BY HARRY RING
C'mon kid, have a sip - With a straight face, Budweiser
denies its ad figures, Frankie and Louie the lizards or its
previous animated frog, are pitched at children. Meanwhile,
retail stores are stocking battery-operated "talking" mugs
that feature the frog and croaks "Budweiser."
Toppings too? - Wal-Mart, and other companies are targets of class-action suits for working employees "off-the- clock." That is, making them clock out and then work extra without overtime pay. The Taco Bell chain settled their Washington state case out of court. Actually, they didn't make their employees work for free. They rewarded them with pizza parties.
It figures - A Labor Dept. official concedes that with a minuscule number of Wages and Hours investigators the chances of a company getting a visit is once every 50 years.
Capitalism really foul things up - The British Isles are surrounded by water that keeps getting worse. Environmental researchers found that of 755 beaches monitored, 125 were clean. Why? Oil spills and "deliberate" discharges of mercury, cadmium and lead. Plus the "insidious" affect of radioactive waste.
American Way of Death - If you live in the New York area and your pooch checks out, call All Pets to Heaven. Casket and burial, $1,000.
2666? - Wall Street banking economist Edward Yardeni warns that there's a 60 percent chance of a recession being triggered in 2000 because of computer-related problems.
Another social disease - "The number of Americans who suffer from asthma has risen 75 percent since 1980 to more than 15 million, due in part to pollution and other environmental factors, federal health officials said.... There were more than 1.8 million emergency room visits for asthma in 1995." -News item.
Health-care `reform' - The White House has a plan for the three million people, age 55 to 64 who have no medical coverage. The plan would permit them to buy into the Medicare program. Premiums would run about $300 to $400 a month.
A guesstimated 10 percent of the uninsured would be able to afford it.
That's a comfort - The Pope declared the earth was doomed to end "at some point," but there's no fixed date.
Sure, the workers did it -Britain's J. Salisbury supermarket chain ("A fresh approach to shopping") was fined 8,000 for selling food items nearly a month past their sell- by date.
Said a spokesperson: "There are clear procedures in place and these have been reemphasized to staff to ensure this does not happen again."