When Karen KirschÂ’s health-insurance premium jumped from $444 a month to $559 a month in one year, she called bullshit on Oregon's State Insurance Division by challenging a rate increase it approved.... From Willamette Week....

As the 2009 AVN Adult Entertainment Expo opens in Las Vegas this week, Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis and HUSTLER magazine publisher Larry Flynt are hoping to get a financial bailout for the adult entertainment industry, a spokesperson for Francis announced today.... From Las Vegas Weekly....

Lee Iacocca isn't running GM, Ford or Chrysler, and the most inept administration in history has made conditions far more daunting, but the stakes are far greater. We should take a deep breath and help the bums.... From Arkansas Times....

According to former agricultural banker Ben Gisin, whose magazine Touch the Soil is chronicling the local foods movement across the nation, the housing-cum-banking crisis foreshadows and ever deeper, looming global catastrophe: massive food shortages.... From Boise Weekly....

I am of mixed opinions of how or even whether to assist people and banks that got involved in the overinflated housing market over the last few years.  But one thing I am clear about is that giving out billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to the housing industry that reaped in mega-profits d...

After months of doom-and-gloom headlines about the U.S. housing crisis, some might assume Philadelphia's been hit just as hard as other American cities -- but Philly realtors disagree. (Of course, they can't afford not to.)... From Philadelphia Weekly....