Free Republic

Thus, the treasury plan is a disgrace: a bail-out of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown. It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented – many on the RGE Monitor Finance blog forum – alternative plans that were more fair and efficient. This...

Today in America times are tough and customers are hard to come by. That is why it is important not to do your customers wrong. DirecTV doesn’t seem to understand this philosophy. They give you substandard service and then when you had enough they try to extort money from you. I have cancelled my DirecTV service because of bad or what I like to call NO customer service. Now they want to tell me I owe almost $400.oo in contract cancellation fees. I never signed a contract with DirecTV. I have noticed through all my research that many people have...

Here is cautionary tale for travelers considering using Priceline to book their travel... I haven't used Priceline for years because of bad experiences in the past. But I thought I'd give them one more try. I booked a hotel room through Priceline for our family, and requested 2 beds, but got a standard room with 1 king sized bed instead. Somehow in the booking process Priceline swapped what we asked for without us knowing. I'm sure this was just a glitch of their computer system , but none-the-less we didn't know this had occured first. I discovered this later when...

SAN DIEGO - If there's pain at the pump in the U.S., Mexico may just have a remedy. A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in San Diego retails for an average price of $4.61 a gallon. A few miles south, in Tijuana, it's about $2.54 — even less if you pay in pesos. More and more people appear to be taking advantage of the lower price. "I used to buy exclusively in the U.S. before gas started really going up," said Patrick Garcia, a drama teacher at an elementary school in San Diego who lives in Tijuana. "Since then, I've...

It's a free country, and if Barack Obama's campaign wants to make money from posters ($70 a pop!) designed by the artist Shepard Fairey, they can go right ahead. (The candidate himself thanked the artist, and said that his "images have a profound affect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign." You know, because they're put on stickers and posted all over public property.) And I'm sure I'll be told that the artist uses Communist propaganda imagery in an ironic way, or a satirical way, or in a way of making a pro-freedom political statement...

In the past two decades, thousands of Britons have moved to Spain in search of a place in the sun. But now property sales are plummeting, following the news that many of the expats' homes were built illegally, and demolition crews are moving in. Paul Hamilos reports ... LOTS OF GOOD STUFF ... After three decades of growth that made Spain one of Europe's strongest-growing economies, the wheels are starting to come loose. At the end of last year inflation reached its highest point in more than 10 years. Add falling house prices, a struggling stock market and rising unemployment...

Buy a diamond? Get a refund You may be owed a cut of a $295 million class-action settlement for gems purchased as long ago as 1994. Here's how figure out whether you're eligible and how to make a claim. advertisement Article Tools E-mail to a friendTools IndexPrint-friendly versionSite MapDiscuss in a Message BoardArticle IndexBy Marilyn Lewis How would you like a little refund on that diamond nose stud you bought in your wilder days? Or the diamond engagement ring you purchased for your sweetie when you settled down? If you bought a piece of diamond jewelry -- or jewelry with...

I am buying a very expensive though small piece of electronics (a HD camcorder that can fit in a purse or pocket). It's got a great price on Amazon, better than anywhere else. I was thinking that because it's so small and I have little kids, I might need some kind of extended warranty, which I usually never get nor need. Can I count on the manufacturer to provide good customer service for this product? Should I buy elsewhere in case something goes wrong or I get a lemon? Any suggestions from the techies?

Shot in Boston, with a cast of 42, it's a wonderful Kwanzaa December 16, 2007 While the Christmas film has been a staple of American cinema since George Bailey discovered it's a wonderful life, the African-American holiday of Kwanzaa, observed from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1 each year, has been around for only about 40 years, and the cinematic pickings are much slimmer. That's why a Boston-based independent filmmaker believes he's breaking new ground with his movie. "Kwanzaa with the Jones's" will have its premiere Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline. The film is the...

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – No one can say exactly how much money illegal immigrants spend on lottery tickets. However, the owner of a small store in Bensonhurst admitted to me that the biggest fans of the New York Lottery are Mexicans. “They earn next to nothing doing dirty work, yet they throw $20 to $30 a day to the wind,” he marveled. “Sometimes entire families play!” Vendors rarely ask their lottery customers for ID. They couldn’t care less about a person’s age, legal status, or knowledge of English. This amounts to legalized fraud because illegal immigrants who win large sums of...

House, Senate passage seem likely The careening vehicle that has been this legislative session's toll road overhaul appeared to pull into the garage about 4:35 p.m. Thursday. At that moment, Republican state Sen. Robert Nichols of Jacksonville, after spending several moments huddling on the floor with Sen. Tommy Williams, sponsor of Senate Bill 792, affixed his signature to a compromise version of the bill, and the two shook hands. "We've got a deal now," Williams, R-The Woodlands, said about an hour later. "This is really going to move transportation issues forward, particularly in large metropolitan areas." The deal was among...

LONDON: Lloyd's of London, the world's biggest insurance market, on Thursday reported a pretax profit of 3.66 billion pounds (€5.4 billion, US$7.2 billion) in 2006, a year of few global catastrophes. That reversed Lloyd's 2005 result of a loss of 103 million pounds (€152 million, US$202 million) because of hurricane damage claims. "During the year, we benefited from strong underlying conditions and an exceptionally low level of catastrophes," said Lord Levene, Lloyd's chairman. "However, it would be unrealistic to expect such a favorable claims experience this year." The 2005 season was the most destructive in recorded history, with 27 named...

Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday admitted he “really screwed up” by spending tax dollars on a leased Cadillac and high-end office furniture, but he strongly defended the hiring of a $72,000-a-year chief of staff for his wife. “Every governor has had staff to help support the work of the office, including the work of the first lady,” Patrick said during an impromptu press conference. “It’s official business.” However, a Patrick aide could recall only two events Diane Patrick has attended this year, one to promote early education initiatives in the State House and a second to appear at a reading event...

A man found dead on a Homewood street this morning was cut in half when he reached into a car and the driver took off, slamming him into a pole on Hamilton Avenue, police said Pittsburgh Police said the victim, who was identified as Antwon Williams, 45, was selling drugs to the driver of a blue Dodge Neon shortly after 6 a.m. Witnesses told police that the driver accepted crack cocaine but tried to drive away without paying. The seller then reached inside the driver's side window to try to put the car into park, but the driver drove off....

What do a gym membership, a bottle of prescription pills and a holiday gift card have in common? Each of them is a thing that is bought and then often goes unused. In their recent paper “Paying Not to Go to the Gym,” the economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ulrike Malmendier showed that people who buy an annual membership to a health club overestimate by more than 70 percent how much they’ll actually use it. Many people, therefore, would be better off buying monthly or daily passes. ...As for gift cards — well, let’s just say there is good reason that...

I've been playing bingo on-line at a popular bingo site and it appears that almost every game has the same 3-4 winners (not me) and jackpots are won over and over by the same players. Got to chatting on the bingo site and someone suggested that the company pre-determines the winners by customer ISP number. We figure the winners are those who may not play the most cards but make the most deposits. Does this sound plausible? Any software designers out there?

Cash-starved Americans, many of them serving in the U.S. military, are watching an increasing crackdown on one of their most frequent sources of last ditch credit - payday loans. Even Congress has clamped down on the practice, but a spokesman for the payday loan industry Thursday told Cybercast News Service that criticism of the loans is being led by "elitist" consumer groups whose members "never have to go paycheck to paycheck." Payday loans allow individuals to stay financially afloat between paychecks. They are short-term cash loans in which the borrower often hands over electronic access of their bank account to...

"New Mexico’s infatuation with costly rail projects will continue to burden the state’s economy with wasteful spending into the distant future. This reality was made clear earlier this year when Rep. Tom Davis (R., Va.) secured $1.5 billion in federal money for Washington’s Metro rail system, contingent on local governments raising taxes on their citizens to create a “dedicated revenue source” for that system." >Snip<

Microsoft's Zune Marketplace will sell individual songs for Windows PCs and Zune digital media players "through a system called Microsoft Points. The new Microsoft cash system will work by adding money to an account, as with a prepaid phone card. Points will then be deducted from the account with each purchase. A single song will cost 79 points, 'the equivalent of 99 cents,' according to Microsoft spokeswoman Kyrsa Dixon," Candace Lombardi reported in late September for CNET News. Lombardi reported, "The point system is already used in the Xbox Live Marketplace, and Microsoft plans to host other online stores where...

Top employees of a city-financed Bronx charity diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal expenses like home renovations, furniture and the purchase of a Volvo and a BMW, a city investigation has found. The widespread fraud in recent years at the charity, the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, which received $9 million a year in city financing to help children and the elderly, also included off-the-books bank accounts — created under the guise of supporting youth athletic programs — that were used to pay bonuses to the executive director and four other officials, according to the city’s Department...

Judge Sides With Original Supernova In 'Rock Star' Suit Ruling requires Tommy Lee's band to change name following show's finale. David has defeated Goliath. According to a Tuesday (September 12) ruling by San Diego Judge John Houston, the producers of CBS' "Rock Star" are going to have to come up with an alternate name for Supernova, the band made up of Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee, Voivod's Jason Newsted and former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. Last month, the original Supernova — an Orange County, California, punk trio — filed for a preliminary injunction in San Diego's U.S. District Court...

New Mexico governor and presumptive presidential candidate Bill Richardson recently joined the ranks of governors who have proposed significant changes to their state’s Medicaid systems. Starting with passage of Mitt Romney’s groundbreaking and controversial universal-coverage plan in April, states from West Virginia to Idaho and from Florida to Maine (to name just a few) are taking steps to improve care while cutting costs. Richardson, however, despite his national image as a “moderate,” has taken a different path, namely the path of least resistance. Rather than making tough decisions and prioritizing as most other states are doing, Richardson plans to leverage...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — A federal commission approved a final report on Thursday that urges a broad shake-up of American higher education. It calls for public universities to measure learning with standardized tests, federal monitoring of college quality and sweeping changes in financial aid. The panel also called on policy makers and leaders in higher education to find new ways to control costs, saying college tuition should grow no faster than median family income, although it opposed price controls. The report recommended bolstering Pell grants, the basic building block of federal student aid, by making the program cover a larger...

Cuban Communism: Fidel Castro's slide toward death's embrace is bringing closer the island-state's day of reckoning: Either it lives free or dies a tyranny. The U.S. must now push for freedom relentlessly. The ailing dictator will probably go out the way he shouldn't — in his bed. But the legacy he leaves just 90 miles from our shores is one of the worst in the world and should be destroyed. Contrary to the media's puerile awe at the 79-year-old Castro's significance — he's often reverently called "the longest-serving" Latin American ruler or "maverick leader" — he is one of the...

Recently, we met an engineer from Air Synergy Labs, Inc. who has invented and patented (U.S. and Canadian Patents) a simple device that may in fact help to increase the performance of most any internal combustion engine.  If that’s the case, then his invention (he calls it the VortexValve™) might provide us with a simple and easy way to save huge amounts of money on transportation costs (i.e., the amount of fuel we have to buy for our cars, trucks, buses, etc.).  The story behind this unique device and its almost serendipitous discovery is quite fascinating and one of these...

The documents seized in the FBI raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) remain unread by Justice Department investigators, pending a federal Appeals Court ruling scheduled for August 27. [snip] But we already know a bit about the charges and some of the alleged partners of Congressman Jefferson. Two people have pleaded guilty to bribing him.

/begin my translation N. Korea Holds onto  Chinese Trains Bringing Aids Japanese Media, "(N. Koreans) say that trains are part of the aid package." [2006-07-04] Outdated N. Korean trains N. Korea refuses to return (Chinese) trains which brought aid supplies from China, even after the supplies were unloaded, leaving Chinese authorities increasingly frustrated, it has been revealed. Quoting sources inside China, Jiji Press of Japan reported in its July 4th dispatch,  "China is sending materials and goods to N. Korea, but, in recent days, N. Korea frequently refuses to return these trains, raising frustration of Chinese authorities." According to Jiji, the sources speculated, "N....

Vietnamese police have foiled three Nigerians in their scams duping thousands of dollars out of Vietnamese women who lent them money to ostensibly buy chemicals to restore ‘blackened US banknotes’. A source said they had been deported from Vietnam The police refused to reveal their names or say whether the three cases were related, but they happened with different women earlier this year by different Nigerians with the same trick. In April, one Nigerian befriended a café owner in southern Vung Tau resort city and promised to give her a share in a restaurant he was about to open if...

This will be a busy week in the House -- Congress goes into summer recess Friday, but not before considering the Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 (SIRA). Never heard of SIRA? That’s the way Big Copyright and their lackey’s want it, and it's bad news for you. Simply put, SIRA fundamentally redefines copyright and fair use in the digital world. It would require all incidental copies of music to be licensed separately from the originating copy. Even copies of songs that are cached in your computer's memory or buffered over a network would need yet another license. Once again,...

GT500 will not be released until later this month, but dealers pre-selling cars on the Internet get high prices. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Ford hasn't yet announced the price of the 2007 Shelby Cobra GT500. But, whatever it is, buyers have already indicated a willingness to pay at least $20,000 more. The Shelby Cobra GT500 is a version of the popular Ford Mustang equipped with a 500-horsepower supercharged V-8 engine. The original Shelby GT500s, made in the late 1960s by race driver turned sports car maker Carroll Shelby, are now highly coveted collectibles that can sell for hundreds of thousands...

NEW YORK, May 18 (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is seeking damages totaling more than $1 billion as part of an arbitration claim against the Ecuadorean government for seizing its assets, a company spokesman said on Thursday. The U.S. oil producer has also terminated all local employees in Ecuador and is relocating its expatriate staff, the spokesman said.

Venezuela and Mexico are among the potential strategic partners for joint operations in the fields that used to be developed by oil corporation Oxy. The corporate agreement to drill oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon was made null and void, the Ecuadorian Government disclosed Tuesday. "There is the possibility of forming a strategic alliance with a state company, as set forth in the regulations," Ecuadorian Minister of Energy Iván Rodríguez said. Additionally, there is the possibility of "contracting directly a state company of a foreign country to reinforce technically Petroproducción. The subsidiary of state oil company Petroecuador will be responsible for...

Latin America: Ecuador's government deserves all the trouble it's got coming now that it's decided expropriation is the way to get rich. But the trouble won't come from the U.S. It's headed their way from Ecuadoreans....The loss of Ecuador's hard-won free-trade pact with the U.S., something it was on the razor's edge of signing, is virtually guaranteed. Ecuador also will probably lose all practical access to U.S. markets when its 2006 Andean trade preferences expire.Two free-trade-pact neighbors, Peru and Colombia, will gladly help themselves to Ecuador's market share in exports of flowers, shrimp and other regional specialties. About 60% of...

My advice: pay cash. Here's why--TWICE within the last 3 months (at different gas stations in the northeast--one in Westchester County, NY and one in Morris County, NJ) I was charged a second time on my credit card. The one in Westchester charged the 34 dollar fill-up twice and the Jersey one added a dollar as a separate charge to the gas charge (I imagine the dude was giving himself a tip). Has this ever happened to anyone else? Or was this a remarkable coinkydink? Probably also a coinkydink that neither of the gas pumpers was born in the USA......

Now you can see what gas prices are around the country at a glance. Areas are color coded according to their price for the average price for regular unleaded gasoline. gasbuddy *** TIP: Right click on the map for more information about each county(parrish/borough) or zip. ***

Hello all,I am writing a rare vanity and I hope it is in the correct forum. I need some information as I am not too swift on business law. I hope some freepers can help me. I went this evening to Billy Jeans, a resturant here in Gastonia, NC. It seems they charged my visa debit card more than the tab was. We were a party of four and my tab was for $54.93 but my online statement shows they charged me $65.92.The receipt that I signed said $54.93. On the line where it says "Tip" I wrote "On Table"...

Jefferson City, Missouri -- Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's Commissioner of Securities Matt Kitzi issued a consent order last week concerning a St. Louis business that claimed it could produce a car that runs on water. The order alleges that William P. Alexander and his company, Emerging Technologies Development Company, offered and sold unregistered investments in Emerging Technologies Investment Group LLC. In a July 2004 news release, the company claimed it would create several thousand jobs in St. Louis to produce a water-powered car that would likely make the need for gasoline obsolete in 100 days. However, the company admits...

Maryland lawmakers are forever trying to resolve the vexing issue of illegal aliens seeking driver's licenses, which would be almost funny if their moral flaccidity did not show how vulnerable we are to another terrorist strike. The obtuse thought process is hardly limited to Maryland's windbags. Nothing provokes doublespeak or total capitulation in a politician like the seemingly clear-cut issue of illegal aliens. They are here illegally, so send them back, right? That old-school thinking apparently has no place in these enlightened times of feeling pain and emoting on Oprah's couch. We are obligated to embrace the desperate plight of...

Hawaii residents paid more state taxes in 2004 than residents of any other state in the country... Hawaii residents paid an average of $3,050 per person in 2004, while Texans paid the least — an average of $1,368. Every state but one collected more taxes per person in 2004 than it did a decade earlier... State taxpayer burdens increased by an average of 41 percent from 1994 to 2004. Only Alaska saw the amount it collects per person decline. Even when the numbers are adjusted for inflation, the individual tax burdens increased in 43 states. Rising education and Medicaid costs...

Taxes were up in the past 10 years for Maryland and Virginia residents, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, disappointing both lawmakers and anti-tax advocates. The tax burden in Virginia increased by 55 percent in that period, with a per capita amount of $1,903 in 2004. In Maryland, the tax burden increased by 46 percent, with an individual tax burden of $2,214 in 2004. The District's tax statistics are computed with cities' and local governments' financial data, which won't be available until April, the Census Bureau said.

The D.C. government knocked down an apartment building in Southeast in 2002, and now it wants the building's owner to pay about $98,000 for it, with interest. But, owner Erika Brown objects because, her attorney says, city officials never told her that they were going to demolish the building she purchased from the city weeks before. Gary M. Sidell, an attorney for Miss Brown, calls the District's move to recoup demolition costs "theft by government." He also said that by charging an 18 percent annual interest on a demolition lien, D.C. officials are treating Miss Brown as "a profit center."

WASHINGTON — A bill for busing evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was $32 million more than it should have been, and the government paid it without question, the Transportation Department inspector general said Friday.

I put a $50 pre-order on an Xbox 360 in August 2005. The video game store employee (a walking commercial on why to go to college) promised a delivery date of November 23, 2005. Yesterday, the store left an auto mated message; "Microsoft is not going to deliver the quantity of Xboxes they promised. Your Xbox won't arrive until 2006." Unfortunately, my kids played the answering machine before I got home from work. It was a shock and disappointment for them, as several did not know I ordered it. I can only find mention on news of a delayed launch...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A Minneapolis school board member may owe the district more than $29,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums due a computer glitch, according to documents obtained by the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. Board member Audrey Johnson's unpaid premiums began adding up during the 2000-01 school year, when she made partial payments, according to a district memo written in May. In the past two school years, the amount jumped by about $20,000 when she was listed as paying nothing.

In the beginning, experts gave it a week. Two, tops. Now, a state Supreme Court justice finds himself out of a job, and other incumbents in Harrisburg are left sweating over their political futures because of what pundits are calling a "populist insurrection." The anti-pay-raise movement that many had dismissed early on as a passing thunderstorm is developing into a Category 5 hurricane that threatens to uproot incumbents across the state next year. "Rome is burning, and the empire is crumbling," said State Rep. Thomas C. Petrone (D., Allegheny), who took the raise but later donated it to charities, including...

The president's tax reform panel's report is due at the end of this month, but don't hold your breath if you were looking for the reform that is really needed. Preliminary signs are the panel will recommend relatively modest (but several desirable) changes to the federal tax system. For decades the present income tax system, with its tens of thousands of rules and regulations, has been widely recognized as so complex no one human, no matter how talented, can understand it.

As the controversy over a pay raise for Pennsylvania lawmakers continues, a public relations event at a Pittsburgh elementary school this week turned out worse than state House speaker John Perzel of Philadelphia could have pictured -- literally. At the school event, Speaker Perzel again tangled with reporters over the pay raise (see related story) -- prompting a blistering editorial in Friday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette saying the speaker’s “arrogance was on full display.” But to make matters worse, says Prof. Terry Madonna, political analyst and pollster at Franklin and Marshall College, a photograph (above right) published by another Pittsburgh newspaper, the...

Posted by Baja Cactus, owner of the Pemex station and motel in El Rosario. The Mexican government sets the price each month. As you all may already know, the last of every month, Pemex changes the fuel prices...usually only a couple of cents. So, here you go the prices for October 2005... Magna............$ 6.12 pesos per liter Premium..........$ 7.23 pesos per liter Diesel.............$ 5.06 pesos per liter These prices are in liters, and 1 gallon = 3.7854 liters. Today (october 4th) 1 dollar = $ 10.70 pesos (+/-) Using the previous information, this is what we have.... Magna............$ 2.165 dollars...

BATON ROUGE, La. More than six (m) million dollars has poured into Governor Kathleen Blanco's Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation in the past four weeks, but hurricane victims have yet to receive any of the money. The holdup? The governor hasn't appointed a committee to distribute the contributions. The foundation's Web site says the fund was established "to help provide immediate assistance." The governor's press secretary, Denise Bottcher, says the foundation actually is meant to meet more long-term needs. Organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army are providing day-to-day help. Bottcher says the foundation is designed to...

It's time for all investors, and opponents of government greed, to sign the "Say No To Income Trust Taxation" online petition. Please sign now online. It only takes a few seconds at: http://www.petitiononline.com/income/petition.htmlThis latest Liberal tax grab, by Ralph Goodale, has got to be stopped. Please let your voice be heard in opposition. It's time for the silent overtaxed majority to finally speak up.