Last Friday, we sent out an alert asking our members to contact House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers. Our goal was to have him issue subpoenas to former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former Justice Department official John Yoo, requiring them to testify about the sanctioning of torture in the Bush administration’s Justice Department. In response, more than 6,000 of our members sent emails to Chairman Conyers.

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that Chairman Conyers was, in fact, threatening to issue subpoenas to Ashcroft and Yoo! Here is how the article started:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday threatened to serve subpoenas on former Attorney General John Ashcroft and two others associated with the Bush administration’s interrogation policies if they don’t agree to testify.

If the three - including John C. Yoo, the former assistant deputy attorney general, and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff - do not reply by Friday, “I will have no choice but to consider the use of compulsory process,” Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., wrote in letters to them.

That’s Washington-speak for issuing congressional subpoenas.

We are thrilled that Chairman Conyers is moving in the right direction, but the fight is certainly not over yet. Taking on the White House is never easy and he needs all the encouragement he can get.

If you have not sent an email to Chairman Conyers yet, please click on the following link to get started:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2165/t/1027/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24355

Thank you so much for joining us in this effort.

Steve

Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.

I don’t want to alarm anybody, but maybe it’s time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You’ve seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they’re a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.
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Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

“Load up the pantry,” says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street’s top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. “I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn’t going to happen here. But I don’t know how the food companies can absorb higher costs.” (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows. food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

The median price of a new home in March, compared with a year ago, fell by the largest amount in nearly four decades.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that sales of new homes dropped by 8.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units, the slowest sales pace since October 1991.

The median price of a home sold in March dropped by 13.3 percent compared with March 2007, the biggest year-over-year price decline since a 14.6 percent plunge in July 1970.

The dismal news on new home sales followed earlier reports showing sales of existing homes fell by 2 percent in March. Housing, which boomed for five years, has been in a prolonged slump for the past two years with sales and home prices falling at especially sharp rates in formerly boom areas of the country.

For March, sales were down in all regions of the country, dropping the most in the Northeast, a decline of 19.4 percent. Sales fell by 12.9 percent in the West, 12.5 percent in the Midwest and 4.6 percent in the South.

In other economic news, orders to factories for big-ticket manufactured goods fell for a third straight month in March, the longest string of declines since the 2001 recession, while applications for unemployment benefits fell by 33,000 to 342,000.

The Commerce Department said demand for durable goods dropped by 0.3 percent last month, a worse-than-expected performance that underscored the problems manufacturers are facing from a severe economic slowdown. The last time orders fell for three consecutive months was from February to April of 2001, when the country was sliding into the last recession.

The weakness in manufacturing orders was led by a 4.6 percent drop in orders for autos, a sector hard hit by soaring gasoline prices, and the weakening economy, which have cut sharply into car sales. Orders in the category that includes home appliances fell by 6.6 percent. This industry has been hurt by the two-year slump in home sales.

President Bush said Tuesday that the economy was not in a recession but a period of slower growth. However, economists who believe the country has fallen into a recession pointed to the string of declines in manufacturing orders to support their view.

The sharp drop in expected revenue is expected to play a key role in negotiations over the proposed state budget during the next two weeks as Gov. M. Jodi Rell and legislators seek to fund a wide variety of services — ranging from nursing homes and homeless shelters to prisons and public schools.

Nursing homes and nonprofit organizations already are complaining that an expected 1 percent cost-of-living increase is too low, and the lower surplus projections will probably make budget decisions more difficult, lawmakers said.