Democratic Senator Barack Obama seized on record gas prices and a spike in US job losses as he focused on the ailing US economy, trying to link Republican rival Senator John McCain to the faltering economic policies of unpopular President George W. Bush.
Obama launched a two-week economic tour on Monday that will take him to key battleground states in the November election. He was trying to make the economy the central theme of the general election campaign rather than national security issues where McCain has an advantage.
Polls show that the weak US economy has surpassed the Iraq War as the key concern for voters.
PHOTO: AP
In his first speech since Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton suspended her bid for the Democratic nomination, Obama tried to win over her working class constituency, focusing on home mortgage foreclosures, staggering energy costs and growing unemployment.
Obama spoke in North Carolina, where the working class has been hard hit, but it is an issue that could reverberate across the electorate nationally.
The centerpiece of McCain’s economic plan “amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush’s policies,” Obama told about 900 people in Raleigh.
Repeatedly linking McCain to Bush, Obama said, “Our president sacrificed investments in health care, and education, and energy, and infrastructure on the altar of tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs.”
Obama criticized McCain for originally opposing Bush’s first-term tax cuts but now supporting their continuation. He said he would place a windfall profits tax on oil companies while McCain would reduce their taxes.
Obama offered no new policies in his speech but used the occasion to summarize earlier proposals, including raising income taxes on wealthy Americans, granting a US$1,000 tax cut to most others, winding down the Iraq War, tightening credit card regulations and pumping more money into education, alternative fuels and infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
Even before Obama spoke, McCain issued a statement through his spokesman that said Obama “has promised higher income taxes. Social Security taxes, capital gains taxes, dividend taxes and tax hikes on job-creating businesses.”
“Barack Obama doesn’t understand the American economy, and that’s change we just can’t afford,” said Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman.
McCain is airing TV ads in key states on the Iraq War, which he sees as a better issue for him in the November election.
In a potential boost to Obama, the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor organization, plans to have its members target Bush and McCain at gas stations around the country.
Union members will hold signs saying “Bush & McCain Love Big Oil” and complain about a McCain tax proposal they say would give the five largest oil companies US$3.8 billion in tax breaks.
Meanwhile, Obama ramped up his search for a running mate on Monday, consulting with Senator Dick Durbin by telephone and dispatching members of his vice presidential vetting team to meetings with top Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not