Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* Barack Obama will unveil<\/a> a new tax plan today, which will propose more than $80 billion in annual tax relief for workers and seniors funded by an increase on wealthier investors. According to an AP report, Obama “wants to give 150 million working Americans a $500 tax credit, expand relief for homeowners, eliminate income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000 and simplify tax returns so millions of Americans can file in less than five minutes.”<\/p>\n * Speaking of Obama, the Illinois senator delivered a stern message<\/a> to Wall Street investors yesterday. “If we are honest, I think we must admit that those who have benefited from the new global marketplace — and that includes almost everyone in this room — have not always concerned themselves with the losers in this new economy,” Obama told the crowd at the Nasdaq MarketSite.<\/p>\n * Fred Thompson became the fourth leading GOP candidate to announce yesterday that he would blow off<\/a> a PBS debate later this month at a historically black college in Baltimore. Giuliani, McCain, and Romney had already declined invitations. “There is a pattern here,” Tavis Smiley told the Huffington Post. “When you tell every black and brown request that you get throughout the primary process that ‘no, there’s a scheduling problem.’ That’s a pattern… Are we really supposed to believe that all four of these guys couldn’t make it because of scheduling?”<\/p>\n * John Edwards’ campaign is sending an unusually-blunt email to supporters, criticizing<\/a> Hillary Clinton for attending a DC fundraiser today hosted by government contractors and lobbyists in the homeland security industry. In a mass email, the Edwards campaign blasts Clinton as a “corporate Democratic insider.” * Mitt Romney attacked Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan yesterday, using an NYC hospital who didn’t want<\/a> to be used as a campaign prop. “We find it unfortunate that Mr. Romney misappropriated the image and good will of St. Vincent’s Hospital to further a political agenda,” a hospital spokesman said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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\n* McCain lost another key staffer<\/a> — Robert Terra, who managed the senator’s campaign war room — and lost a key supporter<\/a> in Michigan, when former state Attorney General Mike Cox announced he would resign as state chairman of the McCain campaign<\/p>\n