Showing posts with label barrack obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barrack obama. Show all posts

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Elite School Sees Dark Side of Limelight


"Demonstrators from Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas protest across the street from Sidwell Friends; students hold a counter-protest.(Carol Guzy/the Washington Post)"

Its parent-teacher conferences made the evening news. So did cases of swine flu. And Sidwell Friends School has recently been the target of a few small protests that seem aimed at prominent parents, not students.

The school, long a favorite of Washington's leading families, is no stranger to presidential children. But in the months since Barack and Michelle Obama decided to send their daughters there, Sidwell has been pulled into the spotlight of a distinctly 21st-century culture -- one that is increasingly celebrity-obsessed and often shockingly unmannered.

Educators and others at Sidwell have portrayed this as what their most famous parent might call a "teachable moment."

When five anti-Obama, anti-gay protesters appeared in front of the school's Wisconsin Avenue NW entrance Monday morning, they were met by 150 Sidwell students waving signs ranging from "There is that of God in Everyone" to "I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It."

"I guess they think they can influence what we think because we're young and vulnerable," said Daniel Edminster, a Sidwell junior. "They can't."

The school, founded in 1883, taught children of three White House occupants before the Obamas: Theodore Roosevelt, Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton. Vice President Biden's grandchildren go there, as did Al Gore's son while Gore was vice president.

But in the 1990s, when Chelsea Clinton attended, Twitter and Facebook didn't exist to amplify and extend conversations. (There have been more than 175 tweets about the protests in front of Sidwell since Monday.) Nor did the Internet function as a gathering place for the political fringe to the extent that it does today.

Administrators at Sidwell said they remembered two protests in the 4 1/2 years that Chelsea Clinton attended the school. This year, there have been two protests since mid-September.

The news media and the blogosphere have put the school under a microscope, too. GQ recently named the school's admissions director the 50th most powerful person in Washington. The Obama girls' first day of school merited a two-page spread in People. Its racial dynamics were analyzed on NPR. Its lunch menu is scrutinized by sustainable food advocates and doctors groups.

On the political front, pro-school-voucher activists invoke Sidwell again and again in their arguments for letting families use public money to send their kids to private schools.

Parents, students and educators say that the Quaker school's values of egalitarianism and thoughtfulness haven't changed under the spotlight but that expressions of students' views have become more visible to the public.

"I don't think anything in the culture has really changed," said Chris Dorval, whose daughter attends Sidwell's high school. But, he said, the attention has "kind of crystallized their culture in a way."

The school's former head said that even negative attention could, in the end, be valuable for the students. "In some ways, these kinds of experiences deeply enrich the education students get," said Bruce Stewart, who spent 11 years as head of Sidwell before he retired at the end of June. "You want to hear those voices, listen to them and make a judgment about it. That's an important thing for kids to learn . . . not acquiescing to it, not being duped by it, but hearing it."

Even at the lower school, where the five protesters chanted slogans that were not lower-school or family-newspaper appropriate at dismissal time Tuesday, parents said that they would try to use the demonstration as a teachable moment.

"My son is in kindergarten, and he won't really understand the content," said Amy Henderson, who was waiting with her preschool-age daughter in the car line. She could have stayed at home with her daughter and had someone else pick up her son, she said. But she said that she wanted to see the protest and talk about it with him. "We have too many same-sex couples as friends for it to be an issue," she said.

Not everyone at the school sees a big difference in public interest in the school between the Clinton and Obama eras.

"It's not really different between the mid-'90s and now," said Ellis Turner, associate head of the school. "This has happened now within a condensed period of time," he said of the protests, which he called "a low blow."

Turner said he didn't know whether protests would become a regular feature of school life. "We'll have to see," he said.

On Monday morning, an orderly counter-protest didn't prevent orderly learning.

"Guys, first-period class is getting ready to start," Turner told the massed students shortly before 8.

All but a few packed away their signs and headed into the school, leaving behind the five protesters on the other side of the street.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Analysis: 10 percent jobless is Obama's new world



WASHINGTON – For months he had warned it was coming but that didn't ease the political shockwaves for President Barack Obama when unemployment topped 10 percent.

A year after his election Obama finds it increasingly difficult to blame the sour economy on George W. Bush or offer reassurances that jobless Americans will soon find work.

Never mind that the economy itself grew in the last quarter, that the recession, as measured by the precise formulas used by economists, is over and that the number of jobs lost in October was less than one-third the number of job losses at the start of his presidency.

Those claims about the recession's end do not convince most people, who remain painfully aware of the unemployment rate.

At 10.2 percent, October unemployment climbed to chart-topping heights unseen in more than a quarter century. The bottom line is that more than 15 million Americans are out of work and 3.5 million lost their jobs while Obama was president. Expected or not, this is Obama's new reality.

"I won't let up until the Americans who want to find work can find work, and until all Americans can earn enough to raise their families and keep their businesses open," the president declared Friday.

That's a hopeful promise but not very realistic.

And it shows that, for the time being, action to tackle record budget deficits will simply have to wait.

Obama, appearing at the White House Rose Garden on Friday three hours after the jobless numbers were made public, said his administration was looking at additional spending for roads and bridges and energy efficient buildings. Additional tax cuts for businesses and steps to increase credit for small businesses were also on the bill.

The new unemployment rate also came on the same day Obama signed a $24 billion bill to extend jobless benefits and spur homebuying

In a sign of Democratic thinking, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who heads Congress's Joint Economic committee, said Democrats would consider new aid to states, an "infrastructure bank" to increase construction jobs and small business tax credits.

"I think we're witnessing a political renaissance about concerns about jobs," Lawrence Mishel, president of the labor-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said approvingly. "It will put the deficit concerns into their appropriate context."

What all this amounts to is another stimulus for the economy. Though don't look for Democrats to call it that; Democrats have a tough enough time debating the merits of the $787 billion stimulus Congress passed earlier this year.

Republicans were quick to pounce on the proposals. Internal polling by the Republican National Committee after Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia showed that Republican candidates could do well by arguing against additional spending while promoting job growth through tax cutting alone.

But in rhetoric and in deed, Obama is being forced to address an unemployment picture his economic team had long ago expected to avoid.

Many economists predict the jobless rate will rise again, peaking at 10.5 percent sometime next year before employment makes a turnaround in the spring. That still means unemployment will remain high for some time. The administration's own projections still see unemployment at 8 percent by the end of 2011.

Such lingering discomfort can have economic and political consequences.

Consumer spending likely won't increase rapidly. Foreclosures will continue to rise, hitting not just subprime borrowers, but prime mortgage holders as well. Commercial real estate lending, already teetering, could plunge in the face of rising vacancy and loan delinquency rates.

Politically, Democrats are staring at some damage — and the fear of unemployment — themselves. Exit polls Tuesday in the New Jersey and Virginia GOP victories showed that the economy was the top issue in the minds of voters. And national public opinion surveys show that a majority of the public doesn't believe Obama's economic policies are working.

Couple that with traditional losses by the president's party during midterm elections and Democrats have cause to worry about their own fate.

The unemployment number masks the fact that job losses slowed compared to past months — the work force went down by 190,000 in October compared to 219,000 in September. What's more, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said job losses in August and September had been overstated by 91,000.

In addition, the economy grew by 3.5 percent in the third quarter. And Christina Romer, a top Obama economic adviser, noted an increase in temporary service jobs. "That's often the first sign of firms kind of dipping their toe back into hiring people," she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

But since the start of the recession in December 2007, 7.3 million Americans have lost their jobs and key sectors — construction, manufacturing and retail trade — are still seeing significant declines.

The president has not been helped by reports of flaws in the administration's count of jobs created by the $787 billion stimulus.

Ten months into the job, Obama did not even try to lay the blame for the economy at Bush's feet, as he has in the past. His only criticism was implied.

"When we first came into office, our immediate goal was to stop the free fall that caused our economy to shrink at an alarming rate," he said. "We've succeeded in achieving that goal, as our economy grew last quarter for the first time in a year."

But Obama has already taken ownership of the economy.

Republicans, he noted wryly during a July speech in Michigan, were eager to blame him for the economy.

"That's fine," he added, "Give it to me!"

Four months later, it would be hard to give it back.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

UN nuclear inspectors head to Iran to visit site


U.N inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)


VIENNA – A team of U.N. inspectors went to Iran on Saturday to visit a recently revealed nuclear site, amid new efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency experts are slated to examine an unfinished uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom to verify it is for peaceful purposes. Disclosure of its existence last month raised international suspicion over the extent and aim of the country's nuclear program.

Iran insists its nuclear program serves to generate power and denies allegations it is trying to make nuclear weapons. Tehran asked for more time Friday to consider a U.N.-backed plan to ship much of its uranium to Russia for enrichment.

The U.S., Russia and France endorsed the deal Friday, but Iran's representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said Tehran wants until next week to respond

President Barack Obama called French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday to discuss Iran. "The two chiefs of state stated their perfect convergence of views on the Iranian nuclear issue," according to a statement from Sarkozy's office. It would not comment further on what they discussed or the timing for an eventual new international meeting on Iran.

The White House said Obama thanked Sarkozy for France's close cooperation on the issue and that they agreed to continue consultations in the weeks ahead. Obama also spoke with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, stressing the need for unity between Washington and Moscow on Iran, according to the White House.

Bernanke's trillion-dollar decision


Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke


The biggest decision of the economic recovery will be made in the next six months, and Barack Obama will have almost nothing to do with it.

Forget the debate over TARP, and never mind the questions about a second stimulus. This decision is about when to pull out $1 trillion that’s propping up the U.S. banking system. And it will be Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his Fed colleagues who make the call.

That’s hard enough for a White House that knows its political fortunes rise and fall with the economy.

What’s worse is that Bernanke and Obama – like many presidents and Fed chairmen past – won’t necessarily have the same goals for this trillion-dollar decision.

Fed chiefs worry about inflation. Bernanke wants to take the money out quickly enough to prevent the economy from overheating and causing a jump in prices that strangles growth. But move too fast, and the economic recovery runs out of fuel.

Presidents worry about jobs. Obama probably wouldn’t mind a little overheating, say, next summer – when voters are starting to make up their minds about the 2010 congressional elections, and he hopes the economy can shake the 10-percent unemployment rate doldrums.

“Any chairman of the Fed will do what’s right for the country, not what’s right for the administration,” said Ernest Patrikis, a partner at the law firm White & Case who spent 30 years at the New York Fed. “That’s his job – that’s why he’s apolitical.”

“The exit will be so difficult,” said economist Joseph Brusuelas of Moody’s Economy.com. “Bernanke wants to engineer a recovery that does not include inflation. Obama wants a more robust recovery and like many political actors may be willing to forgo a little inflation for a little more employment.”

The White House is already worried that jobs won’t be coming back fast enough next year, Fed or no Fed.

Obama economic adviser Christina Romer warned a congressional panel Thursday that the jobs picture will remain “painfully weak” through 2010, with a seriously elevated unemployment rate for another year.

So all the White House can do is watch and wait, and hope it doesn’t pay a political price for any missteps by Fed officials they can’t control.

“It’s a dicey thing to do, and they know it,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee. “They have to be careful.”

The Fed’s moves are shrouded in secrecy, their prerogative to move the levers of the economy closely guarded – so much so that there’s been a recent a rise in populist anger about this all-powerful agency that exists largely outside the democratic process.

But because the Fed is an independent agency, it’s even considered bad form for a president to talk much about it – and indeed, the White House refused to comment for this story.

Last fall, the Fed injected $ 1 trillion-plus into the nation’s banking system – at times, by providing financial institutions with cash to cover their losses as the global meltdown spread. Now Fed officials are already talking about the need to withdraw the funds injected into the economy during the darkest days of the crisis, moves that are credited with largely saving the United States from plummeting into an economic depression.

“Given the highly unusual economic and financial circumstances, judging when the time is appropriate to remove policy accommodation, and then calibrating that removal, will be challenging,” said Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn in a speech to the Cato Institute on Sept. 30. “Still, we need to be ready to take the necessary actions when the time comes, and we will be.”

Translation: “policy accommodation” is the cash, and “the necessary actions” are the decision to ease it out of the economy.”

And is the Fed prepared to the pull the trigger? “We will be” seems to cover it.

Already, the Fed is already showing some signs of restlessness. On Monday, the New York Fed tested its “reverse-repo” process -- one tool the Fed could use to use to pull the money out when the time comes. The test run was widely interpreted as a sign the Fed is getting ready to act – but when, nobody knows.

The Fed can also tap on the brakes at the first sign of inflation by raising interest rates, now near zero. The Fed has said it will keep the rock-bottom rates for an extended period, but it won’t be more specific when they could go up – a decision that is bound to be controversial when it comes.

Patrikis thinks the Fed will make a decision on withdrawing liquidity either during the second quarter of 2010, or after the November elections that year – but that it won’t make any dramatic moves in the run-up to Election Day.

Still, he said, it is too early to predict what the Fed might do. And Patrikis points out that Obama will have indirect input into the decision, because there are two vacancies on the Fed’s board now that Obama will fill in the coming months. The president will surely select board members whose economic judgment he trusts.

Between the two vacancies, a member who Obama appointed earlier this year and Bernanke himself, the president will likely have named four of the seven members of the Fed’s Board of Governors by the time they make the call.


But the Fed knows actions like that can have political consequences. “There are few politicians who like higher interest rates,” said one former Fed official. “And President Obama is a politician.” That said, the official continued, “I suspect they will be broadly on the same page.”

That’s because Obama, too, has a longer-term time frame in mind: 2012, when he will be running for reelection. It’s in Obama’s interest for the Fed to take inflation prevention measures now so that he doesn’t have to run a tricky reelection campaign in a high-inflation environment.

Tensions between Presidents and Fed chairmen are nothing new.

In the 1980s, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker declared war on inflation. His strategy: raising interest rates. Volcker jacked the Fed funds rate to 20 percent, which contributed to the deep early 1980s recession that caused howls of protest from the White House and incumbent Republicans on Capitol Hill. The Fed, grumbled then-Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), should “get its boot off the neck of the economy.”

Nonetheless, Volcker’s strategy worked, and the Fed broke the back of the inflation cycle. Ironically, Volcker is a top economic adviser to Obama today.

In the 1990s, President George H.W. Bush blamed Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan for his election loss to Bill Clinton. Bush didn’t believe Greenspan was lowering interest rates fast enough to pull the nation out of a recession – which gave Clinton, with his famous “it’s the economy, stupid” campaign, an opening to trounce the elder Bush.

Mark Gertler, a professor of economics at New York University, says the lesson of history is that politicians should not interfere with the central bank. “If the Fed doesn’t act independently, the economy is endangered,” said Gertler. “It would be dangerous if the administration appeared to be interfering with the Fed.”

Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) doubts they’ll be any daylight between Obama and Bernanke – who Obama just reappointed over the summer at a time when Wall Street needed a signal that there would be continuity at the Fed.

He argues that Bernanke and Obama will have the same agenda in 2010: fixing the economy.

“I think they are very much in sync,” said Frank. Asked about potential divergence between the Fed and the White House, he said, “That reflects a journalist’s hope that there will be friction. Obama and Bernanke have both argued that at some point they’re going to unwind this.”

Friday, October 23, 2009

WH releases official Obama family photo; high-profile week for first lady


This week the White House released the much-anticipated official Obama family photo on its Flickr page. The portrait was taken in the Green Room of the White House on September 1 by famed Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz, notable for her decades of work capturing the images of rock stars and Hollywood's elite as well as for her multimillion-dollar fortune's recent collapse. The seated and beaming first family looks happy and relaxed, with Sasha and Malia Obama each draping an arm over mom and dad.

Official Obama family portrait

Michelle Obama style-watchers may want to note she’s not in a sleeveless dress: The bare arms in her solo official portrait caused a minor stir when it was released last February.

The portrait adds to a flurry of Michelle Obama publicity this week. On Wednesday she hosted a "healthy kids fair" for approximately 100 Washington D.C.-area schoolchildren on the South Lawn of the White House. During the event, part of her ongoing effort to educate children about the importance of proper diet and exercise, the first lady wowed onlookers by swiveling a Hula-Hoop 142 times before it finally hit the ground. Not quite done there, Mrs. Obama also took off her shoes to run an obstacle course with hurdles.

Also on the agenda: tackling the 10 questions segment of “The Jay Leno Show” on Friday night. The rapid-fire “Ten @ Ten” questions — fielded recently by Justin Timberlake, Sen. John McCain, Tom Cruise, and LeBron James — have made for some water-cooler conversations after the show, which has been tanking in the ratings of late. Mrs. Obama's appearance with Leno is notable but certainly not unusual, as former first lady Laura Bush appeared as a guest on “The Tonight Show” when it was hosted by Leno during her husband's presidency.

Also this week, a new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that the American people view Michelle much more favorably than they do her husband or Vice President Joe Biden, a change from the numbers just after the first family took up residence in the White House.

Approval numbers for the president, meanwhile, have been sliding; the USAToday/Gallup poll notes that Obama is viewed favorably by 55 percent of respondents, down from 68 perecent just after the election. Insiders were quick to note when Laura Bush raised her profile during the last days of her husband’s embattled term; similarly, her successor’s PR efforts are getting noticed.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

US scientist accused of trying to sell secrets

Prosecutors say a scientist who worked on the cutting edge of moon exploration has been caught trying to sell classified secrets to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence agent.

Stewart David Nozette, who is credited with helping discover evidence of water on the moon and has been a leader in recent lunar exploration work, was arrested Monday and charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information, the Justice Department said.

Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md., was expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials said Nozette did not immediately have a lawyer.

Nozette worked in various jobs for the Energy Department and NASA. In 1989 and 1990, he worked for the White House's National Space Council.

He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that is credited with discovering water on the south pole of the moon. He also worked at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he designed highly advanced technology, from approximately 1990 to 1999.

At Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department's top secret and "critical nuclear weapon design information" clearances. DOE clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

Nozette also held top offices at the Alliance for Competitive Technology, a nonprofit corporation that he organized. Between January 2000 and February 2006, Nozette, through his company, had several agreements to develop advanced technology for the U.S. government.

To build a case against Nozette, FBI agents posed as officers of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and the criminal complaint suggests why they thought their suspect would take the bait.

From 1998 to 2008, the complaint alleges, Nozette was a technical adviser for a consultant company that was wholly owned by the Israeli government. Nozette was paid about $225,000 over that period, the court papers say.

Then, in January of this year, Nozette allegedly traveled to another foreign country with two computer thumb drives and apparently did not return with them. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist said that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows.

The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law. In Jerusalem, Israeli government officials said they were not familiar with the case and had never heard of the suspect.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Tuesday that Nozette had past business dealings with Israel Aerospace Industries, a government-owned defense contractor. IAI declined to comment.

The affidavit by FBI agent Leslie Martell said that on Sept. 3, Nozette received a telephone call from an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Nozette agreed to meet with the agent later that day at a hotel in Washington and in the subsequent meeting the two discussed Nozette's willingness to work for Israeli intelligence, the affidavit said.

Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.

The scientist also allegedly said he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.

Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged.

According to the court papers, Nozette and the undercover agent met soon afterward in the same hotel, where the scientist allegedly said that while he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall classified information by memory.

Nozette allegedly told the agent, "Well, I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ... they don't expect me to do this for free."

About a week later, FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box, asking Nozette to answer a list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The agents provided a $2,000 cash payment.

Nozette was later captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. The next day, agents retrieved the sealed envelope and found, among other things, a one-page document containing answers to the questions and an encrypted computer thumb drive.

One answer contained information classified as secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead surveillance system. Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

Agents then asked for more information, and again he allegedly provided it, in exchange for a cash payment of $9,000.

Over the course of his career, Nozette performed some of his research at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.