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A BigMac and large chocolate shake will cost you more than $5.00.Two gallons of gas will cost you more than $5.00.A pack of cigarettes, around $5.00A movie tickets will cost more than $5.00 Most of us blow five bucks on crap several times a month.If everyone gave 5.00 a month to FR, we wouldn't need Freepathons any longer.Heck, it's worth five bucks a month just to be IBTZ.Help keep FR up and running.

ORLANDO, Fla. - The cost of building roads has gotten so high, not even dirt is cheap anymore. As a result, many states are postponing scores of highway projects. The reconstruction work from the eight hurricanes that have hit the United States since 2004 has combined with a rise in population in some states to drive up the demand for labor, material and equipment. That, in turn, has pushed up wages and prices. Surging fuel prices, China's immense demand for concrete and steel and the reconstruction of Iraq are also pushing U.S. road construction costs higher. "We plan for cost...

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association say that the Prevailing Wage Act of 1961 may have increased the cost of school construction more than any other law. The law requires local governments to pay wages set by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry for public works, which inflates the cost by between 9 and 30 percent according to the Association. Should the law be abolished? Yes. Cut cost. I need the money as much as anybody in the trades. No. Remember, Joe Hill.

Executive Summary Prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the United States, Britain and their allies pursued a policy of containment authorized by the United Nations Security Council. Major elements of the policy included economic sanctions on Iraq, disarmament requirements, weapons inspections, Northern and Southern no-fly zones within Iraq, and maritime interdiction to enforce trade restrictions. Continued containment was the leading option to war and forcible regime change. We analyze these two policy options, war and containment, with attention to three questions: In terms of military resources and expenditures for humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, is war more or...

The hurdles to an Imperial County desert airport are in sharper focus with a report on the feasibility of a maglev train from San Diego, placing costs at a minimum of $148 million a mile and one-way fares below the price of a tank of gas. The 165-page consultants' report released yesterday presents a mixed bag to the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, which had kept the Yuha Desert concept on its list of airport options while the analysis was conducted on the magnetic levitation train. The cost of building the project – $15.2 billion to $18.5 billion for...

Tuition and fees at some New York City private high schools will cost more than $30,000 for the school year ... New York already boasts the highest private school tuitions in the country, but prices at some schools will now surpass even the cost of sending a child to Harvard... Riverdale Country School, located on a leafy oasis in the Bronx, will charge $31,200 for tuition, lunch, and books for grades six through 12. Bus service from Manhattan costs an additional couple of thousand dollars. Parents are looking to spend about $400,000 before their children even get to college. Undergraduate...

The United States will pay Russia $US21.8 million ($29.17 million) per astronaut for a lift aboard a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station, the US space agency NASA has said. The fare is slightly more than the world's first "space tourists" forked out for a ride into space with the Russian craft. With its shuttle fleet grounded and no other vehicles available to serve as space station rescue boats, NASA had no choice but to pay Russia for transportation or abandon the half-built orbital outpost. Congress last year lifted a weapons proliferation ban so NASA could buy Russian space...

Despite late efforts by fiscal conservatives to delay — or derail — it, the Medicare prescription drug benefit train has left the station. Now, with the registration process a few weeks old, the only talk of delay on Capitol Hill has to do with pushing back the May 15 deadline for seniors to sign up.

Interested in solar power? How much you'll pay in city fees to put solar panels on your home depends on where you live -- and some fees around Silicon Valley are so high they are placing a cloud over renewable energy, according to a new study. Saratoga, for example, charges $95 for a permit to install solar panels on a house. Yet in Los Gatos, two miles away, city planners will sock a homeowner with a $1,287 bill for a permit to install the same system. The findings come from a survey of 40 cities in San Mateo, Santa Clara...

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft's Xbox 360 console may have only just hit stores, but it has already been subjected to "teardown" analyses by at least three research firms. Chipworks Inc., Portelligent Inc. and iSuppli Corp. found, among other things, that most of the dedicated parts within console are stamped with the Microsoft X-logo, rather than the actual manufacturers' logo “We could call this ‘Microsoft inside’,” Gary Tomkins, manager of technical intelligence at Chipworks, said in a statement released Wednesday (Nov. 23). Analyst David Carey of Portelligent (Austin, Texas) said the Microsoft markings were applied to the custom ASIC parts designed...

Washington, DC, November 4 - The sky-rocketing cost of a college education is certainly on the minds of parents. This week, an Indianapolis group took up the issue in the nation's capital. "The cost to students has been rising faster than inflation, faster than families' ability to pay and also faster than need-based aid," said Martha Lamkin of the Lumina Foundation. That's why the Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation hosted a summit in Washington. Among the findings; a growing frustration with how long it sometimes takes to get a degree. They also concluded that ways need to be found to make sure...

Attorneys for concealed gun opponents who challenged the law filed a motion Wednesday seeking reimbursement from the state for their unspecified costs and fees. That comes one week after the resolution of a request from gun store owners who intervened in the lawsuit to be reimbursed by the plaintiffs for their costs and lost business. Details of an apparent out-of-court agreement are being kept secret. Missouri's law allowing most adults age 23 and older to receive concealed weapons permits was enacted when the Legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto two years ago. In February 2004, the state Supreme Court upheld the...

“It would reduce the costs of healthcare substantially if we produced things to standard,” said Paul Otellini, who became Intel’s chief executive in May, 2005.

Changes in a national accounting guideline a decade ago helped set the stage for California's ballooning pension liabilities by obscuring the long-term costs of providing the richest benefits in the nation, a former CalPERS consultant says. Under changes by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, pension funds can amortize the cost of retroactive benefit increases over 30 years and public employee unions can negotiate to defer salary increases in favor of better pension benefits. But the shifts meant officials often were unaware of the full costs of their decisions, Citrus Heights accountant Marcia Fritz wrote in a Sept. 30 letter to...

Warning: The content contained in this column has failed to meet the prescribed standards of political correctness. The American people have spoken. Are elected officials listening? Illegal immigration: Polling Data 84% of Americans worry about illegal immigration. Of those, thirty-seven percent worry a "great deal" about it. Gallup Poll, March 8-11, 2004 65% of Americans favor stopping ALL immigration during the war on terrorism. Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll 74% of respondents believe the U.S. should NOT make it easier for illegal aliens to become citizens of the U.S. CNN/Gallup/USA Today Poll, January 2004 76% of Americans believe the U.S. is...

OIl traders shrugged off Bush's petroleum reserve announcement. Prices in Washington surged to as much as $3.15 a gallon. By Kevin G. Hall Knight Ridder Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Gasoline prices in many U.S. cities spiked past the all-time highs set in 1981 and no relief for motorists as oil traders largely shrugged off the Bush administration's Wednesday announcement that it was releasing supply from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Just a day earlier, analysts had predicted that prices could climb to record levels by Labor Day weekend in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But it happened by midday Wednesday. Gas...

Wednesday opens a new chapter in the 16-year Bay Bridge saga, when regional politicians take the reins to oversee the project amid unanswered questions about why the public will pay twice — at unknown cost — for the same work. Specifically, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission will be asked to approve freshly repackaged bids to build the bridge's tower. Caltrans is expected to advertise the project the next day but has not released an official cost estimate. MTC's new role results from lengthy negotiations in the Capitol this year and the new law they produced. It means the Bay Area will...

In a swift response to yet another Islamic terrorist attack, this time in downtown London at rush hour, Britain’s Prime Minister Blair stated, "It is important that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world." I like Tony Blair. He has been a steadfast ally of the United States on many fronts including the War on Terror. Even in the face of political malcontents at home, he remains calm,...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jul 5 (OneWorld) - A vast majority of Americans disagree with President George W. Bush's stance on global warming, a new poll said Tuesday amid reports of a widening rift over climate change between the United States and its partners in the Group of Eight (G8) dominant countries. ''Going into the G8 Summit, nearly all Americans feel that the U.S. should not be a laggard, but should be ready to do as much as most other developed countries to reduce emissions that cause climate change,'' said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy...

The sheriff's constable delivered the lawsuit to the neat brick home in Cliffside Park on Valentine's Day. It was a bouquet of heartache from Hackensack University Medical Center. "GUIDO OSSO," it read. "You are hereby summoned in a Civil Action of the Superior Court of New Jersey." The reason: Failure to pay a hospital bill of $160,170.35. The wanted man sat at home, slumped in his wheelchair. His head rested on a television tray and his bottom on an incontinence pad. Since a devastating series of strokes in 1999, the 66-year-old Osso hadn't known what day it was, much less...