I got a very interesting comment from one of our readers about my last newsletter. It is not the first I have received from him and he is always straight and to the point.
He said, “On another note, what is it with this Tesco watch? Politics are playing a big jealous role in the Tesco spotlight. Let's get in the real world about it. There's many here who didn't want to see them get off the ground and others who wish to see them fail. Is that the only way to deal with the competition? Just read between the negative lines.”
There has been a lot of press about Tesco sales not meeting their goals since they arrived in this country. I think that is a Tesco problem and retailers who have already changed their marketing plans to compete are ahead of the game.
By Marla Dickerson
Los Angeles Times
Article Last Updated: 03/08/2008 11:57:50 AM MST
MEXICO CITY - Four campaign seasons have come and gone since presidential hopeful H. Ross Perot warned that NAFTA would create a ''giant sucking sound'' of jobs going to Mexico, and the trade pact is still generating plenty of noise. Calls to renegotiate the 14-year-old deal are rising from both sides of the border.
Thousands of protesters paralyzed traffic in Mexico's capital in January to demand a redo of the pact, which they said had hurt Mexican farmers. In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement has loomed large in states such as Ohio, which last week hosted a crucial presidential primary.
The Rust Belt has shed hundreds of thousands of factory jobs since 1994, when the U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade bloc was implemented. Ohio alone lost a net 50,000 jobs as a result of NAFTA, according to a 2006 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, and 250,000 factory jobs in all since 1994.
While campaigning in Ohio and elsewhere for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have said the deal, at the very least, needed to be retooled to protect American workers. Failing that, both have said that as president they would pull the United States out of the agreement.
''Let's get real about NAFTA. It simply isn't working for all Americans,'' Clinton said at a recent rally in
Youngstown, Ohio. If elected, she said that short of ending the agreement, she would call for a temporary freeze on new trade pacts and a thorough review of existing ones. Obama has said he wants stronger labor and environmental provisions put into NAFTA and other accords, but he had to fight off criticism last week that his campaign gave Canada back-channel assurances that his harsh words for NAFTA were for political show.
The Associated Press
Published: March 17, 2008
AUGUSTA, Maine: When harvest time rolls around in Maine, 10,000 to 12,000 migrant farm workers and their families come to the state to harvest wild blueberries and cranberries, pick apples and cut broccoli. Others tend chickens, work in the forests and help grow Christmas trees.The workers who travel from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and Canada play a key role in keeping Maine-grown food on the supper tables at a reasonable cost.Their unsung role is documented and celebrated in an exhibit of photos and comments which itself will migrate from Augusta to Boston and back to Maine in the weeks ahead. Its final tour will be in areas where migrants will toil during the next harvest season. The list of stops is being finalized. About 85 percent of the fruits and vegetables in the United States are harvested by hand, said Barbara Ginley, executive director of the Maine Migrant Health Program, one of the sponsors of the exhibit titled "Farmworkers Feed Us All." 
