Sure, I'll believe it. That was just a letter from 1 state AG. Companies hardly tremble over that anymore.

I suspect it was the House of Representatives letter pointing out that monitoring was, um, illegal.

Economics fail... Mileage deductions ARE a form of "subsidy"/ "incentive"/ "deduction"/"break"/"sop to the gass guzzing masses" even if you personally don't want to label it that way. Tax deductions are just another form of subsidy. While you DO have to buy the gas first, the govt. cuts you some $$ slack for doing so - so you ARE being rewarded. Think of it like a mail-in rebate after purchase...

Maybe we can eventually get a car that simultaneously burns ethanol and fuel-cell-converts fossil-fuel-derived hydrogen at such a rate that its efficiency reaches the critical singularity of 0% efficiency. It'll just be a big flash!

Yes.
Your annoying nosing around in my private heparin-cutting business is annoying. If I want to cut my heparin (or piss on my meat, or steal from my employees) and I can get away with it, why are you nosing around and making laws against my money-making activites?

Yeah, I'd say that's enough to amount to slander.
I'd say slander

The OP didn't reference the statute, yeah, but so what? It didn't reference any supreme court cases on the matter, or any Attorney General's office guidance, or any published local court cases either... All those probably matter too in figuring out what the Michigan law does and doesn't cover. For all Ben knows, that particular statute is trumped by another, more specific statute. As EricaKane points out, there could easily be a more specific statute - insurance law.

Ben's a journalist - writing journalism. That's not the same thing as a lawyer. Besides, everyone knows there's enough pseudo-economists posing as lawyers on the blog to make up for it anyway...

They're her bank, or at least credit card company, and so they have her address. How is putting an ad in a newspaper acceptable if they can mail it to you?

"cutting bonuses"

Reading the article, they're still throwing exorbitant wads of cash at senior executives, but just fewer wads this year than usual.

Yeah, we could have a serious discussion about taxpayer bailouts or why the Fed is making this loan non-recourse, or whether this was authorised by the laws governing the Fed OR we could travel down the paultard path...

but.. but... but... that's such a fine distinction.... ;)

First off, stop being such an apologist for bad behavior. This was clearly intended to, and clearly did, have an intimidation effect. If anyone wanted to contest the truth of what the individuals (intended to) say, the individuals were going to talk - you know, statements made out loud that can subsequently be easily verified or disproved by anyone. It's not like they were going to whisper secret coded meanings that required a decryptred transcript beforehand. As cuiusquimodi points out, lying in Congressional testimony is a federal offense anyway, so lying is not exactly likely. The speakers' entire credit records and financial history don't need to be 'released' in the name of fairness. Only the transactions actually testified about could possibly need verifying - and everyone will know about those transactions as soon as the speakers open their mouth, signed waiver or no.

Waving your hands and pointing to totally unrelated quarterly financial reporting obligations of the credit card companies is entirely missing the point. Yes, those companies do file some form detailing profits and losses somewhere, but so what? That has nothing to do with the subject of their abusive credit card practices. The consumers who were going to testify file taxes with the IRS, so by your logic, hey -they've put out the requisite records - what are you still complaining about?

Finally, if the committee was going to make ridiculous, intimidating demands, how about some consistency? As Elizabeth Warren aptly points out, "fair is fair" doesn't apply when the Credit Card Cos. weren't required to provide any records, data, or verification at all for any of their testimony, much less sign a release forever granting other parties the rights to see their underlying data. Why not say "fair is fair," and actually require the Credit Card shills to actually put up data for B.S. assertions like "this legislation will cause rates to rise xyz percent" before they are permitted to testify.

And in a final sweet note of poetic justice, at the hearing Rep. Spencer Bachaus (R-citibank) said that there was originally a "bipartisan" agreement to require these consumers to sign the waivers. Then the Democrats changed the terms of the deal "after the fact." Gosh, it must really be sucky and unfair when someone (or some credit card company) changes the terms of an agreement (or credit card rate) on you unilaterally without notice "after the fact."

On the other hand, it's nothing compared to car usage...

Seriously, who's had the power to do something about it for, oh, 232 years and just made things worse?

At the first whiff of campaign cash Congress rolled back most every financial regulation since the Depression, (cough Gramm-Leach-Bliley) preempted stronger state laws that protected consumers, (cough OFHEO and OCC) relaxed capital and lending requirements, and reduced transparency obligations. El Jefe GWB is catching lotsa well-earned crep for doing diddley about this, but Congress passed the laws that opened the doors up to this deception and mess in the first place. Congress isn't grandstanding (well, maybe they are) they're scape-goating.

All the legality (or illegality, for that matter - this holds true in gun-control-crazy cities, too) of keeping loaded handguns around doesn't change the fact that the gun is more likely to be stolen or used on a family member than it is to be used in self defense.

There's laws, and then there's statistics.

Most of them throw in a disclaimer to the effect of "it's searching for bombs and hijack tools, it's not like it's police searching for criminal evidence."

Interestingly enough, when people do get arrested as a result of a TSA search that finds criminal evidence, the court conveniently then says "what did you expect, you consented to a search?"

The only way out is to say "screw airlines, I'm taking the train." Oh wait...

If you're living so that the last check you ever write bounces, how much more sweet poetic justice would it be for that check to go to some @#$%$%%$ financial company to pay their stupid overdraft or 'out of network' ATM fees?

Really?
The average american barely has health insurance, with that insurance limiting them to the few doctors who've agreed to cut enough corners to get their prices down to the insurer's level.

This is like saying the average starving Ethiopian doesn't know how to pick the most healthy desserts.

I feel really bad for that poor, poor medical consumer who has a choice of which health care they'll receive, and then blows it because they aren't better informed...

Moral of the story - don't run too far or two fast with that little legal scissor, it's got some sharp exceptions.

That's pretty much average.

During the last four years, just four United States banks have failed.

Consumers shouldn't have to get into some type of technical arms race (using anonymized whois clients), or forced to avoid lookups until they are certain of what they want, or get shafted by monopoly-abusing registries.
Consumers should be able to get market information ("is this product for sale, and for how much?") without having the monopoly vendor lock down the goods and say "well, since I know you are interested, it'll be $20 more for you than the usual price..."

The solution to fraud isn't be faster or sneakier - it is to call it fraud and put a stop to it.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture rule change made in July allows some downer cows into the food supply.

Cows that are too sick to walk due to disease or injury are probly more tender anyway...

What would be ideal is if the number of incidents were ranked by the number of accounts at the bank, not the total number of deposits. However, banks closely guard the number of their depositors and so for now, this is the best we have.

As in, "we don't have the best measure because the banks play 'hide the ball,' so we'll use the second best measure."
Saying who has the most incidents is meaningless on its own. What's best is incidents/account, and incidents/$$$ is a better approximation than just "incidents." Just "incidents" means the biggest bank is always #1, even if it's 5x safer than a smaller bank with 1/10th the customers.

So I'll join the fun. We're talking about ordinary business expenses here, which first requires that you be operating a business. Who cares about the 'laugh test' or whether it's on a list somewhere if you're (like the majority of the US) not actually operating as a business?
As expected, the IRS has rules about what constitutes a business and what doesn't. Rules like it being your livelihood, you having a license for it, actually making a profit from it, etc. Make sure you think about this first step before rushing down the path of business deductions. There's a reason the majority of IRS audits are over disputed business expenses.

Godwin's law, yes, but also true....

Congress cares! (about their banking and data mining corporate contributors who have sloppy data protection....)

We need legislation for this? This is why our government is so ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the US. Because there is already federal law that says just how many inches wide a TV can be before it's a copyright violation to show things on it in public, we do... It's ridiculous, sure, but it ridiculousness to repair earlier ridiculousness.
Here's hoping the legislation actually passes.

The particular level of suspicion the shopkeeper must have is often less that what it takes for a cop to arrest. How wack is that? In a situation where cop couldn't arrest you, a shopkeeper can take you and drag you, physically, into a back room, handcuff you, and keep you there for some time 'til they call the cops. And you probably couldn't (sucessfully) sue.

unless they could successfully get the cage dismissed...

But even so, raising gas taxes to properly capture the cost of externalities isn't bad - it's the hallmark of fully-informed free market pricing. Raising them to the actual free-market level where they'd accurately reflect things like their own pollution would be a good first step, that way people wouldn't over-consume what is effectively a commodity subsidized by the lung and heart damage of US citizens. If you buy into the evidence-based reality that gas burning has climate impacts too, you should probably tax gas to capture that impact too.

Otherwise you must be one of those who support wasteful govt. subsidies, and hates the fully-informed free market's ability to accurately set prices.

rap music lyrics referencing police, drugs and guns.

Let's hope TSA doesn't ban that...

Second that.

It's not suspect at all that the law firm gets a categorical cut of any settlement? Sure sounds to me like the law firm has a conflict between its wallet and its obligation to only take meritorious cases. I'm pretty sure that most states have laws against lawfirms going into business with their clients.