Facing Closure, U.S.'s Largest Sleeping Bag Maker Seeks Relief From Free Trade Loophole

The country's largest manufacturer of sleeping bags says new competition from Bangladesh could force it out of business if the U.S. does not level the playing field.

Exxel Outdoors Inc., which employs nearly 70 workers in its Alabama factory and makes about 2 million sleeping bags per year, has been pressing the Obama administration to lift an exemption that lets Bangladesh import sleeping bags into the country without paying a 9 percent tariff.

"You can't leave an American manufacturer at a competitive disadvantage with a foreign worker," Harry Kazazian, chief executive of the company, told FoxNews.com.

But that's apparently what the Obama administration has done, turning down the company's request in an initial ruling and forcing Exxel to submit another request.

The office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which is reviewing Exxel's request, told FoxNews.com that its review will conclude in the spring and that President Obama would have to sign off on any changes to the list of duty-free products – changes that would go into effect before July 1.
"We take Exxel's concerns seriously," the office said in a statement.
Exxel is also seeking help from Congress.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., has tried to slap a tariff on Bangladesh sleeping bags but he has been unable to sway his fellow lawmakers to change the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, which determines which products third-world countries can import duty free.
So Sessions has placed a hold on the annual GSP bill, making it all but certain that the program will lapse at the end of this month.
"I have supported free trade, probably more than my colleagues," he said on the Senate floor Friday. "But I have worked for two years to try to obtain a simple justice to close a loophole in the tariff laws that has impacted and will close a sleeping bag textile manufacturer in my state."

"They are an independent, hard-working people," he said. "And this bill as written will close that plant. And it should not happen. "

Sleeping bag imports have been on the duty-free list since Czechoslovakia successfully lobbied for it in the early 1990s. But the country, which split soon afterward into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, never followed through with its plan to get into the sleeping bag business, leaving the loophole dormant until Bangladesh took advantage in recent years, an Exxel official told FoxNews.com.

The company says it has been able to compete with China because the communist regime isn't exempt from the tariff on its sleeping bag imports. But the company says in 2009 it began losing major orders from large U.S. retailers because of new sleeping bag operations in Bangladesh flooding the market with their imports.

Exxel says if its factory is forced to move offshore or close down, the economic ripple effect would hurt the company's U.S. vendors, such as suppliers of sewing thread, sleeping bag fill, packaging, as well as suppliers of trucking services and other factory supplies.

Kazazian, said it is ironic to be in this situation after he moved his factory from Mexico to Alabama a few years ago, adding jobs to the economy.

"If the playing field should be tilted, it should be tilted in an American manufacturer's favor," he said, adding that he's not looking for a hand out.

"I want the law to be interpreted the way it should be and the playing field leveled," he said.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/18/facing-closure-uss-largest-sleeping-bag-maker-seeks-relief-free-trade-loophole/?test=latestnews

Bailey: This is why our country is in financial trouble now! Some dumb politician in our government wants to give a break to a overseas company that probably only pays their workers a dollar a day! How can an American company compete with that, especially when our own government seems to be putting Bangladesh's interest over our own!

Bank of America Stops Handling WikiLeaks Payments

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Bank of America says it will no longer process transactions for the website WikiLeaks, following similar actions by several other financial institutions.

The bank said in a statement that it believes that site "may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments."

It joins financial institutions including MasterCard and PayPal that have stopped handling payments for the site.

Reached by phone, Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri declined further comment to The Associated Press.

WikiLeaks responded with a Twitter message urging its supporters to stop doing business with the bank.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/18/bank-america-stops-handling-wikileaks-payments/

Bailey: It would seem the old saying that money can't buy you love is really true in this case!

Border agent shot dead in Arizona, four arrested

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot dead by suspected smugglers close to the Mexico border in southern Arizona and four suspects have been arrested, authorities said on Wednesday.

Agent Brian A. Terry, 40, was shot dead after he confronted several suspects while on duty in a mountainous area a few miles northwest of the border city of Nogales late on Tuesday night, local and federal police said.

Police arrested at least four suspects, and are searching for another who remains at large, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Terry family for their tragic loss," CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin said in a statement.

"Our commitment to Agent Terry and his family is that we will do everything possible to bring to justice those responsible for this despicable act," he added.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ordered state flags flown at half staff in tribute to Terry, a Marine Corps veteran from Detroit, Michigan, who served in the Border Patrol's Tucson sector.

Agents patrolling the sector's 262-mile stretch of the Mexico border make around half of the illegal immigrant arrests and marijuana seizures recorded along the southwest border.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said the assailants were likely smugglers who use the rugged, mountainous area west of Nogales to haul both drugs and illegal immigrants into the United States.

"That area is known to be a smuggling area, both human and drug smuggling, so it was either one of the two more likely," Estrada told Reuters.

The FBI is leading the investigation into the agent's death, with the assistance of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office.

The last Border Patrol agent to be killed on duty was Robert Rosas, 30, who was shot to death near Campo in southern California in July 2009. Police caught the killer, who was subsequently jailed for 40 years.

Bailey: "Any of you left wing liberal idiots getting the picture yet of why America has to do something about the illegal Mexicans coming across our border ?"  

White House insists health law rollout unaffected

– Tue Dec 14, 11:39 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The White House insisted Tuesday that the implementation of President Barack Obama's landmark health care law will not be affected by a negative federal court ruling, and the Justice Department said it would appeal.

"There's no practical impact at all as states move forward in implementing ... the law that Congress passed and the president signed," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said that, as expected, the department would appeal Monday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson in Virginia. Hudson declared that a central provision of the law — the requirement for nearly everyone to carry health insurance — was unconstitutional.

The ruling by the Republican-appointed judge in a high-profile lawsuit by Virginia's Republican attorney general was a setback for the Obama administration, but not a surprise. Two other district court judges, both Democratic appointees, have found the law constitutional.

Obama administration officials noted that consultations with states on implementing the law were moving forward. Later this week officials from all but a handful of states are expected to travel to Washington to meet with the Health and Human Services Department to discuss setting up the state-based insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, required by the new law.

These include officials from many of the 20 states that are simultaneously suing to overturn the law in a fourth case which begins oral arguments Thursday in Florida. Many state officials have concluded that it's better to participate in discussions on implementing the law than not, even if they don't support it. Even so, Republican members of Congress seized on Hudson's ruling to caution states against moving forward.

Central provisions of the law including the exchanges and the requirement for everyone to be insured don't take effect until 2014 anyway. By then the Supreme Court will likely have weighed in with the final verdict on the health law.

Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, a Republican, urged the Obama administration Tuesday to join him in seeking to take the cases straight to the Supreme Court, bypassing the appeals process, in order to provide certainty for states and businesses. Such a course is highly unusual, and the Justice Department weighed in against it.

"The department believes this case should follow the ordinary course of allowing the courts of appeals to hear it first so the issues and arguments can be fully developed before the Supreme Court decides whether to consider it," Schmaler said.

Bailey: The above article shows you just how much our Washington politicians have heard our votes. It is pretty bad when they force a law on the majority of people who has voted against! This law was created by a bunch of deadbeat, lazy people who want everything for free and are to sorry to work for it!

Mexican Criminals Tap Texas for Guns in Drug Wars

Mexican criminals are turning to U.S. border states for firepower in their drug wars. Mexican police have seized more than 60,000 U.S. guns at crime scenes in the past four years. Most of the guns, including assault rifles and armor-piercing .50 caliber weapons, were sold by dealers in Texas, Arizona, and California.http://www.newsmax.com/US/Texas-Guns-Find-Mexico/2010/12/13/id/379759?s=al&promo_code=B48F-1

Off with their heads!

Chilling video released by the AP shows a violent, blood thirsty mob attacking a car carrying Prince Charles. The supposedly bullet proof car ended up badly beaten, and you can see in some of the still pictures the fear in their eyes as they are surrounded by the angry mob of students and others protesting a proposed hike in tuition rates.https://mail.google.com/mail/h/uz5ohgkvq73x/?v=c&th=12cd2036f82a0aba
Bailey: This is a good example of young adults in our society. What a bunch of morons and idiots parents have raised up in this world!  If  the brat doesn't  get a free ride on anything they want and get it right away, they want to go out and riot or kill somebody.  Just goes to show you what kind of parents they were brought up by.

Rum Punch: Reid Adds Sweeteners to Tax Bill to Placate Dems

Tax cut bill introduced by the Senate majority leader is chock-full of sweeteners — which cover everything from the Hollywood industry to rum producers — to serve as a legislative pacifier for Dems upset over the concessions the president has handed Republicans. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/10/obama-predicts-tax-passage-senate-presses-ahead/
Bailey: It looks to me like Reid and the Dems are trying to do as much can to finish screwing up our economy before we vote the rest of them out in 2012. It sure looks to me like we also need to vote out some more republicans.

WikiLeaks' Assange Threatens to Go 'Nuclear' With New Leaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is threatening to go “nuclear” if he is killed or arrested, releasing a “poison pill” of secret documents even more devastating than the ones that already have sparked diplomatic chaos around the globe, according to the British tabloid The Daily Mail.

Assange’s British attorney, Mark Stephens, called the documents a “thermo-nuclear device” intended as an insurance policy to guarantee Assange’s safety.

Stephens noted that several conservative American politicians, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, have called for Assange to be executed. In addition, GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Assange a “high-tech terrorist” on "Meet the Press" Sunday.

“We've seen a number of suggestions that he should be assassinated, again from credible sources around the world,” Stephens told the Daily Mail. “This is all about a man who is a journalist. He received, unbidden, an electronic brown envelope that journalists receive.”

Those attacking Assange are “criminalizing journalistic activity,” Stephens said. And he described the revelations as “a thermo-nuclear device in the information age.”

Interpol, the international police organization, has issued a warrant for the arrest of Assange, an Australian thought to be in hiding in Britain.

The warrant stems from encounters that Assange had with two women in Sweden in August. Stephens has denounced the charges as “political theater.” Assange is subject to arrest at any time.

Assange’s “poison pill” is thought to include embarrassing revelations about the BP oil spill, aerial video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan that caused civilian casualties, sensitive information on Bank of America, and secret documents that discuss the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, according to the Daily Mail,.

Thousands of the site’s supporters have downloaded the “nuclear bomb” from the WikiLeaks website, Stephens claims.

However, the documents can be opened only with a 256-digit key or password that is thought to be virtually impossible to hack.

If anything happens to Assange or the website, Stephens says, the digital password will be distributed automatically, and the documents will be released.

Other revelations continued to bleed out Monday from the 250,000 sensitive State Department cables that have already been posted to the site. Among the latest leaks:

• A document was exposed that lists in detail a host of sites around the world that U.S. officials worry could be vulnerable to terrorist attack.
• Evidence a senior Chinese political figure directed the hacking of Google, which led to the company's leaving China.
• Iran is dismissing cables that indicate Arab countries are terrified that the Shiite Islamic nation may develop nuclear weapons. Iranian presidential adviser Esfandiar Rahim Mashai told Spiegel Online that U.S. authorities leaked the documents themselves to pit governments in the Middle East against each other.
• A leaked note from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton charges that Saudi Arabia is the No. 1 bankroller of terrorist activity. In a secret memorandum, Clinton wrote that the Saudi kingdom remains “the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide" and that "it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority,” according to The Daily Telegraph.