side note: I don’t think I’ve ever read a better article on National Health Insurance and why we need it and why the righties out there, who are attacking it, once again show they don’t live in reality. These conservatives who think government can’t do anything right forget about programs such as Medicare, and our military, and the inspection of all food in this country (USDA), or making sure medications aren’t going to kill us (FDA), or the countless others that provide good, invaluable services to Americans on a daily basis.

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, “wasn’t having any of it.”

It’s a funny story — but it illustrates the extent to which health reform must climb a wall of misinformation. It’s not just that many Americans don’t understand what President Obama is proposing; many people don’t understand the way American health care works right now. They don’t understand, in particular, that getting the government involved in health care wouldn’t be a radical step: the government is already deeply involved, even in private insurance.

And that government involvement is the only reason our system works at all.

The key thing you need to know about health care is that it depends crucially on insurance. You don’t know when or whether you’ll need treatment — but if you do, treatment can be extremely expensive, well beyond what most people can pay out of pocket. Triple coronary bypasses, not routine doctor’s visits, are where the real money is, so insurance is essential.

Yet private markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.

And in their efforts to avoid “medical losses,” the industry term for paying medical bills, insurers spend much of the money taken in through premiums not on medical treatment, but on “underwriting” — screening out people likely to make insurance claims. In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care. (more…)

side note: This is why we at NT, plus countless other reliable news sites we’re hammering against the bailout. Not because we didn’t think the country had financial problems, but b/c we knew how tied at the hip big corporations and the bush administration were, and knew for sure that they would find some way to fuck things up and not fix the economic situation. Low and behold……the rich got richer, and the rest of us got screwed. (a huge reason why I shake my head at low and middle class Americans who keep supporting the “lets screw over low and middle class Americans” Republican Party…….the Dems, at times, aren’t too far behind though.) This is why President Obama needs to find out how and why this happened….and frankly….it didn’t happen on accident, and then make an example of the folks who allowed it.

By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH
The New York Times

Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year, even as their employers were battered by the financial crisis.

Nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, according to a report released Thursday by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general.

At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers.

The report is certain to intensify the growing debate over how, and how much, Wall Street bankers should be paid.

In January, President Obama called financial institutions “shameful” for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was faltering and the government was spending billions to bail out financial institutions.

On Friday, the House of Representatives may vote on a bill that would order bank regulators to restrict “inappropriate or imprudently risky” pay packages at larger banks.

Mr. Cuomo, who for months has criticized the companies over pay, said the bonuses were particularly galling because the banks survived the crisis with the government’s support. (more…)

side note: I want to apologize for not getting more articles up on NT this summer…..it’s been a hectic one for the NT staff. We do need to do something about the health care issue in this country. I do see a problem with the President’s rhetoric and what his staff is doing to reign in the Dems who have been bought-off by the insurance and pharma industries. Specifically his closest adviser, Rahm Emanual. We are constantly hearing the the blue dog Dems will not get behind the President’s plan, or behind a public option…..well, Emanual has a lot of pull with these “Dem” conservatives…….but it doesn’t look like the President has a lot of pull with Emanual. Come on Mr. President….lets get this done, lets start covering the 40 million+ Americans who live without any coverage at all!

BY ROB CHRISTENSEN
http://www.newsobserver.com

RALEIGH – President Barack Obama came to North Carolina to launch a vigorous defense of his health care proposal Wednesday, saying the option of doing nothing would result in insurance premiums doubling for most Americans over the next decade.
Saying that there has been a lot of misinformation about his proposal, Obama said keeping the current system was a prescripton for escalating health care costs, a lack of insurance for people with pre existing conditions and businesses struggling to provide health care to employees.

He said his plan was being deliberately distorted by his critics.

“Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care,” Obama told a packed gymnasium at Broughton High School. “I’m tired of hearing that. I have been as clear as I can be. Under the reform I’ve proposed, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody.”

Obama spoke for about an hour at what was billed as a town hall before a friendly audience of mainly supporters. About a third of his talk was a defense of his stimulus program, a third a defense of his health care plan, and a third questions from the audience.

The president took about a half dozen questions from audience members on topics such as family practice doctors, prescription drug prices and insurance costs for average Americans. (more…)

side note: This is one of the most overlooked discussions when we talk about our current economic crisis. These industries have way too much control over our elected officials. I see this first hand when I call my Representative in Congress, Dan Lipinski. I have never been able to speak with him, schedule an appointment…..absolutely nothing! But I bet if I were to hand over 5 or 10 thousand dollars, I’d hear back from him……Most of these officials are a product of our corrupt, big business government, where you need a shitload of money to even be considered a viable candidate, it’s not where you stand on the issues, it’s how fat your wallet is. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2008, the average amount raised by someone running for a seat in the House: $710,499, Senate: $2,440,038 and for a run at the White House: $67,146,687. These are just averages…..in a hotly contested race, it was much, much more.

by Ryan Grim
HuffingtonPost.com

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been battling the banks the last few weeks in an effort to get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. He’s losing.

On Monday night in an interview with a radio host back home, he came to a stark conclusion: the banks own the Senate.

“And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place,” he said on WJJG 1530 AM’s “Mornings with Ray Hanania.” Progress Illinois picked up the quote.

Earlier Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told the Huffington Post that the most important provision of bankruptcy reform — the authority for a bankruptcy judge to renegotiate mortgages, known as cramdown, which banks strongly oppose — could get ripped out of the bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed back, saying that a bill without such a provision wouldn’t be reform at all.

While Durbin has been negotiating with individual banks over the last several weeks, bank lobbyists and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) have been whipping up opposition to it. A growing number of Democrats have announced opposition to cramdown, including Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Jon Tester (Mont.). (more…)

The U.S. House has passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Precent Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, today by a vote of 249-175.

This decision comes after an official statement from President Obama urging the House of Representatives to pass the legislation and shortly after Rep. Virgina Foxx referred to Matthew Shepard’s hate-motivated murder as “a hoax.”

Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy Shepard responded to the decision saying, “No one should face violence simply because of who they are. This bill is a critical step to erasing the hate that has devastated far too many families.”

“Everyone in this country deserves a chance to pursue the American dream free from intimidation and persecution,” said U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, who is Vice Chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus and cosponsor of the measure. “Every hate crime is an attack on the liberty and equality valued by every American. This legislation will provide state and local law enforcement agencies with resources they need to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, while also protecting the exercise of free speech and religious expression provided under our Constitution.”

Matt Kailey, editor of Out Front Colorado said, “The passage of the Matthew Shepard Act in the House today brings us one step closer to full equality for GLBT people by recognizing that our lives are just as valuable as anyone else’s. Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the federal hate crimes statute does not create a special class of people or give GLBT people special recognition or special rights. What it does is recognize that preying on a GLBT person because of his or her GLBT status victimizes an entire community rather than just one person.

It also brings us closer to eliminating the ridiculous “trans panic” and “gay panic” defenses that have been used for too long as excuses to commit crimes of violence against GLBT people.”

see original

side note: Last night, while flipping between channels, I stopped on CSPAN and the House was in session. Up to podium came Ted Poe, Republican Congressman from Texas.

Here’s the transcript via DailyKos, click here to watch the video via CSPAN:
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE PRO TEM: To what purpose does the Gentleman from Texas rise?

TED POE (R-TX): Request permission to address the house for one minute.

SPEAKER: Without objection.

POE: Mister Speaker, what do six terrorist attacks, Gitmo, dead Americans, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed also known as KSM have in common? Waterboarding. Last week several top secret security papers were released to the public. We learned from these documents that waterboarding is apparently saving American lives. After being waterboarded numerous times at Gitmo, KSM, the killer responsible for planning 9/11, started talking. He told the CIA about plans to hijack an airplane, and crash it into a skyscraper in Los Angeles and kill Americans. He disclosed the seventeen member terrorist cell charged with executing that plan. He also exposed plans of another terrorist cell in New York plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. The enhanced interrogation encouraged KSM to disclose information by naming the ringleaders of four other terrorist attacks. Americans are alive because this individual was doused in water. Terrorists are not victims. The only victims are the thousands of people who have died at the hands of these outlaws. The CIA interrogators have saved American lives by baptizing these criminals in water, and that’s just the way it is. I yield back.

side note: THIS IS A NEVADATHUNDER MUST READ! We’ve posted a few other Taibbi articles in the past and they have well researched, well written, and in general, he has been someone who has laid out exactly what is going on in this county, and how we arrived at this point. Please pass this article around…..if we are to get out of this mess, we have to have an educated public.

MATT TAIBBI
Rollingstone.com
The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

It’s over — we’re officially, royally fucked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country’s heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG’s 2008 losses).

So it’s time to admit it: We’re fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we’re still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck — bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company’s CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: “The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now,” he said. “When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too.” In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being “consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet’s investment portfolio down.”

Liddy made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and sick from being left out in someone else’s financial weather. He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its “pneumonia” was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn’t have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market.

Nor did anyone mention that when AIG finally got up from its seat at the Wall Street casino, broke and busted in the afterdawn light, it owed money all over town — and that a huge chunk of your taxpayer dollars in this particular bailout scam will be going to pay off the other high rollers at its table. Or that this was a casino unique among all casinos, one where middle-class taxpayers cover the bets of billionaires.

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — “our partners in the government,” as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

I. PATIENT ZERO

The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG. AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror. This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders — people who wear seat belts and build houses on high ground — and then blew it all in a year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who acted like making huge bets with other people’s money would make his dick bigger. (more…)

side note: There are still some out-dated Dems in both the Senate and the House who didn’t get the damn memo in November: It’s time for CHANGE…we’re sick and tired of the same old bullshit in DC. Either support the people in your state, or you won’t represent us after the next election!

By Bernie Horn
OurFuture.org

Remember what happened to the President’s stimulus legislation? It was watered down through a series of amendments followed by a painful “deal” with three Republicans whose votes were needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. It is happening again with President Obama’s budget. But this time, Democrats are the ones threatening to ruin the legislation.

Over the past few weeks, many Democrats in Congress—especially in the Senate—have been speaking out and organizing against crucial elements of the Obama budget. They are trying to weaken or eliminate the most progressive initiatives, including his plans for health care for all, energy independence, and a shift of the tax burden from the middle class to the wealthy.

Activists need to speak up now, before it’s too late. Both the House and Senate Budget Committees are expected to vote on their respective budget resolutions late this week, and the budget battle will likely reach the House and Senate floors next week.

Here’s the short version of my appeal. Please click here [1]to go to a web page set up by the Campaign for America’s Future that makes it easy for you to contact “Blue Dog” conservative Democrats in the House and would-be Blue Dogs in the Senate. Tell them we elected Barack Obama to bring change to Washington—they should stop blocking the change we need.

Now, here’s the longer version.

President Obama is doing something unusual. He is trying to win preliminary approval for a sweeping range of reforms by putting them in the FY 2010 budget. As Paul Krugman [2] explains, “President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years.” Robert Reich [3] agrees, saying that through this budget “Obamanomics finally reverses and repudiates the economic philosophy that has dominated America since 1981…It’s revolutionary.”

It’s a gutsy strategy, and one that ought to succeed because Democrats control both the House and Senate. You see, Republicans can’t kill this budget—only Democrats can. The budget resolution operates under special rules [4], the most important being it’s not subject to filibuster. So the budget can easily pass both the House and Senate without a single Republican vote. In fact, right now it seems unlikely that any Republican will support Obama’s budget.

Unfortunately, the Obama budget is under intense attack from so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats. The Blue Dog Democrats [5]is a caucus of 47 U.S. Representatives who describe themselves as a “Coalition of Conservative Democrats.” Last week, Senator Evan Bayh announced [6]the creation of a similar group of 16 Democratic Senators (including Joe Lieberman).

Members of both groups have staked out positions against key budget provisions—opposing especially Obama’s health, energy, and tax reform initiatives. (more…)

side note: I like David Shuster….he has been one of the most straight forward voices on cable news. He is extremely knowledgeable and doesn’t tip toe around any repubs….just ask that tool Joe Scarborough, whom Shuster has torn into on occasion.

side note: Ya….I like reading Frank Rich!

By FRANK RICH
The New York Times

AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. “Obama Losing Stimulus Message War” was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn’t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was “a steaming pile of garbage.”

Less than a month into Obama’s term, we don’t (and can’t) know how he’ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner’s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson’s first mate.

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture.

“It’s why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago,” he said. “We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of ’07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls.” But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, “everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide.” (more…)

side note: Well, we now know that what we were hearing from the White House were all lies and deception. Will Congress act and investigate?

by Jason Leopold
The Public Record

An e-mail written by a senior FBI agent in Iraq in 2004 specifically stated that President George W. Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

The FBI e-mail–dated May 22, 2004–followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential Executive Order.

The FBI e-mail was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The White House had emphatically denied that any such presidential Executive Order existed, calling the unnamed FBI official who wrote the e-mail “mistaken.”

The ACLU has called on Congress to demand that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate whether the President and other officials broke federal and international laws, “including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.”

President Bush and his representatives have denied repeatedly that the administration condones “torture,” although senior administration officials have acknowledged subjecting “high-value” terror suspects to aggressive interrogation techniques, including the “waterboarding” — or simulated drowning — of three al-Qaeda detainees.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration’s legacy, said last month he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners.

“I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning. (more…)

side note: Anyone who watches Real Time w/Bill Maher or any news show….knows Barney Frank. He is a smart SOB who doesn’t take shit from anyone…..this sounds like someone who we need right now!

Michelle Cottle
The New Republic
The redemption of Barney Frank

Barney Frank simply would not shut up. On the afternoon of September 25, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee was holed up in the White House Cabinet Room with a dozen or so government officials laboring to hammer out a rescue package for the flailing financial markets. Those gathered around the grand mahogany table included the president and vice president, the House speaker and Senate majority leader, the ranking Republicans of both chambers, the Treasury secretary, the Fed chairman, and the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees. Frank was on hand at the insistence of his party’s leaders, who had been relying heavily on him since the crisis erupted.

In the presence of such august company, a less confident man might have been intimidated into silence or at least decorous deference. Not Frank. He kept jumping in, quizzing Bush officials and pressing Republican legislators on their objections to the proposal. When John McCain rambled vaguely about the need to alter the package, Frank cut in to demand: “Like what?” As the senator finished, Frank huffed, “I still don’t know what your proposals are.” Similarly, when House Minority Leader John Boehner argued for changes, Frank snapped at him to be more specific. (”Like what?” was a common Frank refrain, say those in attendance.) At one point, recall multiple observers, President Bush felt compelled to remind the congressman that White House protocol calls for participants to wait until the president recognizes them before speaking. Unfazed, Frank resumed his prodding and prying. “It didn’t affect me,” the chairman later explained with a shrug (though he recalls the chiding coming from someone other than Bush). “I wasn’t there because he wanted me to be there. I was there because he knew he couldn’t leave me out.”

While (characteristically) immodest, Frank’s observation is also (characteristically) spot on. The 68-year-old congressman may be imperious, antisocial, and abrasive–President Bush’s nickname for him is “Sabertooth”–yet, these days, he is also indispensable. In recent weeks, as financial markets around the world melted down, Frank has found himself in frequent consultation not only with his party leadership and caucus, but also with top Bush officials and major players on Wall Street. His bespectacled, Droopy-Dog mug has been all over the news, cementing him as the public face of Washington’s efforts to cope with the chaos. (He recently told his swarm of press stalkers that he now knows how Britney Spears feels.) Meanwhile, conservatives have gone after Frank–long a favorite target–with renewed vigor, both blaming him for the current disaster and attempting to knot the controversial rescue package around his neck. Back home in Massachusetts’s fourth district–which stretches from the suburbs south of Boston to the western edge of Cape Cod–Frank felt moved to run TV ads for this election cycle, something he normally doesn’t bother with. (He won with 68 percent of the vote.) (more…)

side note: It’s always good to know the back story as to why certain lawmakers oppose certain legislation.

Salon.com

When Michigan Sen. Carl Levin makes statements supporting a bailout for U.S. automakers, he is generally dismissed as a spokesperson for his constituents — Michigan, of course, is ground zero for the Big Three. No state in the union employs more autoworkers.

So how come Richard Shelby, R-Ala., doesn’t get the same treatment? In Congress, Shelby is the most outspoken opponent of a bailout, routinely declaring that the Big Three are “dinosaurs.” But if there was truth in advertising, every time he opens his mouth there should be a disclaimer: Sen. Shelby represents the interests of his constituents — non-union employees of foreign-owned automobile manufacturers.

Alabama ranks sixth on the list of states with the most autoworkers — by last count 130,000 jobs directly or indirectly depended on the auto industry. Hyundai, Honda and Mercedes-Benz all have state-of-the-art plants in Alabama, producing, among other things, the kind of low-gas-mileage luxury sport utility vehicles that most U.S. consumers are currently reluctant to buy. Toyota manufactures engines for its Tundra trucks and Sequoia SUVs in Alabama. Scores of other parts suppliers thrive, employing non-union labor in a right-to-work state. Alabama also ranks sixth, nationally, in production of cars and light trucks in the United States. All Honda Odyssey minivans sold in the U.S. are made in Alabama. The Hyundai Santa Fe SUV is made in Alabama. (more…)

side note: this is just a fun read.

By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK – Even today, two years after Mark Foley’s very public fall from grace, the former congressman can’t explain why he sent lurid, sexually explicit computer messages to male teens who had worked as Capitol Hill pages.

Sitting in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York this week, the Florida Republican, wearing a yellow tie with blue elephants, finally broke his silence.

“I’m trying to find my way back,” Foley said in an interview with The Associated Press, his first public comments on the scandal since resigning from Congress on Sept. 29, 2006.

Foley insists he did nothing illegal and never had sexual contact with teens, just inappropriate Internet conversations. Investigations by the FBI and Florida authorities ended without criminal charges.

And while he concedes his behavior was “extraordinarily stupid,” he remains somewhat unwilling to accept full public scorn.

These were 17-year-olds, just months from being men, he insists.

“There was never anywhere in those conversations where someone said, ‘Stop,’ or ‘I’m not enjoying this,’ or ‘This is inappropriate’ … but again, I’m the adult here, I’m the congressman,” Foley said. “The fact is I allowed it to happen. That’s where my responsibility lies.”
(more…)

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer

The House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue package, ignoring urgent pleas from President Bush and bipartisan congressional leaders to quickly bail out the staggering financial industry.

Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was announced on the House floor.

When the critical vote was tallied, too few members of the House were willing to support the unpopular measure with elections just five weeks away. Ample no votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle.

Bush and a host of leading congressional figures had implored the lawmakers to pass the legislation despite howls of protest from their constituents back home. (more…)