This total government needs to be changed, they are lying thru there teeth to us about every thing! How many of you people lost your pensions and savings? you have got to see taxes are going to go up to pay for every thing we need, so we need to tax the people that have been doing so well for to many years and NOT PAYING TAXES. These oil company's have riped us off for to many years. Now we have roads,schools,dams,and a lot more to pay for like a war that is not going to end anytime soon and spread.Corrupt government officals taking our money left and right. billions of dollars lost in this war that they can't say were it went. If we don't get these OLD POLITICIANS out of office your going to hurt more. They know ALL the tricks to making money for them self and BIG BUSINESS. So keep doing what you have been doing for to many years and beleave our government thats suppose to protect US THE PEOPLE.

Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:33am EDT

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former White House press secretary Tony Snow, who battled colon cancer, has died, according to media reports on Saturday.

Snow, 53, who had been a conservative radio and television commentator, resigned in August 2007 as President George W. Bush's spokesman.

cancer he had fought earlier had returned, and had undergone chemotherapy. But he said his decision to leave was for financial, not health, reasons.

The affable Snow was credited with livening up the daily news briefings and was admired for his skill at sparring with reporters.

Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:24pm EDT

By Christopher Doering

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Months after the biggest meat recall in U.S. history, the Agriculture Department said on Friday it will begin making public the names of retail stores that receive tainted products, but critics said the change does not go far enough to protect public health.

"We need this rule to reinstall confidence in the American public that we are in control here," Richard Raymond, the agriculture undersecretary who oversees USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, told reporters.

The new plan, which will go into effect before the end of August, would list retail stores only when there is a good chance a person will become ill or die by consuming the meat or poultry product, so-called Class I recalls. Other recall classes where there is a remote or no probability of illness would not be covered.

The push for a more open recall system gained momentum after USDA announced on February 17 that Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co was recalling 143 million lbs of meat, mostly beef. It was the largest meat recall in U.S. history.

Under Friday's announcement, the list of retailers that received meat in the Hallmark recall, which was categorized as one where there was a minimal risk to humans, would not have been made public.

Lawmakers and consumer groups welcomed the new USDA rule, but said it stopped short of fully protecting the public because it failed to cover all meat and poultry recalls.

"If a problem is serious enough to spark a recall, it is serious enough to give consumers all the information they need to avoid potentially dangerous products," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director at Food & Water Watch.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer defended USDA's decision to limit the release of retailers only to where the threat was the greatest to public health.

"We don't want to unnecessarily scare the public," said Schafer. "We want to assure consumers that if they see a Class I recall, and they see their retail store there, they know this is a problem."

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Agency has been working on the rule since March 2006 as another way to give consumers important public health information more quickly. Until now, the department had maintained it did not have the authority to release retail lists.

The department said on Friday the process used to recall products now would remain in place.

Under existing guidelines, USDA contacts food distributors to ensure proper notification is taking place and that products are being removed from store shelves and disposed of properly. It also publicly releases the name of the company involved, the reason for the recall and whether any illnesses have been reported.

Bob Brackett, a senior vice president at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, said he supported keeping the existing rules rather than making changes that may not help the consumer.

"This information, which is publicly announced by USDA when a recall is initiated, is far more timely, reliable and current than a generic list of retailers that might change over time and could very well be inaccurate to begin with," said Brackett.

An FSIS spokeswoman estimated it would take 3 to 10 days to collect the names of the retail stores involved and the list would be periodically updated as information is gathered.

(Reporting by Christopher Doering; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Federal regulators seized IndyMac Bancorp on Friday evening, marking one of the largest bank failures in American history.

The bank, once part of the Countrywide Financial Corporation, is the first major bank to shut its doors since the mortgage crisis erupted more than a year ago. (IndyMac is not related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the big mortgage finance companies that alarmed the stock market this week.)

The closure followed a frenzied week during which IndyMac’s executives tried to bolster the ailing bank. IndyMac, based in Pasadena, Calif., stopped making new loans and announced layoffs of more than half of its 7,200 workers. But IndyMac’s customers, afraid their savings might disappear, stampeded tellers and demanded their money.

Most of IndyMac’s deposits are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which will operate the bank and try to sell it.

The run on the bank came after a critical letter about the bank from Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Federal regulators said on Friday that Mr. Schumer’s letter had prompted the collapse by causing the run and scaring away potential acquirers.

“The senator made comments in his letter questioning the viability of the institution,” John M. Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, said in a phone call with reporters. “When a member of the United States Senate makes such a statement, it frightens depositors.”

In the days after Mr. Schumer’s letter was released on June 26, IndyMac customers withdrew an average of $100 million a day from the bank, or a total of $1.3 billion, the government said. Before Mr. Schumer’s letter, the bank had been receiving net inflows of money from depositors, Mr. Reich said.

Mr. Schumer, who has been critical of bank regulators for months, released a statement criticizing Mr. Reich’s agency.

“IndyMac’s troubles, like Countrywide’s were caused by practices that began and persisted over the last several years,” he said. “If O.T.S. had done its job as regulator and not let IndyMac’s poor and loose lending practices continue, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

For all the write-downs and bad news on Wall Street over the last year, only five local and regional banks have shut their doors. The handful that have failed have been a fraction of the size of IndyMac. IndyMac held $32 billion in assets as of late March, according to the government release.

“It’s the biggest failure in 24 years,” said Chip MacDonald, a banking lawyer at Jones Day in Atlanta. “You haven’t had a lot of failures of that size, yet.”

It has been 15 years since any bank larger than $10 billion in assets collapsed. The largest bank failure on record was in 1984 when Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust in Chicago hit trouble, presaging the savings and loan crisis.

IndyMac ran into trouble late last year when it was not able to sell off a chunk of its Alt-A mortgage loans, which go to homeowners with credit that is better than the sub-prime category. IndyMac was being shopped to potential investors this summer, but their interest disappeared after Mr. Schumer’s comments, said Timothy T. Ward, deputy director of examinations, supervision and consumer protection at the O.T.S.

William Isaac, chairman of the F.D.I.C. in the early 1980s, cautioned against panic. Bank failures so far pale against the 3,000 bank failures in the 1980s, he said.

Elizabeth Sullivan, an IndyMac customer in the Pasadena area, said she almost withdrew her money after hearing about Mr. Schumer’s letter two weeks ago. Once she felt assured that the F.D.I.C. would insure her money, she decided against it, in part out of loyalty to a teller she likes at her local branch and because she felt a public duty not to contribute to “mass panic.”

“Now I wish I had withdrawn it,” she said. “That was in my gut.”