Monday, June 8, 2009
Barack Obama to increase stimulus spending.
Saying, “we’re in a position to really accelerate,” President Barack Obama announced Monday that he is ramping up stimulus spending exponentially in the next three months, allowing the administration to “save or create” 600,000 jobs — four times as many as during the first 100 days since he signed the bill. The spending plans include national parks, summer youth jobs, veterans’ medical centers, police and teachers. In remarks delivered before a meeting of his cabinet Monday, the president said he’s seen “modest progress” in the economy, citing job loss figures that beat Wall Street expectations for the month of May. Still, he said, the job losses are still too high. “I’m not satisfied,” he said. “We’ve got more work to do.”...Link
New report finds big problems in war spending.
WASHINGTON - This is one Christmas gift U.S. taxpayers don't need. Construction of a $30 million dining facility at a U.S. base in Iraq is scheduled to be completed Dec. 25. But the decision to build it was based on bad planning and botched paperwork. The project is too far along to stop, making the mess hall a future monument to the waste and inefficiency plaguing the war effort, according to an independent panel investigating contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan...Link
Intense interrogations.........................
In today's New York Times, William Glaberson describes a proposal being circulated by the Obama administration to enable Guantanamo detainees to be put to death upon a mere guilty plea, i.e., without the need for a full-blown trial. The article describes the purpose of the proposal this way...Link
GM, Amtrak...an Increasingly Fascist America.
Last week, General Motors finally declared bankruptcy. Many in government thought $20 billion in taxpayer dollars would save the company, but as predicted, it only postponed the inevitable. The government will dump another $30 billion into GM and take a 60 percent controlling interest for it. Public officials are now involving themselves in tactical business decisions such as where GM’s headquarters should move and what kind of cars it will build. The promise that this is temporary and will eventually be profitable is supposed to ease the American people into accepting this arrangement, but it is of little comfort to those who remember similar promises when the American taxpayers bought Amtrak. After three years, government was supposed to be out of the passenger rail business. 40 years and billions of dollars later, the government is still operating Amtrak at a loss, despite the fact that they have created a monopoly by making it illegal to compete with Amtrak. Imagine what they can now do to what is left of the great American auto industry...Link
Eighteen killed in Acapulco drug shootout...
ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) - Eighteen people were killed in a shootout between drug gangs and soldiers in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco, the army said on Sunday. The gun battle, near tourist hotels in the Pacific Ocean resort, was a further blow to Mexico's tourism industry, already reeling from cancellations by foreigners scared away by the swine flu epidemic. Gunmen battled troops from a cartel safe house, throwing hand grenades at soldiers who had surrounded them and spraying gunfire into military vehicles and nearby homes. The shooting began late on Saturday and went on until after midnight...Link
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