Free for ALL Friday!
It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (legal) hocus-pocus.
How a Disgruntled Man and His 2001 Volvo Got the Kars4Kids Jingle Banned
Bruce Puterbaugh’s 2001 Volvo was worth $250. The legal precedent he set by nuking the world’s most annoying radio ads? Priceless
If you’ve ever heard the “1-8-7-7-KARS-4-KIDS” jingle, you’ve probably heard it a million times. In states where this car-donation charity operates, it’s been running obnoxiously repetitive singing-kids ads for decades with the intensity of a shock-and-awe military campaign.
But after all those years of operation, one disgruntled donor took it to court and got a judge to kick Kars4Kids off California airwaves for practicing “an actionable strategy of deception.”
As stated in the court ruling, the problem is that the “Kars” were not “4 Kids” at all. Kars4Kids’ own COO Esti Landau testified that the group “operates no functional programs” for helping kids in California.
Link: The Drive (Andrew P. Collins)
These Parents Are Buying Homes for Their Kids—With Strings Attached
The least affordable prices in decades have turned a milestone of independence into a family affair
Buying a home has always been a milestone of financial independence. For some young Americans caught in the least affordable housing market in decades, it has become a family affair—strings attached.
Jennifer’s dad, Mark Gross, had a spending limit of $700,000, and one condition: She had to stay within 2 miles of him. The house they closed on last month was $625,000, and an 8-minute bike ride away. The mortgage is in her father’s name, and Jennifer pays him $2,200 a month to cover a portion of the payments.
He bought her sister, Jessica Locati, a house nearby a few months earlier, fulfilling their mother’s dying wish that the family live close to each other.
Link: Wall Street Journal (Multiple reporters)
America’s Toxic Divide Reaches the Jury Room
Trial lawyers and jury consultants say an erosion of trust in the justice system, more rigid viewpoints and starker political divides have made pitched juror battles more common
The Florida jury spent 14 days late last year feuding over a lawsuit that alleged three big pharmacy chains had improperly flooded the state with prescription opioids, thereby saddling hospitals with the costs of treating uninsured and underinsured patients.
One juror accused another of possibly meeting secretly with lawyers in the bathroom. Another ripped up a poster a juror made to persuade others. Some jurors accused colleagues of letting their sympathy for children harmed by opioids cloud their ability to make decisions based on the law.
After the jury got the case, Trailer, the forewoman, went home and watched “12 Angry Men,” a legal drama about conflict between jurors. “By the end, we had become that movie,” she said.
Link: Wall Street Journal (Corinne Ramey)
Backyard Battalions
Where do battle tanks and military trucks go when their service has ended? Enthusiasts and professionals put them to work for search and rescue, marketing and just having fun
Westen Champlin, an auto enthusiast and YouTube personality in Kansas, owns a tank. Specifically a 1962 Centurion battle tank. It can’t fire anymore, but it sports a power-operated turret, periscopes and a beefy Rolls-Royce Meteor V12 engine. It seats four.
“I was raised on a farm,” said Mr. Champlin, 27, whose YouTube channel has 5.3 million subscribers who tune in for his auto stunts and more, akin to a backwoods “MythBusters.” “Big equipment has always been interesting to me.”
The tank wouldn’t start, but he paid $130,000 for it, winning it in an online auction via Bring a Trailer, a site where military vehicles make regular appearances: Humvees and ambulances, tanks and Jeeps, the occasional plane. Now that the tank is running, its chief use is as a showpiece. Mr. Champlin said it’s “just a big tractor” that he breaks out for parades and “doing cool stuff” with.
Link: New York Times (Mercedes Lilienthal)
Who to Blame For the Rise of the Yuppie? Investment Banks, Obviously
Dylan Gottlieb on How Financialization Remade Corporate America and Wall Street
Phil Calian, editor-in-chief of the Brown Daily Herald, could have worked at nearly any newspaper in the nation after he graduated in 1985. He had never considered an investment banking job—that is, not until Wall Street recruiters began appearing on Brown’s campus every week that spring.
Calian applied to Merrill Lynch’s mergers and acquisitions department on a lark.
“I had to look up ‘capital market’ the first time I had an interview,” he admitted. The interviewer assured him that he did not need any special expertise beyond his undergrad degree.
A year later, Calian was putting in ninety-hour weeks as an analyst, taking his desktop computer home over Labor Day weekend to work on a deal.
“It doesn’t take any great brainpower to do this,” he confessed. “It just takes stamina.” Asked about his choice to abandon journalism for banking, Calian expressed few regrets. “It’s much more fun to put together a million-dollar deal than it is to report it.”
Link: Lithub (Dylan Gottlieb)
‘They Just Want to Matter’: Swarming Teens Test Community Order
A rise in “teen takeovers” is highlighting young people’s need for safe spaces and connection
Unruly teen gatherings have long been an integral part of American culture (think “West Side Story,” or Halloween egg fights).
But driven by social media organizing and the potential for viral fame, a new wave of teen “takeovers” is presenting big problems – and opportunities – for communities across the U.S. This past weekend alone, groups of rowdy teens descended takeover-style on Six Flags St. Louis and at Katy Mills Mall just outside of Houston, requiring police to disperse the crowds. Another planned “takeover” in nearby Tomball, Texas, was halted by a Harris County constable before it could begin.
“When we are made to feel like we don’t matter, we can either withdraw or act out in extremes,” says Ms. Wallace. Teen takeovers “are a collective assertion of this need to matter.”
Link: Christian Science Monitor (Patrik Jonsson)
The I.R.S. Thought It Could Fight Trump’s Lawsuit, but It Struck a Deal Anyway
Officials wrote a memo outlining ways to challenge President Trump’s suit against the Internal Revenue Service. The administration is instead creating a compensation fund
Lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service sought to contest President Trump’s lawsuit against the agency, recommending several potential defenses in a case that the Justice Department nevertheless decided to resolve by creating an extraordinary $1.8 billion fund that could soon be used to pay Mr. Trump’s political allies.
I.R.S. officials prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining what they saw as flaws in Mr. Trump’s suit and advising the Justice Department to move to dismiss it, according to two people familiar with the memo. No lawyers from the Justice Department ever appeared in court to respond to the suit or disputed any of Mr. Trump’s claims, which demanded at least $10 billion from the I.R.S. for not doing enough to prevent the leak of his tax information.
The Justice Department instead made a highly unusual deal in the case. In exchange for Mr. Trump’s dropping the suit, the Trump administration created the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for people who say they were wrongly targeted by the federal government.
Interesting stuff today. I wonder how Trump decided the leak of his info was worth $10 billion. I just don't see it. I also don't know where the Justice Department comes up with that much money for a slush fund. The US government is wrecked, and likely will be for years if not decades.
Bill, I cannot forgive you for planting that jingle in my brain, so I will leave you with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb47CstE7R4