Kevin Colby: News, culture, political blog

Interesting articles to read from Clark Howard’s website:

Outrage over government backing GM, Chrysler warranties

It’s now been almost one year ago to the day that Clark made some comments about Chrysler that provoked heated response.

In short, the consumer champ questioned the company’s viability (while expecting them to go bankrupt) and predicted that their warranties would be worthless back in April 2008.  Read the full story.

Cul-de-sac bans as a new money-saving measure for gov’t?

The state of Virginia is banning the building of new neighborhood developments with cul-de-sacs. North Carolina and parts of Oregon are also seeking to do the same, according to The Washington Post.  Read the full story.

REOs remain the good news in a down housing market

CLARKONOMICS: The news on the housing market continues to be bleak, bleak, bleak. In just one example, the latest numbers from the Case-Shiller index show that home values in Phoenix are down almost 50% from their peak in July 2006.   Read the full story.

An early look at the price of gas in summer 2009

Where will gas be as we begin slowly approaching the summer of 2009? $3/gallon? $4/gallon?! How about between $2.25 and $2.35! That’s the latest word from The Houston Chronicle, which closely follows the oil industry.  Read the full story.

The President’s budget highlights, released last week, took the ax to major subsidies to the oil and gas industry. Through the elimination of several tax breaks and royalty loopholes, the Administration tallied more than $30 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers. The budget proposed repealing and adjusting oil and gas giveaways that included longstanding subsidies such as the passive loss exemption for oil and gas properties, and the percentage depletion allowance for oil and natural gas and the expensing of tangible drilling costs.

Read more about these tax breaks and other oil and gas tax breaks in the Taxpayers for Common Sense oil and gas subsidy analysis.

Information obtained from Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Some interesting articles from Clark Howard’s website:

Money market funds bode well for future economic recovery

CLARKONOMICS: The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index has just hit an all-time low with a reading of 25. To give you some perspective, the optimal score would be 100 if people thought the economy was in tip-top shape.  Read the full story.

Why is gas going up as oil goes down?

Have you noticed that the price of a gallon of gas is going up while the price of a barrel of oil is going down?   Read the full story.

Technology brings about creative destruction for Ritz Cameras

You may have heard the news that Ritz Camera has filed for bankruptcy. As the nation’s largest retail photography chain, Ritz was in 40 of the 50 states operating under several different names.  Read the full story.

Some interesting articles to read:

Who is trying to increase the price tag of the economic stimulus bill? You guessed it .. lobbyists. Big surprise there.

Obama decided to take a break from the White House yesterday and read books to children at a local charter school. Charter school? Isn’t this going to torque the teacher’s unions a bit? Why not go to a regular government school where, after all, the kids likely can’t read the books on their own?

Apparently the $825 billion wasn’t enough for Democrats who wanted $25 billion more for highways, mass transit, and water projects. Luckily the Republicans were able to stop this one.

On February 11th, CEOs from banks that received bailout money will be appearing before Congress to explain how they spent the funds. This ought to be interesting.

Anyone want to take a wag at how many homeowners have taken advantage of slobbering Barney’s brainchild .. the Hope for Homeowners Act?

Tax incentives to buy a car as part of the stimulus? Well, not if you have a household income of over $250,000 a year.

Two car companies actually saw their sales increase in January. Any guesses?

Eric Holder says that he will prosecute Wall Street crimes but he isn’t planning any “witch hunts.”

Yesterday it was Bank of America in the news, now it is Wells Fargo that is catching flack for an upcoming casino junket in Las Vegas for its top mortgage officers. Companies aren’t allowed to reward accomplishment any more. That is so un-Democratic.

The new regulations on lead that are going into effect February 10th .. yeah, Congress probably didn’t think about the huge effect it is going to have on businesses (particularly small businesses) when it passed this doozy.

A rare piece of good news from this stimulus .. yesterday the Congress managed to strip Hollywood of its economic stimulus.  It has something to do with people making over $500,000 a year.

Did you know that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez sends 90,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba in exchange for health workers, sports trainers and .. wait for it.. zoo animals??

Speaking of Cuba and oil .. it plans to resume oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Cuba can do that. We can’t. We have Democrats. Cuba doesn’t.

Members of Congress are getting a bit antsy about the FBI’s decision to cut off relations with CAIR. What’s the problem with the FBI cutting off relations with a Hamas front group?

The city of Seattle thinks that now would be a great time to spend $400,000 of taxpayer money on a graffiti artist project.

In South Florida, hundreds of people waited in line to apply for a job as a firefighter.

Want to volunteer to pick up trash along the side of a highway? Yeah, not unless you have permission from the government.

Duncanville, Texas issued 45,000 red-light citations in 2008 .. in a city that only has a population of 38,500.

How much are the taxpayers in the UK paying to send their children to government schools for “free”?

All articles were obtained from boortz.com

Some interesting articles to read: