Two California Cities Trying To Pass Laws That Would Tax Sugary Drinks By The Ounce

(Nabity Photos)

Now that the crusade against soda and other sugary drinks has been effectively quashed in New York City, two West Coast municipalities are trying to take up the torch. San Francisco and Berkeley are trying to become the first cities in the U.S. to pass per-ounce taxes on sugary drinks, and the industry is paying attention.

If the cities are successful, sugary drinks will be treated basically like cigarettes, taxwise, points out the Associated Press. Big companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are likely worried the laws will pass, spurring health advocates around the country to push similar measures.

But if they can’t get this thing to fly, the idea of trying to curb consumption of such beverages through taxes or similar laws will probably be dead in the water in the future.

“The industry is really motivated to beat us here. If they can beat us in San Francisco and Berkeley, nobody is going to take them on,” said a political consultant handling the campaign in support of the tax in Berkeley.

It’s not easy to pass these laws — 30 special taxes on sugary drinks have been introduced since 2009, and none have lived. The beverage industry says this means people don’t want a tax, while proponents point the finger at the big bucks spent by companies to stymie the measures.

But out West, supporters of the tax say they’re ready for battle, and will use a variety of tactics to educate voters on the issue beforehand — fliers, TV ads, calling up voters and more.

In San Francisco, a $0.02 tax on sugary drinks would not apply to milk or natural fruit juices that don’t add sugar. It needs a two-thirds vote to pass in November. In Berkeley, the proposed tax is $0.01 per ounce and needs a simple majority.

While this isn’t in any of the reports, one must assume that the tingle on the back of these advocates’ necks is the living specter of NYC’s former mayor watching over the whole process, whispering, “Say nooooo to sugary driiiiiinks…“

Soda tax’s last stand? Bay Area preps for showdown [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

4 Things Home Buyers Do That Annoy Sellers

(Robert Fairchild)

By this point, most of us have been unwitting sucked into House Hunters marathon and screamed at the nitpicky buyers about their inability to look past the paint color, but that is a minor annoyance compared to some of the other ways in which home buyers get under the skin of sellers.

The folks at BankRate recently posted a full round-up of these aggravating behaviors, including the previously mentioned picking on the paint, as well as other obvious ones like blowing off appointments or treating a house like it’s your own before you’ve purchased it. But the following four are annoyances that you may not have considered.

1. Presenting a laundry list of defects

This is different than demanding that the seller repaint a room or pull up some ugly carpet. This is when buyers give sellers a detailed accounting of all a home’s defects and why each is being subtracted from the asking price.

“Sellers don’t care why you’re discounting the house,” explains one realtor, who says that presenting a list of defects really just brings up the question of “Why do you want this place?”

Of course, the devil’s advocate inside us would counter that the list of defects presents the seller with a better negotiating position than a vaguely discounted offer. The seller can say “Well, this item is really only worth $X, so you should revise your offer upward.”

2. Requesting multiple ‘visits’ before closing

“A buyer wants a lot of access after they’ve committed to purchase,” explains one broker about this apparent no-no. “They want to bring in decorators, architects, family or even visit it themselves.”

He says that all these visits interrupt the seller’s attempts to make repairs while also packing up and moving out.

We can definitely see how this would be a pain in the butt and agree with the broker’s suggestion to do your repeat visit while the inspector is on-site, since this is time that is already carved out for the house to be invaded.

3. Trying to renegotiate after striking a deal

You’ve agreed on a price, and signed a contract, but now the buyer wants to change her offer. And not because the inspection turned up a meth lab in an underground bunker in the backyard, but because “the market has changed.”

One realtor tells BankRate this happens when buyers suddenly think “they overpaid because they just got caught up in the moment,” or suffer buyer’s remorse.

“It’s extremely awkward,” says the realtor. “It’s violating the terms of the contract, and it’s insulting.”

On a personal note, this happened to me once, but coming from the opposite direction. I had agreed to purchase a tiny apartment in Brooklyn for a king’s ransom, only to have the seller try to raise the price because he was still secretly taking offers through a second realtor. I backed out, and so apparently did the other buyer, as that apartment was still on sale — for a lower price — six months later. And I now live in Philadelphia, where I got several times the space for a fraction of the cost.

4. Rushing the closing date

Unless you’re buying an already-vacated property, the seller will likely need some time to get everything together and clear out. That’s why closing dates are often 30-60 days out from the accepted offer. But some buyers are in a hurry to get into their new digs and push for a speedier closing.

“It’s annoying to the seller for the buyer to want to close before the seller is ready to move out,” explains one realtor. “Each side has to coordinate a schedule and still be respectful to the other side.”

Not to share too many details of my personal life, but this also happened to me when I eventually landed here in Philly. But once again, it was pressure from the seller to up the closing date by two weeks because it interfered with his planned vacation to Aruba. This meant I had to work very closely with the mortgage underwriter to make sure that every required document was perfect and there would be no last-minute snafus that could suddenly delay closing. It also gave me the bargaining chip to get the seller to pay an even larger chunk of the closing costs than he’d agreed to. He got his vacation and I saved some money. Everybody wins.

Anyway, you can check out the whole list of annoyances at BankRate.com.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Target Field Introduces Self-Serve Beer Machines For MLB All-Star Game

This year, Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game will be held at Target Field in Minnesota. In advance of the game, the stadium has solved one of the great sporting-event dilemmas of our time: the possibility that you might miss some of the action on the field while waiting in line for a cold beer. What do you do? Target Field’s answer: vending machines.

Now, Target isn’t starting some kind of underage drinking utopia. Customers will have to prove that they’re over 21 in order to buy a prepaid card to use in the beer-o-mat. The machines also limit the quantity of beer that customers can purchase, limiting them to 48 ounces every 15 minutes. You know, in case a group has dispatched one person to get beer for everyone.

Those 48 ounces of beer will cost $18.24 if you buy the cheapest selection, Bud or Bud Light at 38 cents per ounce. Other selections available for a slightly higher price are Shock Top Lemon Shandy and Goose Island 312 Urban Pale Ale, if you’re not a Bud fan. Those brews are both products of the beverage mega-conglomerate AB InBev, because Anheuser-Busch is behind the creation of the machine.

This Baseball Park Has Self-Serve Beer Vending Machines and Lobster Corn Dogs

Read more at

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Man’s Phone Mailed Back To Him From Japan 9 Months After He Lost It In 280,000 Pounds Of Grain

(KSHB.com)

When an Oklahoma farmer saw his phone disappear in a pit filled with 280,000 pounds of grain, he figured it was pretty much gone. The iPhone had fallen from his shirt pocket and gone up a grain elevator, and went on its merry way into the void. Or so he thought — until he got a call nine months later from a stranger in Japan.

After his phone took that journey to the great grain pit where he was working, it traveled to another grain facility in Oklahoma, reports NBC News. From there it made its way along the Arkansas River, down the Mississippi River and onto a barge headed to Louisiana. It then boarded a ship — with the grain, obviously — and landed in Kashima, Japan.

Sitting in its bed of 2 million bushels of grain sorghum, our brave phone hero probably thought it would never find its way home again. It didn’t have any talking animals to assist it on a homeward bound journey, after all.

But a few days ago, the farmer got a call from Japan, asking if the caller had the right guy.

“I said, ‘Yeah, this is Kevin.’ He said, ‘Did you lose your cell phone?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I lost my cell phone last fall,’” the farmer explained.

Turns out a worker at the mill in Japan had come across the phone, which clearly didn’t belong, and mailed it back to Louisiana. Workers there then sent it along to the farmer in Oklahoma.

“It’s crazy, I can’t believe it. What really shocked me about it all was when I first got the phone call was what a small world it is. There are a lot of meaningful pictures on it, so we were real glad to get the phone back,” he said.

Oklahoma farmer receives lost iPhone from Japan 9 months later [NBC News]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Ford Issues 6 Recalls Covering 101,000 Vehicles

(Blue387)

In an effort to show GM that it’s not the only U.S. car maker who can issue a huge number of recalls, the folks at Ford have announced six separate recalls covering a total of 101,000 vehicles.

Almost all of that total belongs to one recall that involves a problem with the driveshaft on 92,000 Ford vehicles from model years 2013 and 2014. Affected models include the Ford Taurus, Ford Flex, Ford Police Interceptor, Lincoln MKS and Lincoln MKT; 2012-2014 Ford Edge; and 2014 Lincoln MKX.

Detroit News reports that faulty assembly of the right-side halfshaft in these vehicles may cause them to experience “loss of drive function,” meaning the vehicles could roll away if the gearshift is placed in “park” without the emergency brake being activated.

The second recall is for 2,100 2014 Ford Escapes built between Oct. 15 and Oct. 22, 2013, at the Louisville Assembly Plant. The panorama roof glass on these SUVs may have a problem with the bond between the glass and the attaching bracket. This bad bond could leave you with a noisy, leaky roof.

A smaller recall involves 197 2014 Ford Fiestas with fuel tanks that may be missing an adhesive layer. The lack of that adhesive could result in a leak and possibly a fire.

The remaining recalls announced Monday are for commercial vehicles sold by Ford. 5,264 model year 2011-2014 Ford F59 Commercial Stripped Chassis vehicles have been recalled because electrical junction blocks could short-circuit if driven in areas where salt is spread on roads. 635 2014 Ford F53 Motorhome Stripped Chassis and F59 Commercial Stripped Chassis vehicles are also recalled for a possible issue with the brake calipers. And 368 2014 Ford Transit Connect vans have been recalled because of a labeling issue with the brake fluid reservoir cap in Puerto Rico.

This now puts Ford over the 3 million recalled vehicle mark for 2014, which is far behind GM’s total for the year. But there are still many months to go!

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

41% Of U.S. Homes Are Now Wireless-Only

Ten years ago, only about 1-in-20 American homes were cellphone-only. By 2010, that rate had soared to 1-in-5. And according to the newest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of U.S. homes that have ditched landlines completely has doubled since 2010, and now stands at 41%.

The latest report from the CDC also highlights the difference in generational attitudes toward landlines, with 65.7% of adults between the ages of 25-29 being wireless-only, while only 31.4% of those aged 45-64 have given up landlines, and a mere 13.6% of people over the age of 65 having no landline service.

Interestingly, that 25-29 age group is sandwiched between two age groups with lower rates of wireless-only living. On the younger side, the 18-24 year-olds have a 53% rate of living landline-free. This is likely because some in this demographic either live in college dormitories with built-in landlines or still live with their parents who have yet to abandon their wired ways.

The slightly older 30-34 age group still has a high level of being wireless only, at 59.7%, but why the drop-off from the high level seen in the 25-29 group? This may be due to some members of the older group beginning to settle down, starting families and/or buying homes. The CDC data also shows that 76.1% of people living with unrelated roommates are wireless-only, while only 46.6% of adults who live alone are without landlines. Likewise, the wireless-only rate for renters (61.7%) is significantly higher than it is for homeowners (28.5%). This would seem to indicate that as those 25-29 year-olds grow up, some are choosing to get landlines.

And even though wireless-only homes are still not the majority, the CDC data confirms that the majority of the country now use wireless as their primary phone service.

Since 2010, the CDC survey has asked about “wireless-mostly” homes, those where people receive most or all of their calls on cellphones, even though they have a landline. In the latest report, that number now stands at 18.3% of all U.S. adults. When added to the 41% of adults who don’t have landlines, this means that nearly 3-in-5 American adults has stopped using landline service.

While the wireless-only numbers continue to grow, the CDC notices that they aren’t growing as rapidly as they have in the past.

So why does the CDC worry about whether or not you have landline service? Because it conducts a large number of phone-related surveys on health-related issues and needs to know that the people it speaks to for these surveys represent the population at large. If they were to only call people who use landlines, their results may be biased toward older homeowners and may not account for large portions of the population.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Group Of 20 Thieves Hit Samsung Factory, Grab Millions Worth Of Electronics

(Van in LA)

Like one of those heist movies starring a well-dressed, smirking George Clooney and his BFF Brad Pitt, a group of about 20 thieves overpowered workers at a Samsung factory in Brazil and managed to make off with about 40,000 phones, tablets, computers and other electronics.

Police say seven armed men hijacked a chartered bus taking eight Samsung workers to the facility, and took the driver and one employee hostage, reports the Wall Street Journal, leaving the rest to sit by the road.

The suspects rode the bus to the plant, disarmed security guards and then let their friends in. And by friends, naturally that means seven trucks that were then loaded with more than 40,000 gadgets, cops said.

The entire Ocean’s 20 heist took three to four hours, with estimated losses for Samsung totaling about $6.4 million. That’s bad, but not as bad as a number police had floated earlier — $36 million, as the Associated Press reported at first.

Insurance will likely cover most of Samsung’s direct costs, of course, but it’s still not a good sign for the factory’s operations, nor for Brazil itself, as the country tries to attract more electronics companies to set up shop there.

A spokesman said Samsung is ready to cooperate with authorities.

“It is regrettable the incident took place. However, it is fortunate that there were no casualties,” he said.

Thieves Raid Samsung Plant in Brazil [Wall Street Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

This Ring Could Allow The Blind To Read Printed Text Instantly

While Braille and other developments have given visually impaired people access to the written word, not every book, magazine, journal, or important document is available in these forms. But a new wearable device could allow the blind to instantly scan text and have it read aloud to them in real time.

The device, dubbed the FingerReader, is a prototype being developed at the MIT Media Labs.

It’s a simple idea — a tiny camera in the ring reads the text at the tip of the wearer’s finger and translates it into audio. Of course, where it gets complicated is all the technology needed not just to recognize all the words, but to determine when the reader’s finger has veered off course. When this happens, the wearer is alerted via a vibration in the ring.

The researchers tell the AP that they are not looking to replace Braille, but to give the visually impaired immediate access to the vast number of printed items that aren’t readily available in Braille.

For example, being able to read a form at the doctor’s office without having to rely on another person to read it to you, or to instantly be able to read the same magazine story that the person sitting next to you has recommended.

The developers also believe there are applications for the device in translating texts written in foreign languages.

A market-ready version of the FingerReader is still quite some time off, and there is no price point set on it yet. But the researchers believe it could be made available at a reasonable price to consumers when it does eventually go on sale.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Six Flags Roller Coaster Derailed After Riders Hit Tree

(KTLA)

Of all the things you’d think could go wrong on a roller coaster, hitting a tree isn’t usually high on the list. But it will be for the 22 coaster riders who were left stranded after their cars derailed because of arboreal interference.

KTLA reports that the incident happened around 6 p.m. on Monday night at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, CA. Apparently a pine tree next to the Ninja roller coaster had fallen onto the track and was blocking the track.

The Ninja is a suspended roller coaster, meaning the riders are hanging below the track. When the first car collided with the fallen tree, it derailed and dangled about 20 feet above the ground. The other cars in the affected train appeared to have remained on the track, but all the riders were left waiting for assistance from emergency crews.

It took several hours for Los Angeles County firefighters to safely rescue all of the stranded coaster passengers. The four riders in that first car were treated for minor injuries. Two were taken to the hospital as a precaution, a rep for the park told KTLA.

The Ninja, which has been operating for more than 25 years, is temporarily out of operation pending a “thorough inspection of the area,” says the park rep.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Crumbs Shuts Down All Of Its Cupcake Stores

And so the great cupcake bubble of the 21st century has burst, taking with it the industry’s most prominent chain. New York-based Crumbs has closed all of its locations a week after NASDAQ suspended trading of the company’s stock.

Until yesterday, Crumbs had been operating around 50 stores in 10 states and Washington, D.C., but employees were notified on Monday that all stores would close permanently on Monday, reports the Wall Street Journal.

“Regrettably Crumbs has been forced to cease operations and is immediately attending to the dislocation of its devoted employees while it evaluates its limited remaining options,” the company said in a statement to the Journal.

Riding a wave of big publicity and consumers’ desires to dive into mammoth cupcakes covered in cookies, candies, and syrups, Crumbs went public in 2011 with a share price of around $13. By the spring of 2013, confidence in the business had crashed, with Crumbs shares selling for less than $1.50.

The company tried to stay afloat by cutting 15 stores in the last year, but the stock price continued to tumble, sinking below $.30 per share. When Crumbs couldn’t meet NASDAQ requirements for having either at least $2.5 million in shareholder equity or meeting benchmarks for its market cap or annual net profit, the stock market suspended trading of the once-sweet stock on July 1.

Employees were told they would not be paid for any days past July 7. As of Tuesday morning, the Crumbs website is still up and appearing to take orders, though we’d obviously advise against trying it, because you might be in for a long wait.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist