jikThe War On Pizza Will Be Fought With Lobbyistsde

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(Coyoty)

Did you know that there are lobbyists for the important, quintessentially American cause of…pizza? Every part of the industry from family-owned pizzerias to companies that sell mass-produced frozen pizza sheets destined for school lunch trays has people schmoozing members of Congress on its behalf. Their greatest enemies? Nutritional labeling and Michelle Obama.

Bloomberg Business explains the lobbyists fighting for our right to eat pizza, and exactly what’s at stake. Their infographics are glorious, and will probably make you hungry.

The First Lady has nothing against pizza personally, as far as we know, but she has served as the public face of stricter school lunch nutrition standards that aim to get more vegetables and less junk food into kids during lunch. Under the old rules, a slice of cheese pizza containing a few tablespoons of sauce counted as a “vegetable,” since a slice of pizza has two tablespoons of sauce, pizza sauce is made from tomato paste, tomato paste is concentrated tomatoes, and tomatoes are vegetables. While this logic is unassailable, there’s too much at stake for pizza-makers to lose the school market. They fought back–when school cafeterias buy $500 million worth of frozen pizza every year, do you blame them? The U.S. Department of Agriculture has left that loophole open. Pizza remains a vegetable.

Nutritional labeling, meanwhile, is a problem for pizzerias for two reasons. First, laws requiring restaurants to post calories would have them post the calorie count for the quantity that people buy, not the quantity that they necessarily eat in one sitting. Yes, an entire pizza might have 2,000 calories, but that’s a lot less disturbing when four people are sharing it for dinner, or one person eats leftover pizza for three meals in a row. (Who is that person? Not me. Nope.)

Inside the Powerful Lobby Fighting for Your Right to Eat Pizza [Bloomberg]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikAmerican Airlines Super Sorry About Leaving Passenger On Hold For 6 Hoursde

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If you’ve tried to fly this winter, chances are you’ve hit some weather-related delays or cancelations and ended up in line or on the phone waiting to speak to someone who could help you out. But odds are that you didn’t wait as long as the one Florida woman who spent six hours trapped on hold with American Airlines.

The woman tells Tampa’s FOX 13 that she was scheduled to fly from Kansas to Florida via Dallas on Sunday but received a text from American telling her that her flight had been canceled and she’d been rebooked on a Monday flight.

“I thought maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour and two hours into it, I realized this is crazy but I’m not going to give up,” she recalls about the on-hold slog. “This really was horrible customer service. I just could not believe that I could not get through.”

And her wait didn’t end with the airline picking up. Instead, the caller bailed after wasting a quarter of a day.

She would have been better off going down the airport and getting in line. Not only does that ultimately put you in front of a real person who can’t hang up on you, but you also have a measurable way of figuring how long you’ll wait to speak to someone.

If you have to call, some travel-hackers claim that one way to improve your spot in the call queue is to remember your high school Spanish lessons. When you call the airline and have the option for a menu in Spanish, choose that (if you’re conversant enough to fumble your way through a phone tree en español). Or look to see if the airline has a dedicated number for Spanish-speaking customers. Since there are likely fewer people in these queues, you may get a human faster.

For its part, American is really sorry about the 6-hour hold.

“We apologize for the frustrating experience. It was a very challenging weekend due to extreme winter weather impacting the Dallas/Fort Worth area,” reads a statement from the airline. “American had more than 2,000 weather-related cancellations systemwide on Saturday and Sunday. We also had extended wait times in our reservations system and social media channels. We worked to re-accommodate customers as quickly as possible based on their individual travel plans.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

jikReport: Taking For-Profit Colleges Nonprofit Can Generate Hefty Profits For Ownersde

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(tomQ)

Earlier this year Education Credit Management Corporation bought 56 campuses from embattled for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges Inc. and took the schools to the nonprofit sector. While that conversion was initiated because of the ongoing collapse and financial problems facing CCI, other college chains have dropped the for-profit status seemingly to pick up hefty profits.

A new report from the New York Times found that several college chains have made the switch to running a traditional higher education institution a profitable enterprise in its own.

While transferring to nonprofit status means schools must follow stricter restrictions on moneymaking ventures, some former owners aren’t having trouble with finances.

In some cases, owners have been able to finance the purchase of their for-profit colleges by offering loans and tax-deductible donations to an affiliated nonprofit. The new nonprofit then rents the buildings used for the school from the original owner and more often than not, the management team for the institution remains relatively unchanged.

The Times reports that was the case for a Florida for-profit in which the owner continues to rake in millions of dollars after he sold his chain of schools to a nonprofit entity that he also owns.

Back in 2011, Arthur Keiser sold Keiser University to a smaller nonprofit college, Everglades College, where he now serves as president. According to documents viewed by the Times, Keiser lent the smaller nonprofit $321 million for the sale and donated other funds.

Now, the Times reports, Arthur Keiser makes millions of dollars through his position and other payments from the private university.

Keiser has an ownership interest in properties that generate $14.6 million in rent from the school, as well as a stake in a charter airplane used by the school’s representatives and in a hotel where employees stay, the Times reports.

Such profits have raised concerns for consumer advocates and legal experts about the reasons why for-profit chains may want to shift to a nonprofit status.

“There is a concern that the now-nonprofit colleges may be providing an impermissible private benefit to their former owners,” Lloyd Mayer, an associate dean and law professor at Notre Dame Law School, tells the Times. “These sorts of arrangements raise yellow flags.”

Back in November, an Internal Revenue Service complaint filed against Keiser and several board members accused them of violating tax regulations and using the college for personal gain.

The Times reports that one of the company’s board members owns a business that provided the school with a paperless filling system, while a family member of a another board member owns the recruiting system employed at the school. Additionally, a third board member received income from the aquatic engineering program at the school.

For his part, Keiser tells the Times that his family discloses all financial conflicts of interest related to their investment in the higher education institutions and that becoming a nonprofit was a “natural transition.

“My goal has been to build a family legacy,” he says.

Although the Times reports that the Education Department has yet to reject a school’s shift to nonprofit status, other government departments have filed lawsuits after the fact.

The Justice Department joined a lawsuit last year that charged the sale of several for-profit colleges to Denver-based nonprofit, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education.

According to the Times, the sale was financed by Carl Barney, the original owner of the for-profits and the sole board member of the nonprofit.

The Justice Department and Colorado Attorney General’s office charged in the lawsuit that the sale was initiated in part to “evade certain regulatory requirements that apply to for-profit schools.”

Some attorneys defend the shift from for-profit to non profit as simply a necessity for schools struggling to remain afloat.

“Some are truly not doing this to evade regulations,” Neil Lefkowitz, a Washington lawyer who specializes in transactions involving education companies, tells the Times. “They are really having trouble recruiting students.”

Some Owners of Private Colleges Turn a Tidy Profit by Going Nonprofit [The New York Times]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

jikThere’s Another Possible Payment Data Breach At Natural Grocersde

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(northernplateguy)

Apparently, natural foods stores are ready to compete with the big grocery chains. No, not on price–Natural Grocers, a small chain of about 93 stores in 15 states that’s based in Colorado has decided to compete with the big chains by possibly having a payment data breach of its very own. This is not the kind of corporate milestone that a growing chain would celebrate.

Natural Grocers is currently investigating reports that there may have been a breach of customer payment data from its stores. It’s a now-familiar pattern: banks notice fraud on their customers’ cards, then go back and find which businesses all of those customers have visited recently. Right now, compromised cards appear to have transactions at Natural Grocers in common.

If you think that they’re a little late to the party, since 2014 was really the year of the point-of-sale breach, don’t worry–banking sources told Brain Krebs that what appears to be a breach began at the end of 2014, with baddies planting malware on the chain’s systems.

In a statement, the company said that if any information was compromised, it was only credit and debit card numbers, not names, addresses, PINs, or CVVs. They were already upgrading their point-of-sale systems, and they’ve “accelerated” that process because of these reports from banks.

Natural Grocers Investigating Card Breach [Krebs On Security]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

jikNBC Cooking Up Streaming Service For Its Comedic Offeringsde

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Much like Disney’s recent revelation that it now owns a bunch of Star Wars and Marvel stuff might justify standalone streaming services, NBC has reportedly awoken to the notion that it might be able to make some money selling access to its comedy library.

This is according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that the Comcast-owned Peacock Network is considering a low-dollar-value ($2.50-$3.50/month) streaming service that would include access to full episodes of shows like Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show, along with original content.

There is also talk of other niche-targeted streams from NBC and its various cable channels (USA, Bravo, E!) for audiences into everything from horror to religion.

As more consumers turn away from traditional cable TV and toward online streaming service, cable networks are losing viewers, meaning fewer advertising dollars or having to squeeze more ads into each show. The hope is that targeted streaming services may appeal to consumers who don’t mind paying for TV but want more control over the channels they pay for.

What’s unknown is whether NBC would be cannibalizing other revenue sources if it launches new streaming services. The company owns a chunk of Hulu, which carries NBC programming; some Hulu Plus users may ditch that $8/month service for a cheaper option. And NBC made a killing by licensing past episodes of The Blacklist to Netflix last year. Making that show or others available on a less-expensive service may make it more difficult for NBC to command top dollar from Netflix.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

jikThis Is The Best Video Of A Guy Using A Power Tool To Eat A Bagel That You’ll See Todayde

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(MurderBot Productions on YouTube)

True: There are other ways to perform common, everyday actions apart from widely accepted methods. False: All of these are brilliant and deserve the description of “mind-blowing.” But though it won’t change everything you ever thought you knew about breakfast, it is fun to see a guy use power tools on a bagel.

In what I must admit I first thought was another one of those videos showing a trick to doing something that I could then repeat and tell everyone I know about, in “You’ve been eating bagels wrong your whole life” on YouTube, a mute bagel lover goes through a pantomime showing the frustrations of having to cut a bagel in two and smear cream cheese on both sides.

Knives can be annoying, I guess, though some people use those bagel slicing things. And what about all that bread that isn’t on the surface and thus, will never feel the blanket of cream cheese upon its crumbs?

That’s where the power drill comes in (which we do not advise using on bagels). And subsequently, a few other steps that I wouldn’t recommend any sane person follow, though it does make for an amusing video break to the day.

The lesson here, I think? Not everything has to have a shortcut — sometimes the way to do something is just the way to do something.

H/T to @_Cooper for the link!

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

jikCalifornia Suing Wine Bottle Maker Over Claims That It Uses Glass Containing Toxic Materialsde

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(Ninja M.)

While acknowledging that a California glass company isn’t necessarily posing any threat to consumers with its actions, state officials are suing a Modesto business that it says recycles hazardous materials illegally and includes them in new wine bottles.

Gallo Glass Co. in Modesto, CA is the target of a lawsuit made public yesterday by authorities in California, reports the Modesto Bee.

Though officials point out they don’t know if there’s any threat to consumers, the suit alleges that the the plant illegally recycled hazardous dust containing toxic substances like lead, arsenic, cadmium and selenium, which are byproducts of bottle making.

“We have no evidence that consuming wine (from those bottles) poses a health threat,” said the deputy director of the State Department of Toxic Substances Control.

There wouldn’t be any danger even if the bottles broke, the agency’s enforcement supervisor added. But the agency thinks the dust substance should be sent to a landfill, and says Gallo illegally stored it in an unpermitted tank.

Recycling the “precipitate,” as Gallo Glass calls it, is done in a way that the company says meets the highest federal standard for safe packaging, according to its website. Putting material in landfills is also “in direct conflict with California’s recycling goals,” the company said in a statement.

“The lawsuit has no merit,” Gallo Glass said in the statement, adding that it prides itself on employing “environmentally-friendly sustainable practices which the state is inexplicably challenging in this lawsuit.”

“We look forward to our day in court,” the statement adds.

State sues Gallo Glass over hazardous materials [Modesto Bee]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist