“...we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.”

Detroit needs a game changer. The 982 acre island of Belle Isle can be that game changer for Detroit. The book Belle Isle is about that vision.

The setting is Belle Isle, 30 years in the future. Twenty nine years prior (2014), Belle Isle was sold by the city of Detroit for $1 billion dollars to a group of investors who believed in individual freedom, liberty and free markets.

They formed their own city-state, with innovative systems of government, taxation, labor and money. People soon came from all over the world to be part of this culture of unlimited opportunity. Belle Isle became the “Midwest Tiger,” rivaling Singapore as an economic miracle. Although numbering only 35,000 citizens, it generated billions of dollars in desperately needed economic growth and became a social laboratory for the western world.

Credit Cards > Credit Card News > New law bans card payment allocation trickery
New law bans card payment allocation trickery
Until then, use these strategies to cut down debt
By Amy Buttell Crane

If you use your credit cards for balance transfers or cash advances in addition to making purchases, your credit card payments will soon go further, starting in February 2010.

A single credit card can have multiple balances and interest rates -- one rate for purchases, another for balance transfers, yet another for cash advances -- and currently, the credit card company allocates payments as it sees fit. Not surprisingly, credit card companies allocate payments in the most profitable fashion, applying payments first to the balance with the lowest interest rate. That practice lets the high-rate balances linger longer, accumulating interest charges.

Federal law changes payment allocation
That's about to change. A federal credit card reform law enacted in May 2009 requires that credit card companies must apply your entire payment, minus the required minimum payment amount, to the highest interest rate balance on your card. That requirement takes effect Feb. 22, 2010.

This means that, provided you pay more than the minimum payment, you'll be able to pay off your higher interest rate balances faster, lowering your interest payments and paying off your entire bill faster. For example, transferring a balance to a card with low or zero percent interest introductory rate will make more sense under the new rules because your payments will go to pay off higher rate balances rather than the lower or zero rate balances that they went to in the past.

"This will do a lot to help consumers," says Lauren Zeichner Bowne, a staff attorney with Consumers Union, a nonprofit consumer rights advocacy group. "Consumers will be able to really take advantage of promotional rates and manage their finances better because their payments, outside of the minimum payment, will go to their higher rate balances."

A former top Energy Department official has taken a position on the board of a company that received millions in taxpayer money from the department through a stimulus program that has come under criticism from Congress and independent watchdogs.

...


Hurlbut marks a high profile addition to a roster of political connections that helped ECOtality secure more than $100 million in taxpayer financing for its electric vehicle charging stations.

ECOtality secured a $99.8 million award in 2009 to install nearly 15,000 electric vehicle chargers throughout the country. The contract was integral to the president's stated goal of getting a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.