Ripped off? Go get an attorney! But wait . . . you won’t find one.

Think of all the times that merchants have ripped people off. Sometimes it’s a line-item that jacked up your bill. You called and complained, but you eventually gave up and ate the $3.50 after making four phone calls without satisfaction. Sometimes, you bought an appliance and after getting home discovered that it wasn’t as it was promised, but the merchant refused to take it back. Or it might be a $1,000 piece of electronics. Only after the warranty expired, it became clear that it didn’t function as promised. Maybe it’s a used car that you bought for $2,500 and right after driving it off the lot you discovered that it literally wouldn’t go, certainly not at highway speeds, and that the dealer knew of the problem but refused to refund your money. Consider the many complicated financial transactions you’ve signed, credit cards, car loans, or payday loans. What do you do if you notice you’ve been ripped off, but the amount of damages you’ve suffered is relatively small, less than $3,000? You go get an attorney, right? Wrong. You won’t find an attorney to handle cases in this range unless an attorney decides to help you as a favor or “pro bono.” Why not? Because it is a time-consuming task to open a case, file it, prepare for trial and represent a consumer in a trial. It can take dozens of hours to get a decision in the trial court, and then the defendant, who is often represented by a high-priced attorney, can appeal the case, delaying the result for another year. The net result is that consumers who have been ripped off for less than $3,000 (and, actually, much greater amounts too) will have only one real option to litigate their claim: at the small claims court where they will represent themselves.

Continue ReadingRipped off? Go get an attorney! But wait . . . you won’t find one.

FDA: Cheerios is claiming to be a drug

This news is astounding: The FDA, which for many years has worked hard to serve as a lapdog for its industry masters (not the taxpayers), has recently woken up and taken a real stand. The FDA has charged that Cheerios is "misbranded" as a drug that prevents and treats high cholesterol and heart disease. Caveat: The FDA warning letter doesn't cover all of the health claims on boxes of Cheerios. Here's an excerpt from the FDA warning letter to General Mills:

Based on claims made on your product's label, we have determined that your Cheerios® Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal is promoted for conditions that cause it to be a drug because the product is intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease. Specifically, your Cheerios® product bears the following claims on its label:

• "you can Lower Your Cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks" " • "Did you know that in just 6 weeks Cheerios can reduce bad cholesterol by an average of 4 percent? Cheerios is ... clinically proven to lower cholesterol. A clinical study showed that eating two 1 1/2 cup servings daily of Cheerios cereal reduced bad cholesterol when eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol."

These claims indicate that Cheerios® is intended for use in lowering cholesterol, and therefore in preventing, mitigating, and treating the disease hypercholesterolemia. Additionally, the claims indicate that Cheerios® is intended for use in the treatment, mitigation, and prevention of coronary heart disease through, lowering total and "bad" (LDL) cholesterol. Elevated levels of total and LDL cholesterol are a risk factor for coronary heart disease and can be a sign of coronary heart disease. Because of these intended uses, the product is a drug within the meaning of section 201(g)(1)(B) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321 (g)P)(B)].

I applaud the FDA's actions. Many food products are covered with comparable health claims, yet (until now) the claims have not been scrutinized by anyone other than the manufacturers. I suspect that a huge percentage of these claims would not hold up to an independent scientific review. I also suspect that many consumers make their food purchase choices based on these sorts of claims, many of them unsubstantiated. To the extent that a manufacturer gets a competitive leg up by making an unsubstantiated claim, this is an unfair practice that hurts manufacturers who are not stretching the truth. Now, the FDA will take a look at these claims of General Mills, and hopefully thousands of other food manufacturers, and we'll then see how many of those now-ubiquitous health claims start disappearing from products on the shelves. Too bad there's not an organized produce and grain industries that spends big money plastering signs all over produce departments (and billboards) telling people how good it is to eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and also telling consumers that there is no need to buy expensive processed food in wasteful packaging to be healthy. There's so many health claims stamped onto food products that walking down the grocery aisle makes me think I'm at a NASCAR event. I'm not trying to blast the makers of Cheerios here. My kids eat it--sometimes I do too. Perhaps these claims on the Cheerios boxes are justified. But let us investigate. Let us really find out before we allow the grocery aisle health claim wars to continue.

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Health-less

The boogeyman of Socialized Medicine is being dragged onto the field of rhetorical combat to block the move toward anything smacking of Single Payer Health Care in the United States. The argument is old and hoary by now, that adopting a system like that available in Canada or the United Kingdom would lead to a collapse of American health care. Somehow the fact that expenses might be shared and disbursed through the government will render the world’s best health care system somehow crippled inside a generation is not seriously questioned by most people. Because most people don’t know. You can find case after case of anecdotal evidence to support the notion that British health care is worse than ours. Someone knows someone who, as the argument goes. And there is something to that. The waiting periods alone, the pigeonholing of treatment—horror stories abound which we glimpsed here when HMOs were instituted and accountants seemed to be in charge of medicine. There is, in fact, too much information for the average American to digest much less make sense of. Technologically, the United States has an extraordinary medical system. Unmatched in the world, despite some annoyingly negative statistics. That we achieve what we do in a country peopled by citizens who do the least for their own health than in any other country comparably empowered is amazing. Americans eat too much. Medicine can only do so much against a rising tide of obesity related illnesses. The tradition of the doctor giving you a physical and then telling you to eat right and get some exiercise is not a quaint leftover from an age that didn’t know as much as we do—that is sound advice and more than half the battle in maintaining good health. The explosion of Type 2 diabetes in children has been alarming, and this can be tied directly to diet and exercise. We also work longer hours under higher stress than almost anywhere else in the developed world. The need for vacations and long weekends is acute. This may sound sarcastic, but the link between stress and several major illnesses is no joke. We are also a violent society. If one looks at emergency room statistics, it becomes quickly clear that we are a people who like to beat, stab, and shoot each other at higher levels than almost anywhere else. What makes all these factors so overwhelming is that we have the means to do all this. Because a certain percentage, a significant percentage, of the population can afford to go to the doctor and have the consequences of all these lifestyle disasters “taken care of.” I put all this out front because the one factor that is muted in the national debate over the rising cost of healthcare is the fact that we are, collectively, idiots. We do not do, statistically, the simplest things to avert the need for medical intervention. The last detail in this litany has nothing to do with idiocy but with sentiment and perspective. It has been said for decades and it is true—80% of individual health expense in this country is spent in the last two years of life. We are, as a people, loathe to die and we will direct our health services to do absolutely everything to give us another day. In Europe, such people are told to go home and die. That sounds cold, I know, and I’m sure there are people in France and Germany and Italy with the resources to reject this advice. But the nations as a whole are not expected to pay for it. Here we are. Through health insurance.

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Quote time

I love to collect quotes. Such a high ratio of thought-provocation per word! I'd even bet that there is a the seed for a novel in most well-honed quotes. I collect these from many sources, though more than a few of the following were presented to me by The Quotations Page, which I use as my homepage. Some of these quotes have made the rounds (the oldies-but-goodies), though I'd bet that you'll find more than a few that you've never seen before. Enjoy. In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Johann von Neumann (1903 - 1957)

Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.

Robert Byrne

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

Tom Stoppard (1937 - ), Jumpers (1972) act 1

The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.

Douglas Adams , Last Chance to See

“It is not acceptable to have a religion where the alternative to faith is punishment — that’s how you train dogs, not develop people.”

Deng Ming-Dao

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.

George Wald (1906 - )

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

H. H. Williams

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What is St. Louis like?

People from my town of St. Louis are going ape-shit thinking that the national spotlight will come to our city along with the All-Star Game. It's really sounding like mega-insecurity to me. If you're really proud of your city, then be proud. You shouldn't need some sports announcer to say a few nice things about one's tourist attractions between pitches in order to feel validated. And if that sports announcer's opinion is so important, let's make sure that he takes a tour of our decaying city schools before the baseball game so that he can give the national sports audience an informed opinion or two on that, between pitches. And, really, what's more important if you had to choose between having first rate tourist attractions and a first rate school system? But my ambivalence leads to an important question. What is St. Louis really like? I've lived here all my life, and there is much to like about our city (as well as many things that need much improvement). Rather than write my own lengthy description of St. Louis, I'm going to refer you to this well-written balanced account by Alan Soloman of the Philadelphia Inquirer. What should we be thinking about St. Louis as the All-Star Game approaches? Here's Soloman's ominous opening, although his article eventually veers to many of the positive aspects of my river city.

The Gateway Arch, symbol of the place, and the museum beneath it represent the nation at its swaggering best, symbols of a Western expansion that would define us in so many ways. That we're talking about St. Louis - a city that's seen its share of rough times and that, like the country, isn't exactly in swagger mode right now - in a way adds particular power and poignancy to this year's celebration.

For another angle on how St. Louis is doing, check out this article in The Riverfront Times, where the author asks whether the recent efforts to beautify St. Louis amount to "putting lipstick on a pig."

Continue ReadingWhat is St. Louis like?