FYI

The Blue Lemur reports on conflicts of interest on liberal blogger story.

2004 Inflation Measure Highest in 4 Years

After all those price increases, the department's consumer price index (or CPI), one of the most widely followed measures of inflation, was 3.3 percent higher in December than a year before. That rate of inflation was much faster than the 1.9 percent rate of 2003, and the highest since the 3.4 percent rate of 2000.

Workers' pay also rose last year -- but more slowly than prices. After adjusting for inflation, average hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers fell 0.8 percent -- the first such decline since 1994, Labor figures show.