Château LaFake: Should Importing Counterfeit Wine And Other Luxury Goods Be Illegal?

by Gary Leff

Feb 04 2023

Interesting in U.S. law you cannot protect the recipe for wine. You can only have intellectual property in its packaging. If the wine tastes identical, then customers are really getting what they expected right? And it’s just the famous brand that isn’t making profit off of it.

If you look at once high quality brands that have been acquired and watered down their products… think Tumi in luggage, Dom Perignon in champagne (not every vintage should be released, and once wouldn’t have been!)… then the brand is actually what’s lying, communicating to consumers a quality that turns out not to be delivered.

Continue Reading »

Two Families Kicked Off Flight To São Paulo After Epic 15 Passenger Brawl

by Gary Leff

Feb 03 2023

Fifteen passengers brawled on board Gol Airlines flight 1659 from Salvador to São Paulo in Brazil prior to departure.

Reportedly they were two families. A mother asked for her special needs child to sit in the window seat, but the woman who was already there refused to move. One of the children heard something offensive from the family that refused to move, according to a contemporaneous account on Twitter. And things descended into chaos.

Continue Reading »

How The U.S. Keeps Out Foreign Visitors

by Gary Leff

passport getting stamped
Feb 03 2023

Foreign visits to the U.S. are down substantially compared to pre-pandemic times. That’s bad for airlines. It’s bad for hotels. But it’s bad for the entire U.S. economy, too. And it’s an own-goal, with the U.S. government slow-walking people who want to visit here from around the world.

Continue Reading »