This'n'That; March 7th[BankFees;Watermelons;FiscalResponsibility]

LEGAL Bank Scam
Is everyone inside the Beltway, in someone's pocket?  If you're "big business"-you can DO NO WRONG!! Particularly if you're in the banking segment.
You might bode well to ask your banker if he/she uses "largest-to-smallest" check posting.  This is a scheme to generate more and more overdraft fees. Essentially, this is what happens:

• Say, during your workday, you pay $5.00 for your lunch with a debit card.
• After work you buy a well-deserved new suit for $350.00, again paying with the debit card.
• On your way home, you get gas, $50.00 on the debit card.
• During these transactions you fail to realize that your daily beginning balance in the bank is $295.00. 

With "largest-to-smallest" posting, you've just generated up to $102.00 in overdraft fees.  The suit payment will be posted first-a $34 overdraft charge.  Next would be the gas-another $34 charge.  Lastly, the lunch would generate the third overdraft charge.
Had a "smallest-to-largest" method been used, you'd only have ONE OVERDRAFT charge.  Had a chronologic method been used, you'd have two overdraft charges.  Can you see the scam here?!?!
The key section of banking regulations in force here is the one, entitled:

“The Bank’s Consideration of the Section 7.4002(b) Factors”.

This section lays out four reasons to adopt the practice, and concludes that “the Bank’s process for deciding the order of check posting is consistent with the safety and soundness considerations set forth in section 7.4002(b) and that the Bank may therefore post checks in the order it desires”.

In their defense, most banks conclude that they need to adopt the high-to-low order of posting so that customers who frequently write checks against insufficient funds do not do business with the bank primarily because the bank’s fee for checks presented against insufficient funds is lower than its competitors’.

Essentially, the bank is saying that its competitors have high overdraft fees--that it doesn’t want to compete against its competitors--so it needs high overdraft fees too.

Dan Rather:" "Clown Prince" Couldn't Sell Watermelons......"

This was heard on Rush's show of 03/08, during the second hour:

Rather: "Obama couldn't sell watermelons on the highway with a state trooper flagging down traffic."

I have no idea of the context of the Rather quote; whether he was interviewing someone; he was being interviewed; it was one of his ill-conceived statements.  Although the quote seems to be true, I'm waiting for the outrage from Sharpton, Jackson, Ga Rep John Lewis, Ca Rep Maxine Watters, et al.

Christie For President!!
As opposed to the royals at the federal level, N.J. Governor Chris Christie is willing and able to make the tough decisions!!  Mister Christie is able to get shit done; get shit done right!!  Here are portions of a speech he gave last month [02/24], to the state's League of Municipalities:

CHRISTIE: Our citizens are already the most overtaxed citizens in America. The public appetite for ever increasing taxes has reached an end. So now when we freeze $475 million in school aid, I'm hearing the reverberations from school boards saying, "Well now you're just going to force us to raise taxes." I'm tired of hearing school superintendents and school board members complain that there are no other options other than raising property taxes. There are other options. There has to be parity between what's happening in the real world and what's happening in the public sector world. The money doesn't grow on trees outside this building or outside your municipal building. It comes from the hardworking people of our communities who are suffering and hurting right now.
CHRISTIE: The political class -- which unfortunately for us all of us are a member of. The political class is lagging behind the public on this. The public is ready to hear that tough choices have to be made. They're not going to like it. Let me not confuse the two. But they are ready to hear the truth. In fact, they find it refreshing to hear the truth and the pabulum that gets spewed sometimes about, "Don't worry, I can save you from the pain," they've been hearing that for a decade. As we've borrowed and spent and taxed our way into oblivion. We have done every quick fix in the book that you can do, and now we are left literally holding the bag.

CHRISTIE: You all know that these raises that are being given to public employees of all stripes we can't afford, you all know the state can't continue to spend money that it doesn't have, and you all know that the appetite for tax increases among our constituents has come to an end. And so the path to reform and success is clear. We know what it is. We just have to have the courage to go there. What we're doing is showing people that government can work again for them, not for us. Government has worked for the political class for much too long. There's no time left. We have no room left to borrow. We have no room left to tax.

Fiscal responsibility is the only way to drag the country and the several states out of the economic morass we're currently in.  Pissing $140,000  each on 250,000 jobs is not fiscal responsibility!!

Til Nex'Time....