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June 11, 2008 Oil price crisis threatens to reverse globalisation Carl Mortished: World Business Briefing With brutal efficiency, the oil price is beginning to duff up a monster of the 20th century: globalisation. Those great tentacles that gripped our world in a hideous embrace are suddenly weakening and the multinational octopus is looking a bit pale and sickly. The extraordinary rise in the price of crude oil is wrecking outsourced business models everywhere and distance from your customer is no longer merely a matter of dull logistics. Whether you are selling coiled steel or cut flowers, the cost of transport...

Under pressure from employers, the Treasury issued a ruling that allows companies to freeze the pensions of older workers in certain cases without running afoul of laws meant to protect employees' nest eggs. In addition to validating some pension rollbacks that could save companies billions of dollars, the Treasury's action also could tip the outcome of long-running lawsuits alleging age discrimination by pension plans at AT&T Inc., Cigna Corp., Dun & Bradstreet Corp., El Paso Corp., and other major companies. The stakes are huge: In just the AT&T case, nearly 24,000 current and former workers had opted into a class...

2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is firing up the troops for the coming battle over the Supreme Court - taping a message for her supporters accusing President Bush of appointing judges who want undo the accomplishments of the civil rights movement. In a "conversation" with Georgia Rep. John Lewis - videotaped shortly before Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement and posted to Clinton's web site in the last few days - the top Democrat hails the Warren court's landmark Brown vs Board of Education school desegregation decision. Then Hillary warns darkly: "What we are experiencing today is a real movement...

In a memo distributed in the run-up to Mayor Dick Murphy's State of the City address, San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre advises city officials to seek major pension benefit rollbacks in upcoming contract talks with municipal labor unions. "I'm trying to bring a realistic, needed reform that can restore the financial integrity of the pension plan and re-establish the fiscal strength of the city," Aguirre said in an interview yesterday. "If we do this, we can avoid bankruptcy. If we don't, it's almost certain we will go into bankruptcy at some point." Aguirre made his recommendations in a five-page...

WASHINGTON - Some conservative Republicans in the House want to roll back much of the new Medicare drug benefit and the "No Child Left Behind" education law that President Bush (news - web sites) made domestic hallmarks of his first term, a GOP lawmaker said Wednesday. While praising Bush's leadership on fighting terrorism and passing tax cuts, Rep. Mike Pence (news, bio, voting record) of Indiana said it was important for Republicans to reassert conservative values that led them to control of Congress. "The fate of the Republican majority ... will be largely determined by whether or not we rediscover...

The Schwarzenegger administration signaled its support Tuesday for a plan to drop Clinton-era protections that barred road-building and other development on nearly a third of the country's national forest land, including more than 4 million acres in California. The rollback, proposed by the Bush administration last summer, would repeal the most ambitious conservation move of Clinton's presidency — a rule that blocked commercial timber cutting and road construction on 58.5 million acres of national forest holdings. In its place, the Bush proposal would create a system that relies heavily on individual states to decide whether the forest lands should be...

A tax proposal based on California's "Proposition 13" will be on the November 2 ballot in Maine, and librarians and others are warning that it could devastate municipal services. The proposal, spearheaded by Maine Taxpayer Action Network head Carol Palesky, would roll back assessed property values by almost a decade and impose a property tax cap of 1% (or 10 mills) on the new value. The Maine Municipal Association projects a municipal tax revenue loss in FY 06 of nearly $600 million, or a 30% reduction in property tax revenues. However, that assumes that part of the measure would be...

<p>Gov. Gray Davis on Tuesday said he supports an effort by Assembly Democrats to raise personal income taxes and undo the vehicle license fee increase.</p> <p>Lawmakers are crafting legislation that would wipe out the tripling of the car fee that is to go into effect Oct. 1. Instead, the bill would add two new top income tax brackets and bump up taxes on cigarettes.</p>