GENERAL MOTORS LEADS THE CHARGE:
The Launch of the GM Card
In 1992 at a convention, Visa USA president and CEO Robert Heller belittled the arrival of non-band credit-card issuers. He joked that it wouldn’t be long before pizza parlors joined AT&T and General Motors in offering cards. Within a year he was punted and people were talking about McDonald’s having a credit card.
The US Car Industry in the Early 90’s
Flat demand and foreign competition made the early 90’s tough for the big three. In 1992 GM chalked up the largest annual loss in US corporate history, around $4.5 billion.
Part of the solution to GM’s problem was to make better cars and make them more efficiently.
That still left the issue of how cars were sold. End-of-the year rebates, cash-back, and dealer discounts were hard to control. Car buyers began to expect these incentives, so they waited and by waiting forced manufacturers to offer them earlier in the year.
The GM Card
In September 1992, GM teamed up with Household Bank, a major issuer of co-branded credit cards, to launch the GM Card under the MasterCard umbrella. The card allowed holders to apply 5% of their charges to the purchase or lease of a new GM car or truck. The credit was applied after the customer had negotiated his or her best deal on the vehicle. Cardholder were allowed to accumulate up to $500 a year in rebates, with a ceiling of $3500 over 7 years.
GM spent $120 million on a marketing blitz.
The GM Card rollout was the most successful ever in the credit-card business. After only twenty-eight days, there were one million accounts. In less than two months, there were over two million GM Card accounts, and card balances topped $500 million.
The eight million-plus new accounts propelled Household Bank from 10th to 5th place among credit-card issuers. Annual charge volume on the GM Card was $5200, or two and a half times the national average.
The Ford-Citibank Card
In February 1993, Ford joined forces with Citibank.
“Considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that marijuana may be effective in treating a number of medical conditions… such as chemotherapy-induced nausea, wasting and anorexia associated with AIDS” (Joffe and Yancy). Marijuana can help treat this conditions, but there are also other people who use marijuana as a medicine for others circumstances. For example, people use marijuana to sleep, because some people have difficulties to sleep in the night and they need this product to rest their body. Also, those people who could only sleep a few hours use marijuana to help them sleep more hours. Some individuals use marijuana for problems of rheumatism, they mixed marijuana with alcohol to pain relive. Moreover people say that the results with this product is beneficially for adults. People sometimes use marijuana to relaxing his bodies. For example, there are a number of people who stress in work and use it for relaxing at home. However, marijuana should not be legalized because using it as medicine can result in negative consequences. “While proponents assert marijuana’s usefulness in treating a variety of medical conditions, opponents counter that the drugs has never been proven effective and the new laws open the door to abuse” (Peron). Those who use marijuana to sleep can have serious problems because if they use this drug every day to sleep their body will became used to receiving this medication daily. Thus, their body will never rest unless they take in drugs to help them sleep and eventually they will become addicted. Therefore, those who believe that marijuana should be legalized need to rethink the severe consequences that using it as a medicine will cause. People are using marijuana as a medication because it is an excuse to take in drug. For those reasons, it will be more beneficial if marijuana stays
In the short story “A & P” by John Updike, the main character Sammy shows a sense of growth from the story’s opening to its conclusion. This certain change in him started taking place after the visit from the three girls, where he starts to ponder the future of his life. Sammy develops as a more prominent character both by the voice and the mood of the story, suggesting his vast change from rather flat to someone with more personal features and attributes.
Situational crime prevention is an idea criminologists use in order to reduce the chances of crime initially taking place. This theory does not aim to punish criminals after the crime has taken place like the criminal justice system does, but however the opposite, it aims to reduce the chances of the crime taking place to start with. Ron Clarke (2005) describes this theory as an approach that aims to reduce the opportunities out there for crime, involving rational choice theory. Clark focuses on three methods within this theory, directing at specific crimes, altering the environment we live in and aiming to reduce the benefits of committing crimes.
Race, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits (“Merriam-Webster” 2016). “The concept of race, as a construct distinguishing one group of humans from another on the basis of shared biological appearances, emerges from a legacy of human-different making that traces across humanity” (Radano and Bohlman 2000: 10). In my opinion, it is inevitable for musicians to subconsciously incorporate their ideas of racial differences in music making. With the influence of the mass media, racial differences are communicated through music, which then modifies the pre-existing perceptions of racial identities of the audiences. First, I will
The Native Americans were once a proud and power race but now they are become discriminated upon. As the united states continue expand and improve in technology; it pretty much left the Indians
Crime exists everywhere. It is exists in our country, in the big cities, the small towns, schools, and even in homes. Crime is defined as “any action that is a violation of law”. These violations may be pending, but in order to at least lower the crime rate, an understanding of why the crimes are committed must first be sought. There are many theories that are able to explain crimes, but three very important ones are rational choice theory, social disorganization theory and strain theory.
Marijuana is one of the oldest cultivated plants (Nahas 8). Since it became illegal in 1967, there have been questions of whether or not it is good for purposes, such as medicine, other than being a leisure drug. Debates between pro and con groups for the use of marijuana in the medical profession, have been heated and in recent months, referendums have been pasted in a least three states to make it accessible for medical treatment. Personally, I feel that marijuana has the potential to be a significant help with certain aliments, however, more research needs to be done to maximize its potential.
Cannabis, popularized by its dried and leafy counterpart called marijuana, has been used for thousands of years in various regions of the world ranging from Asia to South America for its psychoactive and medicinal properties. It has become a popular recreational drug all over the world, second only to alcohol. It is believed that “over 100 million Americans have tried Cannabis, with 25 million Americans having used it within the past year” (Norml 2013). The main chemicals in Cannabis are cannabinoids which activate the cannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system. The primary cannabinoids responsible for the characteristic effects of marijuana are THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, which is primarily liable for the effects of relaxation, euphoria, shift in perception, and increased anxiety or paranoia. In addition to the commonly known side effects, one interesting consequence of using marijuana is its effects on sleeping behavior and quality of sleep.
Roger & Me shows that GM's board of directors used company profits not to create new jobs, but to buy already existing assets, such as data processing companies (EDS) and weapons manufacturers (Hughes Aircraft) at inflated prices, and to automate their current assembly lines, and build new plants in Mexico and in Asia -- destroying jobs in the United States in the process. In Mexico, GM pays the worker...
Two Works Cited In John Updike’s "A & P," Sammy is accused of quitting his job for childlike, immature reasons. Nathan Hatcher states, "In reality, Sammy quit his job not on a matter of ideals, but rather as a means of showing off and trying to impress the girls, specially Queenie" (37), but Sammy’s motive runs much deeper than that. He was searching for a sense of personal gain and satisfaction. By taking sides with the girls, he momentarily rises in class to meet their standards and the standards of the upper-class.
Many young adults now would not know how different conformity was back in the day or how strong of a desire people have for independence that they start to rebel. Maybe they did because that is how coming-of-age is all about from the past and in the present. In John Updikes “A & P”, we meet a young boy name Sammy who grows a desire of change from the conformity of his town and a need for independence upon seeing a sexually attractive and independent young girl he nicknamed “Queenie”. The themes represented in the story centers around conformity and desires of independence driven by sexual attraction which creates an act of rebellion for Sammy when he quits his job at a small town supermarket.
Ronald V Clarke originally developed the idea of situational crime prevention in the 1980’s (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). This particular crime prevention theory addresses techniques that increase the effort required to commit the crime, increase the risks involved with committing the crime, reducing the reward gained by the offender after committing the crime, reducing the provocation between the offender and others and remove excuses (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Majority of crime is believed to be committed because there are no high risks of being caught and the rewards outweigh the risks (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Increasing the effort by controlling access to locations and target hardening can deflect many offenders, as more effort is needed to commit the crime (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005). Another main technique would be to increase the risks; this may be achieved by extending guardianship, creating natural surveillance or artificial surveillance such as CCTV (Brantingham & Brantingham 2005).
Medically, marijuana has proven to be a productive drug. Studies show marijuana has helped dealing with “pain, muscle spasms, seizure disorders and nausea from cancer chemotherapy.” (Weir) Scientist believes these benefits come from a chemical compound in marijuana called cannabidiol. This chemical is not the active chemical that gives marijuana users the mind-altering effects. With the unce...
Different schools of thought propose varying theoretical models of criminality. It is agreeable that criminal behaviour is deep rooted in societies and screams for attention. Biological, Social ecological and psychological model theories are key to helping researchers gain deeper comprehension of criminal behaviour and ways to avert them before they become a menace to society. All these theories put forward a multitude of factors on the outlooks on crime. All these theories have valid relevancy to continuous research on criminal behaviour.
As you can see, in a society where interacting and over-sharing online is a trend, you probably speak to friends and family through electronic devices and social media than face-to-face. Many surveys have been addressed that one in four college students and adults would spend more time socializing online than they do in person. Whenever you attend a classroom, party or club, you can see that there is someone with their head down looking at the phone, ignore the group and reject to speak in a conversation. Moreover, if they have free time in the weekend to hang out, they tend to want to stay at home and chat or text through social media. As a result, the relationships is deteriorating,