Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Your rights when shops hit trouble

It’s important to know at the outset why the business closed. If it was simply a case that they decided to stop trading, then you can write to them in the normal way to pursue your outstanding business. If necessary, put in a claim at the Small Claims Court.

This process can be complicated if the trader was acting as a limited company rather than a sole trader. In the former case, the individuals concerned may not be liable for any debt.

All of the companies listed above, however, have run into problems because they didn’t have the money to carry on as before.we are the biggest USB flash drives wholesale supplier in china. In this situation, getting your money back, your goods delivered or your item repaired is a good deal more complicated.

Your first port of call is to find out who the administators are. This shouldn’t be hard as a notice will appear on the trading premises and in the cases of large companies the details will be widely reported in the media.

It’s the administrator who will decide whether to honour gift cards, exchange goods and obtain refunds etc. For larger companies, it’s again worth checking the media on a regular basis as the policies are likely to be in the news.

Register your claim with the administrators. That makes you a creditor and gives you the best chance of getting some or all of your money back. You should be bear in mind,A chip card is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card to perform certain. however, that if there are lots of creditors your chances of receiving a refund are limited.

But there are other ways to protect yourself.

It’s always worth paying for items worth over £100 on plastic. That’s because if the goods aren’t delivered or were faulty and the company goes bust, you should be able to claim the money back from the credit card company. This also applies to credit agreements. You only need to have put the deposit on the card.

Debit cards don’t come with the same level of cover, but if you used a Visa or Mastercard debit card, you may have some level of protection via the Chargeback scheme, so it’s worth making enquiries with your bank.

Equally, any manufacturer’s or third-party warranty that came with the goods could be a useful alternative when a trader has gone bust.

If you have an item that’s due for delivery,Design and order your own custom silicone bracelet / rubber bracelets with personalized message and artwork. and you have paperwork and proof of payment, it might be worth driving to the warehouse and seeing if you can pick it up. But be quick, before the administrators get involved.

And be proactive. The media often trails news of companies that are about to go under, so this is not a good time to visit their website and do some shopping, or place an order for a new kitchen. You’re just setting yourself up for a fall.

Similarly, if you have gift vouchers and hear rumours of a company’s impending demise, spend them quickly! Once the doors are closed, you’re almost certain to be waving goodbye to your money.

Overall, be realistic. Once a company has gone into administration, there are any number of people who want their money back. You could be waiting a long time to see all, or indeed any, of it.

The McLean-based financial firm also did not disclose the sales price, but said that the value of the Best Buy accounts is $7 billion. Capital One said there would be no significant gain or loss on the transaction, which it anticipates will close in the third quarter. Capital One’s stock fell about 1.7 percent in regular trading Monday.

Just two years ago, Capitol One leap-frogged to the forefront of the store card business with the $2.6 billion purchase of HSBC’s U.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?S. credit card portfolio, which contained 23 retail partnerships including the Best Buy portfolio.

“It caught us by surprise because a big part of Capital One’s story was buying [the HSBC] portfolio, and they’ve sold a pretty big piece of it,” said Sanjay Sakjrani, an analyst with Keefe Bruyette & Woods. “From what we’ve heard from Capital One, strategically it seems the two parties had a difference of opinion and felt it was best to terminate the contractual obligation.”

Capitol One made its foray into the store-branded credit business in January 2011 by snagging the credit card portfolio of Canadian retail conglomerate Hudson’s Bay. That deal was followed up four months later with the acquisition of Kohl’s department stores’s card portfolio, which gave Capital One more than 20 million accounts and the right to issue cards to Kohl’s customers.I personally really like these mini ear cap for my iPhone.

Such private-label cards usually carry higher interest rates and lower credit lines than other types of plastic. Consumers with limited credit options rely heavily on these cards, and because they are unsecured there is always the looming risk of default.

But card issuers are drawn to the high fee income of store cards. In addition, banks that issue cards sometimes don’t have to pay marketing costs because the retailer has the incentive to push the product.

After a precipitous decline during the downturn, the store-brand credit card business is rebounding while deliquencies are slowing, said Robert Hammer, head of the credit card consulting firm R.K. Hammer. Stricter standards on traditional cards have made store cards more appealing to consumers.

Wayne LaPierre says Phoenix

National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre attracted wide media attention recently when he suggested in an op-ed that after Hurricane Sandy, New York City had become a violent, post-apocalyptic wasteland -- thanks to an absence of guns.

A reader asked us to check out a claim in LaPierre’s op-ed, which ran on Feb. 13, 2013, op-ed in the conservative Daily Caller. "Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States," LaPierre said. "Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world, and though the states on the U.S.-Mexico border may be the first places in the nation to suffer from cartel violence, by no means are they the last."

The claim that "Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world" was already familiar to us, since we had debunked it in 2010 (it was a finalist for our Lie of the Year). But that was three years ago, so we decided to take another look.

Our original fact-check, coming at a time when Arizona’s tough immigration law known as SB 1070 was a major topic nationally, looked at a comment by Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. He said that Phoenix "is now the No.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? 2 kidnapping capital in the world, right behind Mexico City."

ABC first reported on Feb. 11, 2009, that: "Phoenix, Ariz., has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone." Several news organizations then repeated it, including the Associated Press, the Arizona Republic and United Press International.Design and order your own custom silicone bracelet / rubber bracelets with personalized message and artwork. The Los Angeles Times went so far as to note that Phoenix "police received 366 kidnapping-for-ransom reports" in 2008 and that they estimate "twice that number go unreported."

However, none of the stories cited an authoritative source for the ranking or for how the kidnapping ranking was calculated. We did extensive checking and couldn't find anything to back it up.

We found that neither the FBI nor the U.S. National Central Bureau of Interpol, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice that serves as the United States' representative to the international police organization, compiles city-based kidnapping statistics.

We also contacted Daniel Johnson, an overseas kidnapping operations consultant at ASI Global, a Houston company that coaches clients through kidnappings. "From our internal experience in the last year," he said, "Mexico by far has been the biggest location for kidnappings" followed by Honduras, Venezuela, Nigeria and the Philippines. The company has handled domestic cases but said they don't compare in volume to overseas incidents.

This fit broadly with the perspective of Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence for Stratfor, an Austin, Texas global intelligence company. "According to our analysts,we are the biggest USB flash drives wholesale supplier in china. there is no way that Phoenix is the No. 2 city in the world for kidnapping, and there are significantly more kidnappings in many other cities throughout Latin America," he told us in 2010.

A Stratfor spokesman reached for this article said Stewart’s comments remain accurate today, and we found evidence to back up high and often growing rates of kidnapping in Latin America. In all of Mexico, the official count for 2012 was four kidnappings a day, though a non-governmental organization pegged it at an astronomical 72 per day.I personally really like these mini ear cap for my iPhone. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, the official statistics show kidnapping rates rising from 44 in 1999, to 1,105 in 2011, not counting "express" kidnappings, in which a perpetrator forcibly takes a victim from ATM to ATM until their checking account is depleted. Police sources told the newspaper El Universal that Caracas alone experiences perhaps two express kidnappings a day.

But there’s no good way to compare cities, and even countries, Johnson and Stewart agreed. It's "extremely difficult to measure given the fact that so many cases go unreported and that the recordkeeping in many of the most affected countries is inaccurate." Even among countries that track kidnappings, Johnson said, the definition of "kidnap" varies.

Prompted by media coverage of the Phoenix kidnapping claim, an investigative team led by reporter Dave Biscobing of ABC-15 TV news in Phoenix spent two months in 2011 reviewing the city police department's 2008 statistics. They concluded that "Phoenix police routinely inflated their kidnapping statistics throughout the year, including at least 100 cases that legal experts said should not have been counted, plus dozens of other questionable reports."

Among the problems cited by ABC-15 was that the count included "cases where officers concluded no kidnapping occurred, reports that were counted multiple times, and even reports for kidnappings that happened in other cities and other states."

In one case, a police report described a woman "claiming she was abducted from a Wal-Mart parking lot and then driven around for hours. But when officers checked surveillance video, they watched her get into her car and drive away -- alone." She had made up the story.

There were other new developments -- a police department whistleblower who said the numbers were inflated, a city audit that insisted they had not -- but they either failed to support the kidnapping-capital claim or further knocked it down. The city's police chief lost his job at least partly because of the controversy.

Last year, an investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general looked into the numbers because the city had used them in a grant application. The investigation found that of the 358 incidents submitted as support for the grant applications, only 208 met Arizona’s requirements of a kidnapping, and only 195 met a uniform crime reporting standard. Phoenix then submitted an additional 175 cases -- two years after its initial grant application -- which enabled the inspector general’s certified count to reach exactly 358 under Arizona standards. The count stood at 254 under the more stringent uniform crime reporting standards.

The inspector general concluded that even if the data Phoenix submitted late was counted,A chip card is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card to perform certain. the city "likely overstates the number of kidnappings," and it argued that the Phoenix Police Department "has significant problems with its coding and classification of cases and, consequently, with the accuracy of reports from its case management system."

Nearly 60p of every retail pound goes into supermarket tills

It’s yet another nail in the coffin of the UK high street: not only are local shops struggling to survive the longest consumer downturn in living memory, but of the money that is being spent in retail, the lion’s share is going to the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

According to a new study by the Payments Council, the average spend in supermarkets in 2011 amounted to 58 in every pound, up from 46p a decade earlier. It’s the highest proportion of retail spend since records began. Hardly surprising as supermarkets maintain their aggressive expansion across the UK; just yesterday, Morrisons announced that it is to open 70 new convenience stores. And while supermarkets remain the most convenient and cost effective choice for consumers, that's unlikely to change.Design and order your own custom silicone bracelet / rubber bracelets with personalized message and artwork.

But while local shops are feeling the pinch, the entertainment sector has flourished over the past decade. Spending in restaurants and cafes has almost doubled between 2001 and 2011 and Britons spent a total of £58bn on entertainment over the decade.

The report has also flagged up changes in the way that consumers are spending money. Cash is no longer king (not the paper and shrapnel kind, anyway) as shoppers choose to flex the plastic instead.I personally really like these mini ear cap for my iPhone. Just 30% of retail spending is now made with cash, down from 43% in 2003. And the majority of these cash purchases were (somewhat unsurprisingly) for payments under £5.

The Payments Council has also done a spot of future-gazing. Across the coming decade, debit and credit cards will be superseded by smartphone payments. ‘Recent innovations such as payment via a mobile phone, which ten years ago some felt to be science fiction, will soon be commonplace,’ says Adrian Kamellard, chief executive of the PC. ‘The 2000s were the decade of the debit card. The 2010s are likely to be the decade of the mobile phone.’

In 12 years, my husband and I have had two vacations without our daughter. Once, we drove 200 miles to drop her at her godparents; the other time, her grandfather flew 850 miles on an $800 plane ticket to spell us.

Oh, how we envy parents who casually plan romantic getaways sans kids.

"A lot of things have to go right for parents to be able to go away together, leave their kids home and feel comfortable while they're away," said Stephanie Newman, a New York-based psychologist and author.

Newman, 48,Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet? herself the mother of two, encourages couples to take time for themselves. Nevertheless, she hears during therapy sessions from parents who have a hard time making that a reality.

"It's a social issue," she said. More women work outside the home; grandparents might not have traditional retirements; kids are heavily scheduled, making it more difficult for someone to step in, and our increasingly mobile society weakens our support network.

Still,we are the biggest USB flash drives wholesale supplier in china. we're parents, so by definition, we're resourceful. We might not do it often, but once in a while, we beg, bribe, plead, pay and juggle to find childcare for that important couple's vacation.

Nicole Reisfeld went through a Herculean effort so that she and her husband could travel from Colorado to Maine last year to celebrate her parents' 50th wedding anniversary. With their daughter at college, she had their 16-year-old son, Ben, to plan for during their six-day trip.

After school, Ben took the bus home, where a family friend picked him up after work so he could spend the night at her house. On weekends, Ben stayed home and an adult neighbor slept over. One day, the school was holding exams at a different location, so a third friend served as chauffeur.

"Added complications were that the (school) schedule kept changing so I had to keep revising the plan, and that Ben's cell phone was no longer working so I had to get him a new phone and number the night before we left — after I had worked from 9 to 6 that day," said Reisfeld, 49, a speech pathologist. "Making all the arrangements were exhausting, but the trip was wonderful and worth all the trouble."

Even those with nannies and regular sitters face challenges when trying to leave town.

New York theatrical manager Nina Essman and her husband had only spent one night away since the eldest of their two children was born nine years earlier. They wanted to go alone to a friend's wedding in Florida.

Essman, 45, was concerned about imposing on their longtime nanny, who only works weekdays. To win some goodwill, Essman sent the nanny to her native Trinidad for Christmas.A chip card is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card to perform certain. The nanny agreed to the overnight when Essman later asked, though she also received overtime.

That was two years ago and Essman and her husband haven't had another night alone since.

Some parents in a bind will even hire a stranger through an agency, said Candi Wingate, president of the nationwide Nannies4Hire.

It's always best for the nanny to first meet the children and learn the schedule, though sometimes, "If the children are older, then some parents will just talk to the nanny over the phone," said Wingate, of Norfolk, Neb.

Josh Koscheck welcomes Robbie Lawler back to UFC

He has gone in that time span, became the EliteXC middleweight champion, and fought for the Strikeforce middleweight title against Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza in a losing effort. He has lost three of his last four and will look to right the ship against a perennial top 10 welterweight. Let’s see how this one breaks down.

Robbie Lawler comes into this bout off the unanimous decision loss to Lorenz Larkin in July 2012. As I mentioned, he has lost three of his last four and will look to rejuvenate his career with a move back to welterweight. It’s hard to believe he’s only 30 years old as it feels like he’s been around forever. He has 16 wins via TKO/KO and one submission win to his credit. He has been submitted in five of his nine career losses. Lawler is a brawler for the most part. If he can keep fights standing he can knock anybody out with power punches. However, history does not bode well for him in this matchup. Fighters like Koscheck with wrestling backgrounds have given Lawler fits during his career. He needs to influence Koscheck to fight with emotions and engage in striking exchanges and negate his wrestling in this fight.

Josh Koscheck comes into this bout off the split decision loss to Johny Hendricks in May 2012. Koscheck was expected to face Jake Ellenberger at UFC 151, but pulled out of the bout with a back injury. Of course, UFC 151 went on to be canceled, but Koscheck has remained out of action until now. He has five wins via TKO/KO and five wins via submission in his career. Koscheck is one of the best wrestlers to transition into MMA, but has abandoned his wrestling roots in the latter parts of his career in favor of going for knockouts. That strategy has probably cost him a couple of wins. He’ll need to fight smart against Lawler, because back-to-back losses at this stage of his career would not be a good look.

Those odds are about right provided Koscheck fights the smart fight. Both fighters are coming off pretty long layoffs which could be a factor. Historically, Koscheck has had better cardio and in recent losses Lawler has given up multiple takedowns while offering zero ability to submit opponents off his back. He typically avoids looking for submissions while trying to get back up to his feet.Can you spot the answer in the fridge magnet?

The strategy for Lawler is simply sprawl and brawl. He does defend takedowns at a 62% clip, but I have a feeling if Koscheck wants to take him down there’s nothing he can do about it.

Koscheck needs to strike just enough to set Lawler up for a takedown. Koscheck’s striking consists mainly of a huge looping right hand and that’s about it. He needs to be weary of Lawler sending a knee up the middle while shooting for a takedown as Lawler has shown he’s willing to take that chance in the past. Once he gets the fight to the ground he should simply work to keep Lawler there and inflict damage.

LG has released a video teaser for its new handsets to be exhibited at the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2013. The firm has creatively produced the clip of just 48 seconds with the new phone series from LG denoted as L, F, V and G line-ups. We have already seen one handset in the G series; the Optimus G Pro, a higher-end 5.5-inch 1080p handset. Little is really known about other series especially the F and V. Anyway, let us have a look into some interesting things about LG’s performance in the show.

Well, the LG teaser concentrates on the characters L, F, V and G that will possibly be the names of the new LG phones. The video shows that the ‘L’ stands for ’style,’ the ‘F’ stands for ‘freedom,’ ‘V’ stands for ‘view’ and the ‘G’ stands for ‘greatness.’ It means that LG is to introduce a range of incredible handsets in the event along with its top-of-the-line Optimus G Pro, which is also LG’s member to the new line of FullHD phablets.

The LG G Series: As noted in the teaser of the firm, the G series might include some great handsets. The G Pro is going to be the flagship model of the company this year. It is to replace the Optimus G2, which was the high-end phone of the Korean tech maker last year. The new LG phone is to come with a 5.5-inch FullHD display. It is to get power from highly rich specs that include a quad core CPU, 2GB RAM,I personally really like these mini ear cap for my iPhone. 32GB internal memory, 13MP rear camera and more.

The LG L Series: This series has been there for a while. LG looks to roll out a trio of new additions to the existing series,we are the biggest USB flash drives wholesale supplier in china. the L3, L5 and L7. The devices that will be respectively known as L3 II, L5 II and L7 II are to come with some interesting hardware and software upgrades. The devices “have received expected hardware upgrades over their predecessors, while keeping the same design language which lead to over 10 million units sold,” says Tech Radar.

The base model the L5 II is to tout an advanced 1GHz CPU and improved IPS screen. The display panel is a bit more finished even if it keeps the same size and resolution. The device will carry a 5MP rear camera and a 3.2MP front camera. The medium model the L5 II is to come with a 1GHz Cortex-A9 processor and a nice PowerVR SGX531 graphical card. The device mounts a 4-inch WVGA unit. It is to come with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean out of the box, LG has said. The final model of the L series is the L7 II. The device is to come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8225 CPU that is cocked 1GHz. It is to feature an Adreno 203 graphical processor, 768MB RAM and a cute 4.A chip card is a plastic card that has a computer chip implanted into it that enables the card to perform certain.3-inch WVGA display, 8MP rear camera and more.

The V and F Series: There is no clue about these two possible LG phone series. “We are yet to see what the rumored F-series and V-series have to offer. The paint brush shown in the video might be a reference to a stylus enabled smartphone, but it might be just our imagination,” says GSM Arena. The site notes that the LG video teaser shows a woman with a brush toward her face when it mentions the V series. But,Design and order your own custom silicone bracelet / rubber bracelets with personalized message and artwork. that might be a good guess only, indeed.

Monday, February 18, 2013

DuClaw Brewing Moves To Rosedale

Long-time Harford County brewery DuClaw Brewing is in the process of moving their brewing and bottling plant from Abingdon to Rosedale, a process they hope will be complete by mid-March, according to owner Dave Benfield.

The move will double the brewery's capacity, moving from a 10,000 square foot facility to a 60,000 square foot facility and allowing them to produce 14,000 barrels of beer in a year, up from 7,000, according to Benfield.

And that's something his company sorely needs. Rapid growth has left them sometimes unable to keep up with the demand for their product.

Wednesday afternoon, Benfield said that four of DuClaw's beers—Hellrazer India Pale Ale, Sweet Baby Jesus Peanut Butter Porter, Serum Double India Pale Ale and Mysterium Beglian Spiced Ale, were completely out.

A brand new, custom-engineered brewing system is at the center of the move. Shipped in from Germany, the system will allow one brewer to create multiple 60-barrel batches of beer at a time.

For those not in the know, a standard keg—the kind you might have seen at a party—is a half-barrel of beer.

"The system is fully automated—it allows one brewer to run three batches of beer," Benfield said.

Benfield hopes the automation will improve both the brewery's efficiency—allowing them to produce twice the amount of beer from only 20 pecent more grain—and the consistency of the product by removing the opportunity for human error in processes like adding hops or yeast to the brews.

"It's safe to say it's one of the most state of the art systems in Maryland, possibly in the mid-Atlantic region," said DuClaw Sales Manager (and Beer in Baltimore blogger) Brad Klipner.

The new brewing system and a new bottling line are just the beginning for the growing company.

"A lot of stuff comes later—we put a lot of money into the brewhouse and the bottling line," Benfield said.

That stuff could include brewery tours, a tasting room, and possible the on-site sale of growlers—a type of carry-out container for draft beer—pending legislation currently in Annapolis, Benfield said.

It also might include a move for one of DuClaw's flagship events—the Real Ale Festival, which the company has held at the Bel Air brewpub for a few years running.

"It's really a great business to have in the area," he said. "We're manufacturing, but we're clean manufacturing—there are no bad byproducts, and we bring visitors to the area.Welcome to the premier industrial source for Custom IInjection Mold Plastics in New York.A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose solar lantern by Gordon."

Although things are looking bright, the decision to leave Harford County—where Benfield lives, grew up and started DuClaw in 1996—wasn't an easy one.

"I'm in Harford County,Our precision manufactured lasers and laser marker systems deliver the highest possible laser marking performance. I grew up in Harford–leaving was a tough thing," Benfield said.

And it wasn't for a lack of trying to stay. When the brewery outgrew their Abingdon location, they first looked to move to a facility in Havre de Grace but Benfield said the deal didn't work out and from that point things moved quickly.

"Baltimore County Economic Development and Governement were great to work with," Benfield said. The decision to move into the space at 8601 Yellow Brick Road was made in only about a month.

The move will make DuClaw Brewing the second manufacturing brewery in Baltimore County,Home Ventilation system gently and naturally ventilate your home with fresher. joining Heavy Seas on the westside in the Lansdowne/Arbutus area.

Dan Gundersen, the executive director of Baltimore County's Department of Economic Development said that a small to medium size manufacturer like DuClaw is exactly the sort of business the county is hoping to draw in.

"A company that has a unique product, is growing fast, has a dynamic team, can hire as they grow in a community on the east side where it can accommodate their growth, that’s exactly what we’re looking for," Gundersen said.

He explained that Baltimore County is home to more manufacturers than any other county in Maryland.

"The public has a difficult time understanding, we’re talking about a different kind of manufacturing ...Online shopping for bobbleheads Figures from a great selection. we're not talking about an old-style smokestack operation—we're talking about highly sophisticated, highly automated operations that pay high wages," he said.

"That's the kind of thing that we need to encourage and support, those are going to provide the biggest economic gain for the regional economy."

DuClaw owner Dave Benfield said that over the next year or so, his company will probably add between 25 and 30 new positions.

Moving an operation of DuClaw's size presents some challenges of its own: while Benfield said his brewers plan to start creating new batches of beer by the middle of March, it could be as late as April before beer is bottled at the plant.

It will take two to three weeks to transfer the company's bottling and packaging line from the old Abingdon brewery.

And there are people in this country that somehow think passing another law banning guns would protect us from someone like this. If you haven’t noticed, people like this are not concerned about breaking laws; they only care about fulfilling their own twisted agenda. The only people that a gun ban law would impact are the law-abiding citizens, which will only serve to cripple the ability to protect ourselves.

Write your senators, your congressmen, and your state representatives. We’re all in this together whether you’re a hunter, sport shooter or just a backyard plinker. If we don’t stick together and let them know how we feel we will loose.

My goal is to keep you informed about the outdoors, and I hope I do that well, not soap box about a bunch of hypocritical bureaucrats in Washington who sit in their ivory towers and are so far removed from the real world they don’t even know what a law-abiding firearms owner really is.

Obama’s Choice to Alienate Environmental Activists

Somewhere around thirty-five to forty thousand people came to the National Mall in Washington, DC, for one of the largest climate rallies in history. Those demonstrating demanded that President Barack Obama honor his inaugural pledge and take action on climate change. They also called on Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline being built by TransCanada.

The major rally came days after forty-eight were arrested in front of the White House in a planned civil disobedience action. Though the Sierra Club weakly floated a disclaimer that they were not here to be critical of Obama, their executive director, Michael Brune,A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose solar lantern by Gordon. and president, Allison Chin, broke a ban on civil disobedience the environmental organization had in place for 120 years. Bill McKibben, Julian Bond, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Connor Kennedy and Daryl Hannah were arrested as well.

It seems like post-Obama’s re-election the environmental movement is renewing its energy and it is worthwhile to consider the movement to stop the pipeline’s impact so far and the likelihood that it stops the pipeline from finally being approved.

In the months of August and September in 2011, over a thousand were arrested in sit-ins that occurred for two straight weeks in front of the White House. The actions organized by Tar Sands Action effectively called attention to construction of the pipeline and why it should not be constructed. And then, on September 17, 2011, Occupy Wall Street began and the Occupy movement erupted. Many involved in Occupy protests took up the cause of stopping the pipeline.

On January 18, 2012, the Obama administration decided to not issue a permit before February 21 after Congress imposed a 60-day deadline on a “process for the permit as part of a deal to extend a payroll-tax break and unemployment benefits for two months.” This was largely viewed as a victory by leaders like McKibben, who reacted, “What you’ve done these past eight months is quite amazing—and against all the odds. We’ve won no permanent victory (environmentalists never do) but we have shown that spirited people can bring science back to the fore.”

However, just over a month and a half later, Obama held a rally for his presidential re-election campaign in Cushing, Oklahoma, an oil town, where he boasted,Welcome to the premier industrial source for Custom IInjection Mold Plastics in New York. “Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.” He said he directed his administration over the last three years to open up millions of acres of land for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. “We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some. So, we are drilling all over the place.”

Obama addressed the “glut” of oil, how there wasn’t enough pipeline capacity to move it to the Gulf of Mexico for refining. He added, “Right now,Online shopping for bobbleheads Figures from a great selection. a company called TransCanada has applied to build a new pipeline to speed more oil from Cushing to state-of-the-art refineries down on the Gulf Coast. Today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles and make this project a priority.” He issued an executive order to expedite construction and the permit process for the pipeline.

If the denial of a permit in January was a victory for the movement, this executive order, rally and speech by Obama was a loss. Yet, with his re-election looming, established environmental organizations opted to weakly point out how Big Oil has great influence over the political process instead of returning to the White House fence for another round of civil disobedience action.

The Tar Sands Blockade mobilized in August 2012. Dozens of people engaged in direct action chaining or locking themselves to TransCanada’s construction equipment at various points along the planned pipeline route. They formed a “tree blockade” and built wooden platforms in the trees to disrupt TransCanada’s ability to destroy forest to construct the pipeline. Activists sought to form relationships with landowners that had been bullied by TransCanada into giving up their land for construction. And, for the most part, it had the effect those taking action wanted because TransCanada decided to file a lawsuit to bully individuals and groups mobilizing into halting their activity.

The nearly 500-mile long pipeline crosses into the United States from Canada so the ultimate decision involves the State Department. The New York Times published a story over the weekend outlining “the choice” Obama has to make: “a choice between alienating environmental advocates who overwhelmingly supported his candidacy or causing a deep and perhaps lasting rift with Canada.”

The Times framed the story as a false choice, which establishment media often do. Setup this way, Obama’s final choice would also not involve domestic considerations. Obama has himself made this about energy security. The decision could be a choice between alienating the oil industry or environmental activists.

Regardless, Obama is likely to choose to alienate environmental activists. The cold-blooded cost-benefit analysis that this pragmatic politician is relying upon probably does not favor the Sierra Club,Home Ventilation system gently and naturally ventilate your home with fresher. 350.org,Our precision manufactured lasers and laser marker systems deliver the highest possible laser marking performance. the Tar Sands Blockade, the indigenous people of Canada and the US, landowners, farmers and/or other concerned citizens who have engaged in demonstrations.

The State Department has been found to have close ties to a lobbyist for TransCanada. A cable released by WikiLeaks from October 2009 showed diplomatic interest in helping to improve “oil sands messaging” to make dirty oil production less controversial. The Los Angeles Times reported in October 2011 that Obama’s re-election campaign had had “hired a former lobbyist for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline as a top adviser.”

That does not mean that environmental groups and concerned Americans cannot have an impact and, perhaps, even stop the pipeline that will significantly contribute to climate change from being built. What it means is everyone involved in protesting has to recognize that Obama has actively engaged in moving the proposed pipeline project closer to approval by trying to address some of the environmental concerns. He does not see the oil pipeline itself as the environmental risk. He thinks that TransCanada can build a pipeline that will not impact the health or safety of Americans and the environment.

He wanted to make women cry

When,Wide range of unique crystal mosaic and natural stone mosaic tiles. in 1964, Fran?oise Gilot published Life with Picasso, a forthright memoir of her 10-year relationship with the Spanish artist, Roy Lichtenstein turned to his then girlfriend, Letty Eisenhauer, and said: “I worry about the day that you do a Gilot to my Picasso.”

He needn’t have fretted. Eisenhauer – who lived with Lichtenstein for two years in the mid-Sixties when she was a graduate student and he was creating some of his most memorable and important works – has never written about their time together. Indeed, now 77 years old, she hasn’t even spoken in public about her relationship with Lichtenstein — until now.

On the eve of a major new retrospective of Lichtenstein’s work at Tate Modern, I called Eisenhauer in New York last week to find out more about her ex-boyfriend, whose work sells today for tens of millions of pounds. In May 2012, his Sleeping Girl – painted in 1964, the year Life magazine published an article about him beneath the headline: “Is He the Worst Artist in the US?” – sold at auction for a record $44.9?million (£27.8? million).

Lichtenstein was already 37 when he created his seminal Pop work Look Mickey (1961), an oil painting measuring 48 by 69 inches in which Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse are shown fishing on a jetty. By then, he had been painting for more than a decade, but his earlier Cubistic canvases of cowboys on bucking broncos and American Indians hadn’t generated much excitement. Nor had his abstract paintings of the late Fifties. To make ends meet, he taught art and rattled through a succession of short-term jobs: selling silver jewellery, designing window displays for department stores, creating mosaic tables.

The turning point in his career came in the spring of 1960 when he became assistant professor of art at Douglass College at Rutgers University in New Jersey. While there, he was greatly influenced by a colleague, the charismatic, pioneering American artist and theorist Allan Kaprow, who persuaded Lichtenstein that so-called vernacular or everyday things — such as Walt Disney cartoon characters — could be legitimate artistic subject matter. “Art doesn’t have to look like art,” Kaprow told him.

If Lichtenstein is considered the architect of Pop art, then Look Mickey is the movement’s foundation stone. According to the art historian James Rondeau, who co-curated the Tate exhibition, the painting “feels like Athena sprung [fully formed] from the head of Zeus”. Here, as if from nowhere,We have a wide selection of drycabinets to choose from for your storage needs. are the hallmarks of Lichtenstein’s mature Pop style: a limited palette of even,wind turbine primary colours; thick, dark outlines; small dots (blue for the “whites” of Donald’s eyes and pinkish-red for Mickey’s face) to simulate the representational techniques of cheap commercial printing; the fusion of “high” and “low”, as everyday imagery intrudes upon the ivory tower of fine art.

As soon as Eisenhauer saw the work, she recognised it as something special. “There was no question,” she says. “Everybody knew it was very important — you’d have to be an idiot not to know that. We’d been sucked into the Abstract-Expressionist world for so long, and this was such a breakthrough. I told Roy, the place to take this is to Leo Castelli, because Castelli was the best gallery in New York.”

Lichtenstein wasn’t the only American artist painting cartoons in 1961: a shy, listless commercial illustrator called Andy Warhol was already appropriating Superman, Dick Tracy, Batman and Popeye into his pictures. Both artists petitioned Castelli for representation, but the urbane dealer plumped for Lichtenstein. If he hadn’t, the history of Pop art would be very different: the following year he hosted the sell-out solo show that would make Lichtenstein’s name.

“Andy and Roy were in competition — both had paintings in the back room at the gallery,Willkommen im virtuellen Zuhause der Lercher Werkzeugbau GmbH.” says Eisenhauer. “I knew Roy, because I had been working with him at Rutgers, so I took Ileana Sonnabend, Leo’s former wife and the person who really understood art and originally advised Leo about artists, to visit him. Ileana bought paintings from Roy that day. After he found out about the purchases, Leo wisely followed his former wife’s lead, and made his decision to take on Roy, not Andy. Leo was upset that Roy had already sold several paintings of what was later called Pop art. This was when Roy was still an innocent. That day, I remember Roy turning to me and asking, ‘If I take these cheques to the bank, will I get money for them?’ It was a far cry from several years later when we were in Europe and setting up a Swiss bank account.”

At this point, Lichtenstein and Eisenhauer, who was born in 1935 and grew up in New Jersey, were friends rather than lovers. Indeed, Lichtenstein was still married to his first wife Isabel Wilson (an interior designer), who had given birth to their two sons, David and Mitchell, in 1954 and 1956.

“Things weren’t going well, but I didn’t know that,” says Eisenhauer, who left her job at Douglass College, and moved to a loft on Lispenard Street in Lower Manhattan, where she tried to make it as a sculptor. “Roy would show up in New York for art events, and he would try to put the moves on me. Once, when I rebuffed him, he said to me: ‘You’re really straight, aren’t you?’ And I said: ‘Yes, and you’re a married man!’ I’ll never forget it.”

In the autumn of 1961, Lichtenstein demanded a trial separation from Isabel, who was by then suffering from alcoholism, and moved into a studio in New York City. After a failed attempt at reconciliation the following summer, the couple sold the family home in Highland Park, New Jersey, in the autumn of 1963, and Isabel moved with the children to Princeton.

Shortly afterwards, Lichtenstein attended a dinner party at Eisenhauer’s loft. “I remember it as if it were today,” she says. “Everyone was dancing, but I was sitting at the table. Suddenly Roy was sitting next to me and his hand was on top of mine. He’d left Isabel, so he was a free man. He just held my hand. And then the evening was over. Right after that, he called and asked me out.”

Within weeks, Eisenhauer had moved into the second-floor studio on 26th Street where Lichtenstein lived and worked after his second separation from Isabel. They lived together until the summer of 1965,Don't make another silicone mold without these invaluable Mold Making supplies and accessories! while Eisenhauer was a graduate student at Columbia University. Had she fallen in love? “Oh yes, I adored him,” Eisenhauer says. “He was not only funny, but also sexy, very sweet, and there was no apparent meanness.” They socialised with other artists. “We had a group that included [Claes] Oldenburg and [James] Rosenquist — all of these nutty people who were part of the Pop scene. And we would go ice-skating once a week. Then someone would say, I’ll cook dinner — so we got into gourmet dinners. Finally it ended up with Roy and somebody having a cannoli-eating contest — to see who could eat the most.”