The 1.7 percent pace matched analysts' expectations. The slight upgrade for the quarter reflected stronger inventory building by businesses than previously thought.

The Federal Reserve and other economists say the economy bounced back smartly in the current January-to-March quarter. Private analysts predict growth during this period will clock in at a brisk pace of 4.5 percent or higher. Then economic activity will moderate to around a 3.4 pace in the April-to-June quarter.

Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the best gauge of the economy's performance.

In other economic news, the Labor Department reported the new claims filed for unemployment benefits last week dropped by 10,000 to 302,000, another sign that the labor market is strengthening. The decline left claims at a lower level than economists had forecast.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues said Tuesday that the economy has snapped out of its end-of-year doldrums and has "rebounded strongly" in the January-to-March quarter. "But (it) appears likely to moderate to a more sustainable pace" going forward, the board said.

Fed policy-makers chalked up the fourth-quarter's mediocre performance to mostly "temporary or special factors" - an assessment that was shared by private economists who likened the final quarter of 2005 to a temporary breather rather than a sign of prolonged economic troubles ahead.

The 1.7 percent growth rate in the fourth quarter marked a big loss of momentum from the third quarter's zippy 4.1 percent pace.

The fourth quarter's slowdown was blamed on lingering fallout from the Gulf Coast hurricanes and elevated energy prices, which especially caused consumers to tighten their belts.

Consumer spending in the final quarter of 2005 grew at a pace of just 0.9 percent, the weakest since the first quarter of 1995. A cut in spending on big-ticket goods, such as cars, was the main culprit behind the lethargic showing in overall consumer spending.

Cuts in spending by government also contributed to the fourth-quarter's weak performance.

Overall business investment - which includes spending on residential and commercial projects and in equipment and software, however, grew at a speedy pace of 16.1 percent in the fourth quarter, the strongest since the second quarter of 2004.

An inflation gauge closely watched by the Federal Reserve showed that core prices - excluding food and energy - rose at a 2.4 percent pace in the fourth quarter. That was higher than the 2.1 percent growth rate previously reported for the period and marks a substantial pickup from the third quarter's 1.4 percent pace.

To fend off inflation, Bernanke, at his first meeting as Fed chairman on Tuesday, boosted a key interest rate to 4.75 percent and hinted further increases were possible. In doing so, Bernanke and his colleagues hewed closely to the rate-raising script written by former chairman
Alan Greenspan.

Economists predict another rate increase will come at the Fed's next meeting, May 10.

Fresher economic barometers, meanwhile, have flashed good signs for the economy.

The jobs market is improving, with companies adding a sizable 243,000 positions in February. The nation's unemployment rate of 4.8 percent, meanwhile, is close to a 4 1/2-year low reached in January.

Americans' optimism in the economy rebounded in March, climbing to a nearly four-year high, the
Conference Board reported Tuesday.

Still, those things haven't helped President Bush's standing with the public. He has been mired in some of the lowest job-approval ratings of his presidency, according to polls.

Thursday's report also showed companies' profit growth gaining ground in the fourth quarter of 2005. One measure of after-tax profits in the GDP report showed profits increased by 13.8 percent, a turnaround from the third quarter's 4.3 percent decline.

"Silver's still being driven by the expectations of the ETF (exchange-traded fund) and I think gold's more following," said David Rinehimer, head of futures research at Citigroup Global Markets in New York.

Spot silver bolted to $11.10/11.13 an ounce late in New York, versus Tuesday's late quote at $10.84/10.87. On Wednesday, London bullion dealers fixed the daily spot reference rate at $10.8750.

Fund buying took the price up 2.7 percent, helping silver surpassing a short-term technical of $11, on hopes that an ETF that is expected to boost consumer and speculative demand will launch soon.

Silver has risen almost 8 percent since last Tuesday when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared the way for final approval of the first ETF to be backed by bullion.

ETFs are designed to track a specific market or commodity and trade like any list shares on an exchange.

The SEC has not said if or when it would approve Barclays Global Investors' iShares Silver Trust and a launch date was difficult to predict, analysts said.

Credit Suisse this week said silver could climb further in the medium-term, to $15 an ounce, hoisted by greater demand due to the ETF.

Gold drew support from the gray metal, as well as a softer U.S. dollar, higher energy prices and an almost two-month peak in the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index (^CRB - news) of 19 commodity futures, market sources said.

"The fact that we made a new high for the month in gold brought some new fund buying and short covering into market," said Rinehimer.

"The market over-reacted in the early decline -- it has had a good bounce, and oil is up as well," a European trader said.

Earlier, the Federal Reserve's move to hike rates prompted selling and dragged down gold and silver by nearly one percent each.

But price dips are providing good buying opportunities and the metals are seen moving toward recent highs after some profit-booking, analysts said.

Spot gold rose to $573.10/574.00 an ounce, up from Tuesday's late New York quote of $564.35/565.20.

The closing level was just shy of the day's peak of $573.60, which was a mere $1 off the February 2 25-year high.

Tokyo Commodity Exchange gold futures had been pressured overnight as Japanese investors locked in profits ahead of book closings on Friday for the end of Japan's financial year.

"Backed by firm oil prices, falls in gold will be limited," said Hiroyuki Kikukawa, an associate director at Nihon Unicom Corp.

Analysts said, longer term, gold still might go higher.

"Despite the potential impact higher U.S. interest rates will have on gold, it is still well placed to test February's 25-year high of $575 as improving supply/demand fundamentals and the metal's anti-inflationary/safe-haven properties draw investors toward gold and the other precious metals," said analysts at TheBullionDesk.com.

In industry news, Barrick Gold Corp., the world's largest gold company, said it was maintaining its previous forecast to produce between 8.6 million and 8.9 million ounces of gold in 2006.

Platinum rose to $1,071/1,075 an ounce from $1,069/1,073 previously, while palladium closed at $333.50/337.50 an ounce from $337/342.

"If the economy is as strong as the Fed is worried about, that's going to mean better corporate earnings," said John Augustine, chief investment strategist at Fifth Third Asset Management. "The driver is rotating from front-end consumer to back-end business spending. And business spending is being driven by the need to continually improve productivity, which brings in tech spending."

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 61.16 points, or 0.55 percent, to 11,215.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 9.66 points, or 0.75 percent, at 1,302.89. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 33.32 points, or 1.45 percent, at 2,337.78.

The Nasdaq's gains accelerated after the index crossed a key technical level at 2,333, the highest since February 2001.

Apple was the Nasdaq 100's top positive influence. Shares of Apple gained 6.2 percent as rival Microsoft Corp. faced new pressure from the European Union's top antitrust body, which is raising concerns about the company's new Windows operating system, Vista. Apple's stock rose $3.62 to close at $62.33.

Google shares jumped 4.7 percent as index fund managers scrambled to buy shares before the search engine's inclusion in the S&P 500 after the close of trading this Friday. Google shares closed at $394.98, up $17.78 on Nasdaq.

Further boosting the Nasdaq were shares of Qualcomm Inc. Cowen & Co. gave "outperform" ratings to Qualcomm and other wireless technology companies, including Motorola Inc., and said the outlook for the global handset market was positive for this year.

Qualcomm's stock rose 2.8 percent, or $1.36, to $50.72 on Nasdaq, while Motorola shares gained 3.8 percent, or 84 cents, to $22.78 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Boeing led the Dow's advance. Its shares climbed 2.2 percent, or $1.67, to $79.18, after earlier hitting a record at $79.45. Shares of 3M rose 1.7 percent, or $1.26, to $77.56.

GE Commercial Aviation Services, the world's largest aircraft lessor, agreed to buy 30 of Boeing's 737 passenger jets in an order worth about $2 billion.

Shares of Maytag Corp. shot up after U.S. antitrust authorities said on Wednesday they had approved Whirlpool Corp.'s planned acquisition of the appliance maker.

Maytag surged 27.7 percent, or $4.73, to $21.81, while Whirlpool stock gained 7.1 percent, or $6.38, to $95.95.

Trading was moderate on the NYSE, with about 1.58 billion shares changing hands, below last year's daily average of 1.61 billion, while on Nasdaq, about 2.43 billion shares traded, far above last year's daily average of 1.80 billion.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones by a ratio of more than 8 to 3 on the NYSE and by more than 5 to 2 on Nasdaq.

The central bank said further "firming" of rates may be needed, repeating a phrase from its January statement. Traders stepped up bets that the Fed would increase its target to 5 percent in May.

"The commentary implied that the Fed rate at 5 percent is almost guaranteed and maybe one more beyond that," said E. Craig Coats at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Declines in Treasuries are "across the board."

The benchmark two-year note yield shot up 7 basis points to 4.78 percent, nearing its five-year high. The price of the 4 5/8 percent note maturing in March 2008 fell 1/8 to 99 11/16.

Treasuries began their decline earlier in the session after U.S. consumer confidence rose this month to its highest level since May 2002.

Yields on U.S. 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities both jumped 7 basis points, to 4.78 and 4.79 percent respectively. The price of the 4 ½ percent note maturing in February 2016 dived 18/32 to 97 27/32. The 4 ½ percent note due in February 2036 dropped 32/32 to 95 3/8.

Meanwhile, a report showing that business confidence in Germany had set a 15-year high underscored the case for a further rate increase in Europe, even as it weakened government bond markets in Europe and the United States.

"The Treasury market had gotten to a level where it was comfortable going into today's meeting," then European bond markets fell, said Brian Edmonds at Cantor Fitzgerald. "That is forcing our market lower."

Yields on German debt soared as traders raised bets that the European Central Bank would raise its benchmark rate three more times this year, to 3.25 percent.

Two-year German government bond yields climbed nine basis points to 3.23 percent, their highest in more than three years.

The yield on the 10-year German bond also shot up nine basis points, to 3.72 percent, matching its high this year. Its price fell 0.71 to 98.18.

"Global economic growth continues to surprise on the upside, and this German report adds fuels to the fire," said Bernard Walschots, head of research at Rabobank in Utrecht, the Netherlands. "It's pushing a sell-off in bond markets around the globe."

"Right now this company is a size 38 in a size 46 suit, they have to downsize,'' said John Casesa, an industry consultant at New York-based Casesa Strategic Advisors LLC.

The firing of salaried employees is just one example of the so-called ''equality of sacrifice'' urged by GM board member Jerome York, who has said cuts in pay and benefits for salaried workers will help persuade union employees to agree to concessions. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner in February cut his own pay in half and announced cuts to salaried workers health care and pension.

GM last week offered buyouts of up to $140,000 to 113,000 hourly workers in the U.S. as part of a plan to eliminate 30,000 union jobs and close 12 North American locations by 2008.

A few hundred workers will be fired today, Herta said. Those employees with company cars will be given time to find a new vehicle and workers will be treated with ''dignity'' he said, denying reports in Detroit newspapers that they would be sent home in fleets of taxis.

GM is not saying how many workers will be fired this year, Herta said. GM has 36,000 salaried U.S. workers and doesn't disclose how many contract employees it has, he said.

Investor Optimism

GM shares rose 28 cents to $22.93 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They've gained 18 percent this year on optimism job cuts and increased sales of new products will reduce losses.

GM in January fired 500 U.S. contract workers, Herta said. Contract workers are employed by an outside company to perform work for GM. GM's normal attrition rate for salaried workers, including buyout offers, is about 5.5 percent, Herta said.

''It's clear that the more they ask from the union, the more they're going to have to take from the salaried workers,'' Casesa said. ''This is the beginning of the process, not the end.''

Employees who are fired will be paid one month of their base salary per full year of employment, up to 15 months, according to a copy of GM severance policy obtained by Bloomberg. Those workers also maintain their health-care insurance for that period and receive three months of outplacement assistance.

Earlier Cuts

GM's salaried and contract workforce had been cut 32 percent from 2000 to the end of last year, Wagoner said in November. When Wagoner took over as CEO in 2000, GM had 44,000 U.S. salaried workers, 18 percent more than it does now.

The firings are the latest in several actions aimed at GM's salaried workforce. On March 7, that automaker said it will freeze defined-benefit pension plans for its 36,000 salaried workers and switch to a defined-contribution plan.

Defined-benefit plans guarantee a set monthly stipend upon retirement. These plans differ from defined-contribution plans, such as a 401(k), which are funded by employer and employee contributions and grow until the account holder retires and begins withdrawals.

GM in February said it will cut pretax health-care expenses by capping salaried health-care coverage at 2006 levels for eligible GM salaried workers.

Cutting salaried costs and compensation were moves suggested Jan. 10 by York, who was appointed to the GM board in February. York, an aide to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, has said cuts in the salaried workforce were needed to carve deeper concessions from union workers.

Kerkorian, GM's fourth-largest investor, holds a 9.9 percent stake in the automaker through his holding company, Tracinda Corp. York said Jan. 10 that Kerkorian may buy an additional 12 million GM shares if the automaker follows his recommendations.

But none will tell Americans the truth about why we have eleven million illegal aliens in this nation now (when it was fewer than 2 million when Reagan came into office), why they're staying, or why they keep coming. In a word, it's "jobs." In conservative lexicon, it's "cheap labor to increase corporate profits."

Recently George W. Bush insulted working Americans by saying that we need eleven million illegal immigrants here in the United States because (in a slightly cleaned-up version of the more blatantly racist comments of Vicente Fox) there are some jobs that "American's won't do." As the modern-day Sago miners, and the 1950s Ed Norton character Art Carney played on the old Jackie Gleason show (who worked in the sewers of NYC) prove, the reality is that there are virtually no jobs Americans won't do - for an appropriate paycheck.

It's really all about breaking the back of the most democratic (and Democratic) of American institutions - the American middle class.

One of the tools conservatives have used very successfully over the past 25 years to drive down wages, bust unions, and increase CEO salaries has been to encourage illegal immigrant labor in the US. Their technique is transparently simple.

Conservatives well understand supply and demand. If there's more of something, its price goes down. If it becomes scarce, its price goes up.

They also understand that this applies just as readily to labor as it does to houses, cars, soybeans, or oil. While the history of much of the progressive movement in the United States has been to control the supply of labor (mostly through pushing for maximum-hour, right-to-strike, and child-labor laws) to thus be able to bargain decent wages for working people, the history of conservative America has, from its earliest days grounded in slavery and indentured workers from Europe, been to increase the supply of labor and drive down its cost.

In the 1980s, for example, the increasing supply of labor (both from Reagan-allowed consolidations eliminating redundant jobs, and from illegal immigration, which was around 3 million illegals by the time Reagan left office) fed massive union-busting in industry sectors from those directly hit with illegal immigrant labor (like construction and agriculture) to those who only felt its fallout but nonetheless were pressed (like coal mining). In part, because of these national downward pressures on organized labor, the miners who died in the International Coal Group's Sago Mine didn't have union protection.

Indeed, as the International Coal Group's June 2005 form S-A/1 filing notes about one of their other recent mine acquisitions: ".assets are high quality reserves strategically located in Appalachia and the Illinois Basin, are union free, have limited reclamation liabilities and are substantially free of other legacy liabilities." Similarly, it's estimated that the construction industry enhanced their profits last year by over a billion dollars because the availability of illegal immigrant labor has so significantly pushed down the price of construction labor.

"Union free" is good for the CEOs and stockholders of giant corporations. Reagan helped make it possible by reducing enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust and similar acts, by making the Labor Department hostile to labor, and by thus producing an environment into which illegal immigrant labor could step. He busted PATCO and popularized anti-union rhetoric, at a time when union membership was one of the primary boundaries that keep illegal labor out of the marketplace.

Today, this fundamental economic rule of labor supply and demand is most conspicuous in the conservative reluctance to stop illegal immigration into the United States. All those extra (illegal) workers, after all, drive up the supply - and thus drive down the cost - of labor. Even in areas where there are not high populations of illegal immigrants, their presence elsewhere in the American workforce drives down overall the cost of labor nationwide. And when the cost of labor goes down, there's more money left over for CEOs and stockholder dividends.

Conservatives can't just come out and say that they are pleased with the estimated eleven million illegal workers in the United States driving down wages.Conservatives can't just come out and say that they are pleased with the estimated eleven million illegal workers in the United States driving down wages. They can't brag that, behind oil revenue, Mexico's second largest source of income is money sent home from illegal "cheap labor" workers in the United States. They can't point out that before Reagan declared war on working people in 1981 we didn't "need a fence" to keep out illegal immigrants from the south, in large part because the high rate of unionization in America at that time, and enforcement of laws against hiring illegal immigrants, served as barriers to the entry of illegals into the workforce. They won't acknowledge the corporate benefits of a workforce whose healthcare is paid for by taxpayers but whose productivity belongs to their corporate masters.

But conservative strategists have noticed that the workers - and the voters - of the United States are getting nervous about nearly 10 percent of our workforce being both illegal and cheap. This has led conservative commentators and politicians to resort to classic "wedge issue" rhetoric, exploiting Americans' fears -- while working to keep conditions relatively the same as they are today.

They talk about building fences. They worry out loud about brown-skinned Middle Eastern terrorists slipping in amongst the brown-skinned South- and Central Americans. They warn us of all the social security money we'll lose if illegals have to leave the country and stop paying into a system from which they'll never be able to collect. They even find themselves obligated - catering to both working-class fears and to the bigots among us - to promote the idea of giant fences around the country to keep illegals out. (A fence that would, no doubt, tremendously profit their big contractor friends.)

At the same time, catering to compassionate Americans who don't realize this is all about driving up corporate profits and driving down workers' wages, cons like Arlen Specter are promoting legislation that would decriminalize the illegals currently in the United States, thus making legal our increased workforce. As Rachel L. Swarns reported in The New York Times on February 25, 2006: "Advocates for immigrants said the [Bush/Specter] plan failed to protect the rights of immigrant workers, who they argue deserve a clear path to citizenship. And the AFL-CIO warned that a guest worker program of unlimited scale would depress wages and working conditions while creating a perpetual underclass of foreign workers."

None of the various con proposals - from a fence to amnesty - address the fundamental truth of the situation: Conservatives and the businesses they represent want to maintain a large, illegal or marginally legal, and thus powerless workforce in the United States, to keep down the price of labor and help them finally destroy the union movement - and, thus, that politically pesky middle class.

The reason for all these lies and obfuscations is simple, and found in the core notions of conservatism, articulated from Burke in the late 1700s to Kirk in 1953 and Greenspan over the past two decades. It's all about power, and since wealth equals power, about the control of wealth in society.

Conservatives believe that what John Adams called "the rabble" - you and me - can't really be trusted with governance, and therefore that job should be kept to an elite few. The big difference between the old-line Burke conservatives and modern conservatives is that Burke and the cons of his day felt that an hereditary ruling class was desirable (because it would inculcate rulers with a sense of "noblesse oblige"), whereas modern cons like Adams, McKinley, Kirk, and Bush believe that the ruling class should be more of a meritocracy - rule by the "best."

And - in the finest tradition of John Calvin (who suggested that wealth was a sign of God's blessing) - what better indication of "best" could there be than "richest"? They believe there should be a thin veneer of democracy on these old conservative notions of aristocracy in order to placate the masses, but are quite certain that it would be a disaster should the rabble ever actually have a strong say in running the country.

This is, at its core, why conservatives embrace the idea of eliminating the American middle class and replacing it with a Dickensian "working poor" class, and are working so hard to use illegal immigrant labor as the lever to bring this about.

As the '60's and '70's showed - during the height of the American middle class's economic and political power - a strong middle class will challenge corporate power and assert itself economically and politically. This represents a very real threat to conservative ruling elites. "The people" may even suggest that the most elite of the elites should pay stiffer taxes on the top end of their income, so that money can be used to provide the economically most disadvantaged with an opportunity to become socially and economically mobile. It would reduce the most massive of the wealth and the power of the most elite of our conservative elites.

Offshoring, union-busting, and nurturing a huge population of illegal workers (while pretending to be frantic about it and bleating about building fences, fielding vigilantes, or offering "amnesty") are the core ways to destroy an economic middle class, thus ensuring the ongoing political power of the conservative elite takeover that began with the so-called "Reagan revolution" and continues to this day.

This is why conservatives who complain about illegal immigration in front of the cameras won't lift a finger in the halls of congress to pass legislation that would put employers of illegals into jail. (They may support "tough fines," just so long as they're high enough to sound like a lot of money to the average working stiff but low enough to be a "cost of business" for a corporation that gets caught.)

If Congress were to pass a law that said, quite simply, that the CEO of any business that was caught employing illegal immigrants went to jail for a year - no exceptions - then within a month there would be ten million (more or less) people lined up at the Mexican border trying to get out of the United States. The US unemployment rate would drop close to zero, and wages would begin to rise. The American middle class would begin to return to viability, as would the union movement in this nation.

Legal immigration is a good and healthy thing for a nation, because it is done at a rate and in a way that allows a country to collectively decide what sort of labor/jobs ratios it wants to maintain. Limitless illegal immigration, however, leads to the modern-day equivalent of slavery, benefiting only the conservative corporate elites.

Thus, progressives need to begin a new dialogue about immigration in the United States. (Similar discussions are already underway in many of the countries of Western Europe.) Issues include:

To what extent should the United States bleed its middle class because Mexico is a corrupt oligarchy run by a corrupt former Coca-Cola executive?

How do we work out fair and reasonable options for illegal families living and working here who have birthed "anchor children" in the US, now citizens of this nation?

How can we ensure "security" along our southern border in an "age of terrorism"? (A good start may be to stop promulgating policies that cause the world to hate us, but that's another article.)

How do we recalibrate our business and tax laws so businesses - particularly small and middle-sized businesses - can adjust away from depending on a terrified "working-poor-competing-with-even-more-terrified-illegal-labor" workforce and move toward being able to pay a more robust, domestic, unionized workforce?

How can progressives join with the few remaining populist Republicans (like Lou Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan) to forge an alliance to make this an all-American effort and not have it further split the nation?

And how can we all collectively work to prevent Bush and Specter from re-instituting the brutal Bracero "guest worker" program of the last century?

As the anguished mining families in West Virginia show, Bush was wrong when he said there were jobs Americans "won't do." But in the face of massive illegal immigration and the union-busting and wage deflation it spawns, there are increasingly jobs that Americans "can't do" and still maintain a viable lifestyle.

While some geographically-specific industries (like coal mining) don't appear overwhelmed by illegal immigrant labor, its impact on the nation as a whole has made it easier for union-busting to take place from the construction industry in New Mexico to the coal mines of West Virginia. Directly or indirectly, illegal immigration affects all working Americans.

Condemning the frightened working-class white guys organizing citizens' militias along our southern border, or vilifying those who listen to Limbaugh and are convinced that "liberals" are in some sort of collective plot to undermine America may feel good, but it doesn't address the real problem. Progressives will be most effective when we reach across the divides created by Bush, Specter, et al, and point out how this is really all about corporate conservative efforts to replace the American middle class with a workforce of "working poor" Americans and powerless illegal immigrants (or powerless "amnestied" workers) - all so CEOs can fatten their paychecks and further reward the "conservative" investor class.

Only then will Mexico and other countries to our south have an incentive to get their own houses in order, and will our middle class begin to recover decent bargaining power and the living wages that accompany it.

Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show carried on the Air America Radio network and Sirius. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books include "What Would Jefferson Do?" and "Ultimate Sacrifice" (co-authored with Lamar Waldron). His next book, due out this autumn, is "Screwed: The Undeclared War on the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It."

CALL YOUR SENATORS NOW TOLL-FREE: 888-355-3588 or 800-828-0498

Was it not enough when George Bush defiantly admitted he had ordered illegal wiretaps of American citizens? George Bush is laughing at you. Was it not enough when George Bush signed a law intended to stop the international crime of torture, and then declared he would ignore it at his own dictatorial discretion? George Bush is laughing at you. Was it not enough when he lied in the most pathological way to start a war in Iraq for the sole purpose of aggrandizing his own power? George Bush is laughing at you.

Some say that censure is not enough, that George Bush must be impeached. Some go further and argue that he should be tried for war crimes. Is that any reason NOT to speak out for censure as the first step? We have enough participants right now in our OWN network, just the people who will receive this one alert, that if each and EVERY one of you would take just 20 seconds to submit the action page above, there WOULD be a censure of George Bush. Since we started doing this about the best yield we have ever had to ANY one alert was about ten percent. Just 10 percent. Just ten percent of you gave enough of a damn about ANYTHING to actually DO something as simple and easy as to submit an action page. George Bush is laughing at you.

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/censure.php

You call yourselves progressives. A couple of Spanish language DJ's in Los Angeles got together and decided to issue a concerted call to action, and they put something approaching a million people in the streets. And the Judiciary Committee literally trembled. Where is progressive radio on this? Why are you not all giving out the toll free phone numbers 888-355-3588 and 800-828-0498 every hour on the hour to call our Senators? How lazy do you have to be to not even take the time to make a toll-free phone call to finally demand accountability? George Bush is laughing at you.

You don't always have to draft a lengthy personal comment, just take 20 seconds to submit the form. Take 20 seconds to make a toll-free phone call. Take 20 seconds to wipe that arrogant smirk off his face. Because until you do, George Bush is just going to keep laughing at you.

http://www.millionphonemarch.com

Public Agenda, a nonpartisan group, conducted the poll in early January with funding from the Ford Foundation. It said that Americans are at a "tipping point" on energy, akin to their state of mind about the war.

Daniel Yankelovich, chairman of Public Agenda, said the public reaches a "tipping point" when it is gravely worried about an issue and believes the government has the ability to change matters. When the index was first published in August 2005, only the Iraq war triggered a similar response, he said.

"This time we find that a second issue has reached a tipping point, which is energy independence, and you have a very strong increase in the number of Americans who are intensely worried about the problem," Yankelovich said in a conference call.

"Now with this issue having reached the tipping point in the public I think that that means the political complexion of that issue is about to change considerably," he added.

In the latest survey, 85 percent of respondents said the U.S. government could do something about energy dependence if it tried. The share of those who worried foreign conflicts will drive up oil prices or cut off supplies rose to 55 percent from 42 percent in the August poll.

Since the August index was published, the U.S. energy chessboard has been rearranged by a broad energy reform law going into effect, a two-hurricane punch that shut in domestic oil production, sudden spikes in oil prices spurred by geopolitics, and record oil company profits.

While energy independence is certainly on citizens' minds, the index found that the war in Iraq remains their leading international concern.

Their least pressing international issue was promoting democracy abroad, with only one out of five participants saying they considered the activity "very important."

The Government Accountability Office said several planning efforts are under way about how to rebuild that system, but no clear consensus has emerged.

The lack of clarity stems in part from the uncertain estimates of how many people plan to return. The latest estimates put the city's population at about one-third of the 485,000 people who lived there before Katrina hit.

Democrats who requested the study said the findings show the Bush administration must be more aggressive in leading the rebuilding efforts.

"It is unacceptable that six months after Hurricane Katrina, people are still receiving health care services in mobile tents and old department stores," said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., taking aim at Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. "Exactly how does the secretary expect the Gulf Coast region to prepare for a potential flu pandemic or the next hurricane season given the current state of their health care system?"

Leavitt spokeswoman Christina Pearson said the secretary has met regularly with state officials to hear how they would like to see the health care system improved, and he sees opportunities to make the system better than it was before the hurricane struck, particularly through the use of health information technology. She did not have a timetable for when those improvements would be proposed.

The GAO report said that when auditors visited New Orleans, they found primary and emergency health care was available, but access to specialty care was quite limited.

The report also noted that the federal government's estimate of repair costs for two major hospitals run by Louisiana State University - Charity Hospital and University Hospital - amounts to about $36 million. But a private consultant estimated it would cost more than $360 million to repair both hospitals - aging facilities LSU had wanted to replace before the storm.

The city also relied on a network of clinics to treat poor patients before the hurricane, but more than three quarters of those clinics are closed. About 19 clinics are open now, but they generally operate at less than half of capacity.

As usual, most players will just ignore the RBA though until it threatens to reach for its interest rate lever. Canny investors though might join the dots between the RBA story and another one about a large and very successful private property investor deciding to liquidate his portfolio.

Lang Walker is flogging off his multi-billion dollar property empire and will probably be knocked over in the rush of property trusts wanting to buy. But as the SMH observes:

Marc Besen, Ralph Sarich and Kevin Seymour are among other property operators who recently revealed they are offloading their shopping centres and office towers at premium prices to take advantage of the strongest commercial market in nearly 20 years.

Australian property is the most securitised in the world. Maybe the big and successful private property investors are taking notice of the RBA even if the fee factories [banks] are not.

"We are concerned at cutbacks in funding for development," he told a major international conference here on biological diversity, which is being attended by more than 4,000 officials, including scientists and conservationists, from around the world.

Despite repeated pledges, most developed countries have not achieved the targets set for official development assistance to poor countries. At the two-week Conference, many delegates from other developing countries have also voiced similar concerns.

In his speech at a ministerial-level meeting on biodiversity, the popular Brazilian leader, known widely as "Lula", also criticised the West for what many economists consider unsustainable patterns of consuming the world's resources, which are contributing to an alarming level of poverty. In 1980, the rich had 30 times more wealth than the poor, noted Lula. Now that ratio has almost doubled.

"The industrialised nations spend about 900 billion dollars to defend their national borders," the Brazilian president said. "But they allocate less than 60 billion dollars for development in poor countries, where hunger has become a silent weapon of mass destruction."

Lula told delegates that the developed world is willfully neglecting the widening gulf between the rich and poor because it continues to cling to a model of development that has no room for collective sharing of resources and lacks concern for environmental degradation.

"Biodiversity is our planet's greatest treasure. Anything that is contrary to its conservation and to fair benefit sharing must be rejected," Lula said. "It's time to act. It's time for change."

Last weekend, over 100 environment ministers arrived here to sort out how they can reverse the adverse effects of unsustainable development on earth's biodiversity. The U.N. Convention on Biodiversity has already set targets which are due to be achieved by 2010. The Convention's implementation requires accessibility to genetic resources, fair and equitable share in ecosystem benefits and funding for technology transfers to developing countries.

Lula's critical take on the West's attitude towards environmental rehabilitation comes at a time when delegates are still engaged in negotiations on a variety of contentious issues, including funding. Observers think that his call for funding will be taken seriously because under his rule, Brazil has taken a number of practical actions to protect the environment.

Last month, for example, Lula signed a presidential decree to place over six million hectares of the Amazon rainforest under direct governmental protection. He also launched a "zero hunger" campaign and agreed to sponsor Baze, the Brazilian Alliance for Zero Extinction, with 25 other partners.

At the conference, Brazil also led the way in maintaining a moratorium on the contentious issue of testing and marketing of some types of genetically modified seeds. On Mar. 24, the working group in charge of addressing the issue elected to keep a ban on field trials of Terminator technology, which produces seeds whose sterile offspring cannot reproduce, over the opposition of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

"Anything that threatens life is unacceptable," Lula said referring to the ban on testing of so-called "suicide seeds".

Lula's government has also been widely praised for helping the international community adopt what is now known as the Curitiba accord under the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety, which Dr. Klaus Topfer, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme, has described as "the new legal instrument of the 21st century".

"For your contributions to fulfilling the 2010 Biodiversity promise of the heads of state, I would like to say to you in my capacity as a mere citizen of the world and on behalf of my wife and two children, obrigado (thank you), Mr. President," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention, told Lula.

In a recent interview with IPS, Djoghlaf shared Lula's concern over the question of funding for environmental protection and sustainable development in industrially developing countries. "Financing is very crucial. Is it enough? No, and no," he said.

Djoghlaf, who likes to describe the Convention on Biodiversity as the 14-year-old daughter of Rio (a reference to the 1992 Earth Summit in the Brazilian coastal city Rio de Janeiro), urged environment ministers to agree on the "roadmap" for achieving the 2001 biodiversity target.

"We are probably the last generation that still has the possibility of stopping the destruction of the living environment before an irreversible threshold is crossed," Djoghlaf quoted French president Jacques Chirac as stating at a biodiversity meeting held in Paris last year in January.

Meanwhile, for his part, Lula has expressed his disappointment with the slow pace of progress on the Implementation of the Convention, which he sees as the outcome of the lack of political will in much of the developed world. "Since 1992, how much have we advanced?" he asked. "Yes, we have signed many agreements. But they have offered nothing but protocols."