quarta-feira, 15 de julho de 2009
terça-feira, 14 de julho de 2009
O relatório final da comissão do 11 de Setembro
«The 9-11 Commission Report
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government Edition
The Commission’s Final Report provides a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. It also includes recommendations designed to guard against future attacks. Below you will find the official Government edition of the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.
The Full Report (7 MB, 585 pages) has been made available in its entirety, as a single PDF file. The report is also available as a collection of smaller PDFs arranged in a browse table based on the Final Report's table of contents. An Executive Summary (344 KB, 35 pages) of the Final Report is also available.»
Ler tudo aqui:
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/911comm.html
(com a devida vénia ao Relações Internacionais, excelente blogue de Ana Cristina Ferreira, já aqui analisado há uns meses)
O 'stimulus package' não está a ser suficiente: 'too low, too slow'
Análise de Julian Zelizer, professor de História na Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, citado no CNNpolitics.com:
«PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- Vice President Joseph Biden has acknowledged that the $787 billion economic stimulus program has not yet had the impact that the White House was looking for.
"We misread how bad the economy was," Biden said during an interview.
But Biden's account downplays the damaging compromises that the administration made on the stimulus package back in February, as well as the problems that have emerged in implementing the program.
Back in January and February, when the administration and Congress completed their work on the economic stimulus bill, several Democrats and liberal pundits warned that President Barack Obama's stimulus was not going to be enough to revitalize the economy.
While Republicans argued that Congress should do nothing other than cut taxes, Obama's Democratic critics said that another bad scenario was to pass an expensive and highly visible measure that would not actually accomplish the job. This would become a recipe for political attacks down the road, evidence that government can't help achieve economic stability and that President Obama's judgment on policy was suspect.
And there is some early evidence that this scenario is now playing out. According to the most recent Gallup Poll, many of the cherished independent voters in swing states who had shifted toward the Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections are now unhappy with the president's policies.
While President Obama's approval ratings remain at the high level of 56 percent, according to Gallup, these independents are concerned that the president's programs are resulting in too much government spending without achieving clear results.
With two million jobs having been lost since Obama started his presidency, it is difficult for many Americans to react well when Director of the White House National Economic Council Lawrence Summers says, "the stimulus is on track...."
The early criticism is now worth revisiting. When Congress agreed to the final stimulus in February 2009, liberal critics offered two major complaints. The first was that the level of spending in the bill was too low given the dire state of the economy.
"I'm not sure if the $800 billion stimulus plan is adequate to the problem," said Nobel Prize- winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman at Willamette University in January before the final deal had been reached. "We're facing one hell of a crisis and we'll need more than a Band-Aid . . . My guess is that the administration will be back later this year for a second round."
After initially complaining that the stimulus was too small, liberals were then furious when Obama agreed to cuts in the size of the stimulus in response to a small group of Senate centrists.
The second criticism had to do with where the money was directed. The liberal critics argued that the final stimulus bill focused too much on infrastructure programs and tax cuts, with not enough assistance being provided to state and local governments. Cuts in the legislative process eliminated funding for states to help with food stamps, school construction and more.
Finally, there is a problem with the stimulus that did not really become clear until after the bill passed. The implementation has been flawed. Currently, only a small percentage of the stimulus funds has been spent. While countries such as France have immediately made use of their stimulus money, the United States has gone slower.
Rightly concerned about the potential misuse of funds, the administration has moved too far in the direction of delaying the distribution of funds. The government's grinding bureaucratic process has also slowed down progress. And the U.S. relies heavily on third parties rather than directly spending the money.
The stimulus is experiencing problems similar to those of President Franklin Roosevelt's Public Works Administration. In 1933, the PWA was slowed down by administrator Harold Ickes due to concerns about corruption and inefficient projects. Ickes, who believed that PWA faced the "unattainable ideal of administering the greatest fund for construction in the history of the world without scandal," centralized decision-making and insisted on approving virtually every decision personally.
While many of his worries had merit, the White House was unhappy that needed dollars were not getting out the door and into the hands of workers. Roosevelt was fortunate because he could rely on Harry Hopkins and the Federal Emergency Relief Agency, which spent money as quickly as possible. Eventually, despite its problems, the PWA created a lot of jobs and accelerated the development of the South and the West.
As the unemployment rate continues to rise and the stock market swings up and down, it is difficult for many Americans to understand the purpose of allocating so much money but then not spending it as soon as possible. The worse that economic conditions become, the harder it is for existing levels of funding to have their desired impact.
Seeing results is important politically if the White House needs to ask for more money to jump-start the economy. The stimulus has become a litmus test through which to evaluate the president and this problem compounds the challenge of passing health care and other measures sought by Obama.
The best strategy for Obama is not to react as Biden and Summers did. Rather, the best strategy is to fix this. With all the doom and gloom about the president, he still enjoys strong standing with the public, and Democrats remain in a good political position.
It is worth remembering that many of FDR's earliest programs, such as the National Recovery Administration, did not succeed, and others, such as the PWA, experienced some problems during the implementation phase. But in the end, FDR's New Deal is widely considered by most historians to have been a tremendous success
While the economy was not fully revived until World War II, the New Deal provided relief. It significantly and steadily brought down levels of unemployment starting during FDR's first term. The jobless rate dropped from a high of nearly 25 percent in 1932 to just above 9 percent in 1937.
Even if, as some conservatives insist, you somehow consider people who were working in New Deal public works jobs to be jobless -- a dubious claim -- the unemployment rate fell by more than 10 percentage points during this period. The only rise in unemployment occurred in 1937-1938, and that was precipitated by FDR's reducing levels of public spending.
Today, the Obama administration cannot afford to stand still on the stimulus. The time has come to correct what's gone wrong with the existing program by speeding up spending and to consider the possibility of making a politically difficult request for more.»
Obama responde a Anderson Cooper sobre aparentes contradições com Joe Biden sobre a Economia
Será que Obama menosprezou eventuais falhanços do 'stimulus package', como Biden deixou escapar? O Presidente garante que não, em entrevista dada no Gana a Anderson Cooper.
A primeira visita oficial a África: frases fortes de Obama
Barack escolheu o Gana para o apontar como um exemplo de excepção em África, que escapou à corrupção e se mantém como um caso de sucesso. Recusou o discurso paternalista e pôs o dedo na ferida sobre o que tem falhado em África. Mais uma vez, um discurso notável. Começa a ser repetitivo dizer isto sobre Obama, mas continua a ser sempre assim...
«O sangue de África corre-me nas veias e a história da minha família acompanha os triunfos e as tragédias de África»
«A história está do lado dos bravos africanos (que lutam pela democracia), não dos que usam golpes ou mudam constituições para subir ao poder. África não precisa de homens fortes, precisa de instituições fortes»
«África não é uma crua caricatura de um continente em guerra. Mas para demasiados africanos, o conflito é uma parte da vida, tão constante como o sol»
«Há ainda demasiadas crianças a morrer de doenças que não as deviam matar. Quando crianças morrem por causa de uma picada de mosquito, ou quando mães morrem no parto, então sabemos que temos mais progressos a fazer»
«O século XXI será marcado por aquilo que acontecer não apenas em Roma, Moscovo ou Washington, mas também no Gana»
segunda-feira, 13 de julho de 2009
Dick Cheney deu instruções à CIA para esconder plano de contraterrorismo
«WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.
Panetta did not agree.
Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled.
Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance program that was the subject of an inspectors general report this past week. That report noted that Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in Bush's inner circle could even know about the secret program.
But revelations about Cheney's role in making decisions for the CIA on whether to notify Congress came as a surprise to some on the committees, said another government official. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program publicly.
An effort to reach Cheney was unsuccessful.
A former intelligence official, who was familiar with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden's tenure at the CIA, said Hayden never communicated with the president or vice president about the now-canceled program and was under no restrictions from Cheney about congressional briefings. The official said Hayden was briefed only two or three times on the program.
Exactly what the counterterrorism program was meant to do remains a mystery. The former intelligence official said it was not related to the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention program. Nor was it part of a wider classified electronic surveillance program that was the subject of a government report to Congress this past week.
The official characterized it as an embryonic intelligence gathering effort, and only sporadically active. He said it was hoped to yield intelligence that would be used to conduct a secret mission or missions in another country _ that is, a covert operation. But it never matured to that point.
The government official with direct knowledge of the Panetta briefing and the former intelligence official said the CIA has numerous efforts ongoing under its existing authorities that have not yet been briefed to Congress. He said they are not yet known to be viable for intelligence gathering.
The Cheney revelation comes as the House of Representatives is preparing to debate a bill that would require the White House to expand the number of members who are told about covert operations. The White House has threatened a veto over concerns that wider congressional notifications could compromise the secrecy of the operations.
That provision, however, would have no effect on programs like this one.
The former intelligence official familiar with Hayden said Congress has a right to contemporaneous information about all CIA activities. But he said there are so many in such early stages that briefing Congress on every one would be too time consuming for both the CIA and the congressional committees.
The New York Times initially reported about Cheney's direction not to tell Congress of the program on its Web site Saturday.»
in Huffingtonpost.com
domingo, 12 de julho de 2009
sexta-feira, 10 de julho de 2009
A 'armadilha' do 'stimulus package', por Paul Krugman
Artigo do Prémio Nobel da Economia, no New York Times:
«As soon as the Obama administration-in-waiting announced its stimulus plan — this was before Inauguration Day — some of us worried that the plan would prove inadequate. And we also worried that it might be hard, as a political matter, to come back for another round.
I’ll talk about that trap, and how he can escape it, in a moment. First, however, let me step back and ask how concerned citizens should be reacting to the disappointing economic news. Should we be patient and give the Obama plan time to work? Should we call for bigger, bolder actions? Or should we declare the plan a failure and demand that the administration call the whole thing off?
Before you answer, consider what happens in normal times.
When there’s an ordinary, garden-variety recession, the job of fighting that recession is assigned to the Federal Reserve. The Fed responds by cutting interest rates in an incremental fashion. Reducing rates a bit at a time, it keeps cutting until the economy turns around. At times it pauses to assess the effects of its work; if the economy is still weak, the cutting resumes.
During the last recession, the Fed repeatedly cut rates as the slump deepened — 11 times over the course of 2001. Then, amid early signs of recovery, it paused, giving the rate cuts time to work. When it became clear that the economy still wasn’t growing fast enough to create jobs, more rate cuts followed.
Normally, then, we expect policy makers to respond to bad job numbers with a combination of patience and resolve. They should give existing policies time to work, but they should also consider making those policies stronger.
And that’s what the Obama administration should be doing right now with its fiscal stimulus. (It’s important to remember that the stimulus was necessary because the Fed, having cut rates all the way to zero, has run out of ammunition to fight this slump.) That is, policy makers should stay calm in the face of disappointing early results, recognizing that the plan will take time to deliver its full benefit. But they should also be prepared to add to the stimulus now that it’s clear that the first round wasn’t big enough.
Unfortunately, the politics of fiscal policy are very different from the politics of monetary policy. For the past 30 years, we’ve been told that government spending is bad, and conservative opposition to fiscal stimulus (which might make people think better of government) has been bitter and unrelenting even in the face of the worst slump since the Great Depression. Predictably, then, Republicans — and some Democrats — have treated any bad news as evidence of failure, rather than as a reason to make the policy stronger.
Hence the danger that the Obama administration will find itself caught in a political-economic trap, in which the very weakness of the economy undermines the administration’s ability to respond effectively.
As I said, I was afraid this would happen. But that’s water under the bridge. The question is what the president and his economic team should do now.
It’s perfectly O.K. for the administration to defend what it’s done so far. It’s fine to have Vice President Joseph Biden touring the country, highlighting the many good things the stimulus money is doing.
It’s also reasonable for administration economists to call for patience, and point out, correctly, that the stimulus was never expected to have its full impact this summer, or even this year.
But there’s a difference between defending what you’ve done so far and being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr. Biden’s admission that the administration “misread” the economy, declaring that “there’s nothing we would have done differently.” There was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint that the current administration might share some of its predecessor’s inability to admit mistakes. And that’s an attitude neither Mr. Obama nor the country can afford.
What Mr. Obama needs to do is level with the American people. He needs to admit that he may not have done enough on the first try. He needs to remind the country that he’s trying to steer the country through a severe economic storm, and that some course adjustments — including, quite possibly, another round of stimulus — may be necessary.
What he needs, in short, is to do for economic policy what he’s already done for race relations and foreign policy — talk to Americans like adults.»
Barómetro semanal: 61 por cento de aprovação
A Taxa de Aprovação de Obama mantém-se acima dos 60 pontos.
Aqui vai a última sondagem CNN/Opinion Research Corporation:
-- Aprovação: 61%
-- Reprovação: 37%
quinta-feira, 9 de julho de 2009
quarta-feira, 8 de julho de 2009
Jogador de xadrez
«Obama é como um jogador de xadrez a jogar em vários tabuleiros e começou o jogo com uma abertura pouco usual. Não discordo da opção. Se quer transmitir ao mundo islâmico a mensagem de que a América tem uma atitude aberta para dialogar e não está limitada a uma única opção, o confronto físico, o discurso pode ser muito útil. Mas, se se continuar convencido de que cada crise pode ser gerida com um discurso filosófico, ficará enredado nos problemas wilsonianos»
HENRY KISSINGER, antigo secretário de Estado dos EUA, em entrevista ao Der Spiegel, citado pelo jornal 'i'
Congresso 2010: será que os democratas vão pagar o preço da crise?
«NEW YORK (CNN) -- They are two presidents from different parties but have striking similarities.
President Obama maintains that investing in key areas such as health care will help stabilize the economy.
Former President Ronald Reagan and current President Obama are incredibly popular, and both faced rising unemployment early on.
Reagan's experience could be instructive for Democrats today; the GOP lost 26 seats in the 1982 elections. Reagan's popularity could not trump double-digit unemployment.
"If we look back at 1982, as soon as the unemployment rate hit 10 percent, there was a political dynamic that changed significantly ... and it became much harder for the incumbent party to be able to make their case," said Daniel Clifton, head of policy research at Strategas, an investment strategy and policy research firm.
But Reagan was fighting joblessness, inflation and high interest rates. Obama has a full plate, but inflation and high interest rates are not on it.
Nonetheless, the jobless rate today is at 9.5 percent, which is above the peak of 8 percent the White House predicted earlier this year. The administration now concedes 10 percent is likely in the next couple of months.
While some economists have long forecast jobless rates this high, Vice President Joe Biden now admits that the administration "misread how bad the economy was."
Not exactly, according to the president.
"I would actually -- rather than say misread, we had incomplete information," Obama recently told NBC.
But House Minority Leader John Boehner on Wednesday called both explanations "the greatest fabrication I've seen since I've been in Congress."
"I sat through those meetings at the White House with the president and the vice president, and trust me, there's not one person that sat in those rooms that didn't know how serious our economic crisis was," he said.
The White House has stressed that the mess is not its doing, saying that it inherited the economic problems from the Bush administration.
And the president, officials say, is working quickly to fix the economy by investing in and trying to reform energy, health care and the banking system, and by promoting a historic $787 billion economic stimulus package. Watch more on the rise in green jobs »
But two key questions are emerging: How long will the public be patient and give the president's plans time to work? And how big a price will his party pay next year if the jobless rate tops 10 percent?
Clifton says that at the 10 percent figure, "you probably know multiple people who are unemployed and you begin to worry about if you are going to be unemployed yourself, or maybe your spouse, and it creates an anxiety among voters."
And that anxiety may translate to an opening for Republicans to pounce on.
"The first midterm elections for a president are often referendums on his rule and his performance," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. "If he fails to match public expectations that he's going to fix the economy or if the economy gets worse in the view of the public, that could hurt the Democratic Party very much in 2010."
Tina Brown, co-founder and editor of the DailyBeast.com, said the current economic situation has left Obama vulnerable.
"I think there's a huge vulnerability there. I think that Obama has lost focus, or at any rate made us feel that he's lost focus, which perhaps has more important repercussions."
David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, said that Obama's economic plan disregarded "better ideas that could have gone to work right away" -- which leaves him and Democrats vulnerable.
Democrats, however, have a solid majority in Congress, and it will be more than a year until they face voters again.
In the meantime, the White House will have to convince Americans that things are getting better, or at least not getting worse. Obama has promised to save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs. The economy this year is losing, on average, 564,000 jobs every month, according to statistics.
It is impossible to verify whether the president specifically has saved any. And even if a few hundred thousand stimulus jobs can be created, that would not hold back the flood of private-sector job cuts still expected.
That could make for tricky politics from now through 2010.»
in CNNpolitics.com
O lado Palin dos States...
Uma peça de Joe Kovacs, na WorldNetDaily:
«WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Many Americans from coast-to-coast turned Independence Day 2009 into a "counterattack" against what they call the high-spending, freedom-shrinking policies of President Barack Obama and members of Congress, irrespective of party affiliation.
With some 2,000 rallies taking place in all 50 states, cities such as West Palm Beach, Fla., were typical of the angst vented against recent government action.
Approximately 1,000 people turned out in this affluent region for an evening featuring brief speeches and hundreds of homemade signs.
Among those carrying a placard was Barbara Allen of Juno Beach, Fla.
"We have the wrong people in Congress right now," Allen told WND. "There's 535 of them and there's a lot of bad guys in there on a bad mission and we need to counterattack and get 'em out. The bad mission is we're gonna be in a state of socialism here if we don't stop this nonsense of spending [and] spending."
She stressed the tea partiers, who take their name from the 1773 Boston Tea Party, are promoting the principles of the U.S. Constitution.
"We're about common sense. We're not about Democrat, Republican, Libertarian. We want our freedom. We don't want to lose our freedom."
The holiday get-together was a follow-up to the first national tea party that took place on April 15, the deadline to file federal income tax returns.
Yesterday's event attracted participants of all ages, including Jenna Wessels, 18, of Fort Lauderdale, and her 19-year-old sister, Katie. They and their father, David Wessels, were inspired to take part in two South Florida tea parties the same day.
Katie and Jenna Wessels of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., take a stand against higher taxes at the West Palm Beach tea party July 4, 2009 (WND photo / Joe Kovacs)
"America needs to wake up and realize what's going on with our country," Jenna said.
"They're not going to be able to afford anything after they get taxed," added Katie. "Our generation is going to be even more in debt than they already are."
Val Anderson of Lake Worth, Fla., said he showed up to protest "the excessive, obscene government spending."
Referring to higher taxes on the way, he sported a suggestive sign reading, "Bend over, here it comes."
"If the cap and trade bill is passed, the taxes on your light bill can go up from $800 to $1,000 a month and your house will have to meet the new green standards if you're a homeowner," he said. "If you can't afford it, what are you going to do? Another government program to pay for it? How much money do we have to put out? How far does government have to go into out lives and we don't have a lot of choices?"
Lisa Fay and Mern Direnzo of Jupiter, Fla., indicated they were fed up with what they feel is a clear government push toward socialism.
"All of his policies seem to lead that way and it has failed in every other country that it's been tried in, and we cannot afford it," Fay told WND.
"Every day they come up with something new to oppress the people," Direnzo added. "Health care, making us have our houses inspected to sell them, putting in light bulbs that we don't want to put in."
Juno Copley of West Palm Beach said she showed up "to protest what the 'Obamanation' is doing to us as American citizens."
"We feel that he's trying to tax us out of the ballpark, and we think he's trying to take over and be a dictator just like in South America and Honduras," she said. "We think he's inexperienced and sophomoric and doesn't know what he'd doing and he's got the Congress diddling along right behind him for their own benefits."
Her fellow city resident, Michael Angelo Pancia, elaborated on the "dictatorship" theme.
"Obama and the Democrats are starting to act like the Kremlin," Pancia said. "They're going to tell us what we can eat, what we can do. They're going to tell us how to run our lives, and we don't want it."
Did the event give people hope their concerns would be addressed?
"I'll be optimistic in four years when [Obama's] out of office," said Chris Zoeller of Jupiter. He's a one-term president."
After voicing their opinions among themselves, the tea partiers then paraded into a nearby section of the city where a traditional Independence Day celebration was taking place with music and fireworks.
Some onlookers appeared surprised, as they watched with open jaws as they read the messages on the tea party signs.
One man apparently upset by the demonstration shouted, "Stop politicizing the Fourth of July!"
Some 50 miles north of West Palm Beach, some ralliers at a tea party in Port St. Lucie, Fla., claimed the city was harassing them by posting its own sign in front of their displays in "Section B" of a Freedomfest celebration.
The city's sign stated: "The city of Port St. Lucie does not endorse, support, or condone the views or products of the organizations or individuals in this section. However we are required to make this space available to avoid the cost of litigation in reference to Section B."
A member of the Treasure Coast Tea Party who posted video on YouTube called Port St. Lucie's sign "atrocious."»
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