Don’t Run For The Border

As my readers know, I deplore fast food. It’s bad for the people who eat it, it’s bad for the people who grow it, it’s bad for the people who harvest it, it’s bad for the neighborhoods where the restaurants are located. It’s just bad. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say a big problem with America today is the prevalence of fast food.

So it’s about time someone sued these assholes for hawking poison as food:

"Where's the beef?" Wendy's restaurants once famously asked through its advertising, a swipe at its competitors' burgers.

The same question is now being asked by a California woman regarding Taco Bell's beef products, which she claims contain very little meat. So little, in fact, that she's brought a false-advertising lawsuit against the huge fast-food chain.

The class-action suit, which does not ask for money, objects to Taco Bell calling its products "seasoned ground beef or seasoned beef, when in fact a substantial amount of the filling contains substances other than beef."

It says Taco Bell's ground beef is made of such components as water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch and sodium phosphate, as well as some beef and seasonings.

Just 35 percent of the taco filling was a solid, and just 15 percent overall was protein, said attorney W. Daniel "Dee" Miles III of the Montgomery, Ala., law firm Beasley Allen, which filed the suit.

"Taco Bell's definition of 'seasoned beef' does not conform to consumers' reasonable expectation or ordinary meaning of seasoned beef, which is beef and seasonings," the suit says. Beef is the "flesh of cattle," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"You can't call it beef by definition," Miles said. "It's junk. I wouldn't eat it."

When I was growing up back in the late '60s and '70s, we didn't have Taco Bell. My mom made us tacos using 100% ground beef, which she browned in a giant iron skillet with fresh onions and garlic, and she bought corn tortillas which she fried in vegetable oil. And we topped it with tomatoes and onions and cheddar cheese and sometimes a dollop of fresh guacamole, if avocados were in season. And damn it was good.

That's how we eat tacos at our house today. Sometimes if I'm lazy I buy the pre-made shells (organic, of course) but otherwise, that's how you make a taco. Mr. Beale likes his a little spicier than I do, so he adds some cumin powder to his beef. And it's real beef, not filled with Frankencrap like "isolated oat product," "wheat oats," "soy lecithin," "maltodextrin," "anti-dusting agent," etc. What the hell are "wheat oats" anyway? Which is it? Wheat or oats?

Can I tell you how sick and tired I am of picking up fast food trash from the street in front of my house? We live near a Krystal's and a Wendy's, and just about every week some asshole finishes eating his or her chemically-modified sandwiches and tosses the bags out the window. Fuck you.

And when my church participated in this human rights action targeting Taco Bell, I learned a lot about how damaging this entire industry is, not just to our bodies but to our entire economy.

It's a damn shame what the fast food industry has done to this country.

Kentucky Fried Potholes With A Side Of Extra Crispy Hypocrisy

Good grief. I had a hard enough time handling the Home Depot-sponsored Corporaquarium. But this is taking things too far:

KFC, the fried chicken franchise, is offering itself as a corporate sponsor for pothole repair. An actor dressed as KFC founder Colonel Sanders and a road repair group got started this week in the franchise’s hometown of Louisville, Ky., filling up hundreds of holes.

Many of the repairs are decorated with a white stencil saying the spot was “Re-freshed by KFC” — a play on KFC’s ad campaign stressing the freshness of their chickens. KFC spokesman Russell Dyer said the crew is using “regular asphalt,” not day-old biscuits.

The franchise has issued an offer to mayors of cities nationwide, asking them to describe their street’s state of disrepair, with the intent of doing repairs in five cities.

Good lord. Remember when Neil Young and Eric Clapton traded barbs over use of their music in beer commercials? Amateurs!

Here’s a thought: maybe if Yum Brands, KFC’s corporate parent (as well as owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s) paid their corporate taxes, cities like Louisville wouldn’t be so far behind in their pothole repair.

Let’s dig into the memory hole, shall we? Oh, here’s a juicy one:

In the Yum case, first outlined in a lawsuit against a senior Yum executive in May 2004, federal investigators contend that when the company, with the help of KPMG as its auditor and tax adviser, set up a private insurer as a wholly owned subsidiary in 1998 to handle all of its insurance needs, it was effectively buying an Insureco shelter.

Specifically, the government has questioned a transaction undertaken in late 1999 by Yum's wholly owned insurer, Glenharney. In that deal, Yum, then known as Tricon Global Restaurants, sold a small equity stake in Glenharney to Credit Suisse First Boston for $8 million, including fees.

Because Glenharney held offsetting liabilities, in the form of unpaid claims, the sale resulted in a $112.5 million tax loss to Yum.

The I.R.S. contends that the sale served no legitimate business purpose and functioned solely to generate tax losses for Yum, to offset legitimate capital gains. Yum paid $750,000 in fees to KPMG for advice on Glenharney, according to court papers.

The I.R.S., which is auditing Yum for 1997, 1998 and 1999, intends to disallow the $112.5 million tax loss, according to court papers.

WTF? Insurance companies and private banking transactions acting as tax shelters?

Good lord. No wonder this country’s economy is in a mess. Corporations behaving badly, who'd have thought it.

So no, you don’t get to trash our cities and then slap a freaking logo on the repair job. Stick to making fried chicken, assholes.