Puerto Rico: A US State?

Understanding the status of Puerto Rico within the United States can be a complicated issue. It is a common point of confusion for many, with people often questioning – is Puerto Rico a US state? The answer is more complex than a simple yes or no. Although not a formal state, Puerto Rico has been a US territory since 1898, and holds a unique, intersticed status between that of a recognized sovereign nation and a US state.

Puerto Rico is an entity known as a “commonwealth,” defined by certain legal and political relationships with the US. As a territorial commonwealth that is simultaneously a part of and distinct from the United States, it shares many, but not all of the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of conventional US states.

The inhabitants of Puerto Rico, for example, are US citizens. They can obtain US passports, move freely between the mainland and the island, and are governed under the protection of the US Constitution. It has its own governor, its own legislature, and a resident commissioner who represents the island in the US Congress, albeit without a voting right.

Nevertheless, the question remains on the minds of both mainland Americans and Puerto Ricans – should Puerto Rico become a state? The issue has been put to Puerto Ricans multiple times in referendums, with results that reflect a population divided on the issue, influenced by concerns about preserving cultural identity and achieving greater autonomy, against improved economic prospects and representation in federal decision-making.

From an administrative perspective, Puerto Rico becoming a state would mean two more senators and five representatives in Congress. It would allow federal income tax to be collected there, while also being eligible for additional federal funding for programs such as Medicaid.

Yet, if Puerto Rico were to become a state, serious issues would remain. For example, the island has a distinct language and culture that it undoubtedly wants to preserve. How would statehood affect Puerto Rico’s identity?

Puerto Rico’s status draws interest not just from domestic observers but also international ones. For example, a certain communications agency Australia has shown particular interest in the island’s status and how it impacts broader US economic and political dealings.

As we head into the future, the question of Puerto Rico’s status will become increasingly pressing. What we do know, though, is that Puerto Rico’s relationship with the US, regardless of its technical status, will continue to have significant consequences for both.

Whether we regard Puerto Rico as a US state or a unique entity requires us to consider a broader scope of parameters beyond simple geography or historical connection. We must incorporate considerations of culture, economics, and political representation. Ultimately, whatever Puerto Rico’s status is or becomes, understanding – and respecting – its unique position in the American tapestry is essential.

By Jake Barnes

If you have experienced job loss, medical bills, or other financial challenges, maintaining a good credit rating can be difficult. With a good credit rating you can meet temporary financial challenges by getting a personal loan from a bank or lending institution. But if you have bad credit, it can be difficult or impossible to get a personal loan from a bank. What can you do to get a bad credit personal loan? You have some options, but you need to be careful.

Secured Credit Card

A regular credit card is a form of unsecured loan. This means that the lender grants you future access to money based solely on your past credit history. You need not put up any collateral, such as is required for a home equity loan or an auto loan.

But if you have bad credit, you may not be able to get an unsecured loan. As a way to help you rebuild your credit rating, many banks offer secured credit cards. If you are approved for a secured credit card, you are required to make a cash deposit into the credit card account. You can then use the credit card to make purchases up to the amount of your deposit. Then, when you make your regular monthly payment, it reflects positively on your credit rating.

A secured credit card is not a loan. It is simply a way to establish better credit. After a year or so, you may be eligible for a regular credit card. But watch outsome unscrupulous secured credit card companies charge exorbitant fees.

Payday Loans

If you have a steady job and quickly need cash for an emergency, you might consider a payday loan. This is a high-interest short-term loan typically obtained from a neighborhood payday loan store.

Let’s say you need to borrow $400 today to get your car fixed. Your next payday is in two weeks, and your take-home pay is $1,000. The payday loan office will ask you for a check in the amount of $400 plus interest. The check is post-dated two weeks to your next payday. You give them the check and walk out of the office with $400 cash.

On your next payday the loan office will cash your check. If your check bounces, you may be subject to felony prosecution, or the lender will agree to roll over your loan to the next paydayfor a steep fee.

Payday loans are expensive. Loan fees are calculated per $100 borrowed, and typically range from $10 to as high as $30 per $100 borrowed. If you are charged $15 per $100 borrowed, a 14-day loan of $400 will cost you $60 in interest. That’s an annual percentage rate (APR) of 390%. Think about itdo you really want to pay $60 to borrow $400 for two weeks? And don’t forget that your next paycheck wont be $1,000it will be $540, because you will have repaid the loan.

Peer-to-Peer Lending

Also known as person-to-person lending, P2P lending, or social lending, peer-to-peer lending may be a good option if you have access to a lending group. Originally, peer-to-peer lending was developed by tightly knit ethnic groups who trusted one another and who may not have had access to traditional banks. At its most basic, the group creates a pool of money from which members may take out loans, typically for purposes such as a wedding, building a home, or starting a small business. The money is then repaid, sometimes with a low interest charge.

Traditional peer group lending depends upon a high level of personal knowledge and trust among the participants. For the general public, commercial peer-to-peer lending sites are operating on the Internet and are rapidly gaining popularity. Peer to Peer lending sites can generally help people of all credit types. Since the individuals lending the money stand to reap a greater return on their investment when lending to people with bad credit you have many that are willing to do it. Peer to peer or social lending is becoming a great way to get cash without using banks or credit cards.

Getting a personal loan with bad credit can be difficult but if you take your time and explore all of the available options you will certainly find people willing to lend the money. As always, proceed with caution since the loans available to people with bad credit will generally have higher rates and fees associated with them.

About the Author: Check out the article

personal loan alternatives for people with bad credit

on ConsumerFinanceReport.com. Visit the site to view additional personal loan content such as

overnight loans

and peer-to-peer lending.

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=558603&ca=Finances

byAlma Abell

If a friend or a loved one has been arrested, you know how important it is for them to be able to leave the jail and carry on with their life until their hearings. They need to be able to go to work, hire a lawyer, and make sure their bills are paid while they attempt to make sure their case turns out okay. If you want to be able to help them get out of jail, you may want to start by speaking with a Bail Bond Agent In Rockmart about helping them make bail.

When a person is arrested, the jail will give them a bail amount to pay. In most cases, this is set based on the crime they are accused of, but in some cases they may have to go before a judge to have their bail amount set. They can pay the bail amount themselves in some cases, but in many cases the bail amount is too high. Instead, a friend or family member can get a bond for them.

A bond is a contract stating that the person who is giving you the bond will pay the full amount of the bail, and you have to pay a percentage. If the person you’re helping attends all of their hearings, the bondsman will receive his money back, so you won’t have to pay anything further. If they don’t attend their hearings, the bond contract usually states that the bond will need to be paid in full by the person obtaining the bond and the person it is for will have a bench warrant put out for their arrest. This means that if they are stopped by the police for any reason they will be taken to jail and will have to spend the remaining time until their hearing in jail.

If this sounds like something you may be willing to do to help your friend or family member, look for a reputable Bail Bond Agent In Rockmart to get help obtaining a bail bond. They’ll be able to make sure you understand the full contract before you get the bond, and they’ll be able to help you get your friend or family member released from jail.

Send Special Valentines day gifts to india

by

Pooja KumarLife means celebration. Those who believe in life do not miss a single opportunity to celebrate it and even spread this feeling around by giving out special gifts to loved ones. Another of such festival is coming up on 14th February. Valentine’s Day is back to rejuvenate the spirit of love, romance and togetherness. This is the occasion to feel the warmth of relationship and share the same with others who have contributed to this sense of togetherness in your life.The Valentine’s Day has almost approached; those who believe in life with love have started scouring for lovely gifts to please their nears-and-dears. Today, online gifts are more popular than conventional gift stores in your neighbourhood. There are innumerable online gift stores offering variety of Valentines day gifts to India

to select and send from one corner to another of the world, without requiring you to do anything but a few clicks of your mouse. One of sites which I could find on net is GujaratGifts.com. It has stocked an exclusive collection of

Valentine gifts to India

. They have been sending Valentine gifts to India for more than a decade now. The main focus of this site is to help NRIs (non resident Indians) extend their love and caring concerns to their families, friends and loves ones in India by sending exclusive gifts. Likewise every year, there is a huge collection of valentine gifts that you can pick and order to send anywhere in India.

There are thousands of online gift ideas that you can use to send a valentine gift to India

. Just thinking to send

valentine chocolates to india

which will please anyone young or old. There is a huge collection of valentine chocolate, flowers, cakes, sweets, dry fruits, gifts for him, gifts for her and what not. There is wide

range of chocolates and flowers and other gifts that you can choose to send to your valentine in India. Any one from young to old, men and women, everyone will enjoy these gifts. Just send any of these gifts to India on this Valentine’s day and let them know that you cares.Of course there are unlimited gift ideas that you can search online. Certainly you can find one to match the level of recipient. But you do need to take care in choosing the online gift portal for your purpose lest you should lose your money and the gift will never reach its destination. You should buy your gifts only from a reliable online gift stores who has earned a reputation in sending gifts to India

. GujaratGifts.com sends gifts to more than 250 cities in India and has a very prompt delivery schedule.

Pooja Kumar, author of this article, is manager, public relations with GujaratGifts.com, a website that offers Cakes, Chocolates and also helps

send valentines day gifts to india

. The site also offers gift services to

send cakes to India

to over 250 cities.

Article Source:

eArticlesOnline.com}

By David Riewe

Deciding how much apartment they can afford is one of the most important decisions a renter will have to make. This decision will help to determine a number of factors include the size and location of the potential apartment as well as the types of amenities offered. Those who are interested in renting an apartment will have to consider all of their current expenses in comparison to their monthly cash flow. They will also have to determine whether or not there are changes they can make to their current budget to make a larger or more well situated apartment affordable.

Consider All of Your Expenses

When deciding how much apartment they can afford, renters should carefully consider all of their monthly expenses in relation to their monthly income. Expenses may include, but are not limited to, utilities such as gas, water and electric, telephone, cell phone, Internet services, cable television, car insurance, renter’s insurance, gas for car, cost of commuting to work, groceries and other incidental charges. Subtracting these costs from the monthly income will give the renter a good idea of how much money they can afford to spend on rent each month. Renters might also consider subtracting an additional amount out of their monthly income to give them the opportunity to save some money each month.

Expenses to be considered should also include expenses for entertainment purposes such as dining in restaurants, going to movie theaters or cultural events. Even movie rentals should be considered in this category. Considering these expenses is necessary because otherwise the renter may not allot a portion of their budget for such purposes and may find themselves unable to participate in some previously enjoyed leisure activities.

Is There Room for Improvement?

When examining the monthly budget, renter should take the opportunity to determine whether or not there is room for improvement in their current financial situation. For example a renter may find they are able to minimize their monthly bills by obtaining their car insurance and renter’s insurance from the same insurance carrier. The carrier may be willing to offer a discount to a customer who utilizes their services for more than one type of insurance. Likewise there may be the opportunity to minimize expenses by bundling services such as telephone, Internet and possibly even cable television.

Also, consider entertainment expenses as an opportunity for financial improvement. If a renter currently eats out in restaurants for dinner on both Friday and Saturday of every week, they could consider limiting these dining experiences to only one night a week or even only one night every other week. This can result in a significant cost savings which may enable the renter to afford a more expensive apartment.

Other areas where renters can sometimes cut expenses are on cell phone bills and cable television bills. Examine your cell phone bill carefully. If you are not using all of your minutes each month, it might be worthwhile to switch to a plan with fewer minutes. This would lower your monthly bill without causing you to make any sacrifices. One area where sacrificing might contribute to more monthly cash flow is with cable television. Renters who pay higher fees for premium channels can consider eliminating these channels. All of these small changes to monthly spending can contribute to the renter being able to afford a more expensive apartment which may be larger or in a better location than the apartment they would be able to afford without making changes.

Is There a Need for Improvement?

Although trimming superfluous expenses is always a good financial strategy, renters should determine if this is necessary in terms of their rental situation before making drastic changes. Once a renter has established the amount of money they can afford to spend in rent, they can start to look for available apartments in that price range. If the renter is happy with the choices available to them at this time, there may not be a need to make financial adjustments at this time. However, if the renter is not happy with the options available, financial changes and stricter budgeting are warranted.

About the Author: Learn all about Apartment Rentals from our experts! about-apartment-rentals.com

Source: isnare.com

Permanent Link: isnare.com/?aid=137308&ca=Real+Estate

By Donald Carmin

A Spy Watch with built-in DVR is an amazing piece of equipment that puts a video camera, digital still camera, a microphone, and a DVR short for digital video recorder into a working men’s wristwatch. By packing together all these equipment into such a tiny space, this piece of equipment can be used by police force, private detectives, or people who have to accumulate video proof for one motive or another, however stay undercover and discreet.

This spy watch has a video resolution of 1280 x 960, and records at 30 frames per second (fps) providing high quality videos. It has 4 GB of internal memory and you won’t have to fumble with SD cards and should be enough for 20 hours of recording, however the rechargeable Li-ion battery will run out of power well before that is filled and lasts for 70 mins approximately. Despite the fact that the video is not HD quality, for what it is, it is extremely high quality and records video in full color, in particular once you decide to capture natural scenery in your videos. The color video recording is especially wonderful once you take pictures of flowers or vibrant items. If you hold the camera motionless, the photo and video images are clear, whereas if you move the camera while it’s filming, the images will be hazy. Even smaller movements cause disturbances.

This spy watch with a built-in DVR is user friendly and is easily operated by an individual who is wearing it on their wrist, and it can be used either hands. The pinhole spy cam peeks out of the figure 2 on the watch face. As soon as you wear it on your wrist, you can work normally and record images and videos as well. You have to take care you are pointing the face of the camera precisely at what you want to capture. You need to aim the face of the camera at what you desire to capture video footage, as they are being recorded. If the watch is pointing at the sky you will record images and videos of just that.

Perhaps it’s much easier to use if you are left-handed person, given that you can manage the control buttons with your left forefinger easily, or else you will need to come up across the top of the watch with your right hand, and bend your right forefinger on the top of the watch to get to that switch.

However, there are a few pros and cons, let’s go over them. At first the pros, it is user-friendly and simple to operate, records color video footage in AVI format discreetly as well as takes still pictures in JPG format, AVI and JPG format works easily on a computer, records audio with low or no background noise. The cons include, it won’t work on Mac PC, audio is affected by loud background sounds like music, traffic, breeze, and mobs and recording time limited by battery life (70 mins) and not the memory size which is enough for 20 hours recording.

Spy watch is easily available online with several online spy shops. Order one now!

About the Author: Donald is an expert in the field. For more information on

spy camera

and on

spy watch

Please visit: http://www.my-spycam.com

Source:

isnare.com

Permanent Link:

isnare.com/?aid=573128&ca=Computers+and+Technology

Advantages Offered by a Removal Company Maidstone

by

JulyRed

When starting a new chapter in your life that requires you to pack up all of your belongings and move them to a new home, you have to think about your options. Of course, there is no one forcing you to rely on the House Removals Maidstone services offered by a proper Removal Company Maidstone like S W Leach&Sons. However, if you were to make such an investment, you would certainly not regret it because you would be able to benefit from a long list of amazing advantages.

If you think about it, moving sounds like fun. The only problem here is that you will not feel this way once you realise that you have to pack every single thing that you own and that you will have to do it in a really short time. Many individuals believe that they are going to deal with all this work in a matter of hours. If you have never gone through such a life change, you should consider leaving the packing and the moving parts in the hands of professionals. One of the most important advantages that you will benefit from is the fact that you do not have to waste any of your time.

Obviously, that is if you choose to allow House Removals Maidstone professionals to pack everything that you own. They will use suitable packaging materials and tools and will organise everything so that when you do move to your new home, you will know where everything is and it will be easier for you to unpack. Another amazing advantage that you will benefit from if you decide to contact a Removal Company Maidstone like S W Leach&Sons is the fact that they will do all the heavy lifting.

If you are worried that everything will cost too much, you should not be. Usually these companies try to do everything possible so that their customers are satisfied. So, it would be a good idea to look for Removal Company Maidstone that can offer you a free quote without you having to opt for their services. This means that they will come to your home, take a look at your belongings, ask you if you would like them to offer additional services and then come up with a quote.

As long as you are happy with the price that you have to pay for House Removals Maidstone, you can hire them and let them do all the hard work. You can continue with your daily routine, in fact that will make this transition a lot easier than you think. If there are any logistics issues that they need to talk to you about, they will do so and work with you to come up with a suitable solution to all of them.

There are countless reasons why you should look into House Removals Maidstone like S W Leach&Sons, one of them being the fact that these professionals know what they are doing. This means that they have helped a lot of other people with this transition and have made it easier for them to move to their new home. Interestingly enough, the same company is usually also a Storage Company Maidstone, which means that you can benefit from all sorts of useful services.

If you are interested in learning more about the range of advantages associated with a proper Removal Company Maidstone ( http://removalcompaniesinkent.co.uk/ ), you should consider visiting our website. Here you can read all about House Removals Maidstone ( http://removalcompaniesinkent.co.uk/ ) and other related services that will most definitely make your life easier. Get in touch with us as soon as possible!

Article Source:

eArticlesOnline.com

}

Online Email Marketing: Top 7 Professional Formatting Techniques

by

Michael A. Jones

Your online email marketing campaigns can flounder over something as simple as formatting.

Is your email easy on the eyes, easy to read?

Use these 7 key points to ensure your emails have a high readability rating:

1. Format the text lines between 55 and 65 characters. Anything more makes it harder to read and can give the message a ragged look if the recipient’s email program is configured differently.

2. Use only short paragraphs with plenty of space in between. Hit the Enter key twice between paragraphs so your email is easy to read and absorb.

3. If listing an email address or a URL, put it at the beginning of a new line. It is much easier for the recipient to see and use. (Example: See the style of the Resource Box below)

4. Use the Reply button to answer email. The previous message is then included so the recipient has the background immediately available. The > symbol appears on each line of the previous message. Insert your comments or answers under the relevant block of text.

5. Use CAPITALS only for effect, to emphasize key words or phrases. Do not write blocks of text in capitals.

6. Use exclamation marks judiciously. Emphasizing statements with !!!!!! cheapens and lessens rather than adding serious emphasis.

7. Avoid the use of fancy fonts and colors unless you know definitely the recipients are using HTML enabled email software. Although HTML formatted email is now quite common, a huge base of users still use plain text.

Punctuation marks used discreetly and correctly can really add power to your emails. Check Michaels punctuation guide:

about-goal-setting.com/punctuation-guide.html

Free email tutorial:

vitalstop.com/Business/autoresponders.html

Article Source:

Online Email Marketing: Top 7 Professional Formatting Techniques }