For 10 years—including the boom times banks enjoyed in the first half of this decade—the FDIC was prevented from collecting fees from 95% of financial institutions, which it would have used to further build up its safety net in the event it would someday have to bail out a bunch of stupi...

If there is a tipping point for the City's controversial practice of offering special event fee waivers - that is covering the costs of traffic control, police, trash, etc. for events held in the City, history may show that it was Tuesday when the Council approved over $3K in waivers for something.....

09-0499 CD 13 c. MOTION (GARCETTI - ROSENDAHL) relative to declaring the Dyke Day Los Angeles on June 13, 2009 a Special Event (fees and costs absorbed by the City = $3,252). Thanks to a tipster we found out among the many special event waivers totaling nearly $75K the City Clowncil is... [[ This is...

Ready to pay more in airline fees, thanks to government sloth? The Economist reports on an upcoming increase in aviation fees: …if the American government’s “Aviation Passenger Security Fee”, currently at $2.50 for each leg of travel, is already annoying you, the Obama admini...

The a-la-carte airfare trend not only mucks with price transparency; it mucks with your reimbursements. One friend of mine had a hard time getting his checked-luggage fee reimbursed. A former colleague sent me a rant about a previous employer, noting that her $25 standby fee on US Airways, which she...

Here’s a Canadian’s perspective on why university education should be free by Heather Mallick. Of course, I think it well worth considering, even if the perspective comes across as more cold hard economic rationalism.. the comments therefore represent that line - but when in Rome hey! I ...

We all know that just because a rep on the phone promises you something, that doesn't mean it's necessarily true. But in Alan's case, two different United reps both confirmed, repeatedly—he asked several times before completing the purchase and again before canceling—that he could cancel...

Worship Recap: Greg is still preaching on The Sermon On The Mount, challenging us to be more like Jesus in mercy, thoughtfulness and  and to be bold in our prayers. Our music time was complimented with partaking in communion. One funny thing, my keyboard had an intermittent failure during the first...

You'd think a whole bus is hard to hide but Orbitz had no problem trying to sneak one past Harry McCracken when he was booking a flight to Las Vegas. He noticed at checkout there was a $14 ground transportation fee that had been "added for [his] convenience." Paging backwards, tucked in a list of ab...

Filed under: Airlines, Airports, News Here is (what should be) a great piece of news from the aviation world - domestic US carriers are losing fewer of our bags. A staggering 1.3 million bags were not lost when compared to statistics from the previous year. Normally, airlines would have a good reaso...