From Denver’s KUSA Television:

Credit card interest rate soars to 69 percent

By Jeffrey Wolf and Heidi McGuire

CENTENNIAL – Helen Orr and her husband say they would take back all the upgrades they did to their home to avoid the bind they are in now.

“If I could go back and undo everything I did, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Orr said.

The couple took advantage of a Home Depot credit card offer: six months with no payments and no interest. So they used the card to pay for some of the work.

“Once the kitchen looked better, we wanted other things to look better. We were real handy, do-it-yourselfers and did all the work ourselves,” Orr said.

After paying the first promotional balance, they bought more. But when the second promotional offer ended on their new shingles, they didn’t have the money to pay for the entire balance and they were late on their payment.

“I was shocked. I didn’t think it could go that high,” said Orr.

In small print on their January bill, the interest rate read 69.33 percent.

“[If it was] 35 percent I would have, you know, just maybe shed a tear and paid as much as I could. But 69 percent is unreal,” Orr said.

“The credit card company has the right to do that and it’s in the contract,” said George Shoemaker with Consumer Credit Counseling Services.

He says while he’s never seen an interest rate that high, defaulting on a promotional deal can result in higher rates.

“The moment that error or miscue happens, one huge interest rate comes about,” Shoemaker said.

Home Depot says if a cardholder isn’t able to pay the promotional balance in time, then the accumulated interest can make the interest rate look extremely high. However, the cardholder’s rate never changes from what it is in their agreement.

The bottom line, says Shoemaker, if you plan on taking advantage of a credit card promotion, make sure you can pay it off in the time allotted. …

http://www.9news.com/news/arti.....;catid=188

For those who don’t know, for promotional rates like this the documentation clearly states that you make no payments and pay no interest for six months.

But if you fail to pay within that six months, you will owe all accumulated interest in addition to the principal; from the terms and conditions for the credit card in question:

FINANCE CHARGES accrue from the date of purchase at the regular purchase rate in effect from time to time and all accrued FINANCE CHARGES will be added to your Account for the entire promotional period if qualifying purchases (including premiums for optional credit insurance) are not paid in full before the end of the promotional period or if you fail to make any required payment on your Account when due. See below for more details.

I’m sure some court will rule that this couple was “obviously taken advantage of” and Home Depot will be pressured to just “write off” the interest.

How shocking.

From the AP:

Springsteen calls Wal-Mart deal a mistake

NEW YORK (AP) – The Boss is owning up to a mistake.

In an interview with Sunday’s New York Times, Bruce Springsteen says he shouldn’t have made a deal with Wal-Mart.

This month, the store started exclusively selling a Springsteen greatest hits CD.

Some fans were critical because Springsteen has been a longtime supporter of worker’s rights, and Wal-Mart has faced criticism for its labor practices.

Springsteen told the Times that his team didn’t vet the issue as closely as he should have, and that he “dropped the ball on it.”

Springsteen went on to say: “It was a mistake. Our batting average is usually very good, but we missed that one. Fans will call you on that stuff, as it should be.”

Springsteen released his new CD “Working on a Dream” this week and is performing the halftime show at the Super Bowl.

http://www.9news.com/life/ente.....;catid=151

Hey, I’m sure if he returns any money Wal-Mart paid him, they’d be more than happy to fix his “mistake.”

From a pleased AP:

Cortez man accused of Obama death threat held without bail

DURANGO — A Colorado man accused of threatening to kill President Barack Obama and blow up a suburban Minneapolis mall has been ordered held without bail until his next court appearance.

Twenty-year-old Timothy Ryan Gutierrez of Cortez will be held at least until Tuesday, when he faces a hearing in federal court on charges of transmitting threats and falsely threatening to use explosives.

A judge formally advised Gutierrez of the charges on Friday and assigned him an attorney. The attorney, Michael Goldman, said he didn’t want anybody to rush to judgment. Gutierrez wasn’t arrested the day FBI agents questioned him, and he was at his house Thursday when prosecutors announced his indictment but wasn’t arrested there.

Gutierrez turned himself in at the FBI’s office in Durango.

“These are all question that we all have that might suggest that there are mitigating circumstances,” Goldman said.

Before turning himself in, Gutierrez told the Cortez Journal the threats were a prank.

A grand jury indictment alleges Gutierrez sent the FBI two e-mails on Jan. 12 threatening to assassinate Obama and blow up the Mall of America.

http://www.rockymountainnews.c.....eld-witho/

Yet were the man Muslim and/or had he threatened Bush or to blow up the Mall of America as a “protest against America’s consumerism” liberal lawyers would be falling over themselves to prove how he had “no actual means of carrying out his threat.”

From the AP:

Make that 14: Octuplet mom already had 6 kids

By Thomas Watkins and Lauran Neergaard

WHITTIER, Calif. (AP) — How in the world does a woman with six children get a fertility doctor to help her have more – eight more?

An ethical debate erupted Friday after it was learned that the Southern California woman who gave birth to octuplets this week had six children already.

Large multiple births “are presented on TV shows as a ‘Brady Bunch’ moment. They’re not,” fumed Arthur Caplan, bioethics chairman at the University of Pennsylvania. He noted the serious and sometimes lethal complications and crushing medical costs that often come with high-multiple births.

But Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, who has fertility clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York, countered: “Who am I to say that six is the limit? There are people who like to have big families.”

Kaiser Permanente announced the mega-delivery Monday in Bellflower, with delighted doctors saying they had initially expected seven babies and were surprised when the cesarean section yielded an eighth.

Multiple births this big are considered impossible without fertility treatment, but the doctors who delivered the babies would not say whether the 33-year-old woman had used fertility drugs or had embryos implanted in her womb.

However, the children’s grandmother, Angela Suleman, told The Associated Press her daughter resorted to in vitro fertilization because “her fallopian tubes are plugged up” and she had trouble conceiving.

Doctors said the woman rejected an offer from doctors to abort some of the embryos.

More common among younger women is the use of fertility drugs that stimulate egg production; doctors are supposed to monitor budding eggs and stop the drugs if too many develop.

Some medical experts were disturbed to hear that the woman was offered fertility treatment, and troubled by the possibility that she was implanted with so many embryos.

Dr. David Adamson, former president of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, said he was bracing for some backlash against his specialty.

In 30 years of practice, “I have never provided fertility treatment to a woman with six children,” or ever heard of a similar case, said Adamson, director of Fertility Physicians of Northern California.

Women seeking fertility treatment are routinely asked to give a detailed history of prior pregnancies and births, and “it’s a very realistic question to ask about someone who has six children: How does this fit into the concept of requiring fertility treatment?” Adamson said.

The woman’s fertility doctor has not been identified. The hospital has not released the mother’s name, citing her desire for privacy. Suleman said her daughter is not married. It was not clear who the father of the babies is. Her six other children range in age from 2 to 7.

Records show that she held a psychiatric technician’s license from 1997 to 2002. It was unclear whether she is now employed. …

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OCTUPLETS

What remains to be seen is if this statement holds true:

Jessica Zepeda, who identified herself as a friend of the mother, said the woman and family would have enough money to raise 14 children. “She is not on welfare,” Zepeda said. “She is an awesome mom, and will be able to take care of her babies.”

Ward Churchill and Bill Owens have frosty encounter

By Lynn Bartels

Former Gov. Bill Owens on Friday compared onetime CU professor Ward Churchill to a famous movie maker — and it wasn’t a compliment.

“In retirement, he’s starting to look a lot like Michael Moore,” Owens said of the overweight and frumpy director of Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.

Churchill, fired by CU in 2007, is suing to get his job back.

Owens and others, including University of Colorado regents, are being deposed as part of the trial, scheduled to start March 9 in Denver District Court.

Owens declined to discuss in detail what kinds of questions he was asked and what answers he gave, but Owens wasn’t shy about expressing his opinion of Churchill.

“Ward Churchill is a plagiarist and a fraud and, regrettably, we continue to pay for his deception.”

Churchill could not be reached for comment.

The deposition took place in the office of Churchill’s attorney, David Lane. Owens, who left office in January 2007 and now is a businessman, was represented by the attorney general’s office.

For his part Friday, Churchill refused to shake Owens’ hand.

So Owens took a verbal jab: “I said, ‘Come on, you’re a big guy.’”

Lane said later: “I hope the governor’s feelings weren’t too hurt.”

The Churchill saga began in 2005, when an earlier essay he wrote — saying the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were a response to a long history of U.S. abuses — came to the public’s attention.

Churchill called the World Trade Center victims “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who played a key role in the Holocaust.

The essay ignited a firestorm of controversy, and Owens was among those who called on the CU president to fire Churchill

“No one wants to infringe on Mr. Churchill’s right to express himself,” Owens said at the time. “But we are not compelled to accept his pro-terrorist views at state taxpayer subsidy nor under the banner of the University of Colorado.”

The controversy resulted in a deeper look at Churchill’s background. A faculty committee investigated, and the regents fired him, citing alleged fabrications, plagiarism and lies about historical facts in his academic work.

Churchill and Lane claimed the firing was in retaliation for exercising his constitutional right to free speech.

“I very directly told David Lane that I also had a First Amendment right to speak on the subject, and I reflected what a vast majority of Coloradans were saying,” Owens said.

“Unfortunately for David Lane, his client had a clear pattern of lying for virtually his entire academic career. That’s why he was fired.

“I believe the jury will reject Churchill’s (claims.)”

Lane thinks his client will win, but if he loses, Lane said, at least Churchill will have been judged impartially.

“This is the first fair forum that we will have appeared before. Everything else has been stacked by CU,” Lane said. “Bill Owens has been a staunch opponent of Ward Churchill forever, and I’m looking forward to a jury of citizens (reviewing the case.)”

Churchill has said in earlier interviews that he wants university officials “to acknowledge that their accusations of research misconduct are fabrications.”

http://www.rockymountainnews.c.....es-unflat/

Of course, under Colorado’s current Democratic Governor, Churchill likely would have been given a State medal instead.

State senator sought ticket’s dismissal

By Daniel Bice

State senators receive their share of perks and privileges.

But a broad exemption from traffic citations isn’t one of them.

Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn decided Thursday to reinstate a traffic ticket against state Sen. Lena Taylor after the Milwaukee Democrat had successfully lobbied lower-ranking officials to drop it.

“Citation L172194-1 will be reissued to the Senator,” Flynn said in a statement. “Those persons issued citations may pursue all the legal remedies available to them to contest the citation.”

Taylor, who ran unsuccessfully for county executive last year, didn’t return calls – but she issued a statement that said she’d accepted the citation and had paid it.

The twice-elected senator was pulled over during rush hour last Friday evening after two cops said they witnessed her crossing the center line and driving southbound in the northbound lane of N. 35th St. near W. State St.

Here is what Officer Seann Cleveland wrote in abbreviated fashion on the ticket:

“We both observed the listed veh cross to the left of the double solid yellow line and into the N/B lane. The veh continue driving S/B passing several vehicles so she could make a left hand turn into the drive way of 1018 N. 35th St. It should be noted this was just north of W. State St., which is a very busy intersection.”

Cleveland described Taylor as “very irate” after she was stopped.

“(Taylor) stated . . . we ’shouldn’t waste our energy for the stop and she can’t be expected to wait for the light,’ ” the officer wrote. “Taylor was very argumentative and appeared her intent was to provoke an argument w/ us officers.”

If you hadn’t gotten the picture already, Cleveland wrote that the 42-year-old pol was “very argumentative” once again after she received the ticket for driving on the wrong side of the center line. The ticket was for $121.60 and could count four points on her license.

Taylor, a practicing attorney, had an earlier run-in with cops on the Saturday before election day in November. In that case, she was detained by officers and advised about the state electioneering laws but not charged or ticketed.

This time, it’s not clear what exactly happened after she was pulled over and cited.

Asked if the lawmaker called or visited the Milwaukee Police Department, spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz directed the question to Taylor.

But sources within the department said she did contact officials at the 3rd District headquarters to complain about the citation.

Not long after, Acting Capt. Edith Hudson rescinded Taylor’s ticket.

All of this happened while Flynn was busy in Washington, D.C., this week. No Quarter contacted his office Thursday about the decision to drop Taylor’s ticket.

In response, Flynn declined an interview request but issued a statement late Thursday.

In it, he said he first learned of the situation when notified by Assistant Chief Gregory Habeck. Hudson had given Habeck a report detailing her decision to let Taylor off the hook.

The assistant chief reviewed the report and concluded that Hudson’s action “did not appear to be consistent with department policy,” the statement said. After reading her report and department policy, the statement continued, “the Chief concurred with Assistant Chief Habeck’s assessment.”

Flynn did not say specifically how Hudson erred. Her report was not made available.

What is clear is that the acting captain won’t be taken to the woodshed.

“No discipline is contemplated against Acting Captain Hudson,” Flynn wrote. “It was she who brought the matter to our attention in the first place.

“She has been counseled regarding the appropriate application of the general order, which will be reissued to all Milwaukee Police personnel.”

http://www.jsonline.com/watchd.....62682.html

The most important quote here is the Democrat’s statement after being pulled over:

we ’shouldn’t waste our energy for the stop and she can’t be expected to wait for the light

Sums up most elected Democrats’ attitudes, doesn’t it?

Bonuses no luxury for some Wall Street workers

By Madlen Read and Michael Liedtke

NEW YORK (AP) — To President Barack Obama, Wall Street’s $18.4 billion in bonuses is “shameful.” To thousands of bank employees who don’t sit in corner offices, that money helps pay the bills. Outrage over the bonuses reached as high as the White House this week following news that financial firms were rewarding employees even as they were being bailed out with billions of taxpayer dollars. The feelings are understandable: The average Wall Street bonus of $112,000 was about twice the average American’s income.

But the issue is a complicated one.

While Wall Street investment banks and other financial firms make headlines for the millions paid out to certain executives, more modest bonuses go to workers from human resources representatives to secretaries as well as employees who actually made money for their companies last year.

Jason Weisberg, vice president of the Wall Street brokerage Seaport Securities, said bank employees count on performance bonuses like salesmen count on commissions.

“What are you supposed to pay them?” Weisberg asked. “Or are you not supposed to pay them? And if you don’t pay them, how do you expect that employee to stay employed at that company?”

A product manager at one investment bank said she is cutting corners after her 2008 bonus fell by 38 percent, even though her job performance exceeded expectations and her division posted a profit. To save money, she’s raising the deductible on her health insurance to lower the premium, shopping around for less expensive car insurance and cutting back on small luxuries.

“My bills haven’t gone down by 40 percent,” said the worker, who isn’t being named because talking to the media is against her employer’s rules.

Many argue that anyone who works at a bank right now should feel lucky to be employed – after all, hundreds of thousands of their colleagues have been shown the door over the past year.

Most compensation experts say bonuses will be much lower in the coming years, but that some sort of bonus system should stay in place at these institutions to separate the strong performers from the laggards.

Part of the problem with bonuses for 2008 stem from many of them being contractually guaranteed before the banks’ troubles escalated.

The governments “Troubled Assets Relief Program,” or TARP, required compensation for senior executives to be subject to “clawbacks” – where the companies would recoup pay if it was based on inaccurate information, or if the employee’s actions hurt the company. But it did not give the government authority to scrap bonus contracts.

Consultant Vicki Elliott said she expects the banks will make fewer guarantees going forward. Elliott leads the global financial services industry consulting group at the business consulting firm Mercer, a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Cos.

“The landscape is changing,” she said.

If it were up to James Reda, a compensation consultant who has testified on Capitol Hill, bonuses would not be cut to zero, but instead brought down to about $8 billion or $9 billion. That would be about half of the 2008 Wall Street bonus pool and about a quarter of what it was in 2007. The base salaries of most secretaries and information technology workers on Wall Street are comparable to other industries, anyway, he said.

The $18.4 billion doled out in Wall Street bonuses last year was down 44 percent from the previous year. Per person, the average bonus dropped 36.7 percent to $112,000. (It’s a smaller drop because the investment banks laid off so many workers last year.)

All the very top executives at the major banks – including Citigroup, AIG, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch – gave up their bonuses.

And many major banks have been modifying their bonus policies. Both Morgan Stanley and Citigroup said late last year they plan to tie compensation for employees eligible for bonuses more closely to performance, and allow for clawbacks. Europe’s UBS AG also added a clawback provision.

Managers argue that while Main Street views bonuses as extra money, the annual incentive often represents a big chunk of compensation for most Wall Street workers. That means banks would risk of losing their smartest and most productive employees if the bonuses were trimmed too dramatically.

Executive compensation consultant Steven Hall said he knows of at least one firm, which he wouldn’t name, that already has drawn up a list of potential employees to poach if they are unhappy with their bonuses.

Although many people might say good riddance to any defector against this backdrop, Hall argues taxpayers should want banks to retain the cream of the crop given that the federal government has become a shareholder in so many banks.

“The reality is good people will always be able to get a job someplace else if they are unhappy,” Hall said. “So do you want to own stock in a company that is filled with people who can’t get a job anywhere else?” …

http://customwire.ap.org/dynam.....KS_BONUSES

This article almost fairly points out that at most banks, salaries are set somewhat low with bonuses usually making up the balance of worker’s compensation.

Remember when Chevy Chase gives his warm, heartfelt speech about his Christmas bonus in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation?

Obama and the Democrats want to make sure those aren’t allowed to be paid, regardless of whether rank-and-file employees expect them as part of their compensation package.

From the (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal

University of Wisconsin-Madison wants $450 million for construction projects

UW-Madison is seeking state approval for $450 million in building projects, although none is as big as the $150 million Institutes for Discovery going up along University Avenue.

By Deborah Ziff

From roomier cattle stalls to a new hockey rink, UW-Madison is seeking the state’s approval to build more than $450 million in projects.

About $150 million of the construction projects will require state funding. The others would be built with gifts or grants, or by borrowing the money and paying it back with fees from students.

The chances of the facilities being included in the next two-year state budget remains to be seen, especially with the state facing a projected $5.7 billion budget deficit.

But they could hinge on how much money the state gets in a federal stimulus package. In a bill that passed the House this week, Wisconsin would get an estimated $116 million in money for higher education building projects. That bill needs to be reconciled with a Senate bill, still under consideration.

“The university, they have illusions of a spending frenzy here,” said Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, who sits on the Building Commission. “There’s just not enough dollars in these tough economic conditions. That could change if the federal stimulus package earmarks dollars for higher education buildings.”

Kaufert said the state “can’t afford it all” and will need to prioritize top projects.

“We have got to start putting the credit card away,” he said. “On the other hand, I understand we can’t stand still either. A lot of these buildings were built in the ’50s and ’60s. It may be time to start upgrading.”

The UW-Madison campus planning committee, which gets dozens of requests for facilities projects each year, picked UW-Madison’s most pressing projects for state approval and will be presenting them before the Faculty Senate on Monday as part of its annual report.

At the top of the list is purchasing the office building at 21 N. Park St., which sits on the corner of Park and Regent streets and houses UW-Madison’s welcome center.

The university spends about $2.8 million a year to rent the office building, and the window to purchase the building for $38.5 million closes in July 2010. The next opportunity to purchase it, at an escalated price, would be in 2012.

One of the most expensive budget requests is to build the second tower of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research, envisioned as a three-tower complex. The first opened this year on the west end of campus. The second tower would modernize research space and centralize the entire School of Medicine and Public Health. It would cost $135 million, with half paid through gift funds and half by the state.

Many of the projects sought by UW-Madison do not require any state funding: a new practice hockey rink for the men’s team, a space science engineering museum, a new home for Tandem Press, and redevelopment of Gordon Commons, a dining hall that serves the southeast dorms. …

http://www.madison.com/wsj/topstories/435814

That “financial stimulus” going to “education?”

Right here for “roomier cattle stalls.”

Remember, this is what schools actually use federal dollars for, the ones they claim will “shortchange education” if they don’t receive.

Can anybody (this means you S.G…lol) give us a clear picture as to where he stands on the issues?
Especiallly his social policies!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/republicans

“Some of the Most Historic Shirts Money Can Buy”

Earlier this week, WebNewser wrote about ABC and NBC releasing Inauguration-related DVDs in March.

Now CNN.com is getting in the Inauguration memorabilia game, with an entire section of CNN.com headline t-shirts about the event. The tagline: “Some of the most historic shirts money can buy.”. . .

[The shirt says: Obama raises a hand, lifts a nation.
-I just saw it on CNN.com]

http://tinyurl.com/dnfvf3

I keep wondering how many times No has to be said before it is No – these liberals just don’t learn well at all. No means No – in all cases applicable.

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jan 29, 1:36 pm ET

WASHINGTON – A small but growing number of community banks are backing out of the government’s bailout, which they see as fraught with hidden strings and government interference.

About 20 banks so far that applied for or had been approved to receive about $1 billion combined in taxpayer money have reversed course in the past month and refused to take the money. That’s just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars the government already has spent, but it shows that taxpayers aren’t the only ones anxious about the financial bailout.

“The government’s going to own a good portion of these banks,” said David Heintzman, president of Stock Yards Bank & Trust in Louisville, Ky. The bank recently turned down $43 million in approved bailout money.

After Congress approved the $700 billion bailout in October, the government gave banks only a few weeks to decide whether they wanted to take part in the government investment program. Many applied to get a foot in the door, in case predictions of an economic collapse came true….

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....l4eCQDW7oF

It’s like watching Bob Nardelli talk about how he’s somehow going to turn around Chrysler after having all but destroyed once successful Home Depot first.

What’s next? Aren’t there any former Krispy Kreme execs the Republicans could recruit?

A Fiorina run would be like this past Presidential election – a choice between one candidate who is pure philosophical evil and one who’s completely incompetent.

(Come to think of it, many who voted for Obama likely saw their choices the same way from the other side of the political fence.)