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- By Phillip Brownlee
- Posted Dec. 11, 2006 at 1:05 a.m.
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65 Comments
Registration or not, remember, folks: Please Don’t Feed the Trolls.
Congratulations again Ben Huie for your letter, “Climate change is not a fad,” printed on the EAGLE’s editorial page yesterday on Sunday.
All the folks saying that SJ’s discussion boards are boring and slow haven’t been there lately, or at all.http://forum.saljournal.com/index.phpNo lack of free speech.NO TROLLS!!!!You can create and edit your own topics, hell you can make a topic out of how crappy you think their board is, if it pleases you.I read pmoms earlier post about nobody being banned over there.That is true for legitimate posters, however they did have one person register with a porno site as homepage, and they were subsequently removed.Fair enough.
Excellent – I’m signing up now.
Thx, Tracy
Do not come over there nutsack.
I’m already signed up, but I haven’t found anything worth posting to. The convo there is just short of bland, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of it.
And if Golfnuts is going, I may never post.
I just want to add that I do enjoy reading PMom’s posts on the Salina board, and I didn’t mean to sound so negative. I’ll keep checking back over there and may eventually find something to join in on.
Write your own topic.Call it GolfNutz SUCKS!
I’m already signed up, folks. =)
Cool! I’m on my way too!
Anon,I am under the impression that the legislature is wanting to limit the interest that can accrue on the payday loans.Some people don’t necessarily ‘want’ to use it but when they find themeselves in a bind and desperately need the money that’s where they go and end up having to pay 400% interest.
Almost exclusively, these payday loan businesses are used by the lower income segment of the population. I’m all for allowing such businesses to operate, but – 400%? I think pawn shops charge 10% per month, so 120% APR seems to be ok.
If the legistlature limits this rate, will these companies be able to remain in business? I’m sure there are plenty of defaults associated with these loans; so 30-40-50% might not be enough – THEN we’d be taking away a service that caters mostly to the poor.
It’s a dilemma.
I’m not sure I’d want to legislate a limit. I would want to make sure that the true, annualized interest rates are posted up front in 12 point font (no secret fine print) and a signature attests that same is read and understood before the contract is binding. Absent such full disclosure, the debtor should be liable only for the amount borrowed, and NO interest.
Heaven forbid we limit the earning potential for “legal” schlocks. What’s next pension protection for pimps.
If the Kansas Legislature wants to regulate the payday loan places, then are they going to go after these banks and their credit card scams too? I don’t think so – banks have too many lobbyists lining the politicians’ pockets.
If they do run payday loan companies out of state, will they make some of the banks lend money to the current people using payday loans. Obviously there is a customer base for payday loans – so let’s make the banks take their share in this business.
Here’s a nifty news piece that creationists will have to deny.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/science/10cnd-evolve.html?ex=1323406800&en=6576a01a1bb4ce31&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Ahhh, more scientific evidence that supports evolution found right in humans. If people didn’t evolve then we’d all be lactose intolerant and creationism could make an argument. But it can’t, natural selection prevails again.
Ah but religious zealots don’t care what science or evidence proves – they have their own wealth of knowledge – Rush Limbaugh and the rest of their wacky little team.
loan places, credit cards, all they are are legal loan sharks. And yes, there absolutely should be a limit on what interest rate to charge people.
http://my.break.com/media/view.aspx?ContentID=185806
This is funnier than spit. It’s an Australian man who was fed up with Mormons waking him up, so he flew to Utah to wake up Mormons preaching Atheism! LOL he actually got assaulted with a broom.
“annualized interest rates are posted up front in 12 point font (no secret fine print).”
I believe as part of the Kansas statutes, this is required now (not sure about 12 poijnt font.
“point”
I’d like to see the credit unions doing more both to provide credit and, perhaps more importantly, education and budgeting assistance.
I remember a case I mediated in Small Claims Court involving a woman buried under pawn shop loans. Sadly, she was simply clueless as to what was going on. Fortunately, the pawn shop owner was reasonable and I was able to negotiate a way out for her. However, both judge and I were sure she would soon be back in the mess; we wished he could somehow court-order her into counseling.
First performance for Cirque du Soleil, is sold out For March 14.
A second performance, is scheduled for March 13. Tickets to go on sale, on Tuesday. (Tomorrow)
Sumptin’ here, looks wobbly! How, can the second performance, preceed the first?
A total of 4500 ticksts will only be sold, for each performance.
Weird! The UN is downgrading man’s involvement to global warming.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/nclimate10.xml
The pawn shop loan deal is another example of you people thinking that people are too stupid to decide what they want to do. As has been mentioned, the interest rates are not a secret. These are grown people who have the right to vote and drive and marry and be grown ups.
If anybody’s paying attention, 10%/month is NOT a 120% APR.
It’s more like a 214% APR*. Off by a factor of 2, roughly. Which is a lot. If a guy like KGN can’t figure an APR — a guy who can obviously always afford to pay his ISP — then how do we expect a low-income Kansan who’s being pushed hard by desperation to get within 50% of his/her true money cost?
Personally, I’m all for regulating the APR on these. The miracle of compounding becomes the rabid Cujo of compounding when you’re on the wrong end of a high APR.
And folks, that puts too much pressure on American capitalism, imho.
*–1.1^12=3.1384
All they are saying is that it is not quite as bad as some had thought. It is still bad Joe Williams. From the link:
“The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming.One leading UK climate scientist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity surrounding the report before it is published, said: “The bottom line is that the climate is still warming while our greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated, so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future.”The IPCC report, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, has been handed to the Government for review before publication.It warns that carbon dioxide emissions have risen during the past five years by three per cent, well above the 0.4 per cent a year average of the previous two decades. The authors also state that the climate is almost certain to warm by at least 1.5 C during the next 100 years.Such a rise would be enough to take average summer temperatures in Britain to those seen during the 2003 heatwave, when August temperatures reached a record-breaking 38 C. Unseasonable warmth this year has left many Alpine resorts without snow by the time the ski season started.”
Anybody know what the temp is going to be on New Years Day?I need to plan.
fleetwood,welcome to Kansas – who knows – flip a coin.
fleettwood…
Do you understand the difference between climate and weather?http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/03/we-cant-even-predict-weather-next-week.html
Joe Williams,
The crisis is STILL coming — it’s been masked by cooling caused by our production of aerosols, and delayed by the ocean’s heat inertia.
(from your link)”It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun.
Large amounts of heat have been absorbed by the oceans, masking the warming effect.
Prof Rick Battarbee, the director of the Environmental Change Research Centre at University College London, warned these masking effects had helped to delay global warming but would lead to larger changes in the future.”
EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1Anti-capitalist bastards
Loan Sharking has been legalized, whatever happened to usury laws. The credit card companies are almost as bad.
To change the topic – “YA GOTTA BE KIDDING!”
“Texas child suspended after hugging aideAssociated PressWACO, Texas – School administrators gave a 4-year-old student an in-school suspension for inappropriately touching a teacher’s aide after the pre-kindergartner hugged the woman.
A letter from La Vega school district administrators to the student’s parents said that the boy was involved in “inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment” after he hugged the woman and he “rubbed his face in the chest of (the) female employee” on Nov. 10.
DaMarcus Blackwell, the father of the boy who attends La Vega Primary School, said he filed a complaint with the district. He said that his son doesn’t understand why he was punished.
“When I got that letter, my world flipped,” Blackwell said in a story in Sunday’s editions of the Waco Tribune-Herald.
La Vega school district officials said student privacy laws prevented them from commenting.
After Blackwell filed a complaint, a subsequent letter from the district said the offense had been changed to “inappropriate physical contact” and removed references of sexual contact or sexual harassment from the boy’s file.
Administrators said the district’s student handbook contains no specific guidelines referring to contact between teachers and students but does state that inappropriate physical contact will result in a discipline referral.
The La Vega school district, which has five schools, covers about 30 miles around Waco.”
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/breaking_news/16216305.htm
A 4-year-old “rubbed his face in the chest of (the) female employee”? Sounds to me like a little kid snuggling a wamr person. Comments from other parents/grandparents?
fleettwood = anti-science ignorant bastard
ben-Good job on the hurricane predictions this year.Sometimes the climate scientists don’t know their ass from a twelve gauge shotgun.
fleettwood – there was a very active season all over the globe; they just fortuitously curved away from the US coast. Thousands died in the Phillippines and elsewhere.
I suppose you also eschew medical doctors because you don’t understand them either?
I get my medical advice from my doctor; my investment advice from various economic advisors (I am confirmed capitalist); my scientific advice from fellow scientists. I do not go to talk radio for any of that.
What in the world does any of this have to do with talk radio?
PAY TO PARK AT THE COLISEUM starts in Janurary. $3 per car.
I’ll never be there again.
It’s not cost of the parking, its the Muncipal way it’s being suggested. The cost isn’t bringing any kind of event.
Ron Holt is not the person to speak for the Coliseum or Arena if they are soon to sell managing both to SMG or whoever management company.
The County would have been smart to them announce a parking fee.
If a fee to park is necessary, put the cost in tickets. Not a booth at the parking entrance to collect dollars.
That’s municipal thinking isn’t of event and arena smart marketing.
Downtown arena can’t have surface parking fees at all.
fleettwood – the use of talking points that I hear on talk radio rather than the voluminous (but too complicated) information availablr out there.
“Downtown arena can’t have surface parking fees at all.”
Wanna bet? You think parking will be free? They have already said it won’t be.
Ben,
I don’t know that was ever said. Surface parking downtown wouln’t be free. I haven’t seen a parking layout yet.
Are you just damning the downtown arena more.
Do you pay to park at Lawrence-Dumont, Ice Sports, the Indian Center or Exploration place.
It’s not likely. If people want to use parking garages, that’s a cost per car.
There is parking at L-D, indian Center, Exploration Place. Not at the Arena. I’ll be on my own to find (and pay for) parking. Where do you anticipate parking?
Century II charges for parking; it is likely that private lot owners will also – to the extent that they make parking available at all.
The plan for the downtown arena parking is that there is no plan. The proposal I saw said they’d have to find places to park all around downtown, using existing parking.
How stupid is that.
Did anyone see the news on TV that some rich guy offered up to a million dollars match money for Terry Fox’s church, and they have 900 members. Wow I didn’t realize that many Wichitans were so incredibly fruity. He left Emmanuel broke. Not that I care- they’re the ones who supported him for so long.
flike,10%/month simple interest (which is what pawn shops charge) IS 120% APR.
It makes more sense to charge parking per car rather than in the ticket. If I carpool; find a way to take a bus, etc, why should I subsidize the parking of one-person-per-car event goers?
Until the County finishes buying properties, I don’t what surface parking be available.
There is existing free parking but should be more. Century II area parking should be free after 6pm and weekends so anyone wants to park there and walk to the arena, they can do that.
I hope they come out with a parking plan once the process is moving forward.
I wish someone other than County officials, an HOK person constructing the arena, starts to make themselves a face of responsibility.
It’s land and engineering.
A new sports marketing company running the downtown arena will be “spin” doctors. Spinning why construction is slow or parking isn’t enough.
Mrage<—often exibits traits of a delusional mind.@: (
People who take a bus, walk to the Coliseum defeats purpose of County making enough money.
It’s the action of taking money at entrance shows failure of policy. A facility that never has charged for parking now does.
It’s better the public doesn’t see increased costs running the Coliseum. It just going to cost more to see events, that should have been it. Keep $3 in the tickets, hidden.
lots of ’shoulds’ there mrage. I could solve the parking problem but what do I know? I’m just one of those who warned them beforehand of the additional road costs that they have belatedly acknowledged.
Glad to see you like dishonest hidden costs instead of being up-front. Me, I prefer honest pricing.
Hope you get some “glee” out of defeating the parking costs Ben.
Get a ride with friends, they pay.
If your driving, then your being more generous to friends and riders, by accepting the cost yourself.
Take a bus, hope it doesn’t stop outside of the gate. It might. Would the city have to pay for buses dropping off to the County.
It’s get weird, who gets a pass to not pay and others pay.
If its a community shared experience, we’re all at the Coliseum for some event, why doesn’t all pay for parking, than the fewer who are paying more because they are driving the car.
It’s very simple mrage. When I go to an event I go with friends and all chip in to the driver to cover gas and parking. It would be ludicrous to charge each of us for gas or parking when we share. By doing so we reduce the number of spaces that must be maintained and also reduce traffic. So, why should the four of us be charged as much as four singles who use 4 times the gas and take up 4 times the space, both parking and roads.
that is how it is done in cities across the country. Done it at Dodgers games, Bears games, Cubbies, etc.
Can also use buses like we did for the Stones. Worked well.
Tell me mrage; what is your parking plan for your arena?
I have never paid a friend in gas riding to a local event. Go across country with friends, whoever was doing driving duty paid for gas.
Drivers to the Coliseum are supposed to get a meal out of being generous from other riders from now on. It used to be let’s just eat for the joy of it, then quid pro quo.
Yes, less cars possibly or spaces used, an enviromental benefit, but that’s not what our County was considering. Don’t give them that.
Buses to what event at the Coliseum do you think will happen? How about just considering when Thunder play out there, won’t fill the parking lot. Dog and gun shows.
Your considering taking a bus to those events? Not a concert like the Stones will happen out there.
Who will come to Wichita and play in the Coliseum or should they wait until the downtown arena is open.
WWE downtown next time, never again at the Coliseum?
I have no parking suggestions for the downtown arena, unless the buildings County is still trying to buy are for parking once those buildings are torn down.
That’s why they said, existing parking might be enough.
They have measured lots where buildings now stand, when those buildings are torn down, more surface parking created. Their not counting “new” parking being built in that process.
It’s municipal way of thinking, the confusion about where parking is going to be and whether or not the parking will be free. Those questions should already be answered.
Those questions should already be answered”
I’ve been saying that all along.
Now I do not know what you mean by “municipal way of thinking” but I do know that arena supporters have failed to properly anticipate both traffic and parking. This hardly gives me confidence on their Arena performance.
Your comments above suggest to me that you are hedging your bets about your arena’s success. Seems to me that, since you are a booster, you should be working with them to see that your arena is properly sized, designed, ‘trafficed’, and ‘parked’
Yes, less cars possibly or spaces used, an enviromental benefit, but that’s not what our County was considering. Don’t give them that.
How do you know that mrage. Mind reader?
fleettwood,
“Anti-capitalist bastards”
Higher energy efficiency and renewable energy are PRO-capitalist.Lower energy costs = HIGHER profits.Detroit’s gas-guzzlers don’t meet China’s high mpg standards, can’t sell them there.
“climate scientists” only predict that warmer ocean water will cause more intense hurricanes.
How about 180 mph (possibly 200 mph) sustained winds,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005-06_Southern_Hemisphere_tropical_cyclone_season
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Pacific_typhoon_season
I have GIS, satellite photo’s of that area downtown, Ben. I don’t know what buildings the County are buying west of Emporia specifically.
I’m pretty sure its for surface parking reasons, the County is buying those properites.
I have no fears about parking downtown. I just suggest the County is paying nearly $1 Million for some properities, its very expensive surface parking being created and still should be free.
Municipal thinking is like wasting time and effort to consider diagonal parking on Douglas. Cutting flowing traffic in some places to one lane.
That’s not good if people are leaving the downtown arena want to get out of that area a little quicker with two lanes of traffic flowing on Douglas. What’s more important in front of shops parking or flow of traffic in that zone!
I won’t give County any enviromental credit, raising parking fee’s at the Coliseum.
I do know some City people wonder what the County is doing. There is still distrust between our governments on a few things. I know how some in the County make decesions. I had a job in that building during the 80’s.
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has taken down the nine Christmas trees that were on display instead of adding a menorah following a rabbi’s request.
According to http://www.cbsnews.com, “‘We decided to take the trees down because we didn’t want to be exclusive,’ said airport spokeswoman Terri-Ann Betancourt. ‘We’re trying to be thoughtful and respectful, and will review policies after the first of the year.’”
Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, put in his request for a giant menorah several weeks ago and is appalled at the decision that has been made. “‘Everyone should have their spirit of the holiday. For many people the trees are the spirit of the holidays, and adding a menorah adds light to the season,’ said Bogomilsky, who works in Seattle at the regional headquarters for Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish education foundation.” Bogomilsky had hired a lawyer and threatened to sue the Port of Seattle if a menorah was not placed beside the Christmas trees.http://tothecenter.com/news.php
Is anyone familiar with To The Center, from which I just found the post above? I was contacted and asked if I’d be interested in writing for them and am curious.
I remember my pledge year we had a Star of David on top of our tree. The guy who organized the twin parties (and also was Santa for the afternoon party) was Jewish. Seeing as we are ostensibly celebrating the birthday of a Jewish carpenter it made sense to us. None of the children at the afternoon party asked about it. But they sure liked Santa!
Has Johnson County gone nuts??
Heard this morning on NPR that the trees are going back up at Sea-Tac. The reason: the rabbi only sought to have a menorah added to the various displays, and did not threaten to sue.
OOPS!!!!! Looks like the Arena is going to cost more than promised – also opening 8 months later …
Arena price tag up $16.5 million, opening pushed backThe downtown Wichita arena will cost $16.5 million more than originally projected and will open in fall 2009, about eight months later than expected, assistant county manager Ron Holt told Sedgwick County commissioners today.
The arena’s total budget is now $201 million, up from the original $184.5 million, he said.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/16231062.htm
SPACE STORMS COMING TO EARTH!
SAVE US ALGORE!
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061213_solar_storm.html
Besucht uns hier:[url=