Mexican Capo Guzman Behind Drug War Deaths

By Robin Emmott | Reuters

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) – One man looms behind the worst violence in a drugs war on Mexico’s U.S. border that is shaking President Felipe Calderon’s government and worrying Washington.

Joaquin Guzman, known as “Shorty” at just 5 feet tall, is Mexico’s most wanted man and set off a wave of killings in the border city of Ciudad Juarez early last year when he tried to muscle in on the territory of a local cartel.

A turf battle between Guzman’s enforcers from the Sinaloa cartel and local Ciudad Juarez drug runners has since killed more than 2,000 people here and forced the government to deploy 7,500 troops and federal police to take control of the city.

Guzman, 51, has avoided capture several times since he escaped from a high security jail in a laundry van in 2001.

Mexican anti-drug officials say he began waging war for Ciudad Juarez when the local cartel tried to charge him taxes for smuggling narcotics through the city into Texas …

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Court Rejects Franken’s Bid to be Seated in Senate

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected Democrat Al Franken’s petition for an election certificate that would put him in the U.S. Senate without waiting for a lawsuit to be resolved.

Franken is ahead of Republican Norm Coleman by 225 votes. Coleman’s ongoing lawsuit argues some uncounted absentee ballots were wrongly rejected.

Franken sued to force Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to sign an election certificate. Franken argued that federal law required it.

But the state Supreme Court disagreed. In their ruling Friday, the justices said states aren’t required to issue such certificates by the date that Congress convenes …

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States Cut Spending as U.S. Stimulus Fails to Fix Budget Woes

By Lorraine Woellert and Jonathan D. Salant | Bloomberg.com

Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — States are cutting spending and increasing taxes because aid in the $787 billion economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama last week isn’t enough to balance their budgets, governors meeting in Washington said.

“States have a cumulative deficit that is more than double the money we get,” said Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell. Even with the stimulus, “there’s not a state in this union that’s going to be able to wipe away all its problems.”

The U.S. economic crisis dominated talk as the National Governors Association held its annual winter meeting in Washington this weekend. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its lowest level since 1997 last week. Government reports showed industrial output sank in January for a sixth time in seven months and housing starts plunged 17 percent. Companies from General Motors Corp. to Alcoa Inc. are slashing jobs and cutting production as the recession threatens to become the worst slump in the postwar era.

Rendell, chairman of the governors group, said Pennsylvania cut $1 billion from its budget and raised $218 million in additional revenue with taxes on tobacco and other products. The stimulus, even with about $100 billion in infrastructure spending for states, is no cure-all, he said.

“States are not off the hook,” Rendell, a Democrat, told reporters yesterday …

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Schwarzenegger: I’ll Take Fellow GOP Govs’ Stimulus Money

By ANDY BARR | Politico

Fresh off a grueling budget battle in his state, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Saturday that if fellow Republican governors threatening to turn down stimulus funds follow through on their pledge, he’d be happy to have their share.

“Everyone has their own way of thinking,” Schwarzenegger said of those governors in an interview with POLITICO at the National Governors Association’s annual meeting. “I just hope they give me their funding.”

Schwarzenegger supports President Barack Obama’s $778 billion stimulus, but four Republican governors have said they may reject some of the stimulus funds …

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Schwarzenegger May Terminate 20,000 California Employees Amid Budget Impasse

By Michael B. Marois and William Selway | Bloomberg.com

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) — California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing to fire thousands of government workers as an impasse over the state’s $42 billion budget shortfall threatens to drain the state of cash.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, plans to send notices on Feb. 13 to 20,000 workers informing them they may be terminated, Aaron McLear, a spokesman for the governor, told reporters in Sacramento today. The notices will go to about 8 percent of the state’s employees, laying the groundwork for the governor’s goal of temporarily cutting as many as 10,000 jobs, he said.

“This is not a threat,” said McLear. “This is being done out of a sense of reality. The state is running out of cash.” …

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