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Biden lashes out at corporate greed at Colo. stopCOLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Wednesday it's unfair that executives of failed corporations are paid millions of dollars while their employees lose their pensions. Biden vowed that he and Barack Obama would attack corporate greed if they're elected. Biden took direct aim at executives who draw big salaries while leading failed companies. "Their pensions go first," he told a roaring crowd.

Children learn many useful things from television shows and cartoon characters. They learn letters and numbers from the characters on Sesame Street; Dora the Explorer helps them hone their reasoning and problem-solving skills. Now, a cartoon character is telling them when they should die. He’s a dog in a lab coat named “Professor Schpinkee.” He is a creation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Planet Slayer website. Kids who visit the website are invited to pay a “game” called “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator.” But instead of learning letters or numbers—or even how to take a bite out of crime—they learn “how...

It’s less than a week into the general election campaign, but already Michelle Obama is a Republican target. Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger leveled the first blow, introducing Republican John McCain’s wife at a fundraiser this week as someone who is “proud of her country, not just once but always.” Obama wasn’t mentioned by name, but the audience got it. The dig signaled the start of what Democrats expect will be a concerted effort to cast Michelle Obama — and, by extension, Barack Obama — as an unpatriotic radical. It also pointed out the urgency to define Michelle Obama...

ROME - Better insulation at home, less use of the car and even giving up an electric toothbrush can help people in rich nations halve emissions of greenhouse gases, a UN report said on Thursday. "Adopting a climate-friendly lifestyle needn't require drastic changes or major sacrifices," according to the 202-page UN Environment Programme (UNEP) book entitled "Kick the CO2 Habit: the UN Guide to Climate Neutrality". Issued to mark the UN's annual World Environment Day on June 5, it outlines ways for people to combat global warming with measures such as packing lighter suitcases when flying or going jogging in...

You think a $100K salary is a lot? $500K? Please. The truly wealthy scoff at your paltry breadcrumbs. Then it came to pass that I stumbled across this story from Forbes magazine, which is officially called "Forbes" but is actually called "Forbes oh my God we worship ruthless CEOs like shiny meth in the summertime," and among the glittering ads for luxury intergalactic travel and sleek private jets and $50K Rolexes and big phallic yachts and surreal 20-page ad inserts for Abu Dhabi megadevelopments, there was an article about the new home being built in Mumbai right now for Mukesh...

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will push on Friday for passage of a bill to put the huge pay packages of some U.S. corporate executives under greater scrutiny. The Illinois senator has introduced "say-on-pay" legislation that would give investors more of a voice in setting executive compensation packages. "We've seen what happens when CEOs are paid for doing a job no matter how bad a job they're doing. We can't afford to postpone reform any longer," Obama said in prepared remarks for delivery later on Friday. "That's why Washington needs to act immediately to pass this legislation."...

Study: Middle-Class Americans Increasingly Downbeat About Their Short-Term Economic Progress WASHINGTON (AP) -- More and more middle-class Americans say they aren't better off than they were five years ago, reflecting economic pressures amid growing personal debt, a study released Wednesday found. Their short-term assessment of personal progress, according to the study, is the worst it's been in nearly half a century.The survey by the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based organization, paints a mixed picture for the 53 percent of adults in the country who define themselves as "middle class," with household incomes ranging from below $40,000 to more than...

This is an excerpt... Will Romney buy the White House? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 4, 2008 1:00 a.m. Eastern Mitt Romney might go down in history as the presidential candidate who spent more of his personal income than any other in his pursuit to win the White House. It is estimated that he has already used $35 million of his roughly $250 million personal fortune. And if Mitt makes the cut for the Republican nomination, over the next 10 months he will surely surpass Ross Perot's $60 million infusion into his own 1992 candidacy. p>

Throughout my campaign, I have been listening to the voices of people across America. I met one man who told me, "I don't know what I did wrong. I got my education and I worked hard. I've been at the same company for 12 years now, but I've just been asked to train my successor because my job is moving to another country." Another woman said to me, "I just can't make ends meet. My health care premiums have doubled, college tuition is up. How am I supposed to make it as a single mom?"

By HILLARY CLINTON February 4, 2008; Page A15 Throughout my campaign, I have been listening to the voices of people across America. I met one man who told me, "I don't know what I did wrong. I got my education and I worked hard. I've been at the same company for 12 years now, but I've just been asked to train my successor because my job is moving to another country." Another woman said to me, "I just can't make ends meet. My health care premiums have doubled, college tuition is up. How am I supposed to make it as...

Royal Dutch Shell has been forced onto the defensive after its announcement of record profits sparked calls for a windfall tax and complaints from motorists about soaring pump prices. While investors fretted about whether the $27.6bn (£13.9bn) profits based on the current cost of supply masked deep problems facing the world's second largest non-government oil company, Shell received a barrage of complaints that its earnings were "obscene". Understatement: Shell's chief executive,Jeroen van der Veer, said the figures were "satisfactory The annual profits, which were up 9pc, are a record for a European listed company and were driven by last year's...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee criticized rival Mitt Romney's past as a venture capitalist Thursday, saying some workers lost their jobs as a result. In 1983, Romney founded Bain Capital, a firm that developed a reputation for turning around ailing companies and earned him millions of dollars. Asked about Romney's experience, Huckabee said the former Massachusetts governor's success came at the expense of workers. "If that's the turnaround, a lot of Americans would not want to see their lives turned around like that," the former Arkansas governor told reporters before running with a group of supporters...

Only a couple of years ago, Firefox was the little browser that could — an open-source program created by thousands of contributors around the world without the benefit of a giant company like Microsoft to finance it. Since then, Firefox, which has prospered under the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, has grown to be the largest rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 15 to 20 percent of the browser market worldwide and higher percentages in Europe and among technology devotees. It is the most popular alternative browser since Netscape, with about three times as many users as Apple’s Safari.

An Atlanta megachurch took in $69 million in 2006, according to a financial statement the church's minister released in response to a Senate investigation into him and five other well-known televangelists. The Rev. Creflo Dollar disclosed the World Changers Church International's financial information to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but said the money he spends is his own. Dollar said his income comes from personal investments, including businesses and real estate ventures. But the church gave him a Rolls Royce, which he mainly uses for special occasions, he said. "Without a doubt, my life is not average," he said. "But I'd like...

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. - The enormity of the house Arnold Chase is building on Avon Mountain isn't fully apparent from the outside, where only 17,000 square feet of it lies in plain view. It's the two-level, 33,500-square-foot basement complex, complete with a 103-seat movie theater, ticket booth, concession stand, game room and music annex, that will make it New England's largest occupied single-family home. At nearly 50,900 square feet, the Chase home will be slightly larger than billionaire Bill Gates' home in Washington, about 4,000 square feet smaller than the White House and 20 times larger than the average-size home...

DELHI: Top private-equity and hedge fund managers made more in 10 minutes than average-paid US workers earned all of last year, according to a new study from two research groups. The 20 highest-paid fund managers made an average of $657.5 million, or 22,255 times the US average annual salary of $29,500, said the study, released on Wednesday by Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The study cited data from the US Labor Department and Forbes magazine. “The fact that these pay levels for fund managers are so out-of-sight is going to drive up pay at...

So we are agreed. We are living in the second great Gilded Age, a time of startling personal wealth. In the West, the mansion after mansion with broad and rolling grounds; in the East, the apartments with foyers in which bowling teams could play. Or, on another level, the week's vacation in Disneyland or Dublin with the entire family--this in a nation in which, well within human memory, people with a week off stayed home and fixed things in the garage, or drove to the beach for a day and sat on a blanket from one of the kid's beds...

Before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the false-pretense Iraq war, the American way of life was already a global symbol of gluttony. If anything, the post-9/11 period has resulted in even more hoarding. In 2000, the size of the average American home was 2,266 square feet. Now it is 2,434 square feet, according to Census data, with the highest regional average right here in the Northeast at 2,556 square feet. Our homes are on average double the size of those in other Top 10 richest nations such as Japan or Switzerland according to the New York Times and the...

Artifact: A Chilling Tale of Global Warming Katherine Mangu-Ward | February 2007 Print Edition The United Nations has ventured into children’s publishing with a scary story about a small boy who loses a dogsled race because of global warming. In November the odd little picture book cum policy brief, Tore and the Town on Thin Ice, made the rounds at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Kenya.The night after he loses the race by falling through a weak place in the ice, Tore has a dream in which he sees the Inuit goddess Sedna, who warns him that “rich...

Right after a year in which four million more jobs were created by Americans than lost, Jim Webb had the following commentary in his response to President Bush’s State of The Union Speech: “The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one...