Italy's real election battle is Monti vs Berlusconi

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's election campaign is shaping up as a bitter contest not between right and left but between Silvio Berlusconi and outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti to win the balance of power after the February poll.
The final lines were drawn on Monday when Berlusconi sacrificed his own candidacy for prime minister as the price for winning a crucial new alliance with his estranged allies in the devolutionist Northern League.
This alliance is aimed at blocking control of parliament by the center-left, which opinion polls show as virtually certain to win the February 24-25 elections.
But if Berlusconi succeeds, Italy is likely to face renewed instability and legislative paralysis which could make it once again the biggest concern in the euro zone.
Italy narrowly avoided a Greek-style meltdown in November 2011 when Berlusconi, weakened by a sex scandal, was forced out as prime minister and replaced by Monti.
If Berlusconi gains the balance of power he could frustrate center-left leader Pier Luigi Bersani in fulfilling his promise to stick to Monti's austerity and pro-European policies, which have brought Italy relative stability in the past year.
The billionaire media owner's biggest problem in implementing his strategy is Monti, whose centrist alliance has the same aim as Berlusconi: winning enough seats in the Senate to give it influence way beyond its likely share of the poll.
While the center-left is almost certain to win the lower house, the real battleground will be in the much less certain Senate contest.
The battle for this prize explains why Berlusconi and Monti have made almost daily personal attacks on each other in a blitz of television interviews that have drawn accusations they are making unfair use of the airwaves.
Bersani has remained largely above the fray, cultivating his colorless but reassuring image of calm dependability while Monti and Berlusconi try to hurt each other.
However the launching of Monti's centrist front, the sealing of Berlusconi's broader center-right alliance and the emergence of a smaller leftist group are all bad news for Bersani because they could dilute his share of the vote.
TOO CLOSE TO CALL
A new Ipsos poll published in the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore on Tuesday showed the Senate vote too close to call in three big regions which could be decisive in the February vote.
"In Lombardy, Campania and Sicily the outcome of the vote is absolutely unpredictable," said Roberto D'Alimonte, one of Italy's foremost experts on voting trends.
Italy's much maligned electoral law awards Senate seat bonuses to the coalition that wins in each individual region. Bersani would therefore only have to lose in populous Lombardy and Veneto to forgo a majority in the upper house, even if he won all of Italy's remaining regions, said D'Alimonte.
In another paradox caused by the law, he said Monti should hope Berlusconi robs Bersani of enough Senate votes in key regions to hand the former European Commissioner the balance of power as a buttress for the future center-left government.
Despite largely refusing to join the mudslinging, Bersani is clearly worried about the way things have panned out since Monti announced in December that he would join forces with other centrist forces in the election.
In a television interview on Monday, Bersani said Monti's candidacy was "not good news for Italy". However, he saw Berlusconi as his real enemy and Monti only as a "competitor", adding that he was open to a post-election alliance with the centrists.
This idea has been espoused for months by moderates in Bersani's Democratic Party, including his deputy Enrico Letta. They argue this would reassure European partners that the left will not throw away Monti's achievements, while still trying to stimulate economic growth and reducing the burden on pensioners and workers who have suffered most from the deficit-cutting policies of the past year.
Although Monti sharply reduced the pressure on Italy and brought down the government's borrowing costs to more affordable levels, the recession has worsened. Data on Tuesday showed youth unemployment had risen to an all time high above 37 percent in November.
D'Alimonte said that if Bersani failed to win the battleground regions in the Senate vote, he could face a situation similar to or worse than former center-left Prime Minister Romano Prodi in 2006.
NIGHTMARE FOR LEFT
In a situation which is a recurring nightmare for Italy's left, Prodi's government collapsed and was replaced by Berlusconi within two years because it lacked a viable Senate majority. That election was fought under the same electoral law as this time.
An alliance between Bersani and Monti after the election would probably produce a stable government that could last and consolidate progress in implementing economic reform. But there is one big problem. Monti insists he would enter a government only if he were prime minister, and Bersani has ruled this out.
"The idea that the one who wins less votes should be in charge is an old theory unknown in the rest of western Europe," he said in his television interview.
Analysts say that if an agreement between Monti and Bersani was impossible, then the euro zone's third largest economy would be likely to face a short-lived center-left government and a period of political turmoil dangerous for the whole region.
A Tecne opinion poll on Tuesday showed the center-left comfortably ahead at nearly 40 percent, with Berlusconi's center-right on 24.6 and Monti's centrists on just over 15 percent. However the numbers that count will be in regional votes for the Senate and voter intentions are not known in all of those.
The poll in Il Sole 24 Ore, however, showed a surge in the region of Campania - which returns the second largest number of senators after Lombardy - of a new leftist grouping led by anti-mafia magistrate Antonio Ingroia. This group was polling at more than 11 percent and could gift a regional victory to Berlusconi rather than Bersani if the trends do not change.

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APNewsBreak: $5M paid to Iraqis over Abu Ghraib

WASHINGTON (AP) — A defense contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has paid $5.28 million to 71 former inmates held there and at other U.S.-run detention sites between 2003 and 2007.
The settlement in the case involving Engility Holdings Inc. of Chantilly, Va., marks the first successful effort by lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense contractor in lawsuits alleging torture. Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over similar allegations this summer.
The payments were disclosed in a document that Engility filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission two months ago but which has gone essentially unnoticed.
The defendant in the lawsuit, L-3 Services Inc., now an Engility subsidiary, provided translators to the U.S. military in Iraq. In 2006, L-3 Services had more than 6,000 translators in Iraq under a $450 million-a-year contract, an L-3 executive told an investors conference at the time.
On Tuesday, a lawyer for the ex-detainees, Baher Azmy, said that each of the 71 Iraqis received a portion of the settlement. Azmy declined to say how the money was distributed among them. He said there was an agreement to keep details of the settlement confidential.
"Private military contractors played a serious but often under-reported role in the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib," said Azmy, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. "We are pleased that this settlement provides some accountability for one of those contractors and offers some measure of justice for the victims."
Jennifer Barton, a spokeswoman for L-3 Communications, the former parent company of L-3 Services, said the company does not comment on legal matters.
Eric Ruff, Engility's director of corporate communications, said the company does not comment on matters involving litigation.
The ex-detainees filed the lawsuit in federal court in Greenbelt, Md., in 2008.
L-3 Services "permitted scores of its employees to participate in torturing and abusing prisoners over an extended period of time throughout Iraq," the lawsuit stated. The company "willfully failed to report L-3 employees' repeated assaults and other criminal conduct by its employees to the United States or Iraq authorities."
One inmate alleged he was subjected to mock executions by having a gun aimed at his head and the trigger pulled. Another inmate said he was slammed into a wall until he became unconscious. A third was allegedly stripped naked and threatened with rape while his hands and legs were chained and a hood was placed on his head. Another said he was forced to consume so much water that he began to vomit blood. Several of the inmates said they were raped and many of the inmates said they were beaten and kept naked for extended periods of time.
In its defense four years ago against the lawsuit, L-3 Services said lawyers for the Iraqis alleged no facts to support the conspiracy accusation. Sixty-eight of the Iraqis "do not even attempt to allege the identity of their alleged abuser" and two others provide only "vague assertions," the company said then.
A military investigation in 2004 identified 44 alleged incidents of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. No employee from L-3 Services was charged with a crime in investigations by the U.S. Justice Department. Nor did the U.S. military stop the company from working for the government.
Fifty-two of the 71 Iraqis alleged that they were imprisoned at Abu Ghraib and at other detention facilities. The other 19 Iraqis allege they were detained at detention facilities other than Abu Ghraib.
The Abu Ghraib prison scandal erupted during President George W. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 when graphic photographs taken by soldiers at the scene were leaked to the news media. They showed naked inmates piled on top of each other in a prison cell block, inmates handcuffed to their cell bars and hooded and wired for electric shock, among other shocking scenes.
In the ensuing international uproar, Bush said the practices that had taken place at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 were "abhorrent." Some Democrats demanded that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld resign. Eventually, 11 U.S. soldiers were convicted of crimes including aggravated assault and taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated.
Rumsfeld told Congress in 2004 that he had found a way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the United States armed forces." But the U.S. Army subsequently has been unable to document a single U.S. government payment for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
This week, the U.S. Army Claims Service said it has 36 claims from former detainees in Iraq, none of them related to alleged physical abuse. From the budget years 2003 to 2006, the Defense Department paid $30.9 million to Iraqi and Afghan civilians who were killed, injured, or incurred property damage due to U.S. or coalition forces' actions during combat.
In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, lawyers for the Iraqis filed a number of lawsuits against L-3 Services and another company, CACI International Inc. of Arlington, Va., but the cases were quickly hung up on an underlying question: whether defense contractors working side by side with the U.S. military can be sued for claims arising in a war zone. The U.S. government is immune from suits stemming from combatant activities of the military in time of war.
Courts are still sorting out whether contractors in a war zone should be accorded legal immunity from being sued, just as the government is immune.
But a turning point in the cases involving L-3 and CACI came last May. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled 11-3 that more facts must be developed before the appeals court could consider the defense contractor's request to dismiss the lawsuit.
In the case against CACI, four Iraqis who say they were tortured are seeking compensation from the company, which provided interrogators to the U.S. military during the war. CACI has chosen to continue its fight against the lawsuit. Azmy said a trial is expected this summer.
In its defense four years ago against the lawsuit, L-3 said the fact that the claims in the case "cannot be brought against the government means that they also cannot be brought against L-3."
"No court in the United States has allowed aliens — detained on the battlefield or in the course of postwar occupation and military operations by the U.S. military — to seek damages for their detention," the company told the federal court four years ago. "Yet these plaintiffs bring claims seeking money damages for their detention and treatment while in the custody of the U.S. military in the midst of a belligerent occupation in Iraq."
Allowing the case to proceed "would require a wholly unprecedented injection of the judiciary into wartime military operations and occupation conduct against the local population, in particular the conditions of confinement and interrogation for intelligence gathering," L-3 added.

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Supreme Court narrows avenue for death row appeals

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two death row inmates were not entitled to a delay of their federal appeals on the grounds that they were incompetent to assist their lawyers, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday.
In a unanimous ruling against inmates Ernest Valencia Gonzales and Sean Carter, the court also said federal judges cannot indefinitely delay appeals of state criminal convictions in the hope that the defendants might eventually become competent enough to help out.
Justice Clarence Thomas said defense lawyers are "quite capable" of reviewing cases without their clients' help and can identify arguments or state court errors that can be raised on appeal.
He said a district judge who believes an incompetent defendant could substantially aid in his defense should examine the likelihood that the defendant will regain competence.
In contrast, "where there is no reasonable hope of competence, a stay merely frustrates the state's attempts to defend its presumptively valid judgment," Thomas wrote.
Gonzales was convicted by an Arizona jury in the stabbings of two people in front of their seven-year-old son during a burglary. One of the victims died.
Carter was found guilty by an Ohio jury of the rape and stabbing death of his adoptive grandmother.
Dale Baich, who works in the federal public defender's office that represented Gonzales, noted that Supreme Court decision left room for federal courts to put some appeals on hold. A prisoner's competency to assist counsel is an issue in roughly one dozen capital cases pending nationwide, he said.
A lawyer for Carter was not immediately available to comment.
Thomas said the federal appeals courts that put both cases on hold erred in relying on two federal statutes to find that defendants must be competent.
A requirement of competency also does not flow from a defendant's right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he wrote.
The court also said it was "unwarranted" to extrapolate a definitive rule based on a 1960s case involving an incompetent death row inmate that it put on hold for nearly three decades. That case ended when the prisoner died.
The cases are Ryan v. Gonzales, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 10-930; and Tibbals v. Carter, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 11-218.

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KWANZAA: HOLIDAY BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FBI

Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? And let's face it, Kwanzaa's gotten way too commercialized.
A few years ago, I suspended my annual Kwanzaa column because my triumph over this fake holiday seemed complete. The only people still celebrating Kwanzaa were presidential-statement writers and white female public school teachers.
But it seems to be creeping back. A few weeks ago, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., complained about having to stick around Washington for fiscal cliff negotiations by accusing Republicans of not caring about "families" coming together to bond during Kwanzaa. The private schools have picked up this PC nonsense from the public schools. (Soon, no one will know anything.)
It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga -- aka Dr. Maulana Karenga -- founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. He was also a dupe of the FBI.
In what was ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the '60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better.
By that criterion, Karenga's United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American '60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the '60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution (although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers). Those were the precepts of Karenga's United Slaves.
United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented "African" names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named "Jamal" are currently in prison?)
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," which he based on the philosophy of "Mein Kampf" -- and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear.
Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the "framed" murder of two whites included: "the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department" and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. "was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt" -- an interesting standard of proof.)
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, "Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents."
Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot to death two Black Panthers on the UCLA campus: Al "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
Karenga's invented holiday is a nutty blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming legacy of the Worst Generation.
In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- the exact same seven "principles" of Kwanzaa.
Kwanzaa praises collectivism in every possible area of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.
When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially said that, under Kawaida, we also hate whites. (Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! network.)
While taking the "best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism" -- excluding, one hopes, the forced abortions, imprisonment of homosexuals and forced labor -- Karenga said Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity "determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding." There's an inclusive philosophy for you.
Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga's United Slaves -- the violence, the Marxism, the insanity.
Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, they have forgotten the FBI's tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

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Italy dissolves parliament, Monti mulls future

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's head of state dissolved parliament on Saturday and opened the way to a February election, with doubts growing over whether outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti will participate in what promises to be a bitter campaign.
Monti resigned on Friday a couple of months ahead of the end of his term of office, after his technocrat government lost the support of Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party.
For weeks, speculation has swirled over what role Monti will play in the election, which cabinet confirmed would be held over two days on February 24-25.
The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has faced growing pressure to seek a second term and earlier this week Italian media widely reported he would do so.
That now seems far less certain, as Monti has had to digest opinion polls that suggest a centrist group headed by him would probably come a distant third or even fourth in the election, expected to be won by the centre-left Democratic party (PD), led by Pier Luigi Bersani.
"The outcome of the election may well not be all that favorable and the question is where that would leave his own credibility and also his reform agenda," a person close to Monti told Reuters.
Italy's main newspapers reported on Saturday that he was inclined not to run, partly because of disappointing opinion polls and partly because of doubts about the quality of the centrist parties that would be using his name.
Another source familiar with the discussions that have been going on between Monti and these centrist groups said he was no longer in direct contact with his potential allies and was now thinking things through on his own.
"It's very open, Monti's looking at all the possibilities and thinking," the source said. "The thing is that without him, the centrist project doesn't make any sense."
Several centrist politicians who had been hoping for Monti's endorsement appeared almost resigned to going on alone.
"Monti would have given more significance to the initiative but it doesn't change things," Ferdinando Adornato, a member of the centrist UDC party told TGCom 24 news television. "What Bersani and Berlusconi are offering is not enough to change the situation from what it was before Monti arrived."
TAX HIKES
European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have called for Monti's economic reform agenda to continue but Italy's two main parties insist he should stay out of the race.
"We underlined the fact that as we're going into elections with a non-elected, technocrat government, that government, in the person of the prime minister, should remain outside the contest," Fabrizio Cicchitto, PDL leader in the lower house of parliament said after meeting President Giorgio Napolitano.
Italians are weary of repeated tax hikes and spending cuts and opinion polls offer little evidence they are ready to give Monti a second term. A survey this week showed 61 percent saying he should not stand.
Berlusconi, who was forced to make way for Monti in November last year as Italian borrowing costs surged, has stepped up attacks on his successor in recent days and welcomed his resignation on Friday.
"Today the experience of the technical government is finished and we must hope there will never again be a similar suspension of democracy," he told reporters.
Monti, who has kept his cards close to his chest, is expected to outline his plans at a news conference on Sunday.
Rather than announce his candidacy or endorse a centrist alliance to run in his name, two options widely touted in recent days, he may simply present a summary of the reforms his technocrat government has achieved and those still required.
"On Sunday, he will probably only present a policy memorandum, there is unlikely to be any decision on any more direct involvement in the campaign until after Christmas," the second source said.
This would put flesh on the rather nebulous "Monti agenda" which has been a buzz-word of Italy's political debate since it became clear he was considering staying in front-line politics.
It would then be up to the political parties to commit to or reject the priorities set out.
By playing for time, Monti would run less risk of being caught up in the crossfire of what promises to be a messy and bitter campaign and would still be free to step into the fray later on, depending on opinion polls.

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Analysis: Stop-gap fix most likely outcome of "fiscal cliff" talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The "fiscal cliff" deadline is days away and the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama have left town for Christmas.
But even if they were still here, it wouldn't have mattered, according to Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. He says they were going nowhere to resolving the disagreement over how to fix the nation's fiscal problems.
Last month's dreams of a "grand bargain" of tax hikes and spending cuts seem long gone. They had been reduced to more modest bargains in mid-December, and as 2013 approaches, are on the verge of relegation to a "stop-gap measure," at best the sort of temporary fix that Congress undertook in 2011.
A stop-gap that puts everything off for a while but resolves nothing is now the most promising alternative, if there is to be one, to the across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts described as a "fiscal cliff" because they threaten to send the U.S. economy plunging into another recession.
It is also the way fiscal showdowns have ended in Washington in recent years.
Such a fix, at best, would delay the spending cuts and tax hikes further into 2013 as well as work to address in a long-term way a government budget that has generated deficits exceeding $1 trillion in each of the last four years. Even worse, it would set up a huge fight in January and February over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, which controls the amount of money the federal government can borrow.
Dysfunction in Washington was specifically cited as one of the reasons rating agency Standard & Poor's cut the U.S. debt rating to AA-plus after a battle over the debt ceiling in 2011. That alone - not to mention going over the cliff - could lead to another rating cut.
At worst, the new year could start with a full-fledged jump off the 'cliff,' with an understanding, communicated to financial markets, that Congress and the White House would come back and try again for a solution.
Given the apparent deadlock, some congressional aides this week said that Washington needed to begin telegraphing to Wall Street that markets should not panic if a "fiscal cliff" deal is not struck in December.
The goal, one aide said on condition of anonymity, is to avoid starting 2013 with a steep stock market drop like the one the U.S. suffered in 2008, when the country's financial industry was falling apart and Congress was divided over what to do.
On Friday, Obama acknowledged that only small steps might be possible with so little time remaining.
Those, the Democratic president said, would consist of extending benefits for the long-term unemployed and keeping income tax rates low for 98 percent of Americans - meaning raising taxes on households with net incomes above $250,000 a year but not for those earning less.
He held out the possibility of something "comprehensive," as he put it, but it had a hollow ring at the close of a work week that saw House Speaker John Boehner step back from negotiations and pursue a partisan plan that even some of his fellow Republicans could not stomach.
MARKET PRESSURE
The steps that Obama outlined were immediately rejected by Republicans, who have given ground on their previous steadfast opposition to any tax hikes but are still demanding that the White House agree to more substantial spending cuts.
"The president has failed to offer any solution that passes the test of balance," declared Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck, minutes after the end of Obama's statement on Friday.
On Saturday, a spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was similarly dismissive, noting Obama's call had neither bipartisan support nor spending cuts to ride along with tax increases.
McConnell, on Friday, suggested bringing up a House-passed bill that extends current tax rates for all Americans, including the top earners, and then pushes for comprehensive tax reform next year that theoretically could raise new revenues to help cut deficits.
But Obama has promised repeatedly to veto any extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts that fail to hike rates for the wealthy.
And Democrats, who control the Senate, have dismissed the McConnell idea, arguing that Obama ran his successful 2012 re-election campaign on a promise of forcing the wealthy to bear more of the burden of deficit reduction.
Democratic aides in Congress think their own bill implementing Obama's $250,000 income threshold, which passed the 100-member Senate in July with 51 votes, could breeze through this month, or next year after the "fiscal cliff" is breached.
The prospect of a breach is being discussed far more seriously now, and not just as a bluff or to set up the other side for blame.
"I think we're going to go over the cliff," said Republican Representative Patrick Tiberi of Ohio. "I don't see something getting done."
In an MSNBC interview Friday, Hoyer, a 31-year veteran of Congress from Maryland, said it wouldn't matter if everyone was in Washington instead of on holiday.
"Frankly, we've been in town for four weeks and members haven`t been doing much," he said, calling it "one of the least productive times that I've been in Congress."
Even Obama speaks of "a mismatch" between how people are thinking about the looming tax hikes and spending cuts "outside of this town and how folks are operating here. And we've just got to get that aligned," he said in his statement.
ITG Investment Research Chief Economist Steve Blitz on Saturday said sliding the "fiscal cliff" negotiations into the new year was not a huge deal. "I think markets will pressure for a deal in January," he said.
The "pressure" could be in the form of a significant stock market drop, which would hit workers' retirement plans, threaten to deter consumer and business spending, and possibly rattle other countries' economies at a time when the global economy is far from robust.

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Effect of looming 'fiscal cliff' tax increases

A big package of tax cuts first enacted a decade ago are set to expire at the end the year, unless Congress and the White House reach a deal to extend them. How the looming tax increases would affect households at different income levels.
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Annual income: $20,000 to $30,000.
Average tax increase: $1,064.
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Annual income: $30,000 to $40,000.
Average tax increase: $1,417.
___
Annual income: $40,000 to $50,000.
Average tax increase: $1,729.
___
Annual income: $50,000 to $75,000.
Average tax increase: $2,399.
___
Annual income: $75,000 to $100,000.
Average tax increase: $3,688.
___
Annual income: $100,000 to $200,000.
Average tax increase: $6,662.
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Annual income: $200,000 to $500,000.
Average tax increase: $14,643.
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Annual income: $500,000 to $1 million.
Average tax increase: $38,969.
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Annual income: More than $1 million.
Average tax increase: $254,637.

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Florida governor asks Obama to block possible ports strike

 Florida's Republican governor wants President Barack Obama to invoke federal law and order a cooling-off period if nearly 15,000 longshoremen walk off the job in a looming strike that would be a big blow to the state's economy, according to a letter he sent the president this week.
The International Longshoremen's Association union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance grouping of shippers and ports have been bargaining since March but reportedly remain far from a deal covering cargo handling at 15 ports on the U.S. Gulf and eastern coasts.
In October, when a previous contract expired, the sides agreed to a 90-day extension of terms that runs out on December 29.
Florida ports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale would be directly hit by a strike or lockout but a stoppage would also rattle overall transport and trade, which accounts for 550,000 jobs in the state and $66 billion in economic activity, Florida Governor Rick Scott said in a letter dated Thursday.
"The threat to national safety and security that would result from mass closure of ports cannot be overstated," Scott told Obama.
Scott said Obama had the power under 1947's Taft-Hartley Act to prevent or interrupt a work stoppage at the ports. Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush both used Taft-Hartley, which calls for 80-day cooling-off periods and mediation, Scott said.
"The Taft-Hartley Act provides your administration with tools that can help avoid this threat," Scott said. "On behalf of the State of Florida, I respectfully request that you invoke the act when the contract ... expires at the end of the month."

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Egypt president appoints upper house of parliament members

 Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi announced names of 90 new members he appointed to the upper house of parliament, state media reported, and a presidential official said the list was mainly liberals and other non-Islamists.
Two thirds of the 270-member upper house were elected in a vote early this year, with one third appointed by the president. Mursi, elected in June, had not named them till now. Mursi's Islamist party and its allies dominate the assembly.
A presidential official, ahead of the formal announcement, said 75 percent of those selected were not Islamists, and included liberals and Christians, a minority who make up about 10 percent of the population.
Hussein Abdel Ghani, a spokesman for the National Salvation Front, a coalition of leading opposition politicians and groups, said ahead of the announcement that the Front refused to take any seats. "We will never accept such thing," he told Reuters.
The constitutional court had been due to deliver a ruling on the legality of the upper house of parliament earlier this month, but a protest by Islamists outside the court halted its work and the assembly has continued to operate.
Under a new constitution expected to be approved in a referendum on Saturday, the upper house will assume legislative powers now held by the president until a new lower house it elected in a vote likely to take place early in 2013.
The lower house of parliament, also dominated by Islamists, was dissolved earlier this year after a court declared the rules by which it was elected unconstitutional.

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