James L. Paris's Blog, page 69

Want to Publicly Complain About a Product or Service? Be Careful How You Do It

An item over at CNBC.com explains just how bad things can get for dissatisfied customers of a business should they carry their criticisms of a product or service to extremes

When Neely and Andrew Moldovan of Dallas, Texas were making wedding plans, they contracted with photographer Andrea Polito to capture the memories of their special day. Eventually, however, the Moldovans and Polito found themselves in a dispute over a $125 fee the photographer said was required in order to put a cover on the couple���s wedding album. The newlyweds claimed that service was supposed to be included in the package they originally purchased from Polito, while the photographer said the additional charge was clearly outlined in the contract the Moldovan���s signed.

The Moldovans��� response was to aggressively go after Polito through social media, as well as through more traditional channels. Now, a Dallas jury has decided the couple went too far, defaming the photographer, and ordered them to pay Polito $1.08 million in damages.

$1.08 million���for a dispute over $125.

According to CNBC, when the couple embarked on their public tirade, they referred to Polito as a ���scammer,��� and posted a wealth of negative reviews about her business. They told their story to any news organ that would listen, including NBC; a Daily Mail article on the couple opened with the sensationalistic headline ���Wedding photographer holds couple's pictures hostage after they refuse to pay extra fee that ���wasn't in their contract.������ Polito���s business ultimately folded under the weight of all the negative publicity.

In the end, the jury decided that whatever legitimate grievance the Moldovans might have had with their photographer paled in comparison to the highly destructive manner in which they went about addressing it.

Responding to the jury���s verdict, the Moldovans issued a statement in which they said, in part, ���We were unhappy with a situation, so we complained like anyone would.���

Except, by any reasonable account, that���s not true, and it provides the ���lesson of the day��� when it comes to the matter of complaining publicly about a business, something made far easier now in this age of social media.

They may have complained AS anyone else would, but they didn���t complain in the MANNER anyone else would. Instead, the Moldovans deliberately embarked on a campaign to humiliate and ruin the business owner, and were eager to achieve their ends by availing themselves of whatever media outlets were happy to be complicit in their effort. Not only is there no sign this couple ever once thought about being more restrained in their approach, they appear to have floored the gas pedal every chance they could.

On a separate, but related, note, referring to something as a ���scam��� has apparently become the intellectually-lazy person���s way of expressing dissatisfaction with a product or service, and the public has become far too comfortable with throwing the word around. Scam means fraud, and when you publicly claim that you���ve been scammed by a business, you���ve defamed that business unless it turns out that you actually were defrauded. Look up the legal definition of fraud, and you���ll see that there���s a lot more to it than the fact that you may have been served a bad meal because the chef was off his game that night. It���s a serious charge, and when you publicly lodge it against a business, you���re making a significant accusation, one for which you should absolutely expect to be held accountable if it���s not true.

It���s an expensive lesson learned by the Moldovans, and one from which the rest of us, by observing what happened to them, can benefit for free.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

The Peculiar Priorities of Sweden���s Military

Militaries everywhere seem to be changing a LOT.

You know about the ongoing battle in this country about what, if any, role that so-called transgenders should be allowed to formally play in the defense of the nation.

Well, in countries well known to be even more progressive than the United States, it seems the incorporation of social justice agendas is becoming an official component of their very mission.

Take Sweden. As reported by a variety of news outlets, including the International Business Times, the official Facebook page of Sweden���s army made last Monday what many saw as a curious update to what is ostensibly its mission as an official branch of the military. Here it is:

���We are prepared to go as far as we can.

Your right to live any way you want, as whoever you want and with whom you want, is our task to defend. And we are prepared to give everything to do it. Learn more about how we work for everyone's equal value, justice and equality at http://www.forsvarsmakten.se.���

Sweden���s army sees its ���task to defend��� as the ���right to live any way you want, as whoever you want and with whom you want?���

As you might imagine, even in progressive Sweden, a post like this from the nation���s army is sparking quite a backlash.

One Facebook user asked, ���Are you so lost in the rainbow mist that you���ve forgotten you���re supposed to be warriors?��� Another poster, identified as Johan Walterstr��m, inquired as to ���why the armed forces are spending money on various marketing activities that are in no way making us more dangerous to our enemies.

���Because that should always be the main task. There are other bodies which have the job of disseminating information to influence people���s thoughts,��� he wrote.

A military that chooses as its focus the task of making itself more dangerous to its enemies?

What a novel concept, apparently, in 2017.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Republican Donor Sues GOP Over Failure to Repeal Obamacare

Well, this is one way to try to see Obamacare repealed.

In Virginia, there���s a Republican donor claiming his party has committed fraud because it raised all of the money it during the previous election cycle, largely on the promise of repealing the Affordable

Care Act, only to see the law remain very much intact, despite the fact that all three branches of government are firmly in Republican control.

The Hill, citing an article over at The Virginian-Pilot, reports a retired Virginia Beach attorney by the name of Bob Heghmann filed a lawsuit on Thursday in U.S. District Court, saying the Republican Party ���has been engaged in a pattern of Racketeering which involves massive fraud perpetrated on Republican voters and contributors as well as some Independents and Democrats.���

The centerpiece of the lawsuit is Heghmann���s allegation that the national and Virginia state GOP raised millions from 2009 to 2016 on the basis of a commitment to repeal Obamacare, despite knowing, as of Obama���s 2012 reelection, that they would not accomplish the repeal.

More specifically, Heghmann���s suit identifies as the smoking gun here comments made by former Speaker John Boehner following Obama���s reelection, wherein he declared that ���Obamacare is the law of the land.���

���In making this statement Speaker John Boehner was sending a message to House Republicans and others that Repeal was not going to happen. He was trying to put the issue to rest. ... Nevertheless, the Republican Party continued to use the mails, wires and interstate commerce to solicit donations and votes to secure House and Senate majorities and ultimately the Presidency,��� the lawsuit says.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

���Today��� Show Feature on Self-Defense in Stores Advises Throwing Groceries at Robbers

NBC���s Today show featured a report last Friday on how might effectively defend themselves as a robbery at a convenience store unfolds. There are over 32,000 convenience store robberies each year in the United States, and you can bet, as the human condition continues to deteriorate, that number will do nothing but rise.

So what does Today recommend you do if you need to protect yourself in the midst of a violent convenience store robbery?

Pull grocery items off the shelves and throw them at the perpetrators so that you might effect your escape.

Yup.

In a demonstration of this ���technique,��� personal security expert Mykel Hawke, playing the role of the victim, starts throwing packets of oatmeal at Jeff Rossen, Today���s National Investigative Correspondent, who���s pretending to be the armed, highly-agitated criminal.

Hawke set it up like this:

���If you think you have no other choice and you are about to be killed then you���ve got to try to escape. So what you do is you do something mental like, ���Please, mister, don���t shoot,��� and then you set yourself up with, oh!���

That���s when Hawke began throwing the oatmeal at Rossen, who asks, ���And then what?���
Hawke���s reply? ���And then you escape. Okay? So that���s it.���

Very sadly, this was meant to be serious advice.

True to form, Today and Rossen dispensed in this segment the same kind of self-defense drivel they���ve passed along before. That is, rather than suggest people learn to defend themselves by way of the most effective means available to anyone���a firearm���all of their self-defense advice assumes it is out of the realm of possibility that a citizen would carry a gun for protection. Previously, Rossen recommended cell phone apps as the best way to protect oneself from a street assault, and also recommended against fighting back if you are the victim of a home invasion. In another report on how to deal with an intruder, Rossen proposed that victims fight back with bug spray.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Blindsided Author James L. Ferraro Joins Jim Paris Live

In 1996, an unprecedented decade-long courtroom battle was waged in Florida to help bring justice and hope to the family of a young boy born with no eyes after his mother was doused outside of a local u-pick farm by a chemical fungicide believed to have caused his birth defect and the birth defects of many other children.

It was a battle that nearly everyone but attorney Jim Ferraro deemed unwinnable. After all, it involved one of the world's most powerful industrial giants. In the process, it was a fight that changed the landscape of tort law forever. Before it was over Castillo-vs-DuPont would go down in history as the first and one of the most important cases of its kind, setting precedent and also sparking a crucial debate over the questionable use of what is known as the "junk-science defense."

Blindsided is a real life David and Goliath story-a true courtroom drama for the ages.

 

A Conspiracy To Take Down Fox News Hosts?

Eric Bolling, a personal friend of President Trump and a Fox News Host, is now facing sexual harassment allegations and has been suspended while the network investigates. Is this more of the same pattern at Fox or has Bolling been targeted because he is a conservative? A weird home business that pays well, but you must love dogs. A girls softball team learns firsthand that there are consequences for what you do on social media. How big of a deal is the August 21 eclipse? Jim's experience with the Whole 30 Diet, and 10 people are hospitalized due to a mid air jolt on an American Airlines flight.

 

North Korea: Ready to Teach U.S. ���Some Manners with Strategic Nuclear Force���

North Korea sure seems devoted to remaining that problem that simply will not go away

Anyone who���s been paying attention is aware that NK has been happy to thumb its nose at international law with repeated missile tests, and condemnations by the U.S. (and other nations) in the wake of each such test have obviously not endeared America to the communist regime.

On that note, recent editions of Rodong Sinmun, the state newspaper of North Korea, have adopted an increasingly-threatening tone toward Uncle Sam. One article quotes an unnamed government spokesperson in their expression of great hostility toward Washington, saying, in part, that NK is prepared to use ���strategic nuclear force��� in order to ���teach the U.S. some manners.���

���If the U.S. is stupid enough to shove its stinky face on this land again and keep brandishing its nuclear club despite our repeated warnings, the DPRK will teach the U.S. some manners with the strategic nuclear force that it had so far shown to the world,��� said the unidentified government official. ���Any form of military threat or blackmail by the U.S. can never scare the DPRK and, on the contrary, it will only redouble the resolve of the Korean army and people to annihilate the enemy.���

It is believed that North Korea is acutely irritated over all the flak it���s been receiving related to its most recent missile test, that of a Hwasong-14 rocket. Strategic analysts in both the U.S. and South Korea claim the missile has the capability of reaching the United States, and if NK is able to arm the projectile with a nuclear warhead, then some of America���s populous cities would be at distinct risk from a rogue state overseen by an obvious demagogue.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Judicial Watch Puts CA on Notice: You Have 11 Counties with More Voters than Voting-Age Residents

According to a variety of news outlets, including the Highland Community News, California���s Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, is hearing it from Judicial Watch, a non-partisan, conservative watchdog group that makes it its business to keep government officials and agencies in line by filing lawsuits on the basis of the Freedom of Information Act. In Padilla���s case, Judicial Watch has sent a letter to Padilla on behalf of the Election Integrity Project California, informing him that 11 California counties have more registered voters than they have total number of adults living in them.

Assuming what Judicial Watch alleges is, in fact, true, that would put the state at odds with Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

Here are a couple of key passages from the letter Judicial Watch sent to Padilla:

���NVRA Section 8 requires states to conduct reasonable list maintenance so as to maintain an accurate record of eligible voters for use in conducting federal elections.1 As you may know, Congress enacted Section 8 of the NVRA to protect the integrity of the electoral process. Allowing the names of ineligible voters to remain on the voting rolls harms the integrity of the electoral process and undermines voter confidence in the legitimacy of elections.���

���As the top election official in California, it is your responsibility under federal law to coordinate California���s statewide effort to conduct a program that reasonably ensures the lists of eligible voters are accurate.���

Judicial Watch also clarified the numbers for Padilla in the letter:

���[T]here were more total registered voters than there were adults over the age of 18 living in each of the following eleven (11) counties: Imperial (102%), Lassen (102%), Los Angeles (112%), Monterey (104%), San Diego (138%), San Francisco (114%), San Mateo (111%), Santa Cruz (109%), Solano (111%), Stanislaus (102%), and Yolo (110%).���

The letter also informs Padilla that the number in Los Angeles County could be as high as 144 percent.

144 percent??

The letter goes on to tell Padilla that he���ll be sued if he does not act to remove from the voter registration rolls those ���persons who have become ineligible to vote by reason of death, change in residence, or a disqualifying criminal conviction, and to remove noncitizens who have registered to vote unlawfully.���

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Vanderbilt Professor Says Math is Sexist

Is math sexist?

According to a professor at Vanderbilt University, why, yes, it is.

As reported by the website Campus Reform, Professor Luis A. Leyva recently wrote an article titled ���Unpacking the Male Superiority Myth and Masculinization of Mathematics at the Intersection,��� in which he declares mathematics to be a ���white and heteronormatively masculinized space.���

Okie dokie.

It���s important to clarify the insidiousness Leyva claims is at work here. The professor does not believe that math is inherently sexist, or otherwise biased against women because of its true nature. Rather, Leyva says, the bias is socially constructed, and rooted in such things as teacher expectations and cultural norms.

That���s why the ���male superiority��� to which Leyva refers is a ���myth.���

Leyva takes some heart, apparently, in what he sees as improvements in the way teachers view race and gender, but notes that ���there remains much analytical space to examine gender as a social construct and how this differentially affects students��� mathematics achievement.���

One solution to the ���problem,��� as Leyva sees it existing, is for scholars to do a better job of examining ���the influences of different contexts on students��� mathematics achievement and experiences at intersections of gender and other socially constructed identities.���

Or, maybe everyone ��� boys and girls - could just be given more homework���?

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large

Age of Obamacare Drives New Kind of Health Coverage: Cash-Only

The era of what this space often calls ���sort-of��� health insurance has been with us for some time now. ���Sort-of��� health insurance, best exemplified in recent years by policies sold through exchanges under the banner of the Affordable Care Act, is characterized by expensive premiums, as well as enormous deductibles.

The combination of costly premiums with impossibly-high deductibles has left those maintaining such policies to essentially have health coverage merely in theory; while they technically have insurance, the functional utility of the coverage is minimal, at best.

Enter a new era in health coverage, one that has arrived precisely as a result of all the glorified major medical policies now being sold as ���real��� insurance: Cash-only care.

Cash-only medical coverage isn���t insurance at all. It is, instead, a straight cash-for-services model.

You���re probably wondering, ���So, are legitimate doctors really doing this?���

You bet they are.

At its core, here���s why it works: The sums so many are currently paying for largely-valueless policies are so high that doctors are finding these individuals can actually get a better deal by simply paying cash for their medical services.

Think about it. Even a family of relatively modest earners can easily pay $20,000 just in monthly premiums���and then, when they have an actual claim, may be required to hit a threshold of $10,000 or more each year to realize anything approaching true insurance benefits.

As outlined over at Time.com, the Surgery Center of Oklahoma is one such cash-for-care, or ���direct pay,��� facility. The hospital���s website lists the ���all-inclusive��� price for each procedure, like the sum for setting and putting a cast on a broken leg: $1,925.00.

The Surgery Center of Oklahoma accepts no insurance, not even Medicare or Medicaid. ���We say, ���Here���s the price. Here���s what you���re getting. Here���s your bill,��� says Keith Smith, who, along with fellow anesthesiologist Steven Lantier, founded the Surgery Center back in 1997. ���It���s as simple as that.���

As a matter of fact, part of the arrangement at the Surgery Center is that if complications ensue following a procedure, the facility foots the bill for that. In other words, once the patient pays the list price for their procedure, they���re done paying.

The future of direct-pay care? As long as major medical care, masked as real health insurance, continues to be forced on Americans at ridiculous costs, then it looks to be pretty darn good.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large