Rose of Sharon Jewelry

Tantrum Tues. posts are moving to my writing blog at Writes a Lot.com. At the ROSJ blog, it’s now Tantalizing Tuesday – mouthwatering, juicy posts that add sweetness, spice and passion to life!

I love writing the Tantrum Tuesday rants but I decided in the shower this morning (I do some of my best thinking there) that the Rose of Sharon Jewelry blog should totally focus on the positive.

Tantalizing Tuesday will be just as interesting (hopefully you’ll agree) as I talk about jewelry (of course!) and other topics that make life more joyous, more beautiful and more exciting!

The first Tantalizing Tuesday post will appear later this morning!

If you’d like to keep up with my tantrums and rants, I’d love to have you become a Writes a Lot blog subscriber.

You won’t be bombarded with daily posts but what you’ll find there will be worth an occasional quick read.

If you love to write or are interested in a writing career, I’ll be having conversations about the business, creative and personal aspects of being a writer/blogger.

Thanks everyone for all your support of Tantrum Tuesday – I’ll keep stomping my feet just in another location!

SPAM (the email type) is an insult to the canned mystery meat. SPAM is more than a nuisance – it costs our economy $71 billion in lost productivity.

With several addresses, I often get 700 – 900 unwanted messages a day! With an average 20 seconds to skim a message, every day I spend up to 4 hours just dealing with SPAM.  I don’t know about you but I have a lot better things to spend my time on.

Since no SPAM filter can take the place of your eyes – I have to look at every message at least for a microsecond before I hit delete.  Just what a business needs is to delete a message from a customer. But if you’ve every tried to reach a major U.S. corporation by email – forget about it! Their SPAM filters are often set so high your message never gets to anyone’s desk! So we’re drowned out because of SPAM.

As a freelance writer, I often had messages bounce back with a “we won’t read this” SPAM error message because of select keywords in my research requests.

Sure I could change all my addresses but that would become a nightmare as I live and do business online 24/7. Besides that’s only a temporary solution.

So what are we do to?

1. Take it serious and insist that our government agencies do likewise. This theft of time and money is a tremendous drain on everyone.
2. NEVER respond in any way to an unsolicited email message. They wouldn’t be sending them if they weren’t making money.
3. Contact any “legitmate” companies that seem to be using unsolicited messages and complain. Do not use the SPAM message to contact them. Find the company via a search engine.
4. Read how to pull the plug on unwanted messages.
5. Report SPAM to the federal government. There is a specific way to forward the header so the agency can trace back the activity.
6. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 needs the attention of consumer groups and more enforcement power. Since its enactment, things have only gotten worse.

Please share this with your family, friends and business associates – but don’t SPAM anyone!

When a company like Johnson & Johnson has repeated OTC drug recalls, it’s not a fluke – it’s criminal negligence. And it should be a big wake up call for the FDA.

Earlier this month additional Johnson & Johnson over-the-counter brands were added to the frightening list of drugs we often just take for granted.

Tylenol and Motrin IB were recalled because of reported musty and moldy smells. That makes 21 trusted “family” brand named products recalled in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Fiji, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica.

We are a nation of drug-takers so most of us buy a favorite brand and never think twice about it’s potential to do more harm than good. We tuck them in a bathroom medicine cabinet and self-medicate whenever symptoms arise. For consumers, we must treat OTC medicines as drugs; we must carefully read the labels, we must stop, look, smell and evaluate before taking any medicine.  Don’t assume the FDA is  watching out for you as they aren’t. The task is too huge, the system is corrupt and agency is simply not funded properly.

The recalled products are some of the most popular on the market so you probably have a bottle or two in your own cabinets. Here is a complete list of the Johnson & Johnson recalls. PRINT IT OUT NOW and check every bathroom, cabinet, glove box and emergency kit.

Johnson & Johnson (McNeil Consumer Health Care)

If you have questions about this recall, call McNeill Consumer Health Care (owners of Johnson & Johnson) at 1-888-222-6036

Last thing, call or write your Congressman with your concerns about the safety of all over-the-counter-drugs. Because insurance companies want to boost their bottom line many previously covered  prescription drugs have become OTC purchases.  The means untrained consumers are downing billions and billions of over-the-counter medications without any real guidance..

6 months after the worse disaster in the Western Hemisphere, Haitians are still without basics. Billions pledged but only 2% has been distributed. What’s up?

I urge you to learn more about what has and hasn’t happened to help Haiti recover, not only from the earthquake, but from decades of unprecedented poverty.

Today’s interview of Sean Penn, actor/director and co-founder of J/P Haitian Relief Organization, by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now is a powerful and informative message of success and failure. This hour interview provides you with first-hand information of what it is like on the ground in the Haitian capital.

Penn manages a camp of 55,000 displaced citizens. His skill at organizing and making things happen is amazing. He shares his organization’s efforts to not only provide emergency relief but to transition people into permanent homes, create jobs and make the country self-sufficient.

I encourage you to listen to this interview. And if you donated to a charity on behalf of the people of Haiti – contact them and insist that they make certain that the millions donated by individual Americans actually GOES to help Haiti.

 “Don’t think the work is done in Haiti,” urges Penn.

There are many great charities who are working in Haiti. However, I would personally encourage you to donate to Penn’s organization – J/P Haitian Relief Organization. The money is working hard without the bureaucracy of a charitable organization.

Tar balls were blown into Lake Pontchartrain last weekend by Hurricane Alex. New Orleans is again under an environmental assault. A glistening sheen of oil caused several Eastern sections to be closed.

Over 1,700 pounds of oily waste was skimmed from the 600-square-mile lake. CNN reporter shows the oil balls.

The greater New Orleans area has long been a fragile eco-system and is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. But it’s more than wildlife and waterways that are endangered – it is a way of life for locals.

Millions of area residents have lives directly connected to the environmental health of the region. This is a deep wound which makes me deeply saddened. No check from BP or government agency can repair this gut-wrenching damage.

Most of us witnessed the human suffering created by Katrina and watched our government fail the people and many still suffer from its aftermath. We must not abandon these people – they are our brothers and we have been pretty poor keepers.

Please write your congressperson and demand that our federal agencies make New Orleans a priority.

The $8K home buyer credit helped thousands buy a new home. But shame on the IRS for allowing 1,295 inmates get $9.1 million thru fraud!

That’s right! 1,295 prison inmates (including 241 serving life sentences) received the $8K home credit. And this total is from the blatantly obvious filings such as single returns while they were incarcerated. Just think what $9.1 million could do to help those really in need during this recession like extending unemployment benefits.

Additionally, 2,555 taxpayers received $17.6 million for homes that were purchased BEFORE the eligibility date. This is simply just negligent accounting by the IRS! A simple programming routine could have stopped $17.6 million credits from being paid in error.

Another 10,282 taxpayers applied for the tax credit based on a home that was also claimed by another taxpayer. USA Today reported one case where the house was used in 67 separate claims.

The IRS is working to recover these funds but what as an incarcerated prisoner got to lose. The money went to a Post Office box and someone on the outside collected it!

While the IRS reported that less than one-half of 1% of the credits paid out were discovered (so far) to be fraudulent. So what! It costs to recover the funds while millions are being used to finance a dishonest life!

BP “controlled burns” used to contain the oil spill have new victims. Endangered sea turtles are being burned alive in Gulf. Rescuers turned away by BP.

One method employed by BP to reduce the amount of oil that reaches shore is a “controlled burn”. Shrimp boats hired by BP create a section to  burn by dragging fire-resistant booms. Booms are long tubes which float on the surface and act as a barrier for floating oil slicks. The sectioned off area is called a “burn box” and it set on fire to burn up the floating oil. If sea turtles within the “burn box” zone aren’t removed they are burned alive.

A boat caption had been actively rescuing the sea turtles until BP blocked his crews from entering the burn areas where turtles are trapped.

The sea turtles affected by the oil spill are the Kemp's Ridley species which are covered by the Endangered Species Act which has criminal penalties of jail time plus civil penalties of up to $25,000 in fines. BP’s actions which may be “critical” to the clean up effort certainly violate this Act.

"They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there," said turtle rescuer Mike Ellis in an interview with conservation biologist Catherine Craig that was posted on YouTube.com on June 13th.

How You Can Help

The first step is to sign the CREDO Action petition demanding that BP allow the rescue crews in to capture as many sea turtles as possible.

The second step is to call your Congressional Representatives immediately. The organization Contacting Congress can provide you with the phone numbers.

Tweet and share this message:

Tell BP: Stop burning endangered sea turtles alive. Take action: http://bit.ly/aFrbdv @CREDOmobile pls RT

To Learn More

• Check out the RAW story from June 20, 2010.
• Listen to the NPR broadcast from June 10, 2010.
• Read and donate to National Fish and Wildlife Federation site on gulf spill.

Thanks for listening to my rant today. Let’s ban together to make certain that the Gulf clean-up doesn’t create more disasters.

With BP’s ongoing ineptness in handling this unprecedented environmental disaster, I’ll never run out of Tantrum Tuesday topics!

Have you ever wondered just what the facts are when employees strike? I just hate not being told what the beef is. Spirit Airline pilots are on strike now so I thought I’d fill in the blanks on the why.

Why would the pilots at Spirit (who calls themselves the largest Ultra Low Cost Carrier (ULCC) walk out? Could it be that to achieve these low costs that wages are below par or perhaps medical coverage is being eliminated or may be the pilots are just greedy? In an out of the ordinary tactic, Spirit Airlines is sharing the “facts” through Press Releases.

As a registered journalist, I received several of their releases this past week. To the tens of thousands of flyers around the globe have been stranded or inconvenienced by the strike, here’s what I found over the past few days:

According to a Spirit Airline press release “ALPA [the pilot’s Union] turned down a compounded average 29 percent pay increase costing the company an additional $70 million over five years, net of productivity improvements agreed to by the pilots. This 29 percent pay increase when combined with annual step increases totals a 47 percent increase in annual compensation over five years, prior to any overtime pay, signing bonus and 401K matching contribution increases.”

The Air Line Pilot Association counters with “Pilots would work longer hours, pay more for health care in face of record profits.”  Their Press Release today states “In the context of this strong profitability, management’s proposal would not bring Spirit pilots’ salaries up to industry standards for at least five years. The pilots’ pay has been frozen for almost four years, which would mean the pilots would wait a total of nearly nine years under management’s proposal before their salaries would match those of other pilots who fly similar aircraft elsewhere in the industry. The management proposal would also force pilots to work more hours and pay more for health care.”

From what I can gather, the reality is somewhere in the middle. While Spirit did over large wage increases they also balanced that with longer working hours. Spirit pilots are paid less than JetBlue (a comparable airline) employees and more than Air Tran's.

For the past three plus years, the union and Spirit have been haggling over this contract. That’s right 3 years! So Saturday the pilots walked off the job. At first, Spirit said they were going to continue flying with pilots unaffected by the strike; however, dozens of flights have been canceled since Sunday.

After reading dozens of news articles, I cannot find sufficient facts just snippets of the airline’s or the union’s press releases. Once again, consumers are left to guess what is happening.

The Spirit Pilots web site tells their side of the story. Help is available from Consumer Reports  if you are stranded by the strike or have other Spirit issues caused by the cancelled flights.

So why should we care? In the middle of all this wrangling are the key issues – passenger comfort and safety.