Missouri, Arkansas and Pennsylvania investigators
are asking questions about concert ticket sales that leave thousands of fans out in the cold. Somehow, minutes after tickets go on sale, fans can't buy them, but the big ticket resellers snap up thousands of tickets.
Fans are fed up and took their complaints to their state attorneys general.
E! Online says the Hannah Montana concert sellouts were the tipping point for buyer frustrations that have been simmering for some time:
Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon filed suit Thursday against
three ticket retailers, accusing the companies of fraud under the
state's consumer protection laws and of violating a Kansas City
ordinance outlawing scalping.
Tickets to the teen singer's
concert had a top face value of about $63, but they were being resold
online for upwards of $2,000, Nixon said, calling the practice a
"blatant rip-off of consumers."
He named ticket-sellers GoTickets Inc., Tickets Now Entertainment Group Inc. and Ticket Solutions Inc. in his lawsuit.
Nixon
also announced he had reached an agreement with Ticketmaster to release
2,000 more tickets to two of Cyrus' upcoming shows -- 1,000 each in Kansas
City and St. Louis.
Meanwhile, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin
McDaniel has launched an investigation into five online ticket sellers,
demanding documentation of their sales.
McDaniel said he was
concerned that brokers were advertising tickets for sale before they
even existed in order to determine buyer interest in buying those
tickets at inflated prices.
He also said he would be looking into
computer software used by scalpers to snap up large numbers of tickets
on sites such as Ticketmaster, blocking average consumers from
purchasing tickets at face value.
High School Sports Prayer Case
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the third circuit is considering a case
that puts prayer back in the spotlight. The case involves a football coach who does not lead pre-game prayers, does not pray out loud, but bows his head as his players pray.
The Washington Post provides some background:
Grant Teaff, the executive director of the American Football Coaches
Association, estimates that about half of high school football coaches
nationally pray with their teams or lead their teams in prayer. "It's
very much like warriors going into battle, a platoon going into
battle," he said.
He said the association has no guidelines for its members on prayer.
"That's individual," he said. "It'd be like telling somebody, do you
smile when you give an order, or do you frown."
"Not allowing it doesn't mean you're anti-religious or anti-faith;
it means you're trying to be respectful of everyone," said Peter Roby,
director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.
"Sometimes being respectful to everybody means that you have to refrain
from things you would prefer to do as a team because you don't want to
exclude or offend anyone."
Understanding The Latest Slang
The Boston Globe catches us up on the latest teen slang. What is a 100m hottie? What does it mean if a person is "agnorant?"
What does "gnar" mean? If a person is "flossin'" what is he/she doing?
You better get with it.
Here is a glossary of the words.
Tracking Candidate's Health Positions
WebMD has an interesting feature
that compares the ever-evolving presidential campaign promises about
health care. You can compare candidate's positions head to head.
The History of Pretzels
Slate explains where they come from, their link to religion and why they really are the snack food of October ...
How Much Do Lotteries Really Contribute to Education?
State lotteries are under a lot of pressure these days. They promise to raise money for education but have to constantly offer bigger jackpots to attract and hold players.
A New York Times investigation shows that in some states, lottery funds are not the extra that some envisioned. Rather, they are simply replacing tax dollars that used to be spent on education.
The New York Times says:
For years, those states have heard complaints that not enough of
their lottery revenue is used for education. Now, a New York Times
examination of lottery documents, as well as interviews with lottery
administrators and analysts, finds that lotteries accounted for less
than 1 percent to 5 percent of the total revenue for K-12 education
last year in the states that use this money for schools.
In
reality, most of the money raised by lotteries is used simply to
sustain the games themselves, including marketing, prizes and vendor
commissions. And as lotteries compete for a small number of core
players and try to persuade occasional customers to play more, nearly
every state has increased, or is considering increasing, the size of
its prizes — further shrinking the percentage of each dollar going to
education and other programs.
In some states, lottery dollars
have merely replaced money for education. Also, states eager for more
players are introducing games that emphasize instant gratification and
more potentially addictive forms of gambling.
The Sad News About the AIDS VaccineI was teaching an
online storytelling workshops for the
National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in Philadelphia this past weekend. I was saddened to see a headline in
The Philadelphia Inquirer about
a big setback in the search for an AIDS vaccine.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
