By LOUISE RADNOFSKY and T.W. FARNAM 
Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings spent $24,730 in taxpayer money last year to lease a 2008 luxury Lexus hybrid sedan. Ohio Rep. Michael Turner expensed a $1,435 digital camera. Eni Faleomavaega, the House delegate from American Samoa, bought two 46-inch Sony TVs.

The expenditures were legal, properly accounted for and drawn from allowances the U.S. government grants to lawmakers. Equipment purchased with office expense accounts must be returned to the House or the federal General Services Administration when a lawmaker leaves office.

But as British politicians come under widening scorn for spending public money on everything from candy bars to moat-dredging, an examination of U.S. lawmakers' expense claims shows Washington's elected officials have also used public funds for eye-catching purchases.

U.S. politicians, unlike their counterparts in Great Britain, can't bill taxpayers for personal living expenses. The U.S. Treasury gives them an allowance to cover "official and representational expenses," according to congressional rules, and the lawmakers enjoy a fair amount of discretion in how they use the funds.

The Senate and House release volumes of the reimbursement requests for these allowances, but do not make them available electronically. A Wall Street Journal review of thousands of pages of these records for 2008 expenses showed most lawmaker spending flowed to areas such as staff salaries, travel, office rent and supplies, and printing and mailing.

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By Kathy Chu, USA TODAY

As more consumers struggle with bills, their credit scores are paying a price.

From the third quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009 — the latest data available — the average TransUnion credit score dropped 6 points to 651, the credit bureau says. Scores fell more dramatically in states hardest hit by the housing bust: California saw a 10-point drop, for example, and Arizona, 11.

"Consumers are feeling the bite of the current recession," says Ezra Becker, a director in TransUnion's financial services group. "With delinquencies showing up in credit files, it's not surprising that the average score is decreasing somewhat."

Becker believes credit scores aren't likely to improve — and could even drop further — through the second quarter of 2010.

More than 200 million U.S. consumers have credit scores, so a change of even a few points in the national average can be significant, experts say. 

The latest drop is based on TransUnion's TransRisk credit score, rather than the widely used FICO credit score. Yet it's still a "meaningful" gauge of a possible trend because many of the same ingredients — including payment history and debt levels — go into calculating scores, says John Ulzheimer, a credit expert who used to work at Equifax credit bureau and Fair Isaac, the creator of the FICO score.

Amid the recession, rising unemployment has made it harder for some consumers to pay bills, dragging down their credit scores.

In the first quarter of 2009, credit card delinquencies hit a record high of 6.5%, while charge-offs reached 7.5%, a near-record high, according to the Federal Reserve.

Banks are closing a record number of credit card accounts and reducing millions of dollars in credit lines. That could boost the percentage of credit consumers are using, hurting their scores.

MELISSA SANCHEZ;
Yakima Herald-Republic 

GRANGER – On strike, off the air.

That’s how Radio KDNA employees decided Saturday to protest the termination of two people who they say were fired for trying to join a union. Management says that had nothing to do with it.

Now, employees of the Spanish-language public broadcaster said they will return to work only when their former co-workers do too. In the meantime, static replaces all programming on 91.9 FM.

Scores of KDNA listeners showed up to support station employees throughout the day Saturday while they picketed in front of the Granger building, and later at a community rally at Hisey Park.

“We no longer have a voice here,” KDNA night supervisor Manuel Lopez said. “In the 29 years of this station’s existence, we have never had to go off the air because of a labor conflict like this.”

Find out what the $2.7 trillion that has been, or is supposed to be, allocated for here.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama wants unemployment insurance to become a stepping stone for future work by making it easier to enroll in school or job training. Whether he succeeds will depend on the willingness of states and colleges to change the rules.

People who have been laid off and want to go back to school often have to give up their monthly unemployment checks. And if they decide to return to school, they often don't qualify for federal aid because eligibility is based upon the previous year's income.

Under rule changes Obama outlined Friday, the Labor Department will ask states to make exceptions during economic downturns so that the unemployed can keep their benefits if they go to community college or pursue other education or training.

State governments, not Washington, decide who is eligible for unemployment, and they generally require anyone collecting assistance to be actively looking for work. That can complicate plans to attend school.

The Education Department, meanwhile, will encourage colleges to factor in the financial situation of an unemployed person applying for Pell Grants or other education and job training aid. Starting in July, the maximum Pell Grant, which helps low-income students afford college, will receive a $500 boost to $5,350.

Community colleges applauded the president's plan. George Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, said Obama would remove obstacles that keep the unemployed from heading back to school. The association represents about 1,200 such colleges.

"Sometimes we don't give our government credit for doing things that make sense," Boggs said. "It's great to see government stepping in and removing these disincentives."

However, one state-level critic accused Obama of avoiding the question of cost.

New compromise measures supported by Diane Feinstein and Arlen Specter may pave the way for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

With 900,000 union members in the state of Pennsylvania, the Arlen Specter firewall appears to be crumbling.  He knows he can't win a Democratic primary in Pennsylvania without labor, and they have made it clear that their support is contingent on his vote on Employee Free Choice.  

Which is why Penny Pritzker and fellow billionaires are getting nervous, publicly breaking with the White House and President Obama over his support for the bill.

The "centrist" Dems of the Senate, led by Tom Harkin, know they won't be able to shrug and say "what can we do, we only have 59 votes" much longer.  They have thus been trying to write an acceptable compromise so the party's progressives (including the unions) don't decide to stay home when Specter and others need their help in the 2010 elections. 

According to the National Journal:

Diane Feinstein's proposal would replace the card-check provision, which would allow workers to unionize if a majority signed authorization cards and strip a company's ability to demand a secret ballot election. "It's a secret ballot that would be mailed in ... just like an absentee ballot. The individual could take it home and mail it in," Feinstein said. If a majority mailed the ballots to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB would recognize the union.

As Harkin says, the Feinstein compromise has the advantage of "protecting the secret ballot, so people can do it in private," which neutralizes that particular right-wing criticism of the bill.  

CHICAGO — Pete Ostrander and the manufacturer he works for took a hard look at the auto industry four years ago, and neither liked what they saw.

Automakers were pushing vendors like Merrill Technologies Group, where Ostrander works, to cut costs and, with the economic environment in Detroit worsening by the day, the company retooled itself as a supplier to what it believed was an industry with better prospects.

Ostrander, standing in a display booth at one of the wind industry's biggest gatherings, was not alone.

Merrill is among dozens of companies at the American Wind Energy Association conference in Chicago _ which ends Thursday _ that have their traded auto-related business for a niche in wind-power.

"We have seen these indicators for years," Ostrander, an engineer, said of the auto industry. "They needed to clean up their own closets."

With the economy's tailspin, General Motors, Chrysler and Ford have laid off tens of thousands of workers, and Chrysler last week filed for bankruptcy protection. The problems have rippled through a support network that includes thousands of auto parts makers and other suppliers.

According to the Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association, a trade group for auto industry suppliers, more than a third of such companies say in industry polling that they are in deep financial trouble. More than 40 of them entered bankruptcy last year.

"If you walk that floor, what you will see is that many, many companies _ a lot of the small companies _ have come from the automotive supply chain," Don Furman, president of the wind industry organization's board, said at the conference.

AWEA's meeting drew 21,000 people and roughly 1,200 exhibitors.

By Peter Whoriskey
WashingtonPost.Com

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company's new jobs will be filled by workers overseas.

According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.

The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.

As a result, the long-simmering argument over U.S. manufacturers expanding production overseas -- normally arising between unions and private companies -- is about to engage the Obama administration.

Essentially in control of the company, the president's autos task force faces an awkward choice: It can either require General Motors to keep more jobs at home, potentially raising labor costs at a company already beset with financial woes, or it can risk political fury by allowing the automaker to expand operations at lower-cost manufacturing locations.

"It's an almost impossible dilemma," said former labor secretary Robert B. Reich, now a professor at the University of California-Berkeley. "GM is a global company -- so for that matter is AIG and the biggest Wall Street banks. That means that bailing them out doesn't necessarily redound to the benefit of the U.S. or American workers.

PARKLAND, Florida (CNN) -- Yorelle Haroush fled a million-dollar South Florida home this week, chased out, she said, by drywall made in China that's emitting vapors that smell like rotten eggs.

"It's making me sick. Physically, mentally and emotionally, making me sick," said the 18-year-old, who is pregnant with her first child.

Haroush lives with her aunt Amy Massachi and her four siblings and cousins in the house. They believe a year's worth of upper respiratory infections, antibiotics, bloody noses and sickness have been caused by the walls.

Their doctor said they need to get out of the $1.2 million estate in Parkland, Florida, northwest of Fort Lauderdale.

"I said, 'you can't stay there anymore, because you're sick every minute,'" the family's longtime physician, Dr. Ross Nochimson, told CNN. "They're sick on a weekly basis. Earaches, sore throat. I give them something, and they're sick again."

Massachi and her family are among homeowners in more than a dozen states who allege Chinese drywall has emitted corrosive gases they believe have given them health problems.

Homeowners also allege the gases corrode metal components including copper wiring, causing air conditioners and other household systems to fail.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says most of the complaints have come from Florida, where the concerns emerged last year. But consumers also have filed complaints in Louisiana, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, Alabama, Mississippi, California, Washington, Wyoming, Arizona, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.