| Shootings show need for sensible gun control laws
Now I do think some heavy weapons should be outlawed for instance men should not be able to ever get weapons like ak47's or a 50 cal sniper. Honestly we don't need these weapons in the hands of civilians and i'm not saying they are. just as an example weapons of that caliber don't need to be in our control. " .
Cross-border shopping: price comparisons
A fully loaded 2008 Buick Enclave CXL appears to cost before taxes around $45,000 in US and in Canada $59,000. It is hard to believe this whopping 31% difference is nothing but a con job rather than due to the exchange rate. The class action deserves success. .
Police face big change in Phila.
Ramsey has ordered his top commanders, including some district captains, to begin attending 90-minute meetings each morning to review the previous night's crime trends. "We'll begin Monday meeting with the top command - senior commanders, deputy commissioners - on a daily basis to kind of give everybody a broader view of what's going on in the city, not just their little piece of it," Ramsey said in an interview Friday in his office, where the bookcases were bare but his desk was already cluttered with reports. As word spread last week of the morning meetings, some commanders privately groaned about the new workload. The meetings, first slated to begin at 7:30 a.m., were rescheduled to start an hour later to accommodate the commanders. Most of the initial changes in the department's operations last week were largely cosmetic: Mayor Nutter declared a symbolic "crime emergency" after he was sworn in Monday, and the commissioner vowed to increase the department's visibility by wearing a uniform and driving a marked squad car himself.
Subprime Debacle Traps Even Very Credit-Worthy
One common assumption about the subprime mortgage crisis is that it revolves around borrowers with sketchy credit who couldn't have bought a home without paying punitively high interest rates. But it turns out that plenty of people with seemingly good credit are also caught in the subprime trap. An analysis for The Wall Street Journal of more than $2.5 trillion in subprime loans made since 2000 shows that as the number of subprime loans mushroomed, an increasing proportion of them went to people with credit scores high enough to often qualify for conventional loans with far better terms. In 2005, the peak year of the subprime boom, the study says that borrowers with such credit scores got more than half -- 55% -- of all subprime mortgages that were ultimately packaged into securities for sale to investors, as most subprime loans are.
Short session, basic issues
OLYMPIA � After a banner year in which they broke deadlocks on long-stalled bills, launched new programs and enjoyed a treasury flush with cash, Statehouse Democrats are looking at a more modest 2008 legislative session when it opens Monday. "I think the goal will be to make it as boring as possible," state Rep. Bill Fromhold, D-Vancouver, joked to a crowded Greater Spokane Inc. legislative forum last month. "And we're pretty good at that." After all, it's a short-session year: just 60 days. It's also an off year between two-year budget cycles, so there's not a lot of money to fight over. .
|
