.


Of course, few people would really examine their restaurant bill to notice the fee. True, it only amounted to less than 50 cents per bill, but it was still shady.  Why not just mark up the cost of the food every so slightly to keep the restaurant profitable.

Miller's Ale House removed the fee after the bad publicity from WESH-TV surfaced.

Instead of just being straightforward with their pricing, more and more businesses seem to want to create the fee structure knowing most of us can't keep track of it all. Most of us don't know what's included in the price and what is an extra charge.

That way, we're lured in by their "low" price, but hit with fees so they rake in the dough and we're screwed.

These businesses do it simply because they can. As an Associated Press article on complex airline fees asked,  Here's the AP take on the airline industry:

"What other industry can you think of where a person buying a product doesn't know how much it's going to cost even after he's done at the checkout counter?" said Simon Gros, chairman of the Travel Technology Association, which represents the global distribution services and online travel industries.

The answer to that is, in the future at least, more and more.

More from the AP story:

"The harder airlines make it for consumers to compare, 'the greater opportunity you have to get higher prices,' said Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, whose members include corporate travel managers."

A lot of the reason this complicated fee structure seems to be gaining popularity is data mining, according to the AP. Businesses can try to sell you services based on what you wanted in the past. Baggage claim, more leg room, frequent flier, etc., according to the AP.

So we have to pay the price in higher expenses and much more confusion so businesses can learn more about us so they can try to get us to spend even more money on them?

I hope we don't end up where everything we buy is like that. Nowadays, we go to the grocery store and say, buy a can of soup for $1.99. Straightforward enough. Are we going to go to some system where the soup seems to cost $1.99 a can but we have to go to a Web site to make sure we don't pay a $2 carrying fee for taking the soup out of the store once we purchase it, a 50 cent restocking fee, a $1.00 manufacturing fee, and a 50 cent recycling fee, so we end up paying $5.99 for a $1.99 can of soup?

We know costs go up for businesses Just raise the damn price so you can still make a profit. We won't like the higher prices, but we get it. Inflation exists. We deal with it.  Just tell us in a straightforward fashion how much it will cost to buy the thing you are trying to sell.

To obscure how much we're paying through a complex fee structure just seems dishonest to me, even if it is perfectly legal.



Because that's essentially what we're doing with airlines, some hotels and resorts, and apparently, a few restaurants now.

On Cue, Here Come the Sandy Hook Massacre Scam Artists

All of us want to show our support for the people of Newtown, Connecticut, who lost so much and are suffering so terribly in the wake of Friday's Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Well, most of us anyway. You might have noticed on Facebook and Twitter and other social media invites to "like" or otherwise acknowledge or donate money to memorial pages and memes for the shooting victims.

It's easy and natural to respond to the invites. We want to do something to help. But according to Consumerist.com, most of those invites are scams.

The ones that ask for money are often run by people who will just pocket the money.

The memorial sites that just want you to "like" or support turn out to be dangerous, too. They seem safe. A friend you know on Facebook has liked the page, and invites you to like it, too. Since your friend is trustworthy, you like the page, too, to show support for both your friend and the Newtown victims.

What you and your friend don't know is this process means the memorial pages and memes get a lot of traffic and likes and whatnot. That, in turn, means these pages become financially valuable. The operators of these pages later sell the site on an online market, and somebody makes a lot of money of your good will.

Plus, these pages and such get converted to some sort of lousy product advertisement, and then a few months down the road you and friends get spammed.

Charming, no?

Obviously, the people who do these sorts of scams deserve a really horrible place in hell. Really, using the nation's grief to make a buck. I don't know what the criminal penalties are for all this, but I hope it's extreme.

So, go ahead and donate money through a known, reputable organization that you've researched. Show your support for the people of Newtown.
But ignore those prepackaged Facebook memorials that are popping up in your feed over and over again. Most communities hit by tragedy post information about reputable organizations on their Web sites, so check that out, according to Technorati.

I noticed the Town of Newtown, Connecticut has information on their Web page on how to donate, how to help.

That's the best way to ensure your support is really felt. They sure need it.

More Frauds, Scams Confusion for Everybody Who Goes On Line, i.e. All of Us.

Seems every day, I see awful new ways were awful people screw up your life via computer.

Online scams are old hat. Now, the New York Times is reporting on "ransomware" in which creeps infect your PC with a virus that freezes up everything, except for the message they send, saying if you send them a bunch of money, they'll unfreeze the thing.

Of course, they don't unfreeze the computer when victims send the money, but people try anyway, and the criminals get the money.

Most of the criminals seem to be those shadowy overseas figures you always hear about, usually from Eastern Europe. I imagine prosecuting these creeps isn't going to happen too often. I guess all you can wish for is karma.

The stolen money isn't the worst of it. Basically, when this happens, you have to call in an expert to rid your computer of the virus. And in doing so, the expert has to wipe away all your files. I guess this will encourage me to back up stuff, won't it?"

Things really have gone beyond the Nigerian money scams, haven't they?

In a much less serious bit of Internet weirdness, many people on Facebook are saying they are on the social networking site as having "liked" a company or cause and they insist they have done no such thing, according to Bernard Meisler at readwrite.com

There's some nonsensical likes, according to Meisler. A liberal supposedly liked Mitt Romney, an opponent of big box retailers is purported to have liked Walmart, and a vegetarian liked McDonald's.

Even dead people on Facebook are reported to be "liking" things. Really, how many dead people shop or order things through Amazon.com?

My understanding is Facebook "likes" can make money for whoever is liked, and that could tempt people into finding fraudulent ways to get liked.

I really, really unlike all of this.

Meisler links to an October Business Insider piece that suggests if you reference a URL on your Facebook page, that might translate to a like, even if you were hating on whatever was in the Web site whose URL you referenced.

Facebook cracked down on fake likes earlier this autumn, but the problem seems to persist.

Facebook insists that people are probably liking things by accident as they fumble with the wrong buttons on their tiny smartphones, Meisler writes. The dead people liking things are probably a function of them hitting like buttons before they died, and the likes subsequently show up post mortem.

Meisler said maybe Facebook isn't doing this. It could be the retailers found a way to have their products, services or people liked by people who had no idea somebody was liking something on their behalf. Or a third party is selling the fake likes, Meisler speculates.

The bottom line is, it's more true than ever that many of us really don't know what we like.

Home Depot Sold Us Plants That Will Automatically Die.

The ever observant and kind Jeff caught it when  I muttered in my St. Albans, Vermont garden a few weeks ago.

I said some splashes of blue would be nice in the section of perennial flowers I was trying to whip into shape.

This flower grows in my St. Albans, Vt.
garden recently. It's a perennial, but
unfortunately won't be back this
year because a national chain
store sold this in Vermont, though it
 can't overwinter here.

Next day, he happened to be in Home Depot picking up some construction material  and drifted by the garden section. He remembered my comment. And there was a clearance sale!  Low, low prices! He spied some perennials with pretty columns of blue flowers. He purchased them and brought them home.

I was of course thrilled with this latest act of kindness and enthusiastically and got to work planting the blue flowers.

It was only when I was done I spotted the problem. If perennials are sold in Vermont, you don't stop to think whether they can actually grow here if you're presented with them as a gift. Of course they can grow here. They were bought at a store located in Vermont.

I looked at the information. My heart sank. The flowers, something callled Blue Fortune, Anise Hyssop,  were hardy to Zone 6. Vermont is solidly in Zone 4. The perennial Jeff gave me would survive only to temperatures to 10 below. It regularly gets colder than that here in the winter.

Now my sense of outrage grew. To me, Home Depot took advantage of Jeff's kindness and generosity. Why were they selling perennials that can't make it in Vermont?

Let's face it, most people who buy flowers for their yards aren't super experienced gardeners. They don't know the particulars, they reasonably just want to make their property look nice.

Garden zones mean nothing to a lot of people. And it's true the perennials I got spelled out that they were hardy to 10 below. But people don't read the fine print.   Like Jeff, people assume if it's sold in Vermont, it can grow in Vermont.

This fall, I'll mulch the hell of the perennials Jeff got me at Home Depot, but I'm not optimistic at all.

Since most casual gardeners are inexperienced, they won't know why these Zone 6 plants don't come back next spring. They'll assume they did something wrong. So they'll go back to Home Depot and buy  more plants that aren't good for Vermont. Home Depot makes more money and yards remain unadorned by flowers.

I'm sure this all has to do with Home Depot's distribution system that doesn't make distinctions between zones. Still, to me this is a scam.

My advice, and my lesson learned by not reading the fine print: Buy your plants from local growers.  They're  more likely to winter over the perennials they sell, so you know they will grow here. And small, local businesses don't want to screw over their customers. They want you to be happy, so you'll come back for more.

Also, large national chains import plants from growers elsewhere in the nation. That could import diseases to Vermont. A couple years ago, we had a terrible outbreak of late blight in tomato plants across the state.

The late blight got an early, strong start because of tomato plants brought in from warmer, southern climates, to be sold at large national chain outlets. This allowed the late blight to become established early and firmly in Vermont, resulting in a lot of lost crops.

So, learn my lesson. Buy your garden plants locally, wherever you are. And make sure they're selling you plants that can actually grow where you live.

AT&T Sues Small Firm For $1.15 M Over Fraud It Didn't Commit

Here's this week's awful, greedy corporate lawsuit.

In 2009, phone hackers got into the system of a 14-employee company called Todd Tool and Abrasives Systems in Ipswich, Mass and racked up close to $900,000 charges on the firm's phone lines in a few days, according to the Salem (Mass.) News.

In 2009, someone at Todd Tools' phone carrier, Verizon, noticed that Todd Tools' phone usage, which usually amounts to a $700 monthly bill, suddenly went to more than $200,000 in four days.

 AT&T Sued a business for fraud
that it did not perpetrate.

Verizon figured fraud, yanked Todd Tools' ability to make international calls until the hacking was fixed and waived the big bill, as was the decent things to do. End of story, right?

Well, in comes AT&T. Todd Tools owner Michael Smith said he never had a contract with AT&T, but the hackers used some sort of "dial around" that used AT&T's system.

Even though Smith had nothing to do with the fraud, AT&T sued him for $1.15 million, the cost of the hackers' bill plus interest.

According to The Salem News, AT&T said it was entitled to the money because Smith should have had a better, more hack- proof phone system. Also, even though Smith wasn't perpetrating the fraud, AT&T said since their system was used, Smith was on the hook for the cash.

So, AT&T was willing to drive a small company  out of business over a fraud that originated in Somalia. I'm sure AT&T didn't really lose $1 million, but hey, if you can get some extra cash from some poor sucker, why not?  And maybe Smith should have had more hack proof equipment, but shouldn't AT&T have had the same? And if Verizon was able to figure out a fraud was going on and pull the plug, shouldn't AT&T have detected it too?

I'm  sure there's a legal basis for AT&T's lawsuit, but was there an ethical basis as well?

As always in these cases, AT&T  beat a hasty retreat when this situation started making the news. But how many small businesses is AT&T killing in other lawsuits that don't make the news? After all, these phone scams must be a dime a dozen.

But the "nice" people at AT&T said their offer to drop the suit is contingent on Smith dropping his counter suit, according to The Salem News. So, they put the poor guy through the wringer, cost him at least $30,000 in legal bills and almost killed Todd Tools, and Smith is supposed to say it's OK?

I'm glad I don't have AT&T as my phone carrier, but knowing them, they'll probably sue me for $1.15 million for exercising my First Amendment rights to criticize them.

Anything to make a buck, right?