Saturday, October 23, 2010

Barack and Michelle's Mumbai darshan plans

US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will be extremely busy in Mumbai, upon landing on November 6 for a two day India visit. As the world’s most powerful man and his wife zip around the city visiting the 26/11 memorial on Marine Drive, the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mani Bhawan and other locations in south Mumbai, the security obviously will be water-tight .

Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers on the invitation of an NGO. The highprofile visit is likely to inconvenience the citizens, as there could be a complete clampdown on traffic on some main roads of south Mumbai and sanitisation of buildings flanking them.
The Obamas will stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel, and his itinerary practically means Marine Drive will be shut for vehicular traffic on the day of the President’s visit, while buildings flanking it will be sanitised with security personnel manning them until Obama has left the place. Same would be the case with Obama’s visit to Mani Bhawan and Michelle going to Kamathipura.

An officer with the security establishment said, “Several other arterial roads in south Mumbai will also see restricted traffic movement, with tight security all around. The Obamas are not expected to schedule any engagements in the night due to security reasons.”

Since Obama is expected to arrive in the afternoon on November 6, and will travel by road to the Taj Mahal Hotel, the entire stretch from airport to the hotel will be under heavy security. The officer said, “There will be no vehicular movement on Western Express Highway at that time. Traffic on roads leading up to the highway will also be stopped. All buildings flanking the entire stretch will be sanitised. However, there is no threat from the snipers as the President will travel in a bullet-proof car with 4.5-inch thick sheets, which are impenetrable for any gun.”
Obama’s personal security staff itself will be huge, and it has already started making its own arrangements in Mumbai. “A team of secret service agents has already arrived, and has surveyed the areas of his stay and the roads and places on his itinerary,” the officer said.

To ensure fool-proof security, the President’s team has booked the entire the Taj Mahal Hotel, including 570 rooms, all banquets and restaurants. Since his security contingent and staff will comprise a huge number, 125 rooms at Taj President have also been booked, apart from 80 to 90 rooms each in Grand Hyatt and The Oberoi hotels. The NCPA, where the President is expected to meet representatives from the business community, has also been entirely booked.
The officer said, “Obama’s contingent is huge. There are two jumbo jets coming along with Air Force One, which will be flanked by security jets. There will be 30 to 40 secret service agents, who will arrive before him. The President’s convoy has 45 cars, including the Lincoln Continental in which the President travels.”

Since Obama will stay in a hotel that is on sea front, elaborate coastal security arrangements have been made by the US Navy in consonance with the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard. “There will be US naval ships, along with Indian vessels , patrolling the sea till about 330-km from the shore. This is to negate the possibility of a missile being fired from a distance,” the officer said.

The President will be accompanied by his chefs, not because he would not like to savour Indian cuisine, but to ensure his food is not spiked.

US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are scheduled to land in Mumbai on November 6.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Why and Which Cars

More than 1.5 million cars will be recalled by Toyota, the World’s largest car manufacturer in order to fix a brake fluid leak.
Thus, over 600,000 cars in Japan, 30,000 in Australia and 740,000 in USA will be called back to be repaired by Toyota’s engineers.
The harsh decision will be applied to 13 models, including the Toyota Mark X, Toyota Crown sedan, the Lexus IS, RX and GS. There will be another several hundred GS models built between September 2004 and February 2006 that will be recalled due to a failure in the fuel pump. Earlier this year, Toyota was battered by a global safety crisis.
If you own a Toyota and want to determine if your car is affected, check the control panel of your car: If there’s a leak of break fluid, you will notice a warning light displayed on the panel. Moreover, when driving, you will notice a progressive decline in the response time and performance of the brakes, and a spongy feel when pressing the brake pedal.


Source: http://www.providingnews.com/toyota-recall-why-and-which-cars.html#ixzz130p5NUgp

news you can use femacamp info base is on the ball





NPR Ends Juan Williams' Contract After Muslim Remarks...

...made on FOXNEWS

Williams: Fired For Being A 'Bigot'...

National Politically-correct Radio...

Huckabee calls on Congress to cut NPR funding...

FLASHBACK: Soros give NPR $1.8M to hire 100 reporters...


UK cafe owner ordered to remove fan because neighbor claims 'smell of frying bacon offends Muslims'...



ORDER GIVEN: Military Can Respond to Domestic Cyber 'Threats'...




BOOK: Clinton Lost Nuclear Codes While in Office...


Appeals court stays ruling on gays in military...

Pentagon trying to change culture...


White House takes credit for Bush-era wind farm jobs...

'Rent Is Too Damn High' Candidate Doesn't Pay Rent...

DNA Spray Links Criminals to the Place They Robbed...

Hollywood Fundraiser For Rahm Emanuel...

Powerful Anti-Rahm Alliance Emerges In Chicago...


PENTHOUSE founder Guccione dies, aged 79...

'Stink bugs' hit New York...

COLGATE Accused of Stealing 1,000-Year-Old Toothpaste Recipe in India...





Geithner Vows To 'Rebalance' World Economy...

Wall St mogul picked for State Dept post...

FANNIE/GOLDMAN lobbyist tapped as National Security Advisor...


Iran, Venezuela leaders seek 'new world order'...

Ahmadinejad, Saudi King hold more phone talks...
Pilot Refuses Full-Body Scan, Says TSA Doesn't Make Travel Safer...

Objected to 'grabbing and groping and prodding'...
WIKILEAKS Prompts U.S. Alert to Iraqis...


Merkel calms storm over dressing-room visit...
UK to track every email, phone call and web visit...
California's pot crop worth $14 billion -- more than state's wine industry!
Parents Television Council calls 'GLEE' photo shoot pedophilia...
NJ Toll Worker Earns $321,985...
TWITTER BREAKING NEWS FEED...
ABCNEWS NOTE
MIKE ALLEN PLAYBOOK
MSNBC FIRST READ
WASH POST RUNDOWN...




HARVEST: MICHELLE DRESSES TO PICK SWEET POTATOES...



MIRACLE GROW AT WHITE HOUSE...




French union calls for massive new pension protest...

Tourists warned to stay away as violence spirals...

'Birthright' of privileges...

Fuel short as port, refinery strikes drag on...

Sarkozy lashes out...


Jobless: Law student asks for refund...

Cash-strapped governments ramping up tax-collection efforts...

... place wheel locks on cars


Connecticut law firm opens drive-thru window...

Lawyers Spawn Foreclosure Fracas...


'Hormone' Found In Rich People Linked To Longer Life...

New Ad Slams James Cameron For Supporting Energy Restrictions -- While Owning 3 Homes!

VOLT Fraud At GOV'T MOTORS...

Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes

Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the last three years using a technique that moves most of its foreign profits through Ireland and the Netherlands to Bermuda.
Google’s income shifting -- involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” -- helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 percent, the lowest of the top five U.S. technology companies by market capitalization, according to regulatory filings in six countries.
“It’s remarkable that Google’s effective rate is that low,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist who formerly worked for the U.S. Treasury Department. “We know this company operates throughout the world mostly in high-tax countries where the average corporate rate is well over 20 percent.”
The U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent. In the U.K., Google’s second-biggest market by revenue, it’s 28 percent.
Google, the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, uses a strategy that has gained favor among such companies as Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The method takes advantage of Irish tax law to legally shuttle profits into and out of subsidiaries there, largely escaping the country’s 12.5 percent income tax. (See an interactive graphic on Google’s tax strategy here.)
The earnings wind up in island havens that levy no corporate income taxes at all. Companies that use the Double Irish arrangement avoid taxes at home and abroad as the U.S. government struggles to close a projected $1.4 trillion budget gap and European Union countries face a collective projected deficit of 868 billion euros.
Countless Companies
Google, the third-largest U.S. technology company by market capitalization, hasn’t been accused of breaking tax laws. “Google’s practices are very similar to those at countless other global companies operating across a wide range of industries,” said Jane Penner, a spokeswoman for the Mountain View, California-based company. Penner declined to address the particulars of its tax strategies.
Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, is preparing a structure similar to Google’s that will send earnings from Ireland to the Cayman Islands, according to the company’s filings in Ireland and the Caymans and to a person familiar with its plans. A spokesman for the Palo Alto, California-based company declined to comment.
Transfer Pricing
The tactics of Google and Facebook depend on “transfer pricing,” paper transactions among corporate subsidiaries that allow for allocating income to tax havens while attributing expenses to higher-tax countries. Such income shifting costs the U.S. government as much as $60 billion in annual revenue, according to Kimberly A. Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
U.S. Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, and other politicians say the 35 percent U.S. statutory rate is too high relative to foreign countries. International income-shifting, which helped cut Google’s overall effective tax rate to 22.2 percent last year, shows one way that loopholes undermine that top U.S. rate.
Two thousand U.S. companies paid a median effective cash rate of 28.3 percent in federal, state and foreign income taxes in a 2005 study by academics at the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina. The combined national-local statutory rate is 34.4 percent in France, 30.2 percent in Germany and 39.5 percent in Japan, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Double Irish
As a strategy for limiting taxes, the Double Irish method is “very common at the moment, particularly with companies with intellectual property,” said Richard Murphy, director of U.K.- based Tax Research LLP. Murphy, who has worked on similar transactions, estimates that hundreds of multinationals use some version of the method.
The high corporate tax rate in the U.S. motivates companies to move activities and related income to lower-tax countries, said Irving H. Plotkin, a senior managing director at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s national tax practice in Boston. He delivered a presentation in Washington, D.C. this year titled “Transfer Pricing is Not a Four Letter Word.”
“A company’s obligation to its shareholders is to try to minimize its taxes and all costs, but to do so legally,” Plotkin said in an interview.
Boosting Earnings
Google’s transfer pricing contributed to international tax benefits that boosted its earnings by 26 percent last year, company filings show. Based on a rough analysis, if the company paid taxes at the 35 percent rate on all its earnings, its share price might be reduced by about $100, said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in Boca Raton, Florida. He recommends buying Google stock, which closed yesterday at $607.98.
The company, which tells employees “don’t be evil” in its code of conduct, has cut its effective tax rate abroad more than its peers in the technology sector: Apple Inc., the maker of the iPhone; Microsoft, the largest software company; International Business Machines Corp., the biggest computer-services provider; and Oracle Corp., the second-biggest software company. Those companies reported rates that ranged between 4.5 percent and 25.8 percent for 2007 through 2009.
Google is “flying a banner of doing no evil, and then they’re perpetrating evil under our noses,” said Abraham J. Briloff, a professor emeritus of accounting at Baruch College in New York who has examined Google’s tax disclosures.
“Who is it that paid for the underlying concept on which they built these billions of dollars of revenues?” Briloff said. “It was paid for by the United States citizenry.”
Taxpayer Funding
The U.S. National Science Foundation funded the mid-1990s research at Stanford University that helped lead to Google’s creation. Taxpayers also paid for a scholarship for the company’s cofounder, Sergey Brin, while he worked on that research. Google now has a stock market value of $194.2 billion.
Google’s annual reports from 2007 to 2009 ascribe a cumulative $3.1 billion tax savings to the “foreign rate differential.” Such entries typically describe how much tax U.S. companies save from profits earned overseas.
In February, the Obama administration proposed measures to curb shifting profits offshore, part of a package intended to raise $12 billion a year over the coming decade. While the key proposals largely haven’t advanced in Congress, the IRS said in April it would devote additional agents and lawyers to focus on five large transfer pricing arrangements.
Arm’s Length
Income shifting commonly begins when companies like Google sell or license the foreign rights to intellectual property developed in the U.S. to a subsidiary in a low-tax country. That means foreign profits based on the technology get attributed to the offshore unit, not the parent. Under U.S. tax rules, subsidiaries must pay “arm’s length” prices for the rights -- or the amount an unrelated company would.
Because the payments contribute to taxable income, the parent company has an incentive to set them as low as possible. Cutting the foreign subsidiary’s expenses effectively shifts profits overseas.
After three years of negotiations, Google received approval from the IRS in 2006 for its transfer pricing arrangement, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The IRS gave its consent in a secret pact known as an advanced pricing agreement. Google wouldn’t discuss the price set under the arrangement, which licensed the rights to its search and advertising technology and other intangible property for Europe, the Middle East and Africa to a unit called Google Ireland Holdings, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Dublin Office
That licensee in turn owns Google Ireland Limited, which employs almost 2,000 people in a silvery glass office building in central Dublin, a block from the city’s Grand Canal. The Dublin subsidiary sells advertising globally and was credited by Google with 88 percent of its $12.5 billion in non-U.S. sales in 2009.
Allocating the revenue to Ireland helps Google avoid income taxes in the U.S., where most of its technology was developed. The arrangement also reduces the company’s liabilities in relatively high-tax European countries where many of its customers are located.
The profits don’t stay with the Dublin subsidiary, which reported pretax income of less than 1 percent of sales in 2008, according to Irish records. That’s largely because it paid $5.4 billion in royalties to Google Ireland Holdings, which has its “effective centre of management” in Bermuda, according to company filings.
Law Firm Directors
This Bermuda-managed entity is owned by a pair of Google subsidiaries that list as their directors two attorneys and a manager at Conyers Dill & Pearman, a Hamilton, Bermuda law firm.
Tax planners call such an arrangement a Double Irish because it relies on two Irish companies. One pays royalties to use intellectual property, generating expenses that reduce Irish taxable income. The second collects the royalties in a tax haven like Bermuda, avoiding Irish taxes.
To steer clear of an Irish withholding tax, payments from Google’s Dublin unit don’t go directly to Bermuda. A brief detour to the Netherlands avoids that liability, because Irish tax law exempts certain royalties to companies in other EU- member nations. The fees first go to a Dutch unit, Google Netherlands Holdings B.V., which pays out about 99.8 percent of what it collects to the Bermuda entity, company filings show. The Amsterdam-based subsidiary lists no employees.
The Dutch Sandwich
Inserting the Netherlands stopover between two other units gives rise to the “Dutch Sandwich” nickname.
“The sandwich leaves no tax behind to taste,” said Murphy of Tax Research LLP.
Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, has also used a Double Irish structure, according to company filings overseas. Forest Laboratories Inc., maker of the antidepressant Lexapro, does as well, Bloomberg News reported in May. The New York-based drug manufacturer claims that most of its profits are earned overseas even though its sales are almost entirely in the U.S. Forest later disclosed that its transfer pricing was being audited by the IRS.
Since the 1960s, Ireland has pursued a strategy of offering tax incentives to attract multinationals. A lesser-appreciated aspect of Ireland’s appeal is that it allows companies to shift income out of the country with minimal tax consequences, said Jim Stewart, a senior lecturer in finance at Trinity College’s school of business in Dublin.
Getting Profits Out
“You accumulate profits within Ireland, but then you get them out of the country relatively easily,” Stewart said. “And you do it by using Bermuda.”
Eoin Dorgan, a spokesman for the Irish Department of Finance, declined to comment on Google’s strategies specifically. “Ireland always seeks to ensure that the profits charged in Ireland fully reflect the functions, assets and risks located here by multinational groups,” he said.
Once Google’s non-U.S. profits hit Bermuda, they become difficult to track. The subsidiary managed there changed its legal form of organization in 2006 to become a so-called unlimited liability company. Under Irish rules, that means it’s not required to disclose such financial information as income statements or balance sheets.
“Sticking an unlimited company in the group structure has become more common in Ireland, largely to prevent disclosure,” Stewart said.
Deferred Indefinitely
Technically, multinationals that shift profits overseas are deferring U.S. income taxes, not avoiding them permanently. The deferral lasts until companies decide to bring the earnings back to the U.S. In practice, they rarely repatriate significant portions, thus avoiding the taxes indefinitely, said Michelle Hanlon, an accounting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
U.S. policy makers, meanwhile, have taken halting steps to address concerns about transfer pricing. In 2009, the Treasury Department proposed levying taxes on certain payments between U.S. companies’ foreign subsidiaries.
Treasury officials, who estimated the policy change would raise $86.5 billion in new revenue over the next decade, dropped it after Congress and Treasury were lobbied by companies, including manufacturing and media conglomerate General Electric Co., health-product maker Johnson & Johnson and coffee giant Starbucks Corp., according to federal disclosures compiled by the non-profit Center for Responsive Politics.
Administration Concerned
While the administration “remains concerned” about potential abuses, officials decided “to defer consideration of how to reform those rules until they can be studied more broadly,” said Sandra Salstrom, a Treasury spokeswoman. The White House still proposes to tax excessive profits of offshore subsidiaries as a curb on income shifting, she said.
The rules for transfer pricing should be replaced with a system that allocates profits among countries the way most U.S. states with a corporate income tax do -- based on such aspects as sales or number of employees in each jurisdiction, said Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, director of the international tax program at the University of Michigan Law School.
“The system is broken and I think it needs to be scrapped,” said Avi-Yonah, also a special counsel at law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington D.C. “Companies are getting away with murder.”

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

20 year old girl raped by cops

Mexico City:  A 20-year-old criminology student, the only candidate for the position, was designated as police chief in the violence-plagued town of Guadalupe Distrito Bravo, Mexican media reported Tuesday.

Marisol Valles Garcia took charge on Monday of security in the town, population 10,000, on the US border. The community is around 80 km east of Ciudad Juarez, itself regarded as the most violent city in Mexico.

The former mayor of Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, Jesus Manuel Lara Rodriguez, was killed on June 19 at his home in Ciudad Juarez, after receiving death threats.

Valles Garcia said she will not have to fight the drug gangs, which is the responsibility of other law enforcement agencies. Instead, she will pursue preventive programmes in neighbourhoods and schools, and she will be in charge of reclaiming public spaces for the community.

Violent protests have ‘weakened unions’ in retirement battle

French unions have been forced onto the back foot after clashes between a small hard core of violent protesters and police, according to a leading French labour expert.
The violence this week, amid huge country-wide strikes, blockades and demonstrations, has weakened the unions and played directly into the hands of the government, according to Bernard Vivier, director of France’s Higher Institute of Labour (a leading French thinktank).
“The unions are embarrassed by this violence, which is led by anarchist elements of the unions who want to derail any attempts to negotiate with the government,” he told FRANCE 24.
“It has put the brakes on the unions’ momentum, while they themselves recognise that reforms to the pension system are needed,” he added. “These violent protesters want to do anything possible to stop negotiations, and their actions have shot the protest movement in the foot.”
Official spokespeople from France’s major unions were unavailable for comment when this article was published.
Mostly peaceful
Footage and pictures of hooded youths and baton-wielding riot police have dominated international headlines.
However, Tuesday's protests, in which between one million people (according to police) and 3.5 million (according to unions) took to the streets on Tuesday, were largely peaceful.
Violence erupted on the fringes of some marches, notably in Lyon, where hundreds of masked rioters torched cars, smashed store windows and destroyed bus shelters.
In nine days of demonstrations and strikes, some 1,500 alleged rioters have been arrested, 428 after Tuesday’s clashes, according to the interior ministry.
Sporadic protests continued on Wednesday, with groups blocking access to regional airports at Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and Clermont Ferrand.
The demonstrations, organised by France’s powerful trades unions, come as the French government was finalising a law to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.
The law, which will likely be signed off by France’s upper house of parliament, the Senate, this week, would also raise the retirement threshold for a full pension from 65 to 67.
The protests are backed by the majority of French voters who want French President Nicolas Sarkozy to retreat on what was one of the primary planks of his 2007 presidential election campaign – which he won with broad public backing.
Government action
On Tuesday, Sarkozy sent in paramilitary police to clear blockades at France's fuel depots that this week caused a wave of panic-buying and shut down one in three petrol stations across the country.
"If this disorder is not ended quickly, the attempt to paralyse the country could have consequences for jobs by disrupting the normal functioning of the economy," Sarkozy told a cabinet meeting in remarks released by his office, adding his determination to push the pension reform through.
Three depots were peacefully reopened overnight, but protestors have blockaded several more.
"We will continue to unblock these depots as much as necessary," Hortefeux said. "We will not let the country be blockaded and we will not let the thugs go unpunished," he added, referring to those arrested in street riots.
A third day of violence broke out on Wednesday morning in Lyon and the Paris suburb of Nanterre, both the scenes of earlier clashes, where a handful of cars were set alight.
The government is hoping that the protests will gradually fizzle out, as a 10-day half-term holiday begins and schools, which have been the focus of much of the violence, shut their doors.
 

SPEAKER FACES FORECLOSURE ON HOUSE...

With two weeks remaining until Election Day, the political map has expanded to put Democrats on the run across the country — with 99 Democratic-held House seats now in play, according to a POLITICO analysis, and Republicans well in reach of retaking the House.
It’s a dramatic departure from the outlook one year ago — and a broader landscape than even just prior to the summer congressional recess. As recently as early September, many Republicans were hesitant to talk about winning a majority for fear of overreaching.

Today, however, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report predicts a GOP net gain of at least 40 House seats, with 90 Democratic seats in total rated as competitive or likely Republican.
"When Chairman [Pete] Sessions and Leader [John] Boehner said that 100 House seats were in play, Democrats scoffed,” said Ken Spain, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s communications director. “Today, they aren't laughing anymore."
The number of Democrats in danger is more than double the 39 seats Republicans need to seize control of the House. It reflects an elastic electoral environment that favors the GOP by every measure: money, momentum and mood of the country — in this case, sour on Democratic incumbents.
For Democrats, a deteriorating political environment — unemployment high, President Barack Obama’s approval ratings low — has been exacerbated by the presence of cash-flush, independent conservative groups that have poured huge sums of money into races.
The groups, including American Crossroads, have combined with the National Republican Congressional Committee to stretch the boundaries of the 2010 map into races where there’s even a scent of Democratic vulnerability.
“This year is shaping up to be something of a repeat of the 52-seat House and eight-seat Senate rout of Democrats in 1994,” handicapper Charlie Cook wrote last week. “Sure, the circumstances and dynamics are different from then, but the outcome seems to be shaping up along the same lines.”
At one time, there was serious doubt the GOP would have the financial resources to compete effectively for the House majority. The thinking was that scores of potential opportunities could go unexplored due to the cash disparity between the NRCC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
While the NRCC still trails in cash on hand, its fundraising has picked up — the September total was the committee’s largest one-month take since 2006 — and independent groups have helped fill the void. And with anti-incumbent, anti-Obama and anti-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sentiment running so high in many districts, even a relative pittance has been enough to push a few Democrats onto thin ice.
The assessment by POLITICO is based on a review of TV media-buy information from those independent groups and the party committees in more than 80 districts; internal and public polling in individual races; Federal Election Commission fundraising data for incumbents and challengers; and reporting on the districts. ( See: More photos from the campaign trail)
While the level of competitiveness among the 99 seats varies widely, they share a common denominator: all of them show some serious sign of vulnerability to takeover by the GOP. Factors included a Democratic incumbent’s unpopular legislative votes, the quality of opposition, the partisan breakdown of the districts or the huge sums of money dedicated to Democratic defeat — or some combination of all those factors — to place them “in play” ahead of Nov. 2.  (See: Candidates take the debate stage)
The subjectivity of those factors have led to varying interpretations of just how many seats are actually at risk for Democrats. The Rothenberg Report, another political handicapper, lists 91 Democratic-held seats as in play, and predicts the “extremely large field of competitive races” will produce a “likely Republican gain of 40-50 seats, with 60 seats possible.”
POLITICO’s list of 99 seats — some of which have only recently emerged — places GOP pickup opportunities across the political map, stretching from regions of Republican strength such as the South to Democratic states such as California, where three incumbent Democrats face competitive challengers.
In deep-blue New York, Republicans have a shot at as many as nine Democrats. “It’s thermonuclear,” said two-term Rep. Michael Arcuri, in describing the campaign against him to The New York Times.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43814.html#ixzz12uD47M3F