Colorado Won’t Be Getting Its Very Own Marijuana Bank Anytime Soon

(Brett Levin Photography)

In an effort one legislator likened to throwing spaghetti noodles against the wall to see what sticks, a proposal this week to set up a financial co-op within the marijuana industry has met with a swift death.

The plan was born out of a need for state-licensed marijuana businesses who don’t want to be limited to a cash-only basis, but that can’t go through the usual banking process for their financial needs. Because marijuana is still outlawed on a federal basis, banks have shied away from doing business with pot shops in Colorado, despite guidance recently released by the feds for banks.

The proposal would’ve allowed those dispensaries and stores to create their own sort of uninsured credit union, and was introduced late on Wednesday in the state legislature. It still would’ve required the he U.S. Federal Reserve to grant permission for the co-ops to offer services like checking accounts and credit to customers.

It cleared a House committee yesterday before another committee gutted it with an amendment saying the state will just have to keep working on the issue, reports the Associated Press.

Many sponsors noted that it was kind of a long-shot attempt to avoid the hammer of federal law but allow businesses to move away from the cash-only system.

“I don’t know whether this will take an act of Congress or an act of God at this point,” joked Rep. Jonathan Singer, a sponsor of the bill.

“It seems like we’re throwing spaghetti noodles against the wall to see if they stick,” said Rep. Chris Holbert, in what might be my favorite lawmaker comment of the week.

Banking groups had testified that the co-op attempt would just not ever work out, including the head of the Colorado Bankers Association who expressed his doubts on the plan.

“It is flatly illegal to deal in any illegal substance or any proceeds therefrom,” said Don Childers.

Colorado lawmakers shy away from pot bank [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Three Cocktails Hacks You Can Prepare On The Fly In Mid-Air

(Bon Appetit)

Not willing to settle for a lackluster Bloody Mary from the airline drink cart? You don’t have to. We’re not all expert mixologists and there’s a distinct lack of fancy shmancy cocktails options when you’re flying, but luckily there are smarter people out there with all the right answers. Check out three cocktail hacks anyone can use to spice things up in mid-air. [Bon Appetit]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Group Calls On Parents To Tear Kids Away From TV, Computer Screens For A Week

This is a thing that exists and people actually pay money for.

Not so long ago, people would have laughed at the idea that elementary school kids would have smartphones, or that every member of a family would have a TV in his/her room, or that potty-training toilets would be designed to hold a computer screen to placate the defecating infant. In an effort to remind people that there is life outside of the LCD screens they hold in their hands, one group is asking parents to go screen-free next week.

The Campaign For a Commercial-Free Childhood, which recently gave the aforementioned iPotty its worst toy of the year award, is calling on families to take part in Screen-Free Week from May 5 to May 11.

According to CFCC, by the time today’s kids are preschoolers, they are already spending an average of 32 hours a week in front of some sort of screen. And while some of what they’re watching or doing may be educational and helpful, the group believes this is still too much time to be spent doing one type of activity.

“There is a dose-response relationship between screen time and health,” explains Deborah Bade Horn, President-elect of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians in a statement. “As screen time is decreased, measures of health like BMI, physical fitness, and self-esteem improve, especially in children. Screen time is also typically sedentary time which causes our muscles to send unhealthy messages to the other cells in our body.”

While you could just untether yourself and your kids from the various screens for a few days, you could use a little bit of that screen time to look at this searchable list of Screen-Free Week-related programs around the country to see if there’s something more interesting than re-watching Frozen with your kids for the umpteenth time.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Yankees Fan Gets $1.5 Million After City Rejected His “Buck Foston” Sports Bar

(Triborough)

Sports rivalries can be so funny! It’s like why would Red Sox fans care if a Yankees fan wanted to start a bar named after a deer named Buck Foston — oh. Clever, right? Or not, but a jury said a club owner had the right to name his bar Buck Foston’s Road House and also gave him $1.5 million.

The New Jersey man had sued the city of New Brunswick, which had opposed granting him a liquor license for his new sports bar, reports the Star-Ledger. He’s a dedicated Yankees fan and wanted to open the place in 2011.

“This has been a long, grueling and expensive process to have my day in court and tell my story, but I remained confident that one day a jury, presented with the same evidence I saw, would agree that my rights were unconstitutionally infringed” the man said after a federal jury handed down the judgment.

He placed a lot of blame on the city’s mayor, who just so happens to be a dedicated Boston Red Sox fan. He claimed the mayor orchestrated the liquor license rejection by the city council, and named him and the council’s president as defendants along with the city.

The mayor said it wasn’t the tongue-in-cheek slam against the Sox that the city council opposed, it was that the location was at heavily traveled intersection in the city.

Upon hearing the verdict the mayor said he was disappointed, but “while it would have been better to win, the verdict was not for the amount [the man] was seeking” and the sports bar never opened. He said the man had wanted $7 million to $10 million in damages.

“Motorists and the surrounding neighborhood who travel the roadway will not be burdened with a night club and sports bar drinking establishment that doubles the occupancy of the former restaurant on the site located on a dangerous off-ramp connecting two major highways in New Brunswick,” the mayor said.

Meanwhile, the man behind Buck Foston’s has moved to Florida, but says he’s going to try to open a sports bar with that name concept somewhere else. Ostensibly because it’s just so original.

Club owner wins fight, $1.5 million verdict against New Brunswick in naming of sports bar [Star-Ledger]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Media Companies’ Silence On Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger Speaks Volumes

(Steve R.)

While numerous advocacy and public interest groups have publicly come out to declare their opposition to the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, those companies whose business will most directly be affected by the tie-up — broadcasters, streaming services, production studios, advertisers — have remained relatively silent. But it’s not because they don’t have an opinion on the matter.

After all, these companies are not generally reluctant to speak up when their business interests are at stake. Just look at the ongoing legal battle between the broadcast networks and streaming startup Aereo. A quick run-down of the companies and organizations that have filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court in this case shows just how willing media companies are to share their opinions — the National Association of Broadcaster, Viacom, Cablevision, the NFL and MLB, ABC, ASCAP, and Warner Bros. represent just a few groups that have gone on the record with their feelings about that case.

So why are so many of these companies refusing to speak out publicly — for or against — when it comes to the Comcast/TWC merger?

A couple weeks ago, Minnesota Senator Al Franken, a veteran of the TV, movie, and radio industries, claimed that the people he spoke to at these companies were afraid of speaking up out of fear of poking a beast the size of Comcast, which not only controls the nation’s largest cable and broadband operation, but also the massive NBC Universal entertainment octopus that encompasses everything from broadcast TV to multiple cable channels to movies, home entertainment, radio, music, and streaming video.

Want your cable channel to reach Comcast’s more than 20 million pay-TV users? Does your streaming service need to keep running shows produced by NBC studios? These are concerns facing companies who may be putting their business relationships with Comcast at risk by speaking out against the merger.

Sen. Franken has called on these companies to not be shy about their feelings, but Netflix is one of the few major media companies that has put its neck on the line in deriding the proposed merger.

A recent NY Times piece on this muted response to the merger indicates that Franken and Netflix are not alone:

Privately… media executives are eager to echo Netflix’s concern about the deal, and to cast themselves as victims of the potential megamerger. They use words like “omnivorous” and “rapacious” to describe Comcast, while expressing skepticism on the prospect of the largest cable company buying the second-largest.

One anonymous senior media executive said the entire industry has an opinion on the merger, but asks, “Who’s going to be the first to kick sand in the bully’s face?”

Industry analyst Craig Moffett tells the Times that there might be a benefit to this cowardice for those companies willing to leverage it.

“You can bet that everyone and his brother is trying to strike a sweetheart deal with Comcast right now in exchange for either supporting or simply not opposing the deal,” he explains.

The fact that so many typically loudmouthed companies are cowering in fear about this merger — or that those willing to support it may be demanding something in return for their support — is a good indication of just how much power Comcast already wields in this industry and how terrified its colleagues are of upsetting a beast that could make life very tough for them.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Report: Subway Has Had The Most Wage Violations Of All Fast Food Companies

(Mandy_Jansen)

While McDonald’s has been the name on many people’s lips when it comes to wage disputes and underpaid workers, a new report places Subway at the top of the pile of wage violation offenders. Though it’s worth nothing that with 26,000 U.S. locations, Subway has the most stores of all the companies, as well.

CNNMoney cites data collected by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, which it says amounts to more than 1,100 investigations into individual Subway franchisees between 2000 and 2013, more than other companies like McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. Those came in second and third in the tallies of wage violations like pay and hour rules, respectively.

Those 1,100 cases found about 17,000 Fair Labor Standards Act violations combined, and amount to about $3.8 million paid out to Subway workers over that span of years.

Common incidents include employers making workers deduct 30 minutes for a lunch break even if the worker didn’t take a break, forcing workers to pay for a company uniform (which is a violation if the worker’s hourly rate falls below minimum wage after accounting for that expense), or failing to pay workers for time spent doing things like the nightly closing routine.

One franchise also illegally deducted money from employees’ wages to cover cash register shortages, repeatedly. That location was ordered to pay $9,900 in back pay to 72 employees.

Although Subway would likely distance itself as a corporate parent from these franchisees, the problems were bad enough to spur a partnership with the Department of Labor last year to boost the company’s compliance efforts last year.

“It’s no coincidence that we approached Subway because we saw a significant number of violations,” a Department of Labor spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts both issued statements placing themselves far from their independently operated stores. Fast food companies are wont to do that, because while each location bears the corporate name and look and use the same business guidelines, they’re essentially small businesses in their own right.

That’s partly why it’s so tough to crack down on wage violations — the DOL has to investigate each location individually, which takes time, and can’t bring about sweeping changes to the whole company.

Subway didn’t comment for CNNMoney’s article, but McDonald’s and Subway did.

McDonald’s:

McDonald’s and our independent owner-operators share a concern and commitment to the well-being and fair treatment of all people who work in McDonald’s restaurants. Whether employed by McDonald’s or by our independent owner-operators, employees should be paid correctly. When McDonald’s learns of pay concerns in restaurants which we own and operate, we review the concerns and take appropriate action to resolve them. We trust that our independent owner-operators do the same. McDonald’s and our owner-operators employ separately but in total over 750,000 workers in the United States, and we caution against drawing broad conclusions based on the actions of a few.

Dunkin’ Donuts:

The Department of Labor report represents a very small percentage of cases per year involving the Dunkin’ Donuts system, given that there are more than 7,700 Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants independently owned and operated by our franchisees who employ approximately 120,000 crew members at any given time across the country. However, we and our franchisees, who are solely responsible for all employment decisions at their restaurants, take these matters seriously and are committed to the well-being and fair treatment of all crew members.

Subway leads fast food industry in underpaying workers [CNNMoney]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Organiza lluvias de ideas online con Stormboard

Stormboard es una fantástica herramienta 2.0 muy útil para realizar tormentas o lluvias de ideas entre varios usuarios, todo ello de forma online y con la posibilidad de añadir imágenes y otros elementos multimedia al tablero virtual donde se desarrolla la actividad. Interesante, ¿No? Con solo realizar el registro correspondiente podremos crear tableros para las tormentas de ideas e invitar a los que vayan a participar añadiendo el correo electrónico. Es una herramienta práctica a la cual podemos dar muchos usos educativos, especialmente para comenzar proyectos donde tengamos que intercambiar ideas, sugerencias, opiniones, etc. y organizar trabajos de clase.

read more

from Educa con TIC http://ift.tt/RbD6p0

via Educa con TIC Posteado por www.bscformacion.com

Man Takes Kids To Chuck E. Cheese’s For Wholesome Purse-Snatching Fun

(Bob Reck)

For decades, Chuck E. Cheese’s has been a place where parents could bring their kids for wholesome activities like chowing down on overpriced pizza, running around uncontrollably, and playing around in pits of plastic balls that you convince yourself aren’t covered in germs. But one man in Washington state recently added another game to the mix, called “Go steal some purses and give them to me.”

KOMO News in Seattle reports that an Olympia, WA, man has been arrested for allegedly using three kids — ages 7, 8, and 10, who may or may not be related to him — for his own felonious gain.

One particular Chuck E. Cheese’s location in the area had been the site of between 15 to 20 purse thefts in recent months. A look at security camera footage from inside the eatery eventually pointed to footage of youngsters pilfering purses from distracted moms and then bringing them to an older man in the bathroom.

Then this past Wednesday, an employee at the restaurant called the police after spotting the man from the security footage and his trio of sticky-fingered moppets.

The modern-day Fagin and his artful dodgers had already left the restaurant by the time the police arrived, but quick-witted workers had made sure to get a description of his vehicle, which was soon pulled over by an eagle-eyed police officer. Inside the car were the three kids and a woman whose relation to this whole mess is currently unknown.

The man was arrested for suspicion of driving on a suspended license and an outstanding felony warrant.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go train a group of local Boy Scouts how to install card skimmers on an ATM before we go for a lunch outing to Dave & Buster’s.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

Here are eight of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

(NYCandre)

Chris Goldberg

(Carbon Arc)

(stephanie santos)

(Freaktography Urban Exploration and Photography)

(Andy Henry)

(Chuck Miller)

(Chris Goldberg)

(Darren Sethe)

(Brian J. Matis)

Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Want to see your pictures on our site? Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Unruly Walgreens Shopper Goes On Kissing Spree Through The Store, Licks Employee’s Head

(oracorac)

Listen, everyone likes a good smooch now and again, but that doesn’t mean that a stranger in a store will appreciate an unexpected puckerjob. Police say a man went on a kissing spree through an Omaha Walgreens, topping the whole weird encounter off with a well-timed lick to an employee’s head.

According to police, a 35-year-old man wended his way through the aisles earlier this month, reports Omaha.com, dispersing kisses and unwanted advances as he went.

He first tried the photo processing area before moving on to find an employee to kiss. Then in another aisle, he allegedly grabbed a customer’s backside before going up to another woman and then allegedly approached another woman, grabbed her face, murmured “Hey baby” before kissing her and squeezing her rump as well.

She pushed him away, but that rebuff of his advances didn’t seem to deter him as he walked through the store tossing items and allegedly trying to kiss yet another lady.

And when a male worker stepped over a counter to stop him? Police say the suspect planted one on him, too.

He was finally escorted from the store, before returning a few minutes later. He then sat on a counter and refused to move, until he was escorted one more time from the store. That’s when he landed the coupe de grace, licking an employee’s head on the way out, cops say.

He’s been charged with misdemeanor sexual assault and three counts of disturbing the peace.

Man, 35, kisses his way through an Omaha Walgreens before licking an employee’s head [Omaha.com]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist