City Condems House Because Woman Was Trying to Save Money By Using Solar Panels and Batteries Instead of Utility Power
January 28th, 2010Via: Arizona Republic:
An Avondale woman who spent 11 days sleeping in her car said the city treated her unfairly when her home was condemned in December for lack of electricity.
But city officials said Christine Stevens violated building codes, a health and safety concern because Avondale homes are required to have heating systems and a running refrigerator.
Stevens, 47, was trying to make ends meet by powering her home with solar panels and batteries for several months before Avondale code enforcement officials visited her on Dec. 10.
“We explained to her that the panels weren’t enough to sustain a quality of life there,” said Pam Altounian, code enforcement manager for Avondale.
Stevens said she was not given adequate notice before officials gave her 24 hours to contact Arizona Public Service Co. to reconnect electricity or her home would be condemned.
Avondale said a code enforcement officer, Carlena Jones, inspected the property in the 2300 block of North 123rd Lane on Oct. 21 and Nov. 4 and left a notice of violation hanging on the door. According to case reports, both notices went unanswered.
U.S. Babies Mysteriously Shrinking
January 28th, 2010I’ve been seeing this article around but avoiding dealing with it because I just blow my stack when it comes to stuff like this. I’m posting it so people will stop submitting this.
I guess it gives me an excuse to post a link to the Weston A. Price Foundation again.
Cutting to the chase, with regard to birth weight, see the sections on cod liver oil and folate in Vitamins for Fetal Development: Conception to Birth by Chris Masterjohn.
Via: New Scientist:
Birthweights in the US are falling but no one knows why, according to a study of 36.8 million infants born between 1990 and 2005.
A 52-gram drop in the weight of full-term singletons – from an average of 3.441 to 3.389 kilograms – has left Emily Oken’s team at Harvard Medical School scratching their heads. It can’t be accounted for by an increase in caesarean sections or induced labours, which shorten gestation. What’s more, women in the US now smoke less and gain more weight during pregnancy, which should make babies heavier. Oken suggests that unmeasured factors, such as diet or exercise, could explain why babies are being born lighter.
“For your average baby, 50 grams probably makes no difference at all,” she stresses. But those born substantially lighter could be at increased risk of heart disease and diabetes later in life.
Journal reference: Obstetrics & Gynecology, DOI: 10.1097/aog.0b013e3181cbd5f5
Finally, We Have Chickens
January 28th, 2010Posts on Farmlet have become so rare that I think it’s worth mentioning this one here.
Via: Farmlet:
We recently bought eighteen two-day-old Barred Rock chicks. They were unsexed, so we will probably wind up with something like half of them turning out to be roosters.
Chickens, used properly, are outstanding creatures for permaculture systems. In addition to devastating the dreaded and fast moving kikuyu grass and other weeds that we have here, the chickens will provide us with manure for fertilizer, eggs and meat. They’re also a source of constant entertainment for young Owen and someone like me who has never kept chickens before.
S&P Issues a Warning on Japan’s Credit Rating
January 27th, 2010Via: Daily Finance:
Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s says it may downgrade Japan’s current AA sovereign debt rating by one “notch,” which would bring it to AA-. That’s particularly noteworthy because Japan is either the world’s No. 2 or No. 3 economy by GDP, virtually tied with China. S&P has officially changed its outlook on Japan’s debt from stable to negative.
In a statement S&P says an actual rating downgrade could occur “if economic data remain weak and measures to boost medium-term growth are not forthcoming, given the country’s high government debt burden and its weak demographic profile.” Japan’s problems don’t begin to approach those of Greece and Ireland, where national solvency is an issue. It does, however, point to the extent to which the debt of the world’s largest and most developed economies are under scrutiny.
S&P and other credit rating agencies have recently expressed their concerns about U.S. and U.K. sovereign debt, however without directly threatening changes in their rating status.
Toyota Halts U.S. Sales in Massive Recall of Eight Models with Sticking Accelerator Pedals
January 27th, 2010Via: New York Daily News:
In a massive and unprecedented move, Toyota halted U.S. sales of eight models, including the best-selling Camry, with potentially faulty gas pedals.
“This action is necessary until a remedy is finalized,” Bob Carter, Toyota’s group vice president and general manager, told the Associated Press.
The models affected by the “stop sale” were among the 2.3 million recalled last week due to faulty accelerators that could get stuck, causing rapid acceleration. This is the second big recall for Toyota in the U.S. in the past four months.
Verizon to Cut 13,000 Jobs
January 27th, 2010Via: Bloomberg:
Verizon Communications Inc., coping with subscriber losses at its fixed-line phone business, plans to cut about 13,000 jobs at the division this year after posting fourth-quarter revenue that missed analysts’ estimates.
The cuts will follow reductions of a similar size last year, Chief Financial Officer John Killian said on a conference call today. This year’s eliminations equal to 11 percent of the staff at the unit, which had about 117,000 workers at year-end.
28% of Orlando-Area Housing Units Vacant
January 27th, 2010Via: Orlando Sentinel:
Orlando had more vacant houses, condos and apartments than any other major U.S. city during the third quarter, driving down rents and sparking landlord concessions just five years after finding an apartment was virtually impossible.
The four-county metro area had a vacancy rate of 28 percent for all housing in the late summer months of 2009, according to the newest U.S. census information. Orlando’s vacancies surpassed those of any of the other top 75 metropolitan areas in the country.
The information, drawn from a sampling with a 7 percent margin of error, is yet another indicator of the magnitude of the housing slump in this market. The Orando area has the nation’s 11th-highest foreclosure rate and what may be the country’s largest drop in condo prices.
The abundance of vacant foreclosures and condominiums for rent has created a new market for tenants, driving the vacancy rate at established apartment complexes to 12 percent — its highest level in decades.
Local experts talk of rent reductions and unprecedented concessions, with some landlords offering months of free rent. Apartment-complex managers who would have shunned foreclosure victims in the past are now more willing to overlook that transgression on applicants’ credit histories. Still others are offering prospective tenants deals on parking and storage.
Mind Control Cults
January 27th, 2010Research Credit: LP
Better Off Deadbeat: People Get Into Debt, Learn the Law, Become “Credit Terrorists”
January 27th, 2010Via: Dallas Observer:
While most Americans with unpaid bills dread the collector’s call, Cunningham sees them as lucrative opportunities. Many collection and credit card companies, intentionally or not, violate little-known consumer rights laws, and Cunningham’s favorite pastime is catching them doing so and then suing them. In fact, it’s a profitable side job.
Call it ironic, but the only house on the block that appears to be the foreclosed end to some sad financial story is in fact the home of one of the debt collection industry’s emerging and persistent threats. Cunningham calls himself a private attorney general—someone who files private lawsuits in the public interest. Debt collectors call him a credit terrorist.
Patrick Lunsford, who edits InsideARM, a trade magazine for the debt collection industry, knows the term. “There is a sub-group out there that does actually advise people on how to bait [collectors],” he says. “That’s something that really gets under the skin of, well, obviously, collectors.”
Cunningham beats the debt collectors at their own game. He turns their money-making practice into a financial liability. He is a regular guy who has become a radical enemy of the banking system.
Research Credit: JH
Four Charged in Phone Scheme at Senator Landrieu’s Office
January 27th, 2010Via: USA Today:
The four men accused of trying to tamper with Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones share a common experience as young ideologues writing for conservative publications.
Federal authorities said two of the men posed as telephone workers wearing hard hats, tool belts and flourescent vests when they walked into the senator’s office inside a federal building in New Orleans on Monday. The other two were accused of helping to organize the plan.
The most well-known of the suspects is James O’Keefe, a 25-year-old whose hidden-camera expose posing as a pimp with his prostitute infuriated the liberal group ACORN and made him a darling of conservatives.
O’Keefe and suspect Joseph Basel, 24, formed their own conservative publications on their college campuses. A third suspect, Stan Dai, 24, served as editor of his university’s conservative paper and once directed a program aimed at getting college students interested in the intelligence field after 9/11.
And the fourth suspect, Robert Flanagan, 24, wrote for the conservative Pelican Institute and had recently criticized Landrieu for her vote on health care legislation. O’Keefe was a featured speaker at a Pelican Institute luncheon days before his arrest. Flanagan is the son of the acting U.S. Attorney for northern Louisiana.
It’s not yet clear whether the plan was a prank intended to be captured on camera or a more serious attempt at political espionage, as claimed by state Democrats who dubbed it “Louisiana Watergate.”
A witness told authorities that O’Keefe was already sitting in the waiting area of the office and appeared to record Basel and Flanagan on his cellphone when they arrived posing as phone workers.
A federal law enforcement official said one of the suspects was picked up in a car a couple of blocks away with a listening device that could pick up transmissions. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not part of the FBI affidavit. Another official said Dai was the suspect arrested outside.
All four suspects were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
