Cross-posted from The Purple Center.

I really can’t believe this story. It’s such a stupid move. From The Washington Times:

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

(snip)

The 12,000 Federal Flight Deck Officers, the pilots who have been approved to carry guns, are reported to have the best behavior of any federal law enforcement agency. There are no cases where any of them has improperly brandished or used a gun.

(snip)

Since Mr. Obama’s election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers…indicate that the approval process has stalled out.

Pilots cannot openly speak about the changing policies for fear of retaliation from the Transportation Security Administration. Pilots who act in any way that causes a “loss of confidence” in the armed pilot program risk criminal prosecution as well as their removal from the program. Despite these threats, pilots in the Federal Flight Deck Officers program have raised real concerns in multiple interviews.

Arming pilots after Sept. 11 was nothing new. Until the early 1960s, American commercial passenger pilots on any flight carrying U.S. mail were required to carry handguns. Indeed, U.S. pilots were still allowed to carry guns until as recently as 1987. There are no records that any of these pilots (either military or commercial) ever causing any significant problems.

Screening of airplane passengers is hardly perfect. While armed marshals are helpful, the program covers less than 3 percent of the flights out of Washington D.C.’s three airports and even fewer across the country…

I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot safer about flying knowing that guys like Sully Sullenberger up front in the cockpit are packing heat so they can never again be overwhelmed by a couple of terrorists with knives.

I hope this turns out to be the foolish work of some excessively anti-gun new political appointee at the Department of Homeland Security that will be overturned quickly by the White House.

What do you think about this? Post a comment.

Cross-posted from The Purple Center – visit me there.

I also blog at The Purple Center

Thanks to principled stand http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/spending-bill-vote-called-off-lacking-dem-votes-2009-03-05.html”>stand taken by two Democrats, Evan Bayh and Russ Feingold, who said they will vote against the $410-billion spending bill as long as it contains 9,000 earmarks (member pork projects worth nearly $8 billion), the Senate leadership came up http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19691.html”>one vote short on moving the bill forward. Congress is now giving itself another five days to pry the needed vote, probably from Republicans, many of whom want their own earmarks to pass although they are stalling for the moment. Some other Republicans, led by John McCain, are leading the charge against this unconscionable waste at a time when federal dollars are needed for more important things.

Throughout his campaign last year, President Obama promised repeatedly to change the tired ways of Washington, reform the “old politics,” and specifically go line by line through the federal budget to restrain wasteful spending. In his inauguration address and other speeches since January 20, he has again and again struck the same rhetorical notes of  reform and fiscal responsibility.

Now, he has the perfect opportunity to make good on his words. Reform-minded Republicans and Democrats have exposed this especially smelly bit of old-style Washington politics and slowed down its enactment. By announcing that he would veto the bill unless it is stripped of earmarks, the President could guarantee that the House and Senate leadership would do just that and present him with a clean bill. They would have no choice, since they would not be able to muster the two thirds majorities of both Houses to override his veto. In any case, the Democrats would not have the stomach to engage in battle with a new, popular President of their own party.

President Obama would not only fulfill the spirit and letter of his campaign promises. He would gain enormous respect among voters and opinion makers across the political spectrum, opening up new opportunities for truly bi-partisan cooperation on other, pressing issues. And not incidentally, it would be good policy — good for the nation and good for all Americans.

So why did he say through aides that this is “old business” and do his best to duck the issue? Why won’t he take a stand? Alas, the answer is that the old politics of Washington against which he campaigned to eloquently is alive and well. Key Congressional committee chairs and ranking members, along with many of their colleagues regard pork projects as theirs by right and will not part with them graciously. Obama may fear that the powerful on Capitol Hill will retaliate against him in many less-than-public ways if he screws them out of their earmarks.

No doubt some will try to do that. But did we not expect that Obama would at least try to rise above these political considerations and show some courage in “bringing change to Washington?” If he does, he will be able to count on even stronger popular support to offset any fallout among Congressional grandees. If he doesn’t, he will fully deserve to face the consequences of further public disappointment and gathering opposition. It’s up to him.

I also blog at The Purple Center

(I also blog at The Purple Center)

Gawker has a story up that I really hope doesn’t pan out, because it’s really getting tiresome to find out how many folks among the Washington elite really don’t think rules apply to them.

Gawker reports that Derry Noyes, the wide of long-time big-shot Washington lawyer and now White House Counsel, “runs Noyes Graphics, a design business, out of the couple’s home in northwest Washington.”

So?? Well…

Operating a business out of one’s home in D.C. requires a home occupation permit and registration with the city’s division of corporations. Additionally, the government has instituted a new requirement for business license permits.

A spokesman at the Washington D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs told Gawker that no one has ever sought any kind of permit or registration for a business under the name of Noyes Graphics or at the Craigs’ home address. By not registering Craig may have avoided local business taxes.

Noyes Graphics is the real deal, with a number of public listings, including this one, and Derry Noyes is fairly well known for her graphic design work.

Among his myriad important responsibilities at the White House, Craig became the Administration’s chief vetter of Obama’s nominees after the earlier tax-related embarrassments.

Let’s hope that Craig hasn’t been so busy at the office that he didn’t find time to put his and his wife’s business and tax affairs into good order.

If you started a home-based business, isn’t the first question you would ask be, with what local laws and regulations do you have to comply — even without a spouse who is a high-powered lawyer?

What do you think? Post a comment.

(I also blog at The Purple Center)

I also blog at The Purple Center.

OK, I give up. We’ve gone totally off the deep end here. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Roland Burris’s son, Roland II, a not very successful lawyer, got a $75,000-a-year job “as a senior counsel for the state’s housing authority Sept. 10 — about six weeks after the Internal Revenue Service slapped a $34,163 lien on Burris II and three weeks after a mortgage company filed a foreclosure suit on his South Side house.” The state agency’s “mission includes overseeing mortgage programs for low-income home buyers and anti-foreclosure initiatives.” Who better but a politically wired guy who didn’t pay his taxes or make his mortgage payments to advise the poor about their finances?

Of course, this adds to the suspicion that there was some Chicago-style pay to play around Blago’s choice of Burris to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat:

Burris II’s hiring, however, raises more questions about Sen. Burris’ interactions with Blagojevich and his inner circle at a time when the governor was soliciting Sen. Burris for campaign contributions and Burris was angling to have Blagojevich appoint him to the Senate seat once held by President Obama.

There’s also this about Burris the Younger’s stellar credit history:

Since Burris II and his wife got the $372,000 mortgage on July 18, 2006, they’ve paid less than $3,000 on it, the [foreclosure] suit alleges. The balance due is $406,685, including interest and penalties.

That’s $372,000 for Roland the Younger’s dream home, even thought he only paid one dollar for the land:

Burris II built his home in the booming Bronzeville neighborhood on land he bought from the City of Chicago in 2000. City records show he paid $1 for the lot as part of an effort to clean up his once-blighted block.

What a tragedy this is. Who could be expected to pay more than $3,000 back on a $372,000 loan? I have an idea. Let’s all kick in to help Little Roland and his wife avoid losing their home and the American Dream with it.

Oh wait…that’s already being taken care of through the federal mortgage bailout.

I feel relieved.  What about you?  Post a comment.

I blog at The Purple Center.

On the same day President Obama signed the stimulus plan into law, the Federal Reserve issued a new economic forecast for 2009 and beyond. The new outlook revised expectations for the economy downward since the Fed’s last forecast in October.

The key expectations of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, composed of the presidents of the Fed’s district banks and the members of its Board of Governors, now look like this:

With the weaker than expected data offsetting an upward revision to the assumption of the amount of forthcoming fiscal stimulus, the Fed now expects real gross domestic product to decline 0.5 percent to 1.3 percent in 2009.

In October, the Fed had predicted real GDP for 2009 in a range between 1.1 percent growth and a 0.2 percent decline.

That may not seem to be much of a difference but as real growth approaches zero, much less disappears into negative territory, the effects can be tough. The Fed expects that drop in GDP to translate into unemployment reaching 8.5-8.8% in 2009 and continuing to rise in through the beginning of 2010 before edging down over the remainder of that year. In its October forecast, the Fed still expected unemployment to top out at 7.1-7.6% in 2009.

The Fed also revealed a longer-term forecast for the economy that looks quite a bit better than it did the last time, in part due to the stimulus plan:

At the same time, estimates for real GDP growth in 2010 were upwardly revised, reflecting greater monetary and fiscal stimulus as well as the effects of more moderate oil prices and long-term interest rates.

The forecast for real GDP growth in 2010 was revised up to 2.5-3.3% from the previous forecast for growth of 2.3-3.2%.

Of course, the Fed’s forecast could be overly optimistic or just flat wrong. Assuming that it’s generally in the right ballpark, though, what do the numbers tells us about the severity of this recession? Are we experiencing the worst economy since the Great Depression, as some folks are saying every day, or something else?

Let’s look at the data and make some comparisons:

– GDP will shrink in 2009 by no more than 1.3% — maybe as little as 0.5%. GDP  increased in 2008 by 1.3% (after a rise of 2% in 2007), with the drop almost entirely attributable to a sharp plunge (3.8% on an annual basis) in the fourth quarter on the heels of the financial meltdown.

– If these predictions for GDP prove correct, it would be the worst decline in output since the 1.9% drop in the recession of 1981-82.

– Unemployment will rise to at least 8.5% during 2009 and could go above 9% in 2010 (remember, unemployment tends to lag other economic trends so it can still be increasing when activity begins to pick up). Some analysts (but not the Fed) think it will break 10%.

– This level of unemployment and the long period of growing unemployment is similar to what occurred in the 1981-82 recession, when the jobless rate was high by historical standards already in mid-1981 and rose to 10.8% at the end of 1982, the highest post-war level up to that time.

– The economy should bottom out sometime in 2009 (most other analysts believe that will occur around mid-year) and resume moderate growth during 2010.

– Since the recession began in December 2007, that will make the duration of this one at least 18 months — longer than the 1981-82 recession, which lasted 16 months.

In terms of GDP performance, unemployment and length of the downturn, we are in a severe, prolonged recession much like that of 1981-82 (although that one came right after a milder 1980 recession and a decade of “stagflation” so that the impact in the early 80s may have been worse).

But this is no Great Depression revisited. During the Depression, GDP nosedived month after month and year after year for a total decline of 27% during the harshest years, 1929-1933. Unemployment was 15-25% for many years (and even higher in some years). And the Depression lasted, depending on definitions, 7-8 years or even as many as 12-13 years.

We’re in a very bad spot — the worst in a generation and terrible if you’re one of the millions who has lost your job.  But we’ve been here before and recovered very nicely.

What do you think?  Post a comment.

I also blog at The Purple Center.

While yesterday’s reports about the Pakistani agreement with the Taliban in the Swat district, part of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province not far from Islamabad, is a worrisome sign of the continued reluctance of Pakistani leaders to crack down on extremists.  But Pakistan’s rulers for decades have run hot and cold about radicals and jihadists.  President Obama is about to find out just how hard it is to wage war in Afghanistan with such lukewarm “allies” next door where al Qaeda and others are able to shelter.

Be that as it may, there are encouraging signs that Obama and his team, faced with tough realities instead of politically correct fantasies are finding continuity with established US policies more to their liking than “change,” except in “tone.”

One such sign was the new attack by US missiles inside Pakitan the other day.  No sooner did President Obama’s Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan complete his first visit to the region as part of a policy review than C.I.A.-operated Predator drone aircraft again fired missiles at al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan. This time, the targets were two compounds in the South Waziristan tribal area, one linked to Pakistani Taliban kingpin Baitullah Mehsud. Among other things, the Pakistani government has charged Mehsud with being responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The Taliban said that most of the 25 people lled in the strikes were “Uzbek mujahideen,” according to Dawn, a leading Pakistani newspaper. Uzbek nationals have often been among al Qaeda fighters in the region.

This was the third Predator strike inside Pakistani territory since Obama became President. Pakistani politicians have vocally objected to the attacks as violations of Pakistani sovereignty that risked killing civilians. Holbrooke heard these complaints again when he visited Pakistan a week ago. Yet, the U.S. launched another attack.

Interestingly, the attacks also came on the heels of the apparent revelation by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, that Predator drones operate out of a base in Pakistan. Feinstein said so during testimony by the Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. Blair did not confirm her statement, and Pakistan’s Defense Minister denied it.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the U.S. and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari are on the same page about this — perhaps after discussions involving Holbrooke — even though Pakistan wants to pretend otherwise. Feinstein’s very public, but unconfirmed revelation, may have been a way for the U.S. to hint at the cooperation while leaving Pakistan room to deny it. In any case, it is clear that American policy has not changed. The U.S. will continue to seek out and attack al Qaeda and its allies inside Pakistan.

More at The Purple Center

Visit me at The Purple Center

The $789-billion dollar stimulus bill is headed for final passage by the House and Senate. Whatever the merits of the bill’s specific provisions, this is an important victory for President Obama and for Congressional Democrats.

The honeymoon-level public approval of Obama seems to be holding up, as the RCP average of polls shows, although he did take a few hits over the past couple of weeks as Republican critics assailed his economic plan. In contrast, it’s clear that the Democrats in Congress have lost a lot of public support. Unlike the President, all House members and many Senators face election contests next year.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll of voters’ generic Congressional preference, Republicans are running neck and neck with Democrats, with 40% of voters saying they would vote for a Democratic Congressional candidate and 39% choosing a Republican. Just last week, the Democrats held a four point lead (42-38), and two weeks ago, they were ahead by seven points. Forty percent is the lowest support for the Democrats over the past year, down from a high of 50%. Republican support sank to a low of 34% at one point in the past year.

Writing in U.S. News, conservative Michael Barone notes that the generic ballot slippage is potentially a big deal:

Given that this generic ballot question over the years has tended to understate Republicans’ performances in actual elections, one gathers that if the 2010 election for House seats were held today, Republicans would win or come close to winning a majority of seats—which is to say, they would gain about 40 seats. By way of comparison, they gained 52 seats when they won their majority in 1994. This result may just be a momentary blip, which will pass away as quickly as it appeared, and we are a long, long, long way from the November 2010 elections.

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