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November 01, 2011 | | WRECKING CREW Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the lone Republican in Obama’s cabinet, tells The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift that his party wants to do nothing in Washington, and is more committed to defeating the president than creating jobs. ON THE BRINK The Greek government neared collapse Tuesday as Prime Minister George Papandreou faced calls to resign after announcing a vote the European Union’s bailout package—which could throw his country’s eurozone membership into jeopardy. A key legislator from Papandreou’s Socialist party stepped down Tuesday—threatening their slim majority that already faced a number of defections when the austerity package was passed last week—and two more conceded to the opposition’s demands to hold snap elections to create a government of national unity. Global markets spiraled Tuesday on Papandreou’s announcement of a bailout vote, with business leaders questioning how the country could manage the money effectively when Papandreou reportedly even caught his own finance minister by surprise. NEVER MIND Score a point for enraged consumers. Bank of America dropped a plan to charge customers $5 monthly to use their debit cards, becoming the last major bank to ditch proposed debit card fees. "We have listened to our customers very closely over the last few weeks," the bank's co-chief operating officer said in scrapping the plan, which had been met with widespread derision. Last week, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo both cancelled test runs of charging the new fees, and SunTrust Banks and others dropped fees and reimbursed customers. Banks devised the new fees to make up for lost revenue from debit card swipes. OBIT Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mother, Dorthy Rodham, died shortly after midnight Tuesday in Washington. She was 92. The cause was not yet released, but Clinton had canceled a trip to London and Istanbul Monday night due to her mother’s illness. Clinton’s father, Hugh, died in 1993. Rodham’s neighbors in Little Rock said they remembered her as being a “proud mother and warm grandmother.” The Clinton family is planning a private memorial service for Rodham, who Clinton has often credited as inspiring her to stand up for herself and for those who needed help. Rodham rarely gave interviews about her daughter and son-in-law, with one notable exception being during the 2008 election, when she appeared with her daughter in primary states. INCRIMINATING Things keep getting worse for James Murdoch, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and presumed heir to his empire. New documents turned over to the British parliament on Tuesday show that News Corp. agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to one victim of its newspapers’ illegal phone-hacking because the company realized its position was “perilous.” The documents make what one attorney called a “powerful case” that there was a pervasive culture of illegal activity at the company’s U.K. tabloids, and that New Corp. bosses knew what was going on. | | 
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