Feds Searching For Graffiti Artist Vandalizing National Parks And Leaving An Instagram Handle Behind

How could you tag something better than nature already has? (Raj Hanchanahal Photography)

The idea of leaving a place better than when you found it is a fine idea when it comes to things like tidying up a campground before you take off, but that does not mean painting graffiti all over our nation’s parks and wild places. But hey, leaving your Instagram handle on those paintings is a nice touch that should help out authorities when they come looking for you.

And looking for a serial paint vandal they are indeed, reports the San Francisco Gate. The “they” being federal law enforcement who are searching for a person who they believe has been spraying cartoony portraits in national parks across five states.

From a white and red face painting featuring a blue serpent slithering out of its mouth at California’s Yosemite National Park to graffiti left in places like Zion and Joshua Tree, the tagger’s alleged Instagram account @creepytings (which no longer exists) was reportedly full of her exploits.

Though there is a female name on the account, authorities haven’t confirmed if they’ve been in contact with the suspect and it’s unclear whether she is really a she, despite the nice clue left behind.

One of the first to notice the graffiti spotted the white and red portrait on a granite rock near Yosemite’s Vernal Falls is a blogger who snapped a pic and wrote about the shocking discovery.

“Scrolling through her other images, it quickly became clear to me that this account was linked to a New Yorker on a long trip through the parks of the western U.S.,” she wrote. “Within a few minutes I saw she had also visited Bryce, Zion, Joshua Tree, and other public lands. She seemed proud of the ‘art,’ and appeared to take a lot of pride and happiness in the ‘work.’”

Federal investigators are currently in the process of tracking down this “artist” as well as any more of her recent “work” that could be out there.

Feds hunt clueless graffiti ‘artist’ in Yosemite, other parks [San Francisco Gate]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Restaurant Owner Defends Video Of Employee Climbing Out Of Ice Machine

Is this another example of an unthinking fast food worker caught on camera doing something stupid, or is it all a misunderstanding that looks much worse than it is?

In the above video, an employee of small Texas fast food chain Bush’s Chicken opens the kitchen’s ice maker and finds a female employee inside the machine.

But the company claims that it’s not as bad as it looks. The owner of the restaurant tells NewsWest 9 that the video is several months old and that these employees were actually in the process of cleaning out the ice machine at the time.

“What they’re doing is cleaning the ice machines. We do this twice a year,” says the owner, who points out that none of his eateries have ever been shut down for health code violations. “The only way to do it, and even by the manufacturers recommendation, is to get inside to clean the bottom of it and remove stale ice and anything that may have gotten past the filters.”

The owner says that everything is sanitized and disinfected before the machine is put back into use.

He claims the video is surfacing now due because a former employee is working out a grudge against the company.

“They were terminated and in retaliation they put the video up,” he says. “If they felt there was something wrong with it, they should have done it four months ago. They threatened me about wanting their job back and we don’t do that.”

The owner says that people are invited to come and check out his kitchens and judge for themselves if there are any problems.

“Day or night I will be more than happy to walk them through any location that I have at any time and show them anything that they want to see,” he tells NewsNet 9.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Sears And Kmart Will Close 76 Stores By End Of 2014

(Scott Miller)

Sears Holdings, the parent company of Sears and Kmart, needs to lose less money. Their current plan includes closing underperforming stores, renting out vacant space, and borrowing money from its manifesto-writing CEO. These are all very sensible things to do, but will they be enough to save Sears?

The company no longer announces rounds of store closings, instead releasing that information to local news outlets. Investment research site Seeking Alpha instead combed through local news reports, contacting reporters and Sears and Kmart employees on the ground to figure out how many stores will close by the end of this calendar year.

Sears Holdings isn’t about to release a definitive list: “We disclose our store counts at the end of each quarter,” a spokesman told Seeking Alpha. That isn’t helpful when you’re trying to figure out which stores will close in the future, so the site made its own list. You don’t need to register to see it.

Depending on how you count, either 76 or 107 Sears outlets are going to close. The discrepancy is because 31 Sears Auto stores are also slated to close: the total depends on whether you consider these to be separate from a Sears store or not. Some locations are closing while the Sears they’re attached to remains open, but no Sears Auto locations that we know of are staying open while the associated Sears store closes.

Pennsylvania will lose seven Sears and Sears Auto locations and one Kmart, and Indiana reverses that pattern, losing seven Kmarts and one Sears and Sears Auto. In Michigan, there are two Sears and Sears Auto locations closing, but notably six Kmart stores. Michigan, specifically the Detroit area, was the ancestral home of the S.S. Kresge company, the variety-store empire that eventually became Kmart. The first Kmart in Garden City, Michigan remains open for now.

Seeking Alpha estimates that more than 5,000 people will lose their jobs once all of these stores have liquidated and closed.

Exclusive: Sears Laying Off 5,000, Closing Over 100 Outlets [Seeking Alpha]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Why Doesn’t Tesla Just Use Dealerships To Sell Its Cars?

(frankieleon)

Earlier this week, auto dealers in Michigan successfully manipulated the state’s lawmakers to clarify that the only way any car company can sell any vehicles in Michigan is through franchised auto dealers. A handful of other states have similar laws banning Tesla or any other car company from selling their products straight to consumers. So why doesn’t Tesla just give in and work with dealers?

The Washington Post’s Brian Fung investigated this very question and concluded that there are several reasons why Tesla wants to avoid the traditional middle man format.

Primarily, it’s about retaining control of the brand. This is particularly important to Tesla since the electric vehicle market is still relatively new. Why take the risk of handing your product over to a franchised dealership whose primary goal is making his/her own profit?

Tesla does operate a small number of storefront businesses where consumers can see and learn about the cars and their features, but the company’s VP of business development says these “stores are as much education venues as retail venues — in fact, probably more so… We don’t think that we would succeed using an intermediary model where we sell a product that someone else sells to the public.”

Then there is just the thrill of being an upstart company founded by a tech billionaire Elon Musk who seems to revel in the prospect of disrupting an established sales model.

After all, if Musk can succeed in reaching consumers through direct sales, he will have done what other, much bigger players have previously failed to do.

For example, Ford dipped its toes into the direct sales waters in the 1990s, only to be chased off the idea when Texas threatened the carmaker with fines of $10,000/day for allegedly violating the same state law that currently prevents Tesla from selling directly to Texas residents.

Car dealers and legislators who back these laws banning direct sales often claim that they benefit consumers by allowing for pricing competition. If you don’t like the price being offered by one Chevy dealer, you can go to another and see if you’ll do better there. Same goes for all the other major carmakers.

And it’s a valid point; reloading the Tesla website is probably not going to result in a lower price than when you put in your desired specs a few minutes earlier.

But Tesla is not trying to change the law to outlaw car dealerships. It is just trying to see if it can be successful without them. Additionally, if Ford, GM, Chrysler or others decided to give direct sales another try, that doesn’t mean they would eradicate all their existing franchise relationships.

Instead of asking why Tesla wants to avoid going the dealership route, a better question might be: If the dealerships truly love the spirit of competition, why are so many of them actively trying to use the law to minimize it?

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Town’s Theft Of Hundreds Of Pumpkins Turns Out To Be Misunderstanding Over Pig Food

(aginghipster77)

With all the corn snatching and onion stealing, not to mention previous pumpkin plunderings going on, it’s no wonder the organizers of a town festival who saw an entire pumpkin stash go missing thought something evil was afoot. This time, at least, it was all a misunderstanding.

After hundreds of pumpkins destined to be sold at a craft fair disappeared on Monday and were reported stolen, festival organizers worried over the fate of their pilfered gourds, reports Foster’s Daily Democrat.

The huge bins of pumpkins had been covered and stowed behind the high school, when a local pig farmer spotted them and figured they were unwanted.

The police captain said it was all a miscommunication — the farmer called the school and asked if he could take them because they didn’t appear to be in the best condition.

“He noticed the pallets of pumpkins and said some of them were moldy. He said he has a herd of hogs that would love to dine on them,” the police captain said. “The people at the school had no knowledge that any type of pumpkin was being stored and so the secretary said ‘Yeah, go ahead take them.’ So the farmer did.”

Cue pumpkin plundering scare.

It just goes to show you should communicate when you’re stowing large amounts of produce, the captain added.

“If the festival people had reached out and said ‘Here’s our plan. We’ve left a bunch of pumpkins here and we’re going to try to sell them at the craft fair — they’re out behind the pavilion,’ everybody would have known, but they didn’t do that so the only ones that are happy in this whole thing are the hogs.”

Hurray for the hogs!

Pilfered pumpkins went to plump pigs: Misunderstanding led to Pumpkin-fate [Foster's Daily Democrat]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Reduced-Price Meat Means You Pay 4 Cents Extra

When perishable items are close to their sell-by dates, retailers mark them down to get them off the shelves faster. When this happens, everyone wins: customers get cheaper meat, and the store still makes money from the product. That’s how this is supposed to work in theory, at least.

Allison found this very enthusiastic package of beef for sale at Cash Wise, a Midwestern grocery chain.

If it weren’t for all of those exclamation points, maybe it wouldn’t be so funny that the price isn’t reduced at all.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Survey: Overwhelming Majority Of U.S. Doctors Seeing Patients With Drug-Resistant Illnesses

(Emily)

While the pharmaceuticals industry and some livestock farmers and veterinarians still contend that there isn’t yet definitive proof that the overuse of antibiotics is leading to the development and spread of drug-resistant bacteria, a new survey of American doctors found that there is nearly universal concern among doctors about this issue, and that many physicians have treated patients with drug-resistant infections in just the last year.

The report [PDF] from our colleagues at Consumers Union, along with groups like the National Resource Defense Council, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and the National Physicians Alliance, looks at the results of a survey of 500 internal medicine and family practice physicians in the U.S.

Some 97% of doctors surveyed are at least fairly concerned about the growing problem of antibiotic resistant infections, with 59% of all respondents saying they were “extremely” concerned.

And when you look at how many of these physicians have treated patients with drug-resistant infections, it’s no surprise why there is such widespread concern.

According to the survey, 85% of these doctors have treated at least one patient in the last year with a bacterial infection that was resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Of those physicians, 35% have had one of these patients die or suffer significant complications as a result of these drug-resistant bugs.

Many doctors say they are taking steps to reduce the overuse of antibiotics in their practices. This includes refusing to prescribe antibiotics that are not medically necessary, even when patients ask for the drugs.

81% of physicians surveyed say they are now doing this, but that doesn’t necessarily mesh with recently released numbers from the Centers for Disease Control, which found that — as recently as 2010 — some 70% of U.S. doctors were still prescribing antibiotics for acute bronchitis, even though it’s been clearly demonstrated that antibiotics are not effective in treating that illness.

Another way in which doctors say they are trying to combat drug resistance is by prescribing the least broad spectrum antibiotic available (72%); and prescribing antibiotics for the shortest duration needed (68%).

In all, 80% of the physicians surveyed claimed that their practice, group, or hospital is actively working to minimize inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics.

But doctors’ offices and hospitals are only a slice of the antibiotics pie. Around 70% of medically important — and around 80% of all — antibiotics sold in the U.S. go into animal feed for non-medical growth-promotion of livestock and poultry. 93% of the doctors in the survey expressed concern about this practice.

The survey concludes with several policy recommendations for lawmakers, regulators, and private businesses.

This includes asking the FDA to strengthen its current stance on antibiotics in animal feed, by using its authority to restrict the use of these drugs only to cases of animal sickness or direct disease exposure, and to require proper veterinary oversight when antibiotics are used on farms.

Currently, the only tracking done of antibiotics in animal feed is the gross volume sold to farmers. The tracking doesn’t account for how much is actually being given to the animals or for what reason. The report asks the U.S. to adopt a robust tracking system to document the sale, use, and impacts of antibiotic use in livestock production.

It also includes a plea to private businesses like grocery stores, restaurants, and hospitals, asking them to adopt a policy to procure and sell only meat that is produced on farms that restrict the use of antibiotics except for animals that are actually sick, for a limited period of time–just as antibiotics are used in humans.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Belgian Chocolate Company ISIS Decides It’s A Pretty Good Idea To Change Its Name Right About Now

(ISIS Chocolates)

It was only last year when a Belgian chocolate company called Italo Suisse decided to change its name. After all, 90 years after its founding, the business had no real connections to either Italy or Switzerland anymore. But yeah, if anyone at the company had realized there was another ISIS out there, that would definitely not have been the name it chose to switch too.

The company has decided to switch its name yet again, reports Reuters, as it turns out there is another organization associated with the name ISIS — it is the acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a jihadist group that’s invaded parts of Iraq. That group is now known just as Islamic State, but ISIS has stuck around in the public mind.

As such, ISIS is out the door at the chocolate company.

“We chose ISIS as that was the brand name of our pralines and tablets,” marketing manager Desiree Libeert told Reuters. “Had we known there was a terrorist organization with the same name, we would have never chosen that.”

The company had problems moving its product, as the name was putting customers off.

“We had international customers saying that they could no longer stock our chocolate as consumers had only negative associations with the name,” she added.

The new name is one she likely is on board with — Libeert, which is the family name of the company’s owners, and as far as anyone knows, not a terrorist organization.

Belgium chocolate maker ISIS needs to change its name again [Reuters]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

New Plan Expands Availability Of Some Federal Student Loans For Consumers With Tarnished Credit Histories

(Michael)

Families hoping to assist their child in paying for college may soon have greater access to federal student loans under a plan recently finalized by the Department of Education and Obama administration.

The new plan, which could be implemented as early as next spring, would loosen credit standards for families borrowing from the Department of Education’s Parent Plus program, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Parent Plus loans are designed to cover tuition and living expenses when undergraduates reach the limits of their federal Stafford loans.

Under the new plan, the Dept. of Education will now only review the past two years of a parent’s credit history for delinquencies or debts in collection that could be disqualifiers for the loans. The current program check borrower’s past five years of credit history.

Additionally, any delinquent debts below $2,085 will not be used to disqualify borrowers. Currently any amount of delinquencies are grounds to reject an application.

Families who apply for the Parent Plus loan program and currently have damaged credit will now have to undergo credit counseling before borrowing is approved.

Officials with the Dept. of Education tell the WSJ that the changes are designed to boost college enrollment, particularly among disadvantaged youths who may otherwise be unable to afford college.

“These are families who are unable to access credit in the private market” for education, Jeff Appel, the Education Department’s deputy undersecretary, says. “It’s all with the intent of providing wider access to postsecondary education.”

While the plan is designed to give families additional resources on their road to college, some consumer groups have voiced concern that the plan would saddle consumers with excessive debt that they can’t repay.

At the crux of their issues is the fact that the plan doesn’t have safeguards in place to determine a borrowers’ ability to repay.

Officials with the Dept. of Education say current student lending laws don’t allow the government to review an applicant’s ability to repay, that such a review would require an act of Congress.

Education Department to Expand Access to Student Loans [The Wall Street Journal]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Cigarette Company Reynolds Finally Bans Indoor Smoking At The Workplace

(Eva_Deht)

Look around you. Is anyone you work with currently puffing away on a cigarette inside? Is smoke curling up from the cubicles nearby? Not likely, but while smoking inside at the workplace is a thing of the past for most companies today, there’s one business where it was still welcome, until now at least: Reynolds American, makers of Camel cigarettes, announced this week that its employees will no longer be allowed to smoke indoors as of Jan. 1, 2015.

While the founders of the tobacco company might never have foreseen a policy against smoking, Reynolds and its subsidiaries will enforce the no-smoking rule within its facilities, except in designated smoking areas, reports the Winston-Salem Journal.

Traditional cigarettes, cigarettes and pipes won’t be smoked at desks, in conference rooms, in elevators or hallways, a company spokesman told the paper, and the rules will stick for every employee. Electronic cigarettes, heat-not-burn cigarettes, moist snuff and snus will be permissible inside.

“We will restrict traditional smoking to the designated areas as they are put together in 2015 and 2016,” the spokesman said. “The bottom line is that we believe it is the right thing to do, updating our tobacco usage policies, at the right time to do it. The policy change will better accommodate nonsmokers and visitors to our facilities.”

And if you were wondering if the lateness of this policy coming about is because everyone at the company smokes, Reynold’s spokesman says that’s not true — employees are like everyone else in the country, with about 20% being smokers, despite the fact that they work at a cigarette company.

“The use of tobacco products or cigarettes by our employees is pretty close to in line with what you see out in the general public,” he said. “Recognizing that indoor smoking restrictions are the norm today, and most people expect a smokefree workplace environment, we believe we are better aligning our tobacco use policies with those we’re seeing in the general public.”

Camel maker Reynolds snuffs out workplace smoking [Winston-Salem Journal]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist