Archive for the “Spending” Category

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Appearing on “Good Morning America” today Feinberg also responded to a senior Republican congressman who claimed that AIG has “taxpayers over a barrel.”

In a statement released Tuesday night Sen. Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said “the Obama administration has been outmaneuvered. And the closed-door negotiations just add to the skepticism that the taxpayers will ever get the upper hand.”

Feinberg insisted he had not been “outmaneuvered” by the insurance giant.

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Full Story at  CNN.com

In this day and age of food-on-the-go, supplements can add much-needed nutrients to your diet. But a walk down the vitamin aisle at any store could very well make your head spin. Here’s a breakdown of several of multivitamin options.

Basic Multivitamins

What they are: One-pill wonders that offer 100 percent of the recommended daily allowance (RDA), as suggested by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, for many important vitamins.

Benefits: They give you much of what you need in a day, including vitamins A, C, D, and E, B vitamins, and folic acid. Bonus: You have only one tablet to remember to take and swallow. Try One A Day Essential Multivitamin ($10 for 130 tablets, drugstore.com).

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Washington (CNN) — Thousands of American Indians would receive as much as $1,000 each if they accept a proposed $1.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit over government mismanagement of tribal lands.

The suit, filed in 1996, accused the U.S. Department of the Interior of failing to account for and provide revenue from a trust fund representing the value of Indian assets managed by the government.

As part of the settlement, the federal government would agree to establish a $2 billion program to buy small fractions of land to help sellers obtain value from ancestral property, which then would be held by tribal governments.

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Full Story at CNN.com

After a sort of beta earlier this year, Flat World was set to announce Thursday that more than 40,000 college students at 400 colleges will use their digital, DRM-free textbooks fall semester, up from 1,000 in 30 colleges in the spring.

Digital textbooks remain a nascent business and a tough market to enter. At an average cost of $100, textbooks command the highest cover prices in publishing, outside of only some art and coffee-table books. Demand is artificially inelastic as students are indentured to cost servitude at the whim of college professors who blithely assign titles a student must own if she hopes to do well in a given course. Now, multiply that by four, five or even six courses a semester and you are talking big bucks.

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Full Story At News.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON – A leading health care bill under consideration in Congress would cost the government an estimated $1 trillion over the next decade and reduce the ranks of the uninsured by about one-third, or 16 million individuals, congressional budget officials said Monday in a preliminary estimate.

In a letter to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas W. Elmendorf said the estimate was based on major provisions contained in an incomplete draft of the bill. He noted that “taking all of its provisions into account could change our assessment of the proposal’s effects on the budget and insurance coverage rates though probably not by substantial amounts relative to the net costs already identified.”

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Full Story At News.yahoo.com

PIERRE, S.D. – It has the makings of a Hollywood script: A young rancher struggling to eke out a living in one of the poorest corners of the nation claims one of the biggest undivided jackpots in U.S. lottery history — $232 million — after buying the ticket in a town called Winner.

As he sported a black cowboy hat and a huge grin, 23-year-old Neal Wanless accepted his giant-sized Powerball check at a ceremony Friday.

Wanless, who is single and lives with his mother and father on the family’s 320-acre ranch near Mission, said he’s going to buy himself a bigger spread, repay the kindness other townspeople have shown his family and spend his newfound fortune wisely.

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Full Story At  CBS News

The Senate Finance Committee today is hearing proposals on how to pay for President Obama’s proposed universal health care plan, which is expected to cost more than $1 trillion. Among the proposals, as Consumer Affairs reports: A three-cent tax on sodas as well as other sugary drinks, including energy and sports drinks like Gatorade. Diet sodas would be exempt.

“While many factors promote weight gain, soft drinks are the only food or beverage that has been shown to increase the risk of overweight and obesity, which, in turn, increase the risk of diabetes, stroke, and many other health problems,” Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is pushing the idea, said in his testimony. “Soft drinks are nutritionally worthless…[and] are directly related to weight gain, partly because beverages are more conducive to weight gain than solid foods.”

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Full Story At CNN.com

BALLWIN, Missouri (CNN) — For Stuart and Dianne Falk, it is a two-bus, 45-minute trip into downtown St. Louis to head to the gym and to volunteer at a theater group.

And it is a lifeline that ends Friday.

“To be saddled, to be imprisoned, that is what it is going to feel like,” says Stuart Falk. “It is going to feel like being punished for something we didn’t do.”

Stuart and Dianne Falk are confined to wheelchairs. And the bus route that takes them downtown, and to one of the few tastes of personal freedom they have, is being eliminated because of a funding crunch.

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Full Story At  msnbc.com

WASHINGTON – The health insurance industry offered Tuesday for the first time to curb its controversial practice of charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems.

The offer from America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is a potentially significant shift in the debate over reforming the nation’s health care system to rein in costs and cover an estimated 48 million uninsured people. It was contained in a letter to key senators.

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Full Story At ABC News

The teetering company, once the symbol of American industrial might, revealed Thursday that it burned through $19.2 billion in cash last year on its way to a $30.9 billion loss. The century-old automaker said its only hope of living another year is more aid from the government.

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