Drivers, insurers rebel against 'crash tax'

By msnbc.com's James Eng and Andrew Mach

Cary Feldman says it was unpleasant enough?to be?knocked off his motor scooter at an intersection in Chicago Heights, Ill., by the car behind him. But what added insult to his injuries was the $200 bill that came in the mail a few months later ? for the fire truck response.

?It was astounding. I thought I was living in North Korea. I had the audacity to fall on their pavement,? said the 72-year-old retired clinical psychologist, who lives in nearby Matteson, Ill.

Feldman tried unsuccessfully to get Chicago Heights officials to rescind the fee stemming from the June 2010 accident, in which he says the other motorist was deemed at fault and there was never any need for a fire truck to respond along with police and an ambulance. When he couldn?t get the other party?s insurance company to?cover the bill, Feldman wound up paying it out of pocket.

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?If you?re the victim of somebody else?s negligence, why should you have to pay? It?s crazy to me,? he says.

Citizens and insurance companies cite stories like Feldman?s in their intensifying crusade against so-called ?accident response fees,? also known as ?crash taxes.? Cash-strapped municipalities and cities across the U.S. started imposing such fees around 2006-07, when the U.S. economy started to falter,?to raise money to help fund local police and fire departments.

Some local governments have since done an about-face and voted to rescind the fees, saying it?s given their city a black eye.

The city council in Oceanside, Calif., for example, last year voted to repeal the crash tax it charged to out-of-town drivers who get into car crashes that require emergency help from city paramedics.

"We're talking about a program that hasn't worked, that isn't successful and has hurt us," Councilman Jerry Kern said at the time.?"I think for PR (public relations) alone, we should drop this program and tell people we welcome them to this city."

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According to the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, municipalities in?as many as 34 states charge accident response fees or are considering ordinances to allow them. Thirteen states prohibit such fees.

Municipalities often contract with a third-party vendor to collect the fees, which?vary widely but are typically a few hundred dollars. Some local governments charge?for police response to car crashes, some for fire response. Some target the fees only at out-of-town drivers.

The fees are usually billed to a motorist?s insurance company. In some cases, like Feldman?s, a collection agency winds up trying to collect from the individual.

The NAMIC is among the insurance organizations that vigorously oppose such fees. Joe Thesing, assistant vice president-state affairs with NAMIC, says most auto insurance policies don?t cover non-medical accident response and thus won?t pay the fee. The result, he says, is that municipalities wind up collecting only a fraction of what they?re billing for.

?These fees are a form of double taxation applied only to responsible citizens who follow state law and carry auto insurance,? Thesing says. ?It?s our belief that responding to investigative accidents is a function of police and fire departments supported by local taxes.?

Thesing contends third-party vendors have been ?duping? municipalities into thinking that the insurance industry is the ?cash cow? they can use to prop up their ailing budgets.

Have you ever had to pay 'crash tax' fees? Join the discussion on Facebook

One of the largest such vendors is Cost Recovery Corp. of Dayton, Ohio, a collection agency that has contracts with hundreds of municipalities in 16 states. Its president, Regina Moore Jones, disputes Thesing?s contention that ?responsible? drivers are being hit with unfair bills.

?We never bill for an ?accident.? There has to be some sort of negligence. There?s never a victim that?s ever assessed a fee. Only a negligent party and their insurance provider receive a bill,? Moore Jones told msnbc.com.

She said negligent drivers ? not taxpayers ? should rightfully foot the bill for police or fire response to car crashes.

?Tax dollars should be used for core services.? Core services do not include subsidizing for negligence,? Moore Jones said. ?Is it popular with insurance? Absolutely not.?

Thesing says more local governments are shying away from such fees as they learn more about ?the insurance process and as a result of negative publicity.

In the past five or six years, at least 40 municipalities have rescinded or voted down accident response fee ordinances, according to Thesing. That includes New York, the nation?s most populous city, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg last year dropped plans to charge motorists involved in accidents as much as $495 for emergency-response services. The proposal was shelved following an outcry of opposition from citizens, city council members and others.?

?The Fire Department doesn't charge for its response to structural fires, and the Police Department doesn't charge for patrolling a block," City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said at the time.?"Charging for responding to the scene of an accident is a slippery slope, and I don't want to see us begin to go down that road out of a desperate desire to find sources of revenue."

Carol L. Schlitt, a New York personal injury attorney, said the Bloomberg administration's?idea was wrongheaded from the start.

?These are basic government functions that the government is supposed to provide to its citizenry,? she told msnbc.com. ?The reason we have government is to provide services for the common good. When you impose these types of fees or taxes it is a destruction of the communal bond.?

For Feldman, the $200 bill he wound up paying hurt more than the cuts and bruises he sustained in the scooter accident. He got an insurance settlement for the damaged bike, but never got relief for the first-responder fee.

?This is not acceptable to me. You have to come up with another way (of raising revenue) without exploiting people,? he said.

?I don?t go back to Chicago Heights anymore. I?ve told everybody I know,??Stay away, they?re going to find some way to get money from you.??

Chicago Heights Mayor David Gonzalez did not immediately return a call for comment.

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Euro, shares gain on Spanish banks, stimulus hopes

LONDON (Reuters) - The uncertain worldwide growth outlook flushed more investors out of riskier assets on Monday, sending shares and commodities down, despite signs that a drive by Europe's leaders to tackle the region's debt crisis was gathering momentum.

The euro slid 0.2 percent to $1.2430, though it was trading well above the $1.2288 it hit on Friday, its lowest level since July 2010, while Brent crude oil fell below $97 a barrel to a 16-month low.

But safe-haven German government bond yields also rose from last week's record lows as some investors looked to take profits on the sharp moves of the past week, with low liquidity due to a UK market holiday exacerbating price swings.

"Investors are just fleeing risk assets," said ATI Asset Management chief investment officer Simon Burge.

The latest sell-off followed disappointing U.S. jobs growth figures on Friday and weak Chinese manufacturing data, which stoked fears that deepening problems in the euro zone are causing a global slowdown in business activity.

Those fears caused sharp falls across Asian markets on Monday, dragging Tokyo's Topix index <.TOPX> to a 28-year low, and followed a fall of more than 2 percent in U.S. stocks on Friday. U.S. stock index futures also pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Monday <.N>.

The MSCI world equity index <.MIWD00000PUS> was down 0.5 percent at 290.58 points, and is back at levels last reached in December before a wave of coordinated central bank intervention sparked a recovery.

In thin European markets, the FTSE Eurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> index of top shares was down 0.1 percent at 953.94 points after hitting a six-month low on Friday, while the blue chip EuroSTOXX 50 <.STOXX50E> was down 0.9 percent at 2,086.62 points.

Investors are waiting to see if policy meetings by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England this week will produce any sign that another wave of easing is likely given the weaker-than-expected economic data.

Figures on Monday showing euro zone factory prices were unexpectedly stable in April from March, the fourth straight month of weakening inflation pressures, offered some hope that ECB could cut rates.

"Everybody is now waiting for what decision the ECB will take on Wednesday and what (U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) Bernanke will announce on Thursday. There are strong expectations that something will happen, otherwise the market will go much further down," said Francois Duhen, strategist at CM-CIC Securities.

However, the latest Reuters survey of economists' expectations, taken before the latest U.S. jobs data, showed only a third of economists - 27 out of 73 - say the ECB will cut interest rates before the end of the year, and only 11 expect it to move at this week's meeting.

"Without any political or monetary intervention, markets are left in a vacuum," said Stewart Richardson, chief investment officer at RMG Wealth Management.

"The potential for a market capitulation in this period is high, and if we are correct in this view, we fully expect coordinated money printing from the major central banks towards the end of June," he said.

EUROPEAN MASTERPLAN

Europe's leaders are trying to ease market concerns by speaking out about moves to greater fiscal integration before their summit at the end of the month, and before a G20 group of nations meeting on June 18 and 19.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been pressing for a central authority to manage euro area finances, and also wants a coordinated approach to reforming labor markets, social security systems and tax policies.

Spain, which is struggling to shore up its banking system, signaled over the weekend that it was on board with a key element of the plan.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called for the establishment of a central authority that would oversee and coordinate national budgets in the euro zone.

Spain will provide a big test of investor sentiment this week when it auctions more government debt on Thursday. Its 10-year bond yields have eased to around 6.5 percent, close to the 7 percent level at which other indebted countries have been forced to seek an international bailout.

COMMODITY SELL-OFF

The past week has been another bearish one for commodities as investors fear the slowdown in China coupled with the faltering U.S. recovery will hurt demand.

According to analysis by Standard Chartered Bank, funds that specialize in tracking commodity prices have seen assets under management (AUM) fall $1 billion since the start of the year. However, this was mainly due to price falls. Last week saw outflows of $91 million or 0.6% of AUM.

In price action on Monday Brent crude lost nearly 2 percent to hit a session low of $95.63 a barrel, its lowest since late January 2011.

U.S. crude fell $1.82 to $81.41 a barrel after tumbling as low as $81.32 earlier in the session, its lowest level since last October.

Gold mostly held its ground around $1,615 an ounce after its biggest rally in more than three years on Friday suggested bullion is regaining its safe-haven draw.

(Additional reporting by Anirban Nag and Tricia Wright.; Editing by Will Waterman and Elizabeth Piper)

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Twitter to restrict user content in some countries

SAN FRANCISCO?? Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East.

"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter wrote in a blog post published Thursday.

It said even with the possibility of such restrictions, Twitter would not be able to coexist with some countries. "Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," it said.

Twitter gave as examples of restrictions it might cooperate with "certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content."

A Twitter spokeswoman declined to elaborate on the blog.

"Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world," the Twitter blog said.

Twitter's decision to begin censoring content represents a significant departure from its policy just one year ago, when anti-government protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries coordinated mass demonstrations through on the social network and, in the process, thrust Twitter's disruptive potential into the global spotlight.

As the revolutions brewed last January, Twitter signaled that it would take a hands-off approach to censoring content in a blog post entitled "The Tweets Must Flow."

"We do not remove Tweets on the basis of their content," the blog post read. "Our position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed."

And last year, Twitter General Counsel Alex Macgillivray declared that the company was "from the free speech wing of the free speech party."

In the interest of transparency, Twitter said Thursday, it has built a mechanism to inform users in the event that a Tweet is being blocked.

Twitter's move comes at a time when Internet companies such as Google and Facebook have wrestled with foreign governments over freedom of speech and privacy issues as they expand rapidly overseas.

In 2010 Google relocated its Web search engine to Hong Kong, following a very public spat with the Chinese government over its refusal to bow to Beijing's Web censorship requirements and a hacking episode that Google said it had traced to China.

Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46155148/ns/technology_and_science-security/

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Fed unlikely to raise rates until at least 2014 (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Federal Reserve went further than ever Wednesday to assure consumers and businesses that they'll be able to borrow cheaply well into the future.

The Fed pushed back the date for any likely increase in its benchmark interest rate by at least a year and a half, until late 2014 at the earliest.

Its new timetable showed the Fed is concerned that the economy's recovery remains stubbornly slow. But it also thinks inflation will stay tame enough for rates to remain at record lows without igniting price increases.

Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned that its late-2014 horizon for any rate increase is merely the Fed's "best guess." It has the flexibility to change its mind if the economic picture changes. But speaking at a news conference later Wednesday, Bernanke said:

"Unless there is a substantial strengthening of the economy in the near term, it's a pretty good guess we will be keeping rates low for some time."

The Fed reduced its outlook for growth this year but is slightly more optimistic about the unemployment rate. It expects the economy to grow between 2.2 percent and 2.7 percent this year. That's down from its November's forecast of between 2.5 percent and 2.9 percent.

But it sees unemployment falling as low as 8.2 percent this year, better than its earlier forecast of 8.5 percent. December's rate was 8.5 percent.

The quarterly updated forecast also shows that some Fed members wanted to extend the period of record-low interest rates beyond late 2014. The Fed also offered a firmer target for inflation ? 2 percent ? in a statement of its long-term policy goals.

Treasury yields fell on the news that the Fed plans no rate increase until late 2014 at the earliest.

The yield on the five-year Treasury hit an all-time low of 0.76 percent. The yield on the 10-year note sank to 1.95 percent. The 10-year yield had been 2.02 percent just before the Fed made its announcement around 12:30 p.m. EST.

Lower yields could help further reduce mortgage rates and possibly boost stock prices as investors shift out of lower-yielding Treasurys.

Stocks, which had traded lower all day, quickly recovered their losses. The Dow Jones industrial average, which had been down about 60 points before the announcement, was up 43 points in mid-afternoon.

The central bank said in a statement after a two-day policy meeting that the economy is growing moderately, despite some slowing in global growth. It held off on any further bond-buying programs to try to increase growth.

The Fed announced no further bond buying efforts. But it held out the possibility of doing so later. It said it was prepared to adjust its "holdings as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery in the context of price stability."

Some economists say that means the Fed will take further action soon.

Julie Coronado, an economist at BNP Paribas, said the Fed is signaling it will boost its purchases of bonds and other assets if growth fails to accelerate, even if the economy doesn't slow.

That is a "very low bar indeed," she wrote in a note to clients.

The Fed described inflation as "subdued." That was a more encouraging description than it offered last month. A more positive outlook on prices gives the Fed more room to keep rates low.

"This is a fairly clear-cut signal that inflation is not on their radar at this point," Tom Porcelli, an economist at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a research note.

The Fed's statement was approved on a 9-1 vote. Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond regional Fed bank, dissented. He objected to the new time frame for a rate increase.

The extended time frame is a shift from the Fed's previous plan to keep the rate low at least until mid-2013. Some economists said the new late-2014 target could lead to further Fed action to try to invigorate the economy.

Chairman Ben Bernanke will discuss the updated economic forecasts and Fed policy at a news conference later.

The central bank has kept its key rate at a record low near zero for about three years. Its new time frame suggests the rate will stay there for roughly an additional three years.

Beyond the adjusted outlook for interest rates, Wednesday's statement closely tracked the Fed's previous comments about economic conditions.

The Fed used the same language as before in describing Europe's debt problems and the impact on the world economy.

The economy is looking a little better, according to recent private and government data. Companies are hiring more, the stock market is rising, factories are busy and more people are buying cars. Even the home market is showing slight gains after three dismal years

Still, the threat of a recession in Europe is likely to drag on the global economy. And another year of weak wage gains in the United States could force consumers to pull back on spending, which would slow growth.

The Fed has taken previous steps to strengthen the economy, including purchases of $2 trillion in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities to try to cut long-term rates and ease borrowing costs.

The idea behind the Fed's two rounds of bond buying was to drive down rates to embolden consumers and businesses to borrow and spend more. Lower yields on bonds also encourage investors to shift money into stocks, which can boost wealth and spur more spending.

Some Fed officials have resisted further bond buying for fear it would raise the risk of high inflation later. And many doubt it would help much since Treasury yields are already near historic lows. But Bernanke and other members have left the door open to further action if they think the economy needs it.

The Fed said it would keep its holdings of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed bonds at record levels and continue a program to further drive long-term rates lower by selling shorter-term securities and buying longer-term bonds.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_bi_ge/us_federal_reserve

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"Excalibur" actor Nicol Williamson dies aged 73 (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? Nicol Williamson, once described by John Osborne as "the greatest actor since Marlon Brando," has died after a battle with esophageal cancer. He was 73.

His son Luke said on his father's official website that he passed away on December 16. He died in Amsterdam where he had lived for over 20 years, according to media reports.

"He gave it all he had: never gave up, never complained, maintained his wicked sense of humor to the end," Luke wrote. "His last words were 'I love you'. I was with him, he was not alone, he was not in pain."

Scottish-born Williamson first rose to prominence in 1964 when he appeared in London in Osborne's "Inadmissable Evidence." When it transferred to Broadway he was nominated for a Tony Award in 1966.

He went on to star in other stage productions including "Hamlet" at London's Round House Theatre and Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" for which he was shortlisted for a Tony award a second time.

His best known film roles included Merlin in "Excalibur" and Father Morning in "The Exorcist III." His final screen appearance was in 1997 picture "Spawn."

Williamson was working on a new album of music before his death, and his son told the Daily Telegraph he was as yet undecided over whether to post it on the website.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/people_nm/us_nicolwilliamson_death

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Iraq: Wave Of Car Bombings Hit Baghdad, Killing At Least 14

BAGHDAD -- A wave of car bombings hit the Iraq capital on Tuesday, killing 14 people and wounding more than 70 as violence surges in the country amid an escalating political crisis a month after the U.S. military withdrawal.

At least 170 people have died in attacks since the beginning of the year, many of them Shiite pilgrims attending religious commemorations. The last American soldiers left the country Dec. 18.

Suspected Sunni insurgents have frequently targeted Shiite communities and Iraqi security forces to undermine public confidence in the Shiite-dominated government and its efforts to protect people.

Tuesday's first attack targeted an early morning gathering of day laborers in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. Police said eight were killed and another 21 wounded. Minutes later, an explosives-packed car blew up near a pastry shop in the same district, killing three people and wounding 26, police said.

Later in the morning, two more explosives-laden cars detonated, killing three and wounding 29 people.

A parked car bomb exploded near a high school at 10:30 a.m. in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula in northern Baghdad, killing two students and wounding 16 others, most of them also students, according to local police.

In the neighboring district of Hurriya, one person was killed when an explosives-packed car, parked along a busy commercial street detonated five minutes after the Shula blast, police officials said. Thirteen people were injured in that bombing.

Hospital officials in Baghdad confirmed the death toll. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

While insurgents have carried out a number of deadly attacks in recent years, there is little indication so far that the country is slipping back toward the widespread sectarian bloodshed of 2006 and 2007.

Nonetheless, these recent attacks are seen as particularly dangerous because they coincide with both the departure of U.S. troops, as well as a political crisis pitting Shiite officials against the largest Sunni-backed bloc.

The political battle erupted last month after the Shiite-led government issued an arrest warrant against the Sunni vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi, on terrorism charges, sending him into virtual exile in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. In protest, al-Hashemi's Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc has been boycotting parliament and Cabinet sessions, bringing government work to a standstill.

Sunnis fear that without the American presence as a last-resort guarantor of a sectarian balance, the Shiite government will try to pick off their leaders one by one, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tries to cement his own grip on power.

Last week, the leader of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, Ayad Allawi, accused al-Maliki of unfairly targeting Sunni officials and deliberately triggering a political crisis that is tearing Iraq apart. Allawi, who is a Shiite, said Iraq needs a new prime minister or new elections to prevent the country from disintegrating along sectarian lines.

____

Associated Press writer Barbara Surk in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/baghdad-bombings_n_1225996.html

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Virgin America honors Steve Jobs at 30,000 feet with tribute jet (Yahoo! News)

The Steve Job's quote was chosen from an internal competition to name the plane

List?Virgin America's new plane as one of the latest additions to the increasing number of Steve Jobs tributes that include a?posthumous Grammy, a?Mythbusters-style documentary, and a?7' bronze statue. The U.S. airline had the popular Steve Jobs quote "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" painted on the side of an?Airbus A320.?This specific quote was chosen among the list of entries for the company's plane naming contest.

Jobs uttered the phrase back in 2005 while giving a?commencement address at Stanford University, although it originally appeared on the back cover of a 1960's American counterculture publication called?Whole Earth Catalog. "On the back cover of [Whole Earth Catalog's] final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself," Jobs said.

It's not too surprising for the company to come up with a Steve Jobs tribute. Virgin America identifies as a?tech-forward company, and offers?fleet-wide wifi as well as touchscreen displays and power outlets on board. Virgin Group head honcho,?Sir?Richard Branson, is also a?known Apple fan.

[via?MacRumors]

This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca

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