For the $30 million or more she spent on her re-election campaign, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton scored a 36-point victory over an obscure opponent, built a new set of contributors and began assembling the nuts and bolts she would need to run a presidential campaign, the NY TIMES is planning to report on Tuesday. She also purchased more than $13,000 worth of flowers and funneled tens of thousands of dollars a month to consultants and aides. The result was to deplete what had been a formidable war chests in politics down to a level that leaves her with little financial advantage over her potential rivals for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination — and perhaps even trailing some of them.

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The US government has tweaked its terminology in referring to the nearly 11 million Americans who face a constant struggle with hunger to refer to them as people with ‘very low food security.’ According to a report released this month by the US Department of Agriculture, roughly 35 million Americans had difficulty feeding themselves in 2005 and of those some 10.8 million went hungry. But unlike last year’s report on hunger in America, which labeled families who don’t get enough to eat as having ‘food insecurity with hunger,’ this year’s report referred to them as having ‘very low food security.’ The change in terminology has angered groups that fight hunger who say it is aimed at hiding a stark reality. ‘There is very widespread feeling that it was a mistake to water down the language,’ Jim Weill, director of the Washington-based Food Research and Action Center, a non-profit organization, told AFP. ‘There are 35 million people in this country who are struggling with hunger, no matter what you call it,’ he added. ‘An there is no way ultimately to obscure the fact that we’re an incredibly wealthy country with 35 million people who are struggling […]

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WASHINGTON — Rude immigration officials and visa delays keep millions of foreign visitors away from the United States, hurt the country’s already battered image, and cost the U.S. billions of dollars in lost revenue, according to an advocacy group formed to push for a better system. To drive home the point, the Discover America Partnership released the result of a global survey on Monday which showed that international travelers see the United States as the world’s worst country in terms of getting a visa and, once you have it, making your way past rude immigration officials. The survey, of 2,011 international travelers in 16 countries, was conducted by RT Strategies, a Virginia-based polling firm, for the Discover America Partnership, a group launched in September with multimillion-dollar backing from a range of companies that include the InterContinental Hotels Group, Anheuser Busch and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The survey showed that the United States was ranked ‘the worst’ in terms of visas and immigration procedures by twice the percentage of travelers as the next destination regarded as unfriendly — the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent. More than half of the travelers surveyed said U.S. immigration officials […]

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WASHINGTON — House Democrats are targeting billions of dollars in oil company tax breaks for quick repeal next year. A broader energy proposal that would boost alternative energy sources and conservation is expected to be put off until later. Hot-button issues such as a tax on the oil industry’s windfall profits or sharp increases in automobile fuel economy probably will not gain much ground given the narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in an outline of priorities over the first 100 hours of the next Congress in January, promises to begin a move toward greater energy independence ‘by rolling back the multibillion dollar subsidies for Big Oil.’ Yet the energy plan being assembled by Pelosi’s aides for the initial round of legislation is less ambitious than her pronouncement might suggest. For the most part, the tax benefits are ones that lawmakers talked of repealing this year when Congress struggled to respond to the public outcry over soaring summer fuel prices and oil companies’ huge profits. Topping the list for repeal are: -Tax breaks for refinery expansion and for geological studies to help oil exploration. -A […]

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LONDON — Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday. Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq’s regional neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region. ‘If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible,’ he told the British Broadcasting Corp. But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq’s neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict. ‘A dramatic collapse of Iraq _ whatever we think about how the situation was created _ would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region,’ he said. Kissinger, whose views have been […]

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