New GI Bill passes, opens paths to educational resources and future employment for our returning veterans

I first brought this campaign to Joe's Union Review in Feburary 08, with the story "E-Activism can help our returning vets to become workers, not homeless. Help fix the insufficient GI Bill."

Thank you everyone who has signed petitions along the way, I felt it was of utmost importance that our returning vets had a good chance towards a career when they come home, together people such as yourselves from many different blogs and sites got active and we were heard. Even when such high ranking people such as Senator John McCain staunchly opposing the measure and a Geroge W. Bush threatened veto against it, the American people have spoken.

With tremendous support and overwhelming passage in both Congress(256-166) and the Senate (75-22 McCain was a no show) and a reversal of the veto threat by the President, our returning vets now have a fighting chance

Dear Joseph, Today, history was made. Just this morning, President Bush signed the new GI Bill into law. Since we are only a few days away from celebrating the 4th of July, this milestone is a fitting way to honor our veterans who have bravely served this nation. IAVA has led the fight for the new GI Bill from the beginning, and your dedication over the past year and a half ensured that our lawmakers kept it a top priority. Over 20,000 of you called your representatives in Congress, spread the word in your communities and signed the petition at www.GIBill2008.org. Thanks to your hard work, we finally achieved our goal. Generations of veterans to come will benefit from this bill. Your support in this fight has been overwhelming- very few bills in recent history have received such an outpouring of public support. Together, we can be extremely proud of this victory. In a few days, we'll let you know more about this remarkable bill and how IAVA plans to help veterans take full advantage of these new benefits. Thank you for standing with IAVA throughout this fight. Sincerely, Paul Rieckhoff Iraq Veteran Executive Director Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America

Job resources for returning Vets at Joe's

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Task Force on the Underground Economy and Misclassification at a Field Hearing Conducted by Senator John Kerry

Sara Stafford, a Saugus construction business owner shared her personal experience of being underbid by a contractor using misclassified workers and illegals.

Pictured from left: Francis Callahan, Jr. of the MA Building Trades Council, Mark Erlich of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, George Noel of the state Dept. of Labor and Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Stark.

Submitted by Charles Lezette on May 30, 2008 - 11:22am.

MASSACHUSETTS --

On Mon., April 28, George Noel, Director of the Massachusetts Department of Labor [pdf] and Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Stark [pdf] gave testimony and a progress report on the state's new Joint Enforcement Task Force on the Underground Economy and Employee Misclassification at a field hearing conducted by US Senator John Kerry in Chelsea.
"Cheaters and unscrupulous employers have created an underground economy as big as $1 trillion. Worse, workers right here in Massachusetts are being taken advantage of and not getting the benefits and protections they deserve," said Kerry.

Participating in the hearing with Kerry was US Congressman John Tierney (D-Salem), co-author of the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability and Consistency (TRAC) Act, which seeks to discourage employers from misclassifying workers by allowing the IRS to collect the unpaid taxes from the employer. In addition, the bill would increase fines for misclassifications. Frank Callahan, President of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council [pdf] gave testimony in support of TRAC.

"This is a problem that is severe and is getting worse," said Mark Erlich, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the UBC's New England Regional Council [pdf] who testified on the negative effects of misclassification. Erlich added that it was encouraging to finally see the problem getting greater public visibility.

Business owners also attended the hearing. Sara Stafford, a Saugus construction business owner shared her personal experience of being underbid by a contractor using misclassified workers and illegals. Scott Morrisey of Red Line Wall Systems, Inc. gave this overview [pdf].
Ask your US Representative to support H.R. 5804, the Taxpayer Responsibility, Accountability, and Consistency Act.

Charles Lazette is a contributer/Administrator of Union Review and a politically active member of UBC local 370 in upstate New York, he also runs his website UBCNewsroom, go check it out and keep up to date with the latest misclassification headlines in the US and other news that affects workers in the area

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LIUNA "pigs" protest welfare to corporate homebuilders hidden in US Senates approved Foreclosure Prevention Act

The U.S. Senate has passed a version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, the majority of which goes to pay for taxpayer handouts to corporate home builders, not to help struggling homeowners - LIUNA Newswire



I say, if you make a decision that will effect you for 30 years of your life, you should think it through, if you bought a house you couldn't afford, get an apartment, nobody twisted your ARM.

That being stated, I continue that, if you make a bad business decision, and you lose solvency, you should go out of business, case closed.

While it was introduced as a well meaning plan to help people keep their houses, it seems that the Senate version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act is tainted with it's fair share of pork, here's the scoop:

I stayed at the Capitol Hilton in DC this weekend to help give a seminar on E-Activism and Blogging, little did I know that just a few days before there were a group of lobbyists staying at the exact same place. Their mission was to seduce members of Congress into passing the "Foreclosure Prevention Act", which in it's little known areas will give up to 32 BILLION US DOLLARS in tax breaks, to the corporations who helped get us into this mess in the first place.

How? By letting these corporate homebuilders claim MILLIONS in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made 3 or 4 years ago.

They didn't mind building out of control when people were sucking up ARM mortgages like grapes. Now that the bubble has burst, they want to slide on their tax burden. According to LIUNA "The U.S. Senate has passed a version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, the majority of which goes to pay for taxpayer handouts to corporate home builders, not to help struggling homeowners." Unfuckingreal, I'm pissed!

I wonder what would happen if you and I tried to claim this years losses against the gains we had in the last 4 years.

According to the *Metro Washington Council News, AFL-CIO (5/1/08):

"PIGGY" HOMEBUILDERS TARGETED IN FORECLOSURE BAILOUT PROTEST:Big pink chanting pigs rallied outside the Washington Hilton Hotel early Wednesday morning to protest billions in handouts to corporate homebuilders. Serenaded with chants of "corporate welfare on the rise, a bunch of pigs in disguise" and "off to the trough," representatives of the homebuilders industry boarded shuttle buses outside the Hilton to lobby Congress for passage of the Foreclosure Prevention Act. The Act - currently before the House - would provide billions in bailout to the homebuilder industry while giving little relief to homeowners, according to the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), which coordinated the demonstration. "This bailout failed to pass the worker smell test," said Laborers President Terrence O’Sullivan. "We are stepping up our efforts to make sure Congress knows this bailout is unacceptable."

NY Times (4/16/08): Big Tax Breaks for Businesses in Housing Bill

The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.

It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients’ interests.

This has proved especially true on the housing legislation, which many lawmakers and lobbyists view as one of the last opportunities before Congress grinds to a halt amid election-year politics.

In the Senate bill, the nation’s biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

“This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986,” said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association’s members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.

LIUNA Newswire (4/29/08) :

Through their subprime and high-risk mortgage lending subsidiaries, corporate home builders helped create the current crisis which has contributed to the loss of 359,000 construction jobs since 2007. The actions of corporate homebuilders have also contributed to as many as 3 million Americans facing foreclosure and the loss of nearly $1 trillion in investment value, weakening workers' retirement security.

The U.S. Senate has passed a version of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, the majority of which goes to pay for taxpayer handouts to corporate home builders, not to help struggling homeowners. The House of Representatives will soon take up the legislation. In print and online ads launching Wednesday, LIUNA appeals to the House to make the Foreclosure Prevention Act live up to its name. The NAHB, which had threatened to cut off political contributions if it does not get the legislation, is expected to lobby the House Wednesday for the tax breaks. LIUNA and others will demonstrate with 'pigs at the trough,' as the union has done in several cities to protest the proposed corporate homebuilder handout.

LIUNA is fighting for a solution to the crisis which helps to restore jobs, stabilize the housing market, return shareholder value to home builders and work with home builders to create a sustainable model for a healthy industry.

*You can sign up for the newsletter here-> DCLabor

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More H1b Visa abuse news: DOJ penalizes company for excluding US workers in favor of H1b Visa holders

"Only H-1s apply, and should be willing to transfer H-1B." - Job advertisement

I have been covering this for a while, and have seen a video by attorneys who teach companies how to disqualify American workers. It's hardly ever mentioned, but it's happening all over the country.

From ComputerWorld (3/2/08) :

DOJ settles H-1B job ad case for $45,000

A Pittsburgh-based computer consulting company that advertised for H-1B visa holders only is paying $45,000 in civil penalties to settle allegations that it discriminated against U.S. citizens, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said Thursday.

The company, iGate Mastech Inc., placed 30 job announcements between May and June of 2006 "for computer programmers that expressly favored H-1B visa holders to the exclusion of U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and other legal U.S. workers," the DOJ said in a statement.

A complaint against iGate Mastech was filed by the Programmers Guild in 2006. It was one of dozens of complaints lodged by the Summit, N.J.-based organization against various companies.

John Miano, who founded the guild, said in a statement that the DOJ's announcement was "is probably the most visible result" of the guild's campaign against companies that discriminate against U.S. workers "in favor of cheap H-1B workers."

One job advertisement by iGate Mastech for a Java developer on Dice Holdings Inc.'s job board said "Only H-1s apply, and should be willing to transfer H-1B."

"The problem of companies only looking for H-1B workers is a serious one," said Miano. "We are only scratching the surface right now with the companies that are brazen enough to put out ads like these."

Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said in a statement that the agency is "committed to protecting the right of all authorized workers in the U.S. against citizenship status discrimination."

The Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) in the Civil Rights Division, which investigated the complaint, continues to monitor iGate to ensure compliance with the settlement agreement, the DOJ said.

From Workers Independent News (4/29/08) :

Do the competitive H1-B visas really bring the best and brightest to the United States? Jesse Russell reports:

The argument in favor of H1-B visas is that they bring needed skilled workers to the United States; however, a new study from the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that many of those who qualify for the work visas are simply "ordinary" workers. The report is called "H1-Bs: Still not The Best and the Brightest".It was authored by Norman Matloff, who says that his findings show "few of the foreign workers" are "at a level of real expertise whose description is associated with innovation". He said his findings also show that the majority meet the qualifications of "apprentice-like positions."

H1B

• Importing Workers For Pennies on the Dollar
• More H1B Visa abuse news
• Offshoring and H1B Visa abuse, the 1-2 punch to knockout US tech workers

Thanks to OhioChick at Democratic
Underground for spotting this

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Building Bridges Radio: Colombian May Day brutality and West Coast dock shutdown

Colombian May Day Brutality and West Coast Docker workers shut down the ports

*Click above to listen to story

West Coast Ports

Tens of thousands of docks, members of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union shut down the west coast ports in a protest against the war. While an arbitrators decision prevented the ILWU from officially sponsoring the strike, its members turned out en masse. The stand-down at ports including Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle 40% of the imported goods arriving in the United States each year idled ships and halted movement of about 10,000 containers during the eight-hour stoppage.

Colombian Workers Brutalized at May Day Protests

The Bush Administration continues to push through a new free trade agreement with Colombia despite its history of assassinations and repression of trade unionists. The Colombian government claims its fighting that violence, which it says is perpetuated by paramilitary organizations. However, when Building Bridges reporters called Colombia on May 1, 2008 to speak with Javier Correa, Pres. of the Sinaltrainal union we learned that more than one hundred workers at their May Day demonstrations had been arrested, many were beaten and some had been disappeared .

See the full description of the stories and learn more about Building Bridges Radio at UnionReview or at the Building Bridges website

Building Bridges is regularly broadcast live over WBAI, 99.5 FM in the N.Y.C Metropolitan area on Mondays from 7-8pm EST and is streamed, archived and pod cast at www.wbai.org, it is also broadcast nationally in many locations. For more information contact Ken Nash - knash@igc.org

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NY: Congressman Vito J. Fossella arrested

A day he voted against the combustible dust standard, my Congressman, Vito Fosella has been arrested for DWI

From MyDD (5/1/08) :

From The Washington Post:

Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-N.Y.) was arrested overnight in Alexandria and charged with driving while intoxicated, court records showed today.

Fossella is scheduled to appear in Alexandria General District Court on May 12 for an advisement hearing, the records said.

No other details were immediately available.

[...]

Fossella was elected to Congress in a special election to represent the 13th Congressional District of New York in November 1997, according to a biography on his Web site. The district includes Staten Island and the Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and the Bensonhurst and Gravesend neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

Being arrested for a DUI isn't necessarily a political death-knell for an incumbent -- but neither is it terribly good news, particularly when that incumbent is potentially vulnerable. Fossella won reelection in 2006 with about 57 percent of the vote, so he isn't necessarily in terrible shape coming into this election cycle. However, New York's 13th congressional district, which he represents, tends to lean about 1 point more Democratic than the nation as a whole in presidential elections, so this year being a presidential election year doesn't augur particularly well for Fossella's hopes. Throw in a DUI and this race may now be on the map.

At this point, there are a couple of Democrats looking at this race: 2006 nominee Steve Harrison and Brooklyn City Commissioner Domenic Recchia. Recchia, in particular, looks like a formidable candidate, having raised more than $350,000 to this point. In fact, Recchia has more in the bank than Fossella as of the last filing period. So definitely chalk this up as one to keep an eye on...

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May 1st., 2003, mission accomplished, 5 years later West Coast dockworkers strike against war

Follow up to: West coast Longshoreman to strike against war as Iraq conflict costs hit 1/2 a trillion and more news you may have missed (3/08/08)

Five years ago this day, President Bush all dressed up for a party in his flight suit, landed in a jet onto the deck of an aircraft carrier, he then spoke before this very nation and the entire world under a banner that read "Mission Accomplished".

Today, 100% of people with a brain know that just isn't the case. on the west Coast the ILWU has struck the docks and paralyzed the coast, against arbitrator demands that they go to work. These fine men and women have had enough and proceeded with The West Coast dockworkers strike against the war.

the IRAQ WAR

500 Billion plus US dollars

4,000 plus Americans dead

Mission Accomplished, My ASS!

From ABC News

And for those who think it's quieted down, insurgents today dramatically reminded us that it is a long way from over. At least 35 people were killed, 76 wounded in a double suicide bombing north of Baghdad. It was a brutal assault - the first bomber, a woman, blew herself up in a crowded market in a Shiite town. Then, as security forces began dealing with the carnage, a second bomber blew himself up.

From LAList

All West Coast Ports Closed for May Day Strike

Security personnel place warning cones in front of the closed gates at the entrance to the Port of Los Angeles. West Coast cargo traffic has come to a halt as port workers stage anti-war protests to commemorate May Day. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

In the name of ending the war, all 29 ports along the West Coast, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, have halted operations for one shift. "We are supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it's time to end the war in Iraq," dockworkers' union president Bob McEllrath said in a press release.

Two years ago today, a similar protest happened when thousands of truck drivers stayed away to participate in "Day Without Immigrants." This year, the truckers are being turned away from the gates of ports until they can return later this evening when the 6:00 p.m. shift begins.

Today also "serves as a reminder of the 2002 dispute between the maritime association and the dockworkers that paralyzed West Coast ports for 10 days," noted the LA Times.

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Correction: Top labor leader in Honduras killed, yeah just the place for more Free trade

Some say it was a robbery attempt gone astray, while some believe it was premeditated. From Reuters (4/42/08) :

EGUCIGALPA, April 24 (Reuters) - Masked gunmen killed the leader of Honduras' largest union group in an attack authorities said was a robbery attempt, but fellow unionists said she was targeted because of her job.

Rosa Fuentes, the head of the country's largest labor federation, was shot late on Wednesday after a carful of six armed men wearing ski-masks smashed into the back of her car, police spokesman Hector Mejia told Reuters.

Fuentes and the driver of the car died at the scene and another union leader died en route to the hospital.

Police said the attack was an attempted robbery by gang members. The attackers fled when another car pulled up, leaving without some $4,000 Fuentes had with her.

But fellow union members said Fuentes, whose CTH federation groups manufacturing unions with banana workers and civil servants, was killed because of her work.

"This was done by enemies of the labor movement, by hired killers," said Rigoberto Duron, No. 2 at the CTH.

Honduras is part of a regional free trade deal with the United States that has been criticized for its lax labor controls in Central American countries.

In neighboring Guatemala, five labor leaders were murdered last year. That case prompted the AFL-CIO labor federation to file a complaint with the U.S. labor department saying the government had failed to seriously investigate, violating provisions of the trade pact.

The Bush administration has been pushing Congress in recent days to approve a free trade agreement with Colombia. U.S. labor groups oppose the pact, saying Bogota has done too little to curb violence against trade union members. (Reporting by Gustavo Palencia; Writing by Mica Rosenberg, editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Big thanks to Omaha Steve at Democratic Underground for the story and Jimbo638 for the correction.

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Politics, Labor, the SSP, oil, starvation, corporate greed

Excerpts from the RSS feed of The Man Common

• AFL-CIO: CEOs' Pay Packages Played Role In Mortgage Crisis (4/1408) - CNN/Money

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Labor union officials, who blame the nation's mortgage mess in part on runaway executive pay, are calling for Congress to adopt a "say on pay" bill that would let shareholders weigh in on CEO compensation.

Chief executives at Countrywide Financial (CFC) and Washington Mutual Inc. ( WM) were paid "obscene amounts" even when their company's performance faltered as subprime borrowers defaulted on home mortgage loans, AFL-CIO Secretary- Treasurer Richard Trumka said at a press briefing Monday. The bad loans devalued mortgage-backed securities tied to them, leading to large write-downs in assets at a number of financial firms..

Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo, Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger, former Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC) CEO James Cayne, and former Citigroup Inc. (C) CEO Charles Prince were among those rewarded lavishly for betting on risky loans, according to labor officials. Mozilo and Cayne are also chairmen.

"When the house of cards fell, they didn't pay for it, we did," said Trumka.

• Elections in America: Millionaires Accusing Each Other of Elitism (4/14/08) - AlterNet :

But is Barack Obama really an elitist as his opponents claim? Well of course he is -- he's running for president of the United States! He wouldn't have gotten this far in life if he'd spent the past 20 years driving a truck or moonlighting as a fry cook at Arby's. Like every other successful politician in the United States, Obama is a member of America's political ruling class, which means that like every other presidential candidate in recent memory, he is typically insulated from the lives of ordinary people. Does Obama really have any idea what it's like to live like a "Real American?" Of course he doesn't, and neither do John McCain and Hillary Clinton! Does any rational person out there believe that Obama, Clinton and McCain spend their free time away from the campaign trail hanging out at Jimmy Ray's Chicken'n'Beer Depot playing darts with the common folk?

In theory, this point should be fairly obvious. Even before getting elected, most politicians made a good deal of money in their careers as lawyers, doctors, actors or oil tycoons -- you know, real salt-of-the-earth sort of work. But for reasons that have long confounded sane people everywhere, our national millionaire press corps gives positive coverage to political candidates who are the most adept at lying about their ability to connect with regular folks. And because it apparently takes too much work for our press corps to sift through the candidates' policy positions to figure out what each of them is actually offering blue-collar voters, we don't even get rational assessments of politicians' working-class cred. Instead, we get piles and piles of anecdotal evidence.

• Three Amigos Summit (4/15/08) - Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) :

President George W. Bush will soon host what has become an annual “Three Amigos Summit.” The leaders of Mexico, the United States, and Canada will be gathering in New Orleans on April 21 and 22. What do you suppose is on the agenda? A rational response to immigration, perhaps? A thoughtful renegotiation of the unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement? Lessons from Canada’s affordable medicines program?

No. No. And no. Rather than putting their heads together around pressing issues such as these, the three leaders will be advancing a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). And while that may sound well and good, this initiative, begun in 2005, is unlikely to produce either security or prosperity. That’s because the partnership is only with big business.

The chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron, and 28 other large corporations are in on the closed-door negotiations, while members of Congress, journalists, and ordinary citizens are excluded. And the secrecy is not just around the presidential summits, but also the meetings of about 20 SPP working groups that carry on negotiations over the course of the year.

What’s on the table? Not much is public, but we do know that the executive powers of the three countries are hammering out regulatory changes that they claim do not require legislative approval. And given who’s in the room, it’s a safe bet that these changes will favor narrow corporate interests over the public good.

• Global hunger, corporate greed: When will enough be enough? (4/16/08) - The Jakarta Post
  

Media around the world are currently feeding off the increasing price of food everywhere. The World Bank chief has joined in with the prediction that starvation is a distinct possibility for many of the weaker nations, leading to political turmoil.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) chief says only 14 percent of available water is used in Asia, 2 percent in Africa, with the rest flowing into the oceans each year. If this is the sorry state of affairs, what do our political leaders and their henchmen do at the office every day?

The instinctive urge to shoot the messenger is of course misdirected energy. But when you put the disparate pieces of our puzzling world on the table, the emerging picture is embarrassing indeed.

A kilogram of rice costs more than US$1 and a barrel of oil costs over $100. One influences the other. The subprime loan crisis will cost more than $1 trillion and the Iraq war will cost the United States alone as much as $3 trillion.

Different problem, same instinct. Many pundits will argue none of this has any connection to global hunger, as if these colossal costs aren't real and do not affect the common man.

It is all too easy to throw stones at our politicians and bureaucrats. But those of us in business would do well to spend a minute pondering the glass houses we go to work in.

The altar of the shareholder has become the convenient excuse for inexcusable conduct. The voracious appetite for dividends and stock prices has allowed CEOs to hold boards and investors alike to ransom.

Systemic deception has become acceptable culture in too many boardrooms, with nothing more than a wink and a nod required down the chain of command. When it gets to a point that an accountant is unable to explain complex new financial instruments and their equally befuddling acronyms, disaster cannot be far away.

Not even a decade ago, the Internet bubble exploded with disastrous consequences, ripples felt around the globe. Everybody who then believed the lessons were learned have been proven wrong not even a decade later. For every errant CEO who has gone to jail, there are hundreds who have made millions in severance pay alone. Regulators and lawmakers appear not to be troubled.

It seems as if the profit motive is no longer an adequate driver of business today. Unbridled greed has taken over, a global corporate culture spreading like a cancer unchecked.

• Big Tax Breaks for Businesses in Housing Bill (4/16/08) - NY Times

Washington - The Senate proclaimed a fierce bipartisan resolve two weeks ago to help American homeowners in danger of foreclosure. But while a bill that senators approved last week would take modest steps toward that goal, it would also provide billions of dollars in tax breaks - for automakers, airlines, alternative energy producers and other struggling industries, as well as home builders.

The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.

It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients' interests.

This has proved especially true on the housing legislation, which many lawmakers and lobbyists view as one of the last opportunities before Congress grinds to a halt amid election-year politics.

In the Senate bill, the nation's biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

"This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986," said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association's members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.

Supporters of the bill, including Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, say it represents sound tax policy carefully focused to help stimulate the lagging economy. But the White House opposes the Senate bill, and Democratic leaders in the House not only have promised to provide more relief for individual homeowners, but have also dropped the corporate tax provisions from their version.

Downtrodden automakers - Ford and General Motors - were especially dogged in securing a tax break that would let them collect alternative minimum tax credits, also known as the A.M.T., that would otherwise be out of reach because they did not pay enough taxes in recent years to claim a rebate.

If the provision becomes law, it could mean checks up to $40 million for the car manufacturers, as long as the companies had made investments in plant or equipment in that amount.

A Ford spokesman, Mike Moran, said he was aware that Ford would benefit from the tax credit in the bill passed by the Senate. But Mr. Moran said that the credit applied to a range of industries, not just automakers. A General Motors spokesman could not be reached.

Domestic airlines and manufacturers other than automakers would be eligible to claim the A.M.T. break as well. One lobbyist said that the companies that had sought the tax breaks in meetings with lawmakers included Ford, General Motors, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Goodyear Tire and Rubber.

Companies could claim only one of the new tax breaks, which in all, are expected to cost $6 billion through 2018. The jockeying among industry groups, including Realtors, home builders and bankers, is certain to intensify in coming weeks as lawmakers move to reconcile the Senate bill with a more ambitious package of housing legislation now under way in the House.

• The End of the World as You Know It…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order (4/15/08) - TomDispatch.com

Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based.

From resource wars to oil wars (the subjects of his last two books), Michael Klare, Tomdispatch's energy expert, has long been ahead of the curve when it came to ways in which our planet was being reshaped at the most basic level. Today, he offers Tomdispatch readers a peek into some of the key themes in his staggering new book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. If you want to grasp the true shape of our shaky world, of where exactly we've been and where we might be going, this is a book not to be missed. It offers the profile-in-formation of a shape-shifting planet, a planet in transition and on a road to nowhere pretty. Check out as well the latest Tomdispatch brief video (produced by TD's Brett Story) -- in which Klare discusses key issues in his new book -- by clicking here. Tom

• Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? (4/15/08) - TruthDig

By so unabashedly embracing the most glaringly failed U.S. president ever, McCain has surrendered the right to be considered an independent candidate, judged on his own merits and personal history. A vote for McCain is a vote for that rancid recipe mixing religious bigotry, imperial arrogance and corporate greed that he had stood against in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election when he challenged George W. Bush, but to which he now has capitulated.

Too harsh? Then consider just how tight the space is between the rocks of our failed Mideast policy and the hard place of our impending financial disaster. The sudden out-of-control spike in the cost of oil—the key short-term market variable, the specter that stokes inflation fear and limits moves to avoid recession—is not a natural disaster or in any realistic way the result of inefficiency in the use of energy. What more than doubled the price of petroleum in the short run was not that too many of us bought Hummers, but rather that the political stability of the region that contains the bulk of that oil was deliberately and recklessly roiled.

In the name of fighting the 9/11 terrorists, the Bush administration overthrew the one Arab government most adamantly opposed to the Saudi financiers of that son of their system, Osama bin Laden. Instead of confronting the royal leaders of a kingdom that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers, we invaded a nation that supplied not a single one. While Bush overthrew Saddam Hussein, who had no ties to the hijackers, he embraced the leaders of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the only three nations in the world that had diplomatically recognized and supported the Taliban sponsors of al-Qaida.

Consider that historical marker at a time when the UAE and Saudi Arabia bankers are buying major positions in distressed U.S. financial and other key corporate institutions. I know, it all sounds too conspiratorial, like imagining that we might wake up from this national nightmare and discover that the CEO of Halliburton, who replaced Dick Cheney when the latter selected himself to be Bush’s vice president, now has his headquarters in Dubai, tucked safely into the obscenely oil-revenue-rich UAE that our troops were sent to Iraq to protect.

There is no national outrage, or even seriously sustained media interest, over the fact that Cheney’s old company profited enormously from ripping off U.S. tax dollars going into the Iraq occupation. Nor is there even much curiosity about the shenanigans of Halliburton, which is doing business with Arab oil sheiks at a time when the U.S. banks these Middle Eastern oil interests bought into are moving to foreclose on American homeowners.

It’s just the sort of egregious betrayal of the trust of the taxpayers that Sen. McCain would have gone after, before he sought to don the soiled robes of the Bush presidency.

• Biofuel: the burning question (4/15/08) - The Independent

Graham Wynne, chief executive of the RSPB, said: "The volume of biofuel that can be genuinely described as sustainable is at present very small indeed and is nowhere near enough to warrant the 2.5 per cent obligation. The impacts of biofuel production on forests and wetlands are already being seen worldwide. It is a tragedy that customers' money is going to be spent on driving this destruction."

The World Bank and the UN have, in recent days, expressed concern about the impact of biofuels on world food prices, sparking riots from Haiti to the Philippines. Gordon Brown, who has put the issue on the agenda at the forthcoming G8 summit, has also voiced concerns at EU level about deforestation and loss of habitats caused by biofuel production. And Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, raised the issue at the weekend's G7 meeting in Washington.

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