Chrysler just released its first financial report since emerging from bankruptcy last year. The company announced that while it’s still operating at a net loss of around $197 million, it somehow managed to create $1.5 billion in cash during the first three months of 2010. That cash Missoni Dresses, along with an additional $7.4 billion from past cash reserves, went toward putting a dent in the company’s remaining debt.

The smallest of the Big Three also managed to increase its market share one percent compared to the last three months of 2009. What’s more, it produced a whopping 56 percent more vehicles in North America from January to March than it did during the same period last year, despite seeing sales decline by 5.3 percent. That bump in production is largely thanks to the fact that Chrysler idled many of its plants through 2009.

The company says that despite the loss Karen Millen Dresses, it’s still on track to meet its goals and return to profitability by the end of this year. That’s due to the fact that revenue increased by around $300 million from the fourth quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010 and that the company is continuing to reduce its debt. At the same time, a rash of new models, including the long awaited 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee will be hitting the market soon. Follow the jump for the official word.

[Source: Chrysler via Freep | Image: Bill Pugliano/Getty]

BELFAST, Maine — Few people go to one car mechanic for a diagnosis of a rattle in the engine, then go to another to get the necessary repairs. But that’s the way Maine’s nascent home energy audit and weatherization work has been done.

Under a new consumer program offered by Efficiency Maine, homeowners can have an energy audit and six hours of work improving a building’s heat retention done all in one day by the same contractor.

The Direct Install program pays contractors $300 for work, which includes an energy audit and the six hours of air sealing or insulation work. The air sealing work typically focuses on stopping air leaks around doors, windows, plumbing, exhaust fans, chimneys and the foundation.

What’s new about the program, explains Keith McPherson of the Albion-based Home Energy Answers, is that the work is done by the same person who conducts the energy audit.

Until now, energy auditors typically have acted as consultants and referred the actual work to other contractors. Though a law had been considered to prevent energy auditors from earning money from insulation work they had recommended, Dana Fischer of Efficiency Maine said it did not win legislative approval.

McPherson said it simply is more efficient to fix the leaks that become obvious during an audit, rather than write a report prescribing what another contractor must do at a later date.

An energy auditor comes into a home and sets up a blower door, which is a vinyl curtain of sorts that hangs in an open exterior door frame. A fan blows the air outside, with a device measuring the volume of flow and temperature changes. Inside, the auditor is able to locate the sources of air infiltration around windows, doors and other parts of the house using a little smoke to identify moving air sources and an infrared camera to locate cold spots.

Homeowners often imagine big-ticket fixes must follow, such as installing new doors and windows or adding significant amounts of insulation. In fact, McPherson said, big energy-saving rewards are reaped in small fixes. These include adding weatherstripping and caulking to doors and windows, using spray foam to fill gaps around building penetrations for pipes and exhaust fans, insulating around the sill in a basement and around an attic hatch door.

“We spend 90 percent of our time in attics or basements,” McPherson said jokingly. But the work yields substantial improvements, with as much as 25 percent of air flow reduced.

If a house is sufficiently tight, the six hours of work can focus on improving ventilation, if needed, or insulating knee walls or wrapping an electric hot water heater with insulation.

McPherson Buy Windows 7 Product Key, who now has an employee working with him, had worked as an energy auditor for four years before venturing into the energy retention work. He was trained by MaineHousing to do the auditing work, then got certified by the Building Performance Institute.

Efficiency Maine lists auditors on its website Office 2011 MAC Key, but Fischer stresses that hiring one should include the same sort of due diligence on the part of the consumer. Just as someone might solicit references from a carpenter or electrician, the same should be done for those doing energy audit and insulation upgrade work.

Efficiency Maine asks contractors using the program to complete a 40-question survey about the house, detailing insulation, electric usage and other information. The nonprofit also will send out inspectors to randomly review the work completed through the program.

McPherson said he likely will charge his customers $300-$400 for an audit and the six hours of work, but they are actually receiving $700 in improvements, thanks to the $300 he will get from Efficiency Maine.

The Direct Install program can function differently for community action programs, Fischer suggested. They may send their auditors and weatherization crews into low-income households and complete $300 in work at no charge to homeowners.

Both Fischer and McPherson said the Direct Install program also serves as a conduit for Efficiency Maine’s PACE and Power Saver loan programs McAfee Product Key, which provide low-interest funds for larger weatherization or energy related improvement work.

For information, visit www.efficiencymaine.com or call toll free 1-866-376-2463.

LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC beat expectations with an underlying first-quarter profit of $6.8 billion as Europe’s biggest bank saw a rebound in investment banking, growth in Asia and a fall in U.S. bad debts.

HSBC said on Tuesday it was making good progress with its strategic revamp, including cost savings, and had shed 14,000 jobs since last year as part of chief executive Stuart Gulliver’s drive to boost profitability.

“We are pleased that the measures that are under our control, we are getting some serious traction on,” Gulliver told reporters.

He pointed to Hong Kong, the rest of the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America as showing the benefit replica watches, with revenues up 16 percent, 18 percent and 7 percent on the year respectively, and highlighted strong performances in commercial banking and investment banking, called Global Banking and Markets (GBM).

GBM’s rates business was boosted by the European Central Bank’s massive injection of liquidity in December and February, although that boost has faded in the last two months.

Reflecting concerns about the euro zone backdrop, HSBC is hoarding more of its excess liquidity in Europe at central banks. It now has $153 billion at central banks, up $23 billion since December and up by $85 billion in the last nine months.

Other banks, including Santander and BNP Paribas, are also parking excess cash with central banks, preferring that to the risk a counterparty could hit trouble.

HSBC, which makes over three quarters of its profits outside Europe and north America, has bounced back more strongly from the 2008 financial crisis than many competitors, helped by its presence in faster-growing emerging markets.

However, it is facing the same regulatory pressure as rivals to reduce risks, as well as the euro zone’s uncertain political backdrop, which are combining to create “significant headwinds” in developed economies, the bank said.

Gulliver said he did not expect the euro zone to break up. It was impossible to predict if Greece would leave, but even if it did the rest of the bloc could stay together, he said.

Britain’s financial regulator is requiring banks to make “contingency planning against a euro zone dislocation,” which HSBC was part of, he added.

In contrast, China’s economy should have a soft landing and emerging market economies should show growth of more than 5 percent this year, HSBC predicted.

Gulliver is quitting areas where HSBC lacks scale and increasing its focus on Asia. He will provide a more detailed update on strategy at an investor day on May 17.

“We view this as an encouraging update ahead of the company’s forthcoming strategy day,” said Gary Greenwood, an analyst at Shore Capital.

“Highlights include a strong recovery in the Global Banking and Markets business, a reduction in the underlying cost income ratio … and a reduction in impairments replica watches,” he said.

INSURANCE MIS-SELLING

HSBC said underlying first-quarter profit rose 25 percent to $6.8 billion, compared with a forecast for $5.8 billion. Including a $2.6 billion hit from the movement in the value of its own debt, HSBC’s statutory profit was $4.3 billion.

HSBC shares were down 0.7 percent at 551 pence by 1520 GMT, giving up early gains after a sharp 1.8 percent fall by Europe’s bank index.

Expenses nudged higher due to a rise in bonuses at the investment bank and wage inflation in certain regions, such as Asia, but underlying costs as a percent of revenue improved to 55.5 percent from 58.7 percent a year ago.

Gulliver wants to get that level below 52 percent, which some analysts said could be tough, and to lift return on equity (RoE) above 12 percent by the end of 2013. RoE, a key measure of profitability, came in at 6.4 percent, although on an underlying basis it was nearer 11 percent, the bank said.

“We are confident we can hit 12-15 percent RoE and are not going to change it (the target),” Gulliver said.

A year since setting out his strategy, Gulliver has made 27 disposals that have released more than $60 billion in risk-weighted assets and hiked annualized cost savings to $2 billion.

It was not all good news in the first quarter, however.

Bad debts in Latin America jumped 62 percent to $600 million replica watches, mainly due to a rise in Brazil after HSBC increased lending there and the country’s growth slowed.

Its underlying profit of $1 billion in Europe was down $98 million on a year ago due to higher costs and bad debts.

And HSBC joined rivals in lifting its charge for the mis-selling of payment protection insurance in Britain, taking another 290 million pound ($469 million) provision. It has now set aside 745 million pounds, and that may not be enough.

“The volume of claims has increased quite significantly over what our original assumptions were. I cannot say if this is the final provision, I doubt it, we may find we have to top it up again,” Gulliver said.

GBM’s revenues came in at $5.8 billion, up 11 percent on the year and a big improvement on the previous three months, echoing trends seen among rivals. Foreign exchange trading was strong alongside rates, and the bank said April was “satisfactory”.

Losses from bad debts in the quarter were $2.4 billion, broadly flat from a year ago, but well below the near $3 billion expected and showing improvement in the United States due to better foreclosure and impairment trends, where the bank is running down its consumer loans book.

($1 = 0.6180 British pounds)

(Editing by Mark Potter and Jon Loades-Carter)

Related Quotes and News Company Price Related News

Assistant federal Treasurer David Bradbury says there is a strong case for banks to pass on an expected cash rate cut in full to their customers.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is widely expected to reveal a 25 basis point cut in the cash rate on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr Bradbury told ABC Radio ahead of the rates announcement at 2.30pm (AEST) the government believed the banks should pass it on in full.

“That's certainly the position that our government has had and if you look at the various data that is available, whether it be information that has been provided by the Reserve Bank itself or indeed some of the recent profit figures … we can see there is a very strong case for the banks to be passing through the full extent of any movements in the cash rate,” he said.

“But of course we don't prejudge decisions of the Reserve Bank.”

Mr Bradbury said there would be “considerable scrutiny” of the banks if they did not pass on the cut.

“We acknowledge there have Buy Tattoo Kits, since the global financial crisis Tattoo Machine Rotary, been increases to the funding costs the banks face,” he said.

“But it's one thing to acknowledge an increase in funding costs, it's another to give a permanent and automatic green light to the private banks to pocket some of those cuts in the cash rate.

“It is most important we continue to hold the banks to account Best Tattoo Guns, particularly where there is evidence … to indicate that the funding cost situation has started to improve.

“And in that case we are looking to impose considerable scrutiny on the decisions banks take in relation to their own interest rates.”

I’m honored to be speaking here on the National Mall today, in a place where so many people have made their voices heard over the years. Their words called out to the people in the Capitol building over there, to the occupant of that big white mansion down the street, to crowds like us, and to generations who came later.

The importance of “speaking truth to power” has almost become clichéd Tattoo Machine Equipment, but here we are with the Rio Earth Summit just two months away and those with power are showing precious few signs of having heard the truth spoken by so many of us, especially by the young people who will have to live with the consequences of what does — or doesn’t — happen in Rio.

I’m thinking in particular of climate change. If we don’t get to grips with this problem, the world we hand over to them is guaranteed to be a far less pleasant place than the one my generation inherited. And they know it. The youth delegations attending the annual UN climate conferences are the most passionate and outspoken — brave, even — of anyone there. They never fail to move me, because this is where it hits home — like all parents, I am fiercely protective of my children and their future.

Sometimes I get to thinking. What if I were to get stuck in an elevator with President Obama? And maybe the key Congressional leaders of both parties. And no advisers. (Okay, like that’s ever going to happen, but hey it’s my fantasy). What would I actually say to convince them to start fighting for our children’s future, rather than the profits of the fossil fuel companies? What would it take to penetrate that armor of business and politics as usual, and wake them up? I don’t know; I write and rewrite that elevator speech over and over again in my head, but one thing is for certain — I always whip out photos of my two kids to drive it home.

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons: Earth Day Network

But let’s face it. Very few of us will ever have a chance to take that elevator ride, to have that quiet word with those in power. And maybe that’s okay, because we can find our strength in being the opposite of quiet, and redefining what it means to be “in power.” We need to make ourselves heard not just today, on Earth Day Tattoo Supplies, but every day. And we need to leverage our voices into millions.

We must also translate our words more effectively into action. We need all hands on deck to fight against our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels. To get involved in campaigns against coal Tattoo needles, tar sands, deep-sea drilling and the insanity that our taxpayer dollars continue to subsidize these harmful activities. Everyone must play their part, not only by clicking “Like” on a Facebook page, or signing a petition, or even attending a demonstration — these are all important. But also by letting our elected officials know that we’ve done these things and that come Election Day, we’ll be voting for our children’s future. Our votes are power!

Twenty years ago, the first President Bush went to Rio and declared “the American way of life is not negotiable.” We need to make sure that President Obama goes to Rio this time around and acknowledges that the real threat to our way of life is climate change — not the actions we need to take to solve it. Because at the end of the day, there’s only one thing that is truly non-negotiable, and that’s our children’s future.

DMR ArchitectsAn artist’s rendering of a revitalized, mixed-use downtown Hackensack. Read the rehabilitation plan »

HACKENSACK — City Manager Steve Lo Iacono remembers the Hackensack of his childhood, when the city was a center of commerce. A destination.

“Historically, it was the center of Bergen County,” Lo Iacono told NJ.com recently, adding that the presence of hospitals, several major highways and rail lines and the central offices of county government made the city a destination. “Those factors haven’t changed.”

What has changed is the rise of automobile commuting, which sent city-dwellers all over America into the suburbs over the course of a few decades. Hackensack isn’t alone in its struggle to draw people back to its downtown, and now officials here are trying to implement the recommendations of a lofty “downtown rehabilitation plan” that it commissioned from the Hasbrouck Heights-based DMR Architects.

The focus of the study was an ambitious overhaul of zoning laws in a “rehabilitation area” of 389 existing properties across 39 city blocks, spanning a total 164 acres. It recently received unanimous approval from the city’s planning board, and public hearings are slated for June.

Project Manager Francis Reiner says there was another subtle force that sent businesses and residents away from the urban center: Municipalities all over began enforcing single-use zoning laws, relegating one section of a city to commerce and another to residential space. He said peeling back those restrictions, allowing living space above first-floor storefronts, creates a vibrant downtown.

“We have to change the tools and the mechanisms to allow that kind of development to occur,” Reiner said. “This plan does that.”

Lo Iacono says the plan looks to build on the the city’s strengths — its diversity, easy access to public transportation among them — while respecting the architectural and historical character of the city.

DMR ArchitectsThe proposed rehabilitation area spans from the county administration buildings at its southern end up to University Plaza Drive.

“We’re not looking to have someone bulldoze Main Street from the Court House to Sears and put up skyscrapers,” he said.

The proposal, spelled out in a lengthy report issued by DMR Architects in April, calls for a streamlined permitting process that will help developers seeking approval of downtown construction projects cut more quickly through red tape. But they also take a bold stance on what the city will and won’t permit, spelling out in black and white the kind of structures they want — and what they don’t.

“A developer doesn’t know if brick or stucco or vinyl is something the city wants or doesn’t want,” Reiner said of the current planning and zoning processes. “He’s got to spend a lot of money making a presentation that might not go anywhere. These standards come out and say it.”

Vinyl siding, for example, is a no-go for store fronts. As are plastics, “simulated materials,” smoked or tinted glass and acrylic materials. In their place it recommends materials like wood, metal Discount Herve Leger v neck, glass and brick — an emphasis is placed on “durable materials.”

While the requirements and recommendations may be prescriptive, Reiner contends that they only spell out in writing what a zoning board would tell a developer later on in the process.

“It’s not overly prescribed,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of flexibility in the plan.”

Ultimately, he said, “We want active first-floor uses. That’s what makes a city great.”

As examples, Reiner points to nearby cities like Morristown, New Brunswick, Hoboken and Jersey City, all of which have achieved downtown revitalization to varying degrees. Meanwhile in Fort Lee, the borough is currently wrestling with how to go at a similarly ambitious $1 billion mixed-use project just south of the George Washington Bridge.

Because so much of the plan relies on private investment in development, it’s hard to gauge the ultimate cost of the undertaking, but Lo Iacono points to the praise the plan received from Hackensack-based developer David Sanzari at the April 18 city council meeting where it was unveiled, an endorsement that he said “spoke volumes.”

“We know there are a lot of developers that want these types of projects,” Lo Iacono said Discount Karen Millen Dresses, while acknowledging that they’ll have to overcome “long-held beliefs of how people look at the city.”

But the plan also recommends changes to the city streets themselves, including converting the one-ways like Court Street and Bergen Street to two-way roads, and a widening of pedestrian sidewalks, which will require significant public investment.

Lo Iacono said implementation of the plan “will probably force our hand” on a $1.2 million overhaul of the city’s storm water sewer system, which is over a hundred years old and frequently overflows into the Hackensack River during storms.

“It needs to be done anyway,” he said. “We know we need to do it.”

The possibility of major development projects being undertaken at the same time as a major renovation of the Bergen County Justice Complex doesn’t seem to faze the city manager, either. He points out that the construction will be focused downtown, and that major thoroughfares like River, Passaic and Essex streets won’t be impacted. Too much construction, he says, doesn’t rank among his concerns.

“I hope I have those problems,” he said.

Related topics: hackensack

William F. Buckley Jr. in 2001

William F. Buckley, who died today, outlived a conservative movement that was largely his creation.

Buckley established himself as intellectual father to conservatism in 1955, when he founded National Review. Contrary to Lionel Trilling’s famous declaration in 1950 that liberalism was “the sole intellectual tradition” in the United States, conservatism did exist before Buckley. But it was diffuse Tattoo Supplies, encompassing WASP aristocrats (the people Franklin Roosevelt denounced as “economic royalists”); an assortment of cultural conservatives motivated largely by anti-Semitism, racism, nativism, and anti-Catholicism; and a small circle of intellectuals, of whom the best-remembered are the Burkean Russell Kirk and libertarians Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand. Buckley gathered and sifted through these disparate groups, spurning the anti-Semites and anti-Catholics (prompting the John Birch Society to tag him the “pied piper for the establishment”), tolerating but not joining the racists and the nativists, and embracing the libertarians so long as they didn’t disparage religious belief. This last caveat excluded the cultish Rand, whose Atlas Shrugged Whittaker Chambers panned in National Review, taking exception to its atheism and its materialism, which in Chambers’ view made it a conservative mirror image of Marxism. Christian piety and anti-communism were Buckley’s twin pillars, the former to such an extent that Buckley ruled out David Brooks, his onetime protégé, as a possible editor of National Review on the grounds that Brooks was Jewish. Buckley wasn’t willing to sacrifice National Review’s identity as a publication whose mission was at least partly theological.

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More prosaically, National Review defined itself in opposition to the “modern Republicanism” of Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a publisher’s statement accompanying the first issue—the one famous for pledging to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop”—Buckley denounced conservatives who “made their peace with the New Deal,” as the sitting president did, as “the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality [have] never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.” It was this mission, more than the others, that defined Buckley’s influence on conservatism. Within 10 years, the Republicans would nominate for president Barry Goldwater, a candidate who represented the antithesis of modern Republicanism. After Goldwater’s landslide defeat, Buckley’s movement pressed on, and in 1980 it installed Ronald Reagan, one of its own, as president.

It’s rare that a writer as influential as Buckley leaves behind so little in the way of lasting works. Buckley published many books in his lifetime, but only his first Tattoo Supplies, God and Man at Yale, will likely stand the test of time. Buckley extended his influence mainly through National Review, through a syndicated newspaper column, and through Firing Line, the lively debate program on public television that elevated him to national celebrity. His public persona drew admiration from ideological friend and foe alike because of Buckley’s obvious charm, his playful wit, his generosity, and his insistence that political differences be expressed in a civil tone.

But sorry as we may be to mark Buckley’s passing, we should be very glad that the country ignored much of what he had to say. Consider, for example, this National Review editorial from 1957 (cited in Paul Krugman’s recent book The Conscience of a Liberal):

The central question that emerges—and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal—is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. …

National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.

The equanimity in that last clause is particularly chilling when you consider that it was published only two years after Emmett Till’s murder. Buckley was not himself a bigot, but he was at best blind and at worst indifferent to the bigotry all around him, and there can be no question that he stood in the way of racial progress. In a 1963 column taking exception to the imminent march on Washington, where Martin Luther King would deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech, Buckley described himself as someone who believed that

a federal law, artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment, whose marginal effect will be to instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business, is no way at all of promoting the kind of understanding which is the basis of progressive and charitable relationships between the races.

Buckley was similarly oblivious to the danger posed by Sen. Joe McCarthy, about whom he co-authored a sympathetic book in 1953. As late as December 2005, Buckley was still hedging carefully any criticism of McCarthy’s irresponsible witch hunt:

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Mercedes-Benz S-Class spy shots – Click above for high-res image gallery

Mercedes-Benz has a lot on its plate at the moment. In addition to the spy shots we’ve seen of the next-generation GL, ML, SLK and C-Class Coupe, our men in the trees have spotted this S-Class mule out roaming the streets, giving us a glimpse at what the all-new flagship Benz will have in store when it launches in the next few years.

Up front, it appears that the headlamps have been reduced in size and our spies indicate that full-LED units will be in place for the 2012 model year. Additionally Buy White Herve leger, the front grille appears larger, mimicking what we’ve seen in the F700 concept car. Under the hood, we expect a full range of new engines, including gasoline, diesel and hybrid variations, keeping the big S-Class competitive with what the rest of the luxury barges coming to market in the next few years.

We fully expect to see more spy shots of the new S-Class as development continues, so stay tuned. As for the official reveal Buy Christian Audigier Clothing, look for that to happen sometime in 2011 with production models hitting the road in 2012.

Related GallerySpy Shots: 2012 Mercedes-Benz S-Class
[Source: CarPix]

Click above for high-res gallery of the BMW 750Li Discount Karen Millen Dresses

When the 2009 BMW 7 series was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show last fall, BMW’s fifth-generation flagship had an anvil-sized burden to bear. Although the last 7 series was a milestone in the sales department, its design – which foisted Chris Bangle’s influence onto an unsuspecting public – was all but universally panned when it was introduced in 2001. And if the exterior wasn’t offensive enough (to some), BMW’s newly-implemented iDrive system sent many reviewers and owners into unmitigated bouts of rage.

For 2009 Cheap DKNY Dresses, BMW has sought to address the fourth generation’s foibles while capitalizing on its strengths. And while nothing is more subjective than styling, control interfaces have a huge impact on the overall experience. Find out if BMW has succeeded on both fronts after the break.

Related GalleryFirst Drive: 2009 BMW 750Li
Photos Copyright ©2009 Sam Abuelsamid / Weblogs, Inc.

Are straight couples destroying traditional marriage?

Photograph by Andranik Makaryan/Hemera.

While it’s true that marriage is in serious trouble in the United States, it’s not because of the gay and lesbian couples seeking to achieve it. If my own research telegraphs future marriage trends, the real peril may come from an increasing number of straight folks who have had their fill of traditional marriage. Instead of fretting about how gay couples are redefining marriage, maybe we should start talking about why straight couples are rejecting it.

At least that’s the conclusion I’m reaching in considering the fallout from Illinois’ first-in-the-nation experiment with civil unions for opposite-sex couples DKNY Dresses sale, which went into effect June 1 of last year. When asked during a long Skype interview why she and her partner, Justin Gates, chose to enter a civil union rather than marry, Leah Whitesel, who identifies as queer despite her current relationship, framed the question this way: “Gay marriage doesn’t seem like the right discussion to me. Because it should be: ‘What is this institution of marriage and does it still need to be defined the way it has been?’ ” For Whitesel and Gates, the answer is no.

Many of the other straight civil union pioneers have also said no to marriage—for themselves and as an institution. The evidence is in a report that the Cook County Clerk’s Office recently issued on the nation’s first opposite-sex couples who civilly united. It found dissatisfaction with the institution of marriage because of concerns with its historical assignment of roles, its connection to religion, and its unfairness to gay and lesbian couples. My own interviews with some of these same couples, who have rejected marriage and plunged into the shallower, murkier pool of the civil union, reflect a cohort prepared to take the wrecking ball to marriage itself.

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To be sure, the numbers of people entering opposite-sex civil unions in Illinois still represents a very small share of the total. As of Dec. 29, 2011, only 148 of the 1,993 civil union licenses had gone to opposite-sex couples. That’s not surprising, because—as is the case in the other states that have recognized civil unions—the Illinois measure was primarily intended to grant same-sex couples the benefits of marriage without the name. The law can’t achieve equality for them, so there’s very little about these clever creatures of compromise to attract opposite-sex couples. Civil unions aren’t recognized on the federal level, and hardly anyone understands what they are in the first place. For many same-sex couples, a civil-union law is much better than nothing. The expectation was that for opposite-sex couples, it would still be worse than the alternative. That’s why most states haven’t bothered extending the option to straight couples. And why it’s striking that some straight couples in Illinois have nevertheless opted in.

Those 148 couples might portend something big. The clerk’s office was able to survey one partner from more than half (46 of 87) of the opposite-sex couples who had civilly united as of Sept. 19. And their reasons for entering into civil unions rather than marriage should worry marriage traditionalists. For instance, by more than three-to-one, respondents cited “personal or religious convictions against marriage” as a reason for choosing the civil union. And when asked an open-ended question—“Why did you decide to obtain a civil union instead of getting married?” the most frequently proffered response fell into the political/ideological category. The report provides a few specifics behind that political objection to marriage, including statements of “solidarity with the gay community and/or support of equality, fairness, and inclusiveness.” Some respondents cited commitment/label issues, which included those who did not want a “husband” or a “wife,” or even the “marriage” label itself. And 9 percent of respondents cited religious issues. (Even though religion need not be a part of a marriage ceremony, for many the two are inextricably linked).

Almost half the respondents’ objections are loosely about their perceived objections to the institution of marriage. And only four of the 46 admitted choosing civil union status in order to preserve social security or other benefits from a previous spouse that would be lost through remarriage—but not through entering into a civil union Replica Herve Leger v neck, which isn’t federally recognized.

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It’s going to be hard for Cadillac to live up to its longtime billing as “The Standard of the World” if the brand isn’t available in much of it. Despite this, General Motors has decided to pull Cadillac from nearly half of the 25 European markets (not including the U.K. or Russia) in which it currently sells. Along with Cadillac, the HUMMER and Corvette brands will also be affected.

The problem isn’t directly GM’s fault Emilio Pucci Dresses sale, as the automaker relies on a Dutch-based third-party company called Kroymans Import Europe to distribute these brands across the Atlantic. Due to slow sales caused by the global economic downturn, Kroymans has found itself with an “acute liquidity shortage.” In other words Discount Herve Leger v neck, it’s out of money.

GM and Kroymans are currently working on a new distribution deal, but in the meantime, a court has appointed an independent administrator to take possession of the 3,500 unsold vehicles currently sitting on Kroyman’s 165 European dealerships.

[Source: Automotive News - sub. req'd]