Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday June 22 2008 - (813)

Sunday June 22 2008 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Detective Firm Targeted Activists Critical Of Corporations 2008-06-22 02:40:09 They scavenged through trash and tailed people for hours. They used undercover operatives to infiltrate private meetings. The targets were not agents of foreign powers but advocacy groups that had been critical of corporations. In the 1990s, a Maryland-based private detective agency composed of former CIA agents and law enforcement officers spied on such activist groups as Greenpeace, the firm's records show. The agency, Beckett Brown International, had an operative at meetings of a group in Rockville, Maryland,  that accused a nursing home of substandard care. In Louisiana, it kept tabs on environmental activists after a chemical spill. In Washington, it spied on food safety activists who had found taco shells made with genetically modified corn not approved for human consumption. BBI, which was founded in 1995, disbanded in 2000, and the activists might never have learned they were spied on,  but a disgruntled BBI investor began digging through company records two years ago and has been contacting the former targets. He also gave the Washington Post access to the records, which provide an unusually detailed look into the secretive world of corporate spying. "These people were victims," said investor John C. Dodd III. "They were trying to make things better or just do their jobs, and these guys were spying on them." Read The Full Story Update: Scores Die And Ship Sinks In Typhoon That Hit Philippines 2008-06-22 02:39:34 A Philippine ferry with more than 700 people on board capsized during a typhoon and most are missing, officials said on Sunday. Rescuers were trying to reach the scene where the MV Princess of Stars sank near Sibuyan island in the center of the country but churning waves from Typhoon Fengshen made the crossing hazardous. "The ship is upside down. We are waiting for rescuers but there are none so far. Our pump boats are all broken," Ricardo Aligno, a town councilor from the coastal village of San Fernando, told local radio. The coast guard expected one of its ships to arrive in the area by early Sunday afternoon. The ferry sank about three kilometers from shore. Read The Full Story America's Prison For Terrorists Often Held The Wrong Men 2008-06-21 22:52:11 The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. They shouted "Allahu Akbar" - God is great - as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face. Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst." Yet Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy. "He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said. Read The Full Story U.S. Army Adds Own Air Unit, Edges Away From Air Force 2008-06-21 22:51:35 Ever since the Army lost its warplanes to a newly independent Air Force after World War II, soldiers have depended on the sister service for help from the sky, from bombing and strafing to transport and surveillance. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have frayed that relationship, with Army officers making increasingly vocal complaints that the Air Force is not pulling its weight. In Afghanistan, Army officers have complained about bombing missions gone awry that have killed innocent civilians. In Iraq, Army officers say the Air Force has often been out of touch, fulfilling only half of their requests for the sophisticated surveillance aircraft that ground commanders say are needed to find roadside bombs and track down insurgents. The Air Force responds that it has only a limited number of those remotely piloted Predators and other advanced surveillance aircraft, so priorities for assigning them must be set by senior commanders at the headquarters in Baghdad working with counterparts at the Air Force’s regional command in Qatar. There are more than 14,000 airmen performing tasks on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Air Force civil engineers replacing Army construction engineers. Now, in Iraq, the Army has quietly decided to try going it alone for the important surveillance mission, organizing an all-Army surveillance unit that represents a new move by the service toward self-sufficiency, and away from joint operations. Read The Full Story Experts: Africa Needs A Farming Revolution 2008-06-21 22:50:10 With the world's appetite for food expanding, sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly two-thirds of people making their living from farming, could be developing into an agricultural powerhouse. Yet Africa's farms today are only one-fourth as productive as the world average. Populations are growing fast, while food productivity per capita has declined from 30 years ago. During that time, Africa has gone from a continent of food exporters to one that imports some 20 million tons of it every year. "These are farmers who are basically always living on the edge," said Josh Ruxin, a development expert at Columbia University. "They produce just enough food to eat, and during natural disasters or economic downturns they use up their crops and are thrust to the brink of hunger." Experts say that Africa badly needs a "green revolution" like the one that lifted millions of farmers in Asia and Latin America out of poverty a generation ago with higher-yielding seeds and basic innovations such as fertilizer and improved irrigation. The vast majority of African farmers still tend their crops by hand, fertilizer use is one-tenth what it is in Asia and less than 4 percent of farmland is irrigated. Read The Full Story U.K. Unions Gear Up For Wave Of Strikes 2008-06-21 22:43:27 The British economy needs to brace itself for a prolonged period of industrial strife, the like of which has not been seen for 30 years, the country's top union leaders have told The Observer. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber warned: "We are heading for a very difficult period. I think we are going to see more disputes, certainly in the public sector." Detailed discussions on the balloting of 280,000 PCS civil servant members are to begin this week. A series of "imaginative" linked one-day strikes is planned. GMB leaders have told The Observer that their members are "mutinous", and there is serious concern that the 1.3 million National Health Service (NHS) workers who have just agreed a three-year pay deal with the government could re-open negotiations. Unison said the 2.5 per cent pay deal previously agreed included a "re-opener" clause if inflation kept rising. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, told The Observer: "If inflation continues to spiral we will re-open negotiations. If the government refuses to renegotiate the agreement we would have no alternative but to ballot our members." The TUC's Barber added: "At a time of high and rising inflation the emphasis must be on [protecting] the low and medium earners. It's not pay that's been driving inflation. It's been commodity prices. It ought to be possible to prioritize the living standards of lower earners." Read The Full Story New Debate Erupts Over Off-Shore Drilling 2008-06-21 22:42:16 For decades, giant drilling rigs off the Texas and Louisiana coastlines have plumbed the Gulf of Mexico for vast oil and gas riches, creating jobs, bolstering state revenues and perpetuating a vibrant social structure in coastal communities. To the West, drilling rigs also operate off the Pacific shoreline near Santa Barbara, California, but to many residents, they are vile reminders of a 1969 blowout on an offshore rig that spewed a giant oil slick into the Pacific. The ecological disaster contributed to the creation of Earth Day the following year. "It still has an impact on our consciousness," says Linda Krop, an environmental attorney in Santa Barbara. "You don't see oil on the beach any more but it's very high in people's awareness and their concern about any more development." The experiences in California and the Gulf Coast states offer contrasting case studies as $4-a-gallon gasoline accelerates calls for vastly expanded offshore drilling to boost U.S. oil and gas supplies. Offshore drilling is currently permitted off four Gulf Coast states, Alaska and a sliver of California but is banned elsewhere in the United States. Read The Full Story Food Stamps Don't Buy As Much Food These Days 2008-06-21 14:57:13 Making ends meet on food stamps has never been easy for Cassandra Johnson, but since food prices began their steep climb earlier this year, she has had to develop new survival strategies. She hunts for items that are on the shelf beyond their expiration dates because their prices are often reduced, a practice she once avoided. Johnson, 44, who works in customer service for a medical firm, knows that buying food this way is not healthy, but she sees no other choice if she wants to feed herself and her 1-year-old niece Ammni Harris and 2-year-old nephew Tramier Harris, who live with her. “I live paycheck to paycheck,” said Johnson, as she walked out of a market near her home in Hackensack, New Jersey, pushing both Ammni and the week’s groceries in a shopping cart. “And we’re not coping.” The sharp rise in food prices is being felt acutely by poor families on food stamps, the federal food assistance program. Read The Full Story Campaign Blog: Bring It On 2008-06-21 14:56:42 Intellpuke: The following campaign blog was written by Francis Wilkinson and appeared in the New York Times edition for Friday, June 20, 2008. Campaigns generate headlines with the tough decisions they make. On Thursday, Barack Obama’s campaign made waves with an easy one. Mr. Obama’s decision to leave the public financing system elicited the predictable outrage among reformers (and the McCain camp), but it was probably the most obvious and inevitable decision he’ll make all year - justified both politically and ethically. By freeing his campaign from the public system, Mr. Obama can continue to raise donations from his vast base of supporters, who have made his campaign thus far the best-financed in history. Mr. Obama is rightly counting on them to raise far more than the $84 million in public funds he could expect to receive from public financing. Some observers make the case that money is less important at the presidential level because the press plays such a significant role in communicating the campaign narrative. But money still counts for much and a financial advantage is vital to a candidate who expects to come under heavy attack. In 2004, conservative groups ran negative ads against Senator John Kerry and inflicted substantial, arguably fatal, damage to his presidential campaign, giving us the verb “to swift boat” as a linguistic bonus. While no similar ad campaign is yet under way against Mr. Obama, the chances that he will skate to November without sustaining a barrage seem slim. Read The Full Story White House Refuses To Release Air-Quality Documents 2008-06-21 03:24:32 The Bush administration Friday invoked executive privilege and refused to turn over key documents sought by a House investigative committee, escalating a fight over the White House role in U.S. policy on greenhouse-gas emissions and ozone air quality standards. Rep. Henry L. Waxman (D-California), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called off a threatened contempt of Congress vote against Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Stephen L. Johnson and a White House budget official while congressional Democrats decide how to respond. Lawmakers say the two Bush administration officials refused to respond to subpoenas for documents about communications between the White House and EPA. The papers concern White House intervention in Johnson's December decision to overrule EPA officials who were in favor of granting California and 17 other states permission to mandate a reduction of vehicle emissions by 30 percent by 2016. In March, the EPA also issued tougher health standards for smog, but they were not as strict as levels recommended by an EPA science advisory board after President Bush sided with the White House Office of Management and Budget in opposition. "Administrator Johnson has repeatedly insisted he reached his decisions on California's petition and the new ozone standard on his own, relying on his best judgment," said Waxman. "Today's assertion of executive privilege raises serious questions about administrator Johnson's credibility and the involvement of the president." Read The Full Story New York City Mayor Blasts Rumor About Obama 2008-06-21 03:23:59 New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, injecting himself directly into the presidential campaign, forcefully denounced on Friday what he called a “whisper campaign” linking Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to Islam. Speaking before a crucial constituency in the coming election, Jewish voters, in the pivotal state of Florida, Bloomberg said that rumors of Obama secretly being a Muslim represent “wedge politics at its worst, and we have to reject it -  loudly, clearly and unequivocally.” “Let’s call those rumors what they are: lies,” said Bloomberg, who has been mentioned as a potential running mate for both Obama and Senator John McCain, the likely Republican nominee. Residents of South Florida, home to the second-largest population of Jews in the United States after New York City, have received e-mail messages claiming that Obama sympathizes with radical Islam and does not support Israel.  Obama, a Christian, has repeatedly rejected both claims. Bloomberg’s blunt denunciation of the rumors is likely to ingratiate the mayor with Obama’s campaign before the Democratic convention in August. Read The Full Story Physicists: Earth Will Survive LHC After All 2008-06-21 03:23:23 That black hole that was going to eat the Earth? Forget about it, and keep making the mortgage payments - those of you who still have them. A new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) scheduled to go into operation this fall outside Geneva, is no threat to the Earth or the universe, according to a new safety review approved Friday by the governing council of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN or Cern, which is building the collider. “There is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the LHC,” four physicists who comprised the safety assessment group wrote in their report. Whatever the collider will do, they said, Nature has already done many times over. The report is available at http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf .  The physicists, who labored anonymously for the last year and a half, are John Ellis, Michelangelo Mangano and Urs Wiedemann, of CERN, and Igor Tkachev, of the Institute for Nuclear Research in Moscow, Russia. In a press release, CERN’s director general Robert Aymar said, “With this report, the Laboratory has fulfilled every safety and environmental evaluation necessary to ensure safe operation of this exciting new research facility.” Read The Full Story As Fuel Costs Pinch Cities' Budgets, Mayors Push Mass Transit 2008-06-21 03:22:29 Higher fuel prices are forcing cities across the country to cut public services, limit driving by employees and expand public transportation in what has become a sprawling movement to conserve energy. A survey of 132 cities, released Friday here at a meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors in Miami, Florida, found that 90 percent were altering operations because of fuel costs. Republicans and Democrats from New Jersey to Hawaii are essentially becoming energy-pinching nags. They are pushing City Council members, whether they get along or not, to car-pool. They are telling housing inspectors to arrange site visits in clusters so they stop criss-crossing neighborhoods. And, even as many of them still use S.U.V.’s, the mayors are asking nearly everyone to do a little more walking. “It’s costing us millions of dollars a year,” said Mayor Manuel A. Diaz, of Miami, the incoming president of the mayors’ group. “We can’t deal with a deficit, so everyone has to drive less.” Read The Full Story At The Gas Pump And Past The Limit 2008-06-21 03:21:17 The pump slowed and cut off Brendan Baker's gasoline purchase at $74. He returned the nozzle to the pump, swiped his credit card a second time, then put the nozzle back in his 2000 Dodge Ram 1500 and continued fueling. He finished pumping and looked at his two receipts, which totaled $95.23. "Normally I don't keep them because they remind me how much money I wasted," said Baker, a computer technician refueling at his local Sunoco station in Centreville. With skyrocketing gas prices, many customers are bumping up against pay-at-the-pump credit card limits - often $75. Rules limiting these transactions are nothing new, but with gas prices exceeding $4 per gallon, it's increasingly easy to exceed the limit, leaving many customers to face the hassle of dealing with two-transaction purchases. At the station where Baker was filling up, 30 to 50 cars out of a total of about 900 hit the limit each day, according to the station owner. On a recent Saturday afternoon, the station bustled with Toyota 4Runners, Tacomas and other fuel-thirsty vehicles. Back in 2003, when Jeff Urban bought his Hummer, paying $75 to fill up would have been unthinkable, but now, Urban joked, his goliath SUV will soon be a three-transaction vehicle. Read The Full Story	The Greening Of U.S. Academia 2008-06-22 02:39:53 The environmental fervor sweeping college campuses has reached beyond the push to recycle plastics and offer organic food and is transforming the curriculum, permeating classrooms, academic majors and expensive new research institutes. The University of Maryland teaches "green" real estate strategies for landscape architects. The University of Virginia's business graduate students recently created a way to generate power in rural Indian villages with discarded rice husks. And in a Catholic University architecture studio last week, students displayed ideas for homes made from discarded shipping containers. "It should be part of everything we do," said Ligia Johnson, a Catholic University student whose plan for the Kenilworth neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C., included roofs that collect rainwater and grow plants and trees. What was once a fringe interest, perhaps seemingly a fad, has become fully entrenched in academic life, university officials say, affecting not just how students live but what they learn and, as graduates, how they will change workplaces and neighborhoods. At George Washington University last month, many students pinned green ribbons on their graduation robes or their recycled-cotton caps and signed pledges to take their commitment to environmentalism into their jobs. Read The Full Story New Crisis Threatens Healthy Banks 2008-06-21 22:52:24 Increasing struggles by consumers and businesses to make payments on a variety of loans, not just mortgages, are setting off a new wave of trouble in the financial sector that is battering even institutions that had steered clear of the subprime-home-loan debacle. Late payments on home-equity loans are at a record high, according to fresh data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC).The delinquency rates on loans for cars, small businesses and construction are spiking to levels not seen in a decade or more. Unlike last year, when soaring mortgage defaults sparked a crisis of confidence in the financial system, the root of these problems is the downturn in the broader economy. Simply put, consumers and businesses are strapped for cash with job losses growing and retail sales falling, said economists. "We are not finished with the mortgage problem, but you are starting to see increased delinquencies in other forms of consumer debt," said Paul Kasriel, an economist at Northern Trust Securities. "We are in the eye of the hurricane. We had the first wave of the credit crisis, and it was quite damaging. But there's another wave coming, and it's likely to be as destructive." Read The Full Story Call For Change On Mississippi Levees After 1993 Floods Ignored 2008-06-21 22:51:51 The levees along the Mississippi River offer a patchwork of unpredictable protections. Some are tall and earthen, others aging and sandy, and many along its tributaries uncatalogued by federal officials. The levees are owned and maintained by all sorts of towns, agencies, even individual farmers, making the work in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri last week of gaming the flood - calculating where water levels would exceed the capacity of the protective walls - especially agonizing. After the last devastating flood in the Midwest 15 years ago, a committee of experts commissioned by the Clinton administration issued a 272-page report that recommended a more uniform approach to managing rising waters along the Mississippi and its tributaries, including giving the principal responsibility for many of the levees to the Army Corps of Engineers.  The committee chairman, Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., a former brigadier general with the Corps of Engineers, said in an interview that few broad changes were made once the floodwaters of 1993 receded and were forgotten. “We told them there were going to be more floods like this,” said Dr. Galloway, now an engineering professor at the University of Maryland.  “Everybody likes to go out and shake hands on the levee now and offer sandbags, but that’s not helpful. This shouldn’t have happened in the first place.” Read The Full Story Iowa Faces Potential $3 Billion Crop Loss From Flooding 2008-06-21 22:50:48 The flood damage to Iowa crops could reach $3 billion, according to the state's agriculture secretary. "Right now, we have about 10 percent of our corn that has either been flooded out or not planted and about 20 percent of our [soy]beans," Bill Northey said Friday on "Iowa Press", a public television show. "We're seeing some beans go back in the ground, and if we were to lose that, if we weren't able to replant, that would be $2.5 billion, $3 billion - a significant amount of damage," he said. He added that some of the remaining crops would probably have smaller yields. Flooding in several Midwestern states has killed two dozen people and injured 148, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and 35,000 to 40,000 people in several states have been displaced. Read The Full Story 17 Dead After Typhoon Hits Philippines 2008-06-21 22:44:36 A typhoon killed at least 17 people in floods and landslides in the Philippines, and left a cruise ship adrift on Saturday with more than 700 passengers and crew members. The ship, the Princess of the Stars, owned by Sulpicio Lines, stalled in rough seas near Sibuyan island in the central Philippines, officials said. It carried 626 passengers and 121 crew members. “It’s dead on the water, but we can’t get to it because of big waves,” said a coast guard spokesman. The ship left Manila on Saturday morning for the central province of Cebu. Read The Full Story ElBaradei: Military Strike On Iran Could Turn Middle East Into 'Ball Of Fire' 2008-06-21 22:43:01 The United Nations' nuclear watchdog chief warned in comments aired Saturday that any military strike on Iran could turn the Mideast to a "ball of fire" and lead Iran to a more aggressive stance on its controversial nuclear program. Mohamed ElBaradei made the remarks in an interview aired on Saturday by Al Arabiya TV. The interview comes a day after reports emerged that Israel conducted an large-scale military exercise that the United States believes is, in part, a message to Iran that Israel has the capability to attack its nuclear program. "In my opinion, a military strike will be the worst. ... It will turn the Middle East to a ball of fire," ElBaradei said on Al-Arabiya television. It also could prompt Iran to press even harder to seek a nuclear program and force him to resign, he said. Iran also criticized the Israeli exercises Saturday. The official IRNA news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying the exercises demonstrate that Israel "jeopardizes global peace and security." Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the eastern Mediterranean this month, U.S. military officials said Friday. Read The Full Story India's Growth Outstrips Its Agriculture 2008-06-21 14:57:27 With the right technology and policies, India could help feed the world. Instead, it can barely feed itself. India’s supply of arable land is second only to that of the United States, its economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, and its industrial innovation is legendary. Yet, when it comes to agriculture, its output lags far behind potential. For some staples, India must turn to already stretched international markets, exacerbating a global food crisis. It was not supposed to be this way. Forty years ago, a giant development effort known as the Green Revolution drove hunger from an India synonymous with famine and want. Now, after a decade of neglect, this country is growing faster than its ability to produce more rice and wheat. The problem has grown so dire that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for a Second Green Revolution “so that the specter of food shortages is banished from the horizon once again.” Read The Full Story Tomato Salmonella Linked To Florida, Mexico Farms 2008-06-21 14:57:00 Several farms in Florida and Mexico appear to have produced at least some of the tomatoes implicated in what is shaping up to be the country's largest tomato-borne salmonella outbreak, federal health officials said Friday; but the lengthy search for the source of the bacteria continues, said David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's associate commissioner for foods, in a conference call with reporters. Acheson cautioned that the affected Roma, plum and red round tomatoes were not necessarily contaminated on a farm and could have picked up the rare Salmonella Saintpaul strain at a packing station. The number of victims soared 169 cases to 552 across 32 states and the District of Columbia, making this outbreak one of the most, if not the most, extensive of the country's 13 tomato-borne salmonella episodes since 1990, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The strain has left at least 53 people hospitalized since mid-April and may have contributed to the death of a 67-year-old Texas cancer patient. "Now that we know the paths that those tomatoes have traveled between the farms and the consumers, we're looking all along those pathways to see where those contaminations occurred," said Acheson. Read The Full Story Rice: U.S. To Put Zimbabwe On U.N. Security Council Agenda 2008-06-21 14:56:28 Violence and intimidation threaten Zimbabwe's run-off presidential election and the United States intends to bring the matter before the U.N. Security Council next week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a radio interview on Saturday. "This is a very serious matter and the United States does intend to put it on the agenda of the Security Council next week," Rice told National Public Radio's Weekend Edition. The southern African country will hold a run-off presidential election on June 27 between veteran President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Official results showed Tsvangirai won a first round in March, but did not secure enough votes for an outright victory. Read The Full Story Bush Administration Ignored Legal Advice On Detainees 2008-06-21 03:24:20 Senior lawyers inside and outside the Bush administration repeatedly warned the White House that it was risking judicial scrutiny of its detention policies in Guantanamo Bay if it did not pursue a more pragmatic legal strategy that considered the likely reaction of the Supreme Court. Yet such advice, issued periodically over the past six years, was ignored or discounted, according to current and former administration officials familiar with the debates. In August 2006, for example, the top lawyer at the State Department told senior officials at the White House that unless they won a congressional mandate that broadly supported their system of detaining terrorism suspects, their goal of keeping the detainees locked up was in jeopardy. "I can virtually guarantee you, without a legislative basis, federal courts are not going to be willing to uphold the indefinite detention of unlawful combatants," John B. Bellinger III warned in an e-mail. The e-mail, disclosed by former White House officials familiar with the intense internal debates over detainee policy, was one of several red flags for the White House in its fierce battle to keep the detention facility in Cuba free of judicial oversight. The result, they said, has been a series of losses at the Supreme Court, including last week's 5 to 4 ruling that detainees at Guantanamo have a constitutional right to a review of their detention in federal courts - a ruling that holds out the prospect of heavy litigation and close judicial scrutiny of decision-making that the administration has long argued is best left to the president. Read The Full Story McCain Defends NAFTA While In Canada 2008-06-21 03:23:44 Sen. John McCain traveled to Canada on Friday to offer a vigorous defense of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as his campaign sought to portray rival Sen. Barack Obama as inconsistent on free trade. "For all the successes of NAFTA, we have to defend it without equivocation in political debate because it is critical to the future of so many Canadian and American workers and businesses," McCain told a crowd of several hundred at the Economic Club of Canada. "Demanding unilateral changes and threatening to abrogate an agreement that has increased trade and prosperity is nothing more than retreating behind protectionist walls." McCain said his visit to Canada was "not a political campaign trip," and his remarks centered on keeping relations between the United States and Canada strong. The Republican from Arizona did not refer to Obama by name and refused to take questions on political matters at a news conference after his speech, though he was accompanied by top political adviser Charles R. Black, Jr. McCain spent much of his trip in closed-door meetings with Canadian officials. Nonetheless, his comments on NAFTA invoked Obama's criticism of the agreement, and McCain's campaign attacked the senator from Illinois on the issue throughout the day, accusing him of changing his position after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Read The Full Story Big Campaign Promises Bump Into Economic Reality 2008-06-21 03:22:46 On the presidential campaign trail, Democrat Barack Obama promises to "completely eliminate" income taxes for millions of Americans, from low-income working families to senior citizens who earn less than $50,000 a year. Republican John McCain vows to double the exemption for dependents and slash the corporate income tax. To which the folks who monitor the nation's financial situation can only say: Good luck. Because, back in Washington, D.C., tax collections are slowing, the budget deficit is rising, and the national debt is approaching $10 trillion. Whoever wins the White House this fall, fiscal experts say, is likely to have a tough time enacting expensive new initiatives, be they tax cuts or health care reform. Economists expect the deficit to top $400 billion when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, rivaling the all-time high of $413 billion set in 2004. Meanwhile, Congress recently adopted a spending plan that projects a $340 billion deficit in 2009 - a number likely to grow, lawmakers say, as the cost of the Iraq war rises, the economy weakens and the flow of revenue slows. Against that dour financial backdrop, the next president will have to decide what to do with President Bush's signature tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of 2010. Obama and McCain have both promised to keep at least some of them, but that would increase the deficit by $150 billion a year or more. Preventing the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, from expanding to the middle class would add billions more. Read The Full Story In U.S., Travelers Shift To Rail As Fuel Prices Rise 2008-06-21 03:22:16 Record prices for gasoline and jet fuel should be good news for Amtrak, as travelers look for alternatives to cut the cost of driving and flying. They are good news, up to a point. Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues - all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month. Yet the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand. Many of the long-distance trains are already sold out for some days this summer. Want to take Amtrak’s daily Crescent train from New York to New Orleans? It is sold out on July 5, 6, 7 and 8. Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, on July 5? The train is sold out, but Amtrak will sell you a bus ticket. “We’re starting to bump up against our own capacity constraints,” said R. Clifford Black, a spokesman for Amtrak. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php