What on earth are the credit card companies up to?

I've heard a lot of cautionary advice over the last few weeks about watching the mail for updates to credit card agreements and that the credit card companies were doing a lot of sneaky tricks to attempt to get more money from the consumers, so I was surprised when a letter from my Chase United Airlines credit card came and informed me that my fixed rate would be lowered from %14.99 to %7.99.  Then more surprised when an innocuous "update" to my card holder agreement arrived saying that as of January 2009, the card would switch to a variable rate of up to %29.99 APR.  No indication of what the initial rate would be or of any controls on when or how often the rate would change.  The first letter looked like a regular personal letter, the "update" was a small piece of seeming junk mail. Now, I don't carry a balance on this card, so it doesn't really matter to me, but this really seems like a bait-and-switch type activity. Tell folks loud & clear how low their new fixed APR is, right before the holidays to encourage spending - then slip in a large rate increase in January. It was very clear that the new rate would apply to existing balances.

Isn't this the type of thing that is now known as predatory lending? Of course, neither piece of mail came with a phone number or contact for questions...

Neil Young and the Linc Volt in Menlo Park!

Neil Young brought his Linc Volt, reconditioned classic 1959 Lincoln Continental Mk IV, to Sun's Menlo Park campus today to give employees a chance to see the car and the singer up close. The car is now a hybrid, powered by natural gas and lots of batteries. I was surprised at how well it was done - hiding the batteries where the convertible top normally folds down, the engine under the back seat and the generator in the front. Why did Neil drive it to Sun's campus today? Because the car uses Java to monitor performance. I'm not huge car nut, but do like Neil Young and appreciate cool technology so I definitely enjoyed myself.

Voting

I got myself to my polling place around 9AM this morning, finding it a bustle of activity, but no real lines.  California is trying to really push voting-by-mail and if your polling place does not have enough in-person voters, it will be shut down and anyone in that precinct will be required to vote-by-mail.  There are many concerns about voting by mail: ease of coercing a vote, stolen ballots, undelivered ballots, ballots returned with insufficient postage after the deadline to vote, etc. There are provisions for people who did not receive their ballot to go & vote by person in their polling place, but then they only get a provisional ballot - one with a complicated procedure for determining whether or not it will be counted.  For those reasons I show up in person, but the thing I found odd is that there are three polling places in the one building where I go to vote. Wouldn't it make more sense to combine these polling places rather than get rid of them all together? Really, it wouldn't effect my voting at all - two of the polling places are in the same room, but I have not heard of any cases of combining polling places.  If my polling place ever goes extinct, I guess I'll have to go line up at the registrars office.

All the same, I believe this is a very important election for our country and for the state of California, where we seem to love ballot initiatives. If you haven't done so yet, please get out there and vote!

Voting

I got myself to my polling place around 9AM this morning, finding it a bustle of activity, but no real lines.  California is trying to really push voting-by-mail and if your polling place does not have enough in-person voters, it will be shut down and anyone in that precinct will be required to vote-by-mail.  There are many concerns about voting by mail: ease of coercing a vote, stolen ballots, undelivered ballots, ballots returned with insufficient postage after the deadline to vote, etc. There are provisions for people who did not receive their ballot to go & vote by person in their polling place, but then they only get a provisional ballot - one with a complicated procedure for determining whether or not it will be counted.  For those reasons I show up in person, but the thing I found odd is that there are three polling places in the one building where I go to vote. Wouldn't it make more sense to combine these polling places rather than get rid of them all together? Really, it wouldn't effect my voting at all - two of the polling places are in the same room, but I have not heard of any cases of combining polling places.  If my polling place ever goes extinct, I guess I'll have to go line up at the registrars office.

All the same, I believe this is a very important election for our country and for the state of California, where we seem to love ballot initiatives. If you haven't done so yet, please get out there and vote!