Cash for Clunkers Details

Cash for Clunkers Details Question: How does the Cash for Clunkers program work? Cash for Clunkers is a federal program designed to stimulate U.S. auto sales and help the environment by providing an economic incentive for consumers to replace old, low-mileage vehicles with new, fuel-efficient models that are safer and emit less pollution and fewer greenhouse gases. Answer: The basic concept is simple: if you trade in a low-mileage vehicle for one that meets a higher mileage threshold set by the Cash for Clunkers program, the government will provide up to $4,500 to help you purchase the new fuel-efficient vehicle. The details, of course, are more complicated. Under the Cash for Clunkers bill passed by Congress in June 2009, the passenger car you trade in must meet two criteria: The car has been registered and in use for at least a year (this provision prevents people from buying an old beater from a junkyard and trading it in for a new car);The vehicle must have a combined city and highway fuel-economy rating of 18 mpg or less.To qualify for the Cash for Clunkers program, the new car must be priced at $45,000 or less;The new car must have a federal fuel-economy rating that is at least 4 mpg better than the old car you’re trading in to qualify for a $3,500 voucher, or be rated at least 10 mpg better to get the maximum payment of $4,500. The rules for trucks are a little trickier. For light- and standard-duty model trucks, which include most sport utility vehicles (SUVs), vans and pickup trucks: The old vehicle must have a fuel-efficiency mileage rating of 18 mpg or less.The new vehicle must be rated at least 2 mpg better to qualify for the $3,500 voucher or at least 5 mpg better for the $4,500 payment. heavy-duty trucks The old truck you’re trading in must be rated 15 mpg or less.The new truck must be rated at least 1 mpg better to get the $3,500 voucher and at least 2 mpg better to qualify for the $4,500 voucher. work trucks The old truck has to be a 2001 model or older, and $3,500 is the only amount offered to help with the purchase of new work trucks. To compare vehicle mileage ratings for all model years back to 1985, see the interactive chart at www.fueleconomy.gov.

John Bergers Extended Definition of Home

John Bergers Extended Definition of Home A highly regarded art critic, novelist, poet, essayist, and screenwriter, John Berger began his career as a painter in London. Among his best-known works are Ways of Seeing (1972), a series of essays about the power of visual images, and G. (also 1972), an experimental novel which was awarded both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. In this passage from And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos (1984), Berger draws on the writings of Mircea Eliade, a Romanian-born historian of religion, to offer an extended definition of home. The Meaning of Home by John Berger The term home (Old Norse Heimer, High German heim, Greek komi, meaning village) has, since a long time, been taken over by two kinds of moralists, both dear to those who wield power. The notion of home became the keystone for a code of domestic morality, safeguarding the property (which included the women) of the family. Simultaneously the notion of homeland supplied the first article of faith for patriotism, persuading men to die in wars which often served no other interest except that of a minority of their ruling class. Both usages have hidden the original meaning. Originally home meant the center of the world- not in a geographical, but in an ontological sense. Mircea Eliade has demonstrated how the home was the place from which the world could be founded. A home was established, as he says, at the heart of the real. In traditional societies, everything that made sense of the world was real; the surrounding chaos existed and was threatening, but it was threatening because it was unreal. Without a home at the center of the real, one was not only shelterless but also lost in nonbeing, in unreality. Without a home everything was fragmentation.​ Home was the center of the world because it was the place where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal one. The vertical line was a path leading upwards to the sky and downwards to the underworld. The horizontal line represented the traffic of the world, all the possible roads leading across the earth to other places. Thus, at home, one was nearest to the gods in the sky and to the dead of the underworld. This nearness promised access to both. And at the same time, one was at the starting point and, hopefully, the returning point of all terrestrial journeys.*  Originally published in  And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, by John Berger (Pantheon Books, 1984). Selected Works by John Berger A Painter of Our Time, novel (1958)Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing, essays (1962)The Look of Things, essays (1972)Ways of Seeing, essays (1972)G., novel (1972)Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000, screenplay (1976)Pig Earth, novel (1979)The Sense of Sight, essays (1985)Once in Europe, novel (1987)Keeping a Rendezvous, essays (1991)To the Wedding, novel (1995)Photocopies, essays (1996)Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance, essays (2007)From A to X, novel (2008)