Obama to Unveil an Ambitious Budget Plan
(Washington Post)

post from memeorandum on 21 February 2009 05:20:00 PM. © memeorandum

Washington Post:
Obama to Unveil an Ambitious Budget Plan — President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on business and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq …

Read The Full Article:
http://www.memeorandum.com/090221/p38#a090221p38

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Jobs Elude Some Bush Ex-Officials (Joann S.
Lublin/Wall Street Journal)

post from memeorandum on 21 February 2009 05:10:05 PM. © memeorandum

Joann S. Lublin / Wall Street Journal:
Jobs Elude Some Bush Ex-Officials — The jobless rate is hanging high — for many of the roughly 3,000 political appointees who served President George W. Bush. Finding work has proved a far tougher task than those appointees expected. — “This is not a great time for anyone to be job hunting …

Read The Full Article:
http://www.memeorandum.com/090221/p32#a090221p32

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FDL Book Salon Welcomes Deborah Nelson: The War
Behind Me

post from Firedoglake on 21 February 2009 05:00:37 PM. © Firedoglake

As Deborah Nelson makes clear in passages like the above, (from her new book The War Behind Me,) chronicling a seemingly endless accumulation of war crimes can become monotonous. The evil can come to seem, in Hannah Arendt?s term, ?banal?, and one is[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://firedoglake.com/2009/02/21/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-deborah-nelson-the-war-
behind-me/

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Phil Gramm's Extreme Makeover

post from Crooks and Liars on 21 February 2009 05:00:27 PM. © Crooks and Liars

As the crisis of the American financial system deepens, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm is a consensus choice as one of its chief culprits. In recent weeks, the New York Times, Time and Nobel prize-winning economists alike have suggested a warm seat awaits Gramm in Dante's inner circle. Which is why on the very day the UBS vice-chairman's firm was sued by the Justice Department for its role in a mushrooming tax evasion scandal, Gramm took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to blame others for the economic calamity he helped create.

As ThinkProgress noted, Gramm in his extreme makeover pointed the finger at the right-wing's usual suspects. In Gramm's revisionist history, Fannie and Freddie, the Community Reinvestment Act and, above all, the poor are responsible for the nation's economic plight. Three months after the New York Times concluded "deregulator looks back, unswayed," Gramm insisted the 1990's deregulation crusade he led had nothing to do with it:

"I believe that a strong case can be made that the financial crisis stemmed from a confluence of two factors. The first was the unintended consequences of a monetary policy, developed to combat inventory cycle recessions in the last half of the 20th century, that was not well suited to the speculative bubble recession of 2001. The second was the politicization of mortgage lending."

Gramm's fingerprints, of course, have been all over the financial meltdown and steep downturn gripping the U.S. economy over the past year. In his role as an adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign, Gramm famously decried the "mental recession" and mocked the United States as a "nation of whiners." But it was his "Enron Loophole," codified in the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which not only enabled the Enron disaster but opened "the door to unregulated trading of credit default swaps, the financial instruments blamed, in part, for the current economic meltdown." And the Texas Senator's machinations in the Senate to create the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act helped produce the subprime mortgage cataclysm, including catastrophic losses at UBS since joining the company in 2002.

Which brings us to a final irony of Gramm's extreme makeover. As it turns out, before he became a UBS vice-chairman in 2002, a company which this week agreed to pay a $780 million criminal fine and admitted to conspiring to defraud the IRS, then Senator Phil Gramm helped lead the 1990's Republican war to gut the Internal Revenue Service. Perrspectives has the details.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/phil-gramms-extreme-makeover

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Former Bush administration officials are having
trouble finding work.

post from Think Progress on 21 February 2009 05:00:00 PM. © Think Progress

The Wall Street Journal reports today that “for many of the roughly 3,000 political appointees who served President George W. Bush, [f]inding work has proved a far tougher task than those appointees expected”:

Only 25% to 30% of ex-Bush officials seeking full-time jobs have succeeded, estimated Eric Vautour, a Washington recruiter at Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. That “is much, much worse” than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton left the White House, he said. At least half those presidents’ senior staffers landed employment within a month after the administration ended, Mr. Vautour recalled.

Carlos Gutierrez, Commerce secretary under President Bush, blamed the struggling economy. “This is not a great time for anyone to be job hunting, including numerous former political appointees,” he said. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales feels the same way, but his successor, Michael Mukasey, didn’t seem to have any problem landing a job. (HT: Atrios)

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/21/bush-officials-jobs/

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More Reasons Why FAA's Ny/NJ/PHL Airspace
Redesign Is A Fraudulent Money-Grab

post from HIT THE BOBBY STURGELL "EJECT" BUTTON on 21 February 2009 04:59:00 PM. © HIT THE BOBBY STURGELL "EJECT" BUTTON

http://blog.flynextgen.com/2009/01/08/commercial-air-traffic-down-dramatically-in-november/
January 8, 2009...9:29 pm
Commercial air traffic down dramatically in November, 2008
Jump to Comments
From the Airports Council International (press release):
Worldwide passenger traffic dropped sharply by 8 percent in November 2008 as compared to November 2007, according to reports from the 165 key airports that participate in the monthly advance reporting system. International traffic, previously the driver of robust growth during the first half of 2008, decreased in November by 5.8 percent.
Worldwide passenger trends - through November 2008
More sobering statistics: North American domestic passenger traffic was down 12% year-over-year; global air freight dropped 15%.

Read The Full Article:
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-reasons-why-faas-nynjphl-airspace.
html

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More Reasons Why FAA's NY/NJ/PHL Airspace
Redesign Is A Fraudulent Money-Grab

post from HIT THE BOBBY STURGELL "EJECT" BUTTON on 21 February 2009 04:59:00 PM. © HIT THE BOBBY STURGELL "EJECT" BUTTON

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Sun Rises, Market Falls

post from FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right on 21 February 2009 04:45:00 PM. © FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right

One of the more unapologetically idiotic notions being advanced by certain conservative commentators is the idea that the poor performance of the stock markets represents a negative reaction to Barack Obama's stimulus package.

For one thing, the trading markets aren't gauges of overall economic health. They are gauges of future anticipated profits for the large corporations that make up their components. In the long run, certainly, these two things should be correlated. But they needn't be perfectly so: an oil price shock, for instance, is possibly good for the profitability of Exxon, while being damaging to the economy at large. Likewise, the announcement of a plan to take over and turnaround Citigroup, perhaps a necessary evil for economic recovery, would certainly not be good for Citigroup's shareholders, who would probably get wiped out in the process.

That's not the the basis of my critique, however. Rather, it's that this line of argumentation often cites "evidence" that flies in the face of Finance 101.

Robust markets like major stock indicies are fairly good at incorporating information. They don't literally have to see an event occur in order to "price in" its effects. On Wednesday, for example, Barack Obama signed the stimulus package into law. Once this occurred, the prospects for the passage of the stimulus rose to 100%. But what had been the probability of the stimulus bill passing the very second before Obama put pen to paper? Probably about 99.999999%, accounting for the small probability of a hostile takeover by space aliens in the intervening moments. The performance of the market in reaction to such events tells us no more about how it feels about them than it does to the rising of the sun.

To the extent that we can learn anything about the market's preference for the stimulus, we'd instead need to look at those moments where the passage of a stimulus package became more or less certain, or its magnitude became significantly larger or smaller than previously anticipated. In the article I linked to above, professors Bittlingmayer and Hazlett claim to have isolated a couple of such moments:

More pointedly, key political victories for the Team Obama spending plan have not been viewed as buying opportunities on Wall Street. A string of negative market reactions began with the December 18 announcement of a stimulus bill of $700 billion (Dow down 2.5%), continued with the January 7 announcement that the actual plan would be ?on the high side? (-2.7%) and continued with last week?s 61-36 Senate vote supporting the Administration?s fiscal plan. The White House victory and the new bank bail-out plan announced the following day by Treasury Secretary Geithner were met with a 5% wipe-out in the DJI, and a decline in Treasury bond yields, indicating a ?flight to quality.?

Bittlingmayer and Hazlett's memories turn out to be rather selective. Take the December 18th date they describe in their article, when the markets fell by 2.5 percent. On this date, according to the Wall Street Journal Obama had outlined the broad parameters of stimulus package "worth between $675 billion to $775 billion" to Capitol Hill. Was this a surprise to the markets? Not according to contemporaneous accounts of the market's activity that day, which do not so much as mention the stimulus. Moreover, at this time, there were as many complaints that the stimulus was too small as that it was too large. As the Journal then reported:

"The biggest fear is that people will do too little," said one Democratic leadership aide, "like a start-up that fails because it didn't do enough."
Obama aides hope to keep the package below the trillion-dollar mark, a psychological threshold that could carry political consequences, as they fear being accused of adding too much to the country's long-term budget deficit.

One could advance an argument, which would be no less unconvincing than Bittlingmayer and Hazlett's, that the market was behaving badly that day because it wanted more stimulus rather than less.

How about January 7th, the next occasion cited by Bittlingmayer and Hazlett? Bittlingmayer and Hazlett's phrasing to the contrary, there was no major "announcement" about the stimulus bill that day. Instead, there were some off-handed remarks made by Obama at a morning briefing on the economy, which were described by MarketWatch as such:

President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that his proposals to jump-start the economy must also build a stronger nation in the long run. Obama said the size of the stimulus package hasn't yet been settled in discussions with lawmakers, but it would likely be on the "high side" of his team's estimates and lower than some economists have been recommending. The latest guesses are that it will be about $775 billion over two years.

That sort of carefully-parsed response is hardly the sort of "shock" that is likely to have altered Wall Street's expectations about the stimulus. Indeed, Wall Street had many better things to be worried about that day between a plethora of dour economic news.

And how about November 24th, when Obama rolled out his economic advisory team and prompted the Wall Street Journal headline "Obama Signals Big Stimulus Plan"? Bittlingmayer and Hazlett forget to mention this date. And little wonder why: the Dow had closed up by almost 400 points.

The fact is, there have been very few surprises in the entire debate over the stimulus package, the passage of which was more or less inevitable from the moment Obama took office, and the eventual size of which -- just under $800 billion -- was in line with the expectations that the markets had held for weeks and weeks. The nearest exception was probably on January 29th, when the initial version of the stimulus passed through the House without a single Republican vote, something which looked as thought it might theoretically imperil the prospects of the bill passing in the Senate. If the market was anti-stimulus, it should have loved this news; instead it dumped about 230 points.

Disclosure of conflict of interest: I own some mutual funds. I'd like to see 'em go up. I'm not an anti-Wall Street guy. I'm just anti-stupid.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/02/sun-rises-market-falls.html

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Connecticut, NJCAAN, AFSAP, Our Airspace, And
Quiet Rockland, Appeal Again To President Obama

Subject: CT Legislators Seek Obama?s Help In Opposing Airspace Redesign
February 6, 2009

Lawmakers Join Together, Call on President Obama to Order Reconsideration of Changed Airspace Plan
Bipartisan coalition voices concerns about quality of life, environment in southwestern Connecticut

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers???led by state Senator Bob Duff (D-Norwalk)???sent a letter to President Barack Obama this week requesting reconsideration of a new Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA) airspace plan that has consid erably increased commercial air traffic over southwestern Connecticut, with some airplanes flying as low as 3,000 feet over residential neighborhoods.

?We have a new president and Congress?, said Senator Duff, who loudly protested the FAA?s Integrated Airspace Alternative Plan last year, ?so I felt it was important that we on the state level voice our concerns.

Hopefully, they will listen and help to find a solution to this quality of life issue?.

?You have indicated that you are interested in hearing from people at all levels?, the coalition wrote in its letter.

?We, as elected officials, have serious concerns for our citizens in Connecticut as a result of the FAA?s decisions?.

The redesign plan has fallen on heavy criticism because it failed to take quality-of-life issues into account. The FAA plan did not consider alternative routes over less-populated areas and did not set restrictions on minimum altitude for aircraft traveling in the new routes.

The coalition includes Senators Toni Boucher (R-Wilton), Dan Debicella (R-Shelton), Michael McLachlan (R-Danbury), John McKinney (R-Southport), Andrew McDonald (D-Stamford), Anthony Musto (D-Trumbull) and Edith Prague (D-Columbia) and Representatives Jason Bartlett (D-Bethel), Fred Camillo (R-Greenwich), Thomas Drew (D-Fairfield), Louis Esposito (D-West Haven), Livvy Floren (R-Greenwich), John Frey (R-Ridgefield), Gerald Fox (D-Stamford), Lyle Gibbons (R-Greenwich), Bob Godfrey (D-Danbury), Jack Hennessey (D-Bridgeport), John Hetherington (R-New Canaan), Susan Johnson (D-Willimantic), Barbara Lambert (D-Milford), Carlo Leone (D-Stamford), David McCluskey (D-West Hartford), Patricia Miller (D-Stamford), Joseph Mioli (D-Westport), Chris Perone (D-Norwalk),Tom Reynolds (D-Gales Ferry), Jim Shapiro (D-Stamford), John Stripp (R-Weston), Diana Urban (D-North Stonington), Peter Villano (D-Hamden) and Terrie Wood (R-Darien).

?We believe this plan raises environmental and public safety concerns, including noise and air pollution, and has not resulted in significant reduction of the delays at New York airports?, they wrote. ?This change may affect our most vulnerable citizens, such as children, seniors and those with weakened immune systems?.

FAA administration claimed that the change in flight patterns was meant to help improve on-time flight performance at the JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and Philadelphia airports. A 2005 report by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO), however, concluded that the plan would only reduce delays in New York?s busy airports by between one and seven percent.

The GAO also noted that there were no alternatives included in the FAA plan. Measures like peak and congestion pricing, flight quotas, assigned airspace slots for airlines and negotiable scheduling were not considered as ways to reduce air travel problems.
Download the coalition?s letter to President Obama.

Stamford Advocate Coverage: Legislators Seek President?s Help In Flight Path Battle
Area lawmakers hope to change flight path plan
By Martin B. Cassidy
STAFF WRITER
Posted: 02/06/2009 08:21:45 PM EST

Article Highlight:
?The public hearing process (on the Airspace Redesign project) seemed like a charade and nuisance to them in achieving a foregone conclusion?.

More than 30 state legislators from Fairfield County this week signed a letter to President Barack Obama asking his help to get the Federal Aviation Administration to push back recently adopted flight paths over the area, which have raised noise and other environmental concerns.

Local municipalities are battling the flight paths in federal court, arguing the agency adopted routes to and from airports in New York City, Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia, while ignoring requests from elected officials and residents seeking further hearings to air their concerns. The flight path plan would bring a dramatic jump in a ircraft noise and other pollution, according to the letter signed by 21 Democrats and 11 Republicans.

Full Article Internet Link:
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/localnews/ci_11647441
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From:
quiet-rockland@googlegroups.com

Sent:
Monday, January 26, 2009 9:59 PM

To:
quiet-rockland@googlegroups.com

Subject: [Quiet Rockland] Fw: Letter To Obama Admin. Seeking To Block Airspace Redesign Funding

Hello Friends,

Below is an email I received from our friends in Pound Ridge, NY (one of the 12 plaintiffs fighting the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign).

I urge each of you to participate in this initiative by contacting the President as outlined below.

Also, please pass this on to as many friends as you can. The crash on the Hudson just a short time ago underscores the need for us to stop the Airspace Redesign.

Best Regards,

Thomas Sullivan
Quiet Rockland

We need each of you to appeal to the Obama Administration to halt the Airspace Redesign.

A letter, phone call or email from you direct to the White House is crucial to combat the momentum of our opposition. Certain members of Congress along with leading industry groups have pushed for immediate funding and support for the redesign.

If we wait until the projects are flush with funding, we will have a very difficult path ahead of us. The pressure against our efforts will become intense. Industry groups are now lobbying the Obama Administration to immediately pour money into revamping the National Airspace System, which includes airspace redesign. These groups are insisting on adding funding for these projects to the Stimulus Package, rather than just the FAA Reauthorization. If included, this program may receive funding as early as this Wednesday.

Please write a letter in your own words asking the new administration to:

Halt the redesign
Produce a valid environmental impact statement
then reopen the comment period

Why you are asking:
Safety is compromised!
Environmental law violations
Environmental justice implications
Financial impacts
Due process violations
All bad policies that shouldn?t be continued

Where to send your message
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Call 202-456-1111

Include reference to the Petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/airspace/petition.html

Please let me know if you need assistance in drafting a letter to the new administration.

Please read the news items below and notes to understand key terms like ADS-B, Next Gen, AOPA

NOTES

NEXT GEN
The FAA calls the revamped National Airspace System and it?s new technology base ?Next Gen?. Next Gen in a nutshell is a satellite-guided navigational system. When they replace all the old ground based radar systems with satellite, then a nation-wide airspace resign will ensue to allow for more direct routing.

ADS-B
This is the satellite guided technology that allows airplanes to fly in new routes circumventing the normal ground bases radar tracks used today. Once an airport and controll tower installs the ADS-B technology, an airspace redesign will likely ensue.

AOPA
This is the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association - mainly general avaiation and smaller aircraft pilots who use regional airports not the commercial ones.

ATA
Air Transport Association- the US?s largest Airline Lobby group.They have pushed the redesign and have close alliances with Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator John McCain, and Congressmen Mica.

Aviation Insider News Briefs:
Airlines/Industry Suggest To Obama $4 Billion Stimulus

In a letter obtained by Dow Jones Newswire, aviation groups are seeking funds to launch NextGen and equip aircraft with ADS-B equipment. The letter outlines how a $4 billion cash infusion could be used to ignite NextGen air traffic control infrastructure modernization and create 77,000 jobs while obliterating previous completion date estimates. ?Significant benefits that the FAA and Congress believe will be realized over the next 17 years could actually happen in the President-elect Obama?s first term?, according to the letter. The groups also emphasized that NextGen?s reliance on ADS-B and GPS technologies would provide carriers and controllers with the ability to meet a projected rise in air traffic with more efficient (and more direct) routing that would not only counter an increase in traffic but also promise savings in both time and fuel. The groups represented by the letter specifically named in published reports so far include the commercial airlines via the Air Transport Association (ATA), and business jet operators via the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA).

The groups note that such funding wouldn?t be altogether unprecedented, noting prior government-funded purchases for industry. Specifically, the letter cites grants for ?Alaska?s Captsone project and the Ohio River Valley project?, which both pursued the expansion of ADS-B.

LaHood Confirmed As DOT Secretary

Former Rep. Ray Lahood, R-Ill., was confirmed Thursday by the Senate as Department of Transportation Secretary for the Obama administration. LaHood may soon oversee a wealth of public money expected to fall under his hand in support of the new president?s not-yet-finalized stimulus plan, which makes LaHood the target of numerous aviation advocacy groups. The 63-year-old LaHood called his appointment to the position ?the capstone? of his public service career ... though there?s no indication he was making reference to implementation of ADS-B in the lower 48. The Air Transportation Association of America, which supports the use of user fees, called LaHood an ?even-handed, thoughtful? deliberator. LaHood?s past experience may predispose him to a position against user fees. He has served as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which ?has adamantly opposed user fees?, according to AOPA. AOPA is among many aviation groups that have together written the president to make the case for a part of the economic stimulus plan to be applied directly toward modernization of the country?s national airspace system -- specifically, air traffic control and the implementation of ADS-B.

The Air Transport Association, the National Business Aviation Association, the National Air Transport Association, and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, along with AOPA and several other groups, are working together to lobby the Obama administration for a stimulus aid package. The groups specifically identified a plan through which $4 billion could be used to advance the development of NextGen technologies ahead of predicted schedules.

Reid Aide Making Bid for Top Job At FAA

Washington Post
Long-time Senate aide Robert T. Herbert, in his bid for the top job at the Federal Aviation Administration, appears to be making headway against a rival backed by Washington?s labor establishment.

Herbert advises Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on transportation, defense and homeland security issues. Herbert has been locked in dogfight with Duane Woerth, a former president of the Air Line Pilots Association. Both men are regarded within Washington aviation circles as accomplished aviators and qualified to run the agency.

Woerth was identified as the leading contender for the job early on, and has the backing of the AFL-CIO. But Herbert has been pushing back. Reid sent a letter of support on behalf of Herbert to the Obama transition team last month. Additionally, Herbert met late last week with incoming Transportation Secretary Ray H. LaHood, the same day LaHood was confirmed to the post by the Senate.

Herbert has been working hard to soften union resistance, reaching out to the leadership of the many aviation-related labor unions. A top official at one union said the group had already quietly signaled that the union wouldn?t get into a fight with other unions over Woerth.

The FAA?s two largest labor unions, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, have clashed with the FAA over pay and work rules for years. LaHood has said the transportation department will make a top priority of settling Bush-era labor disputes.

Heather V. Wolf
Executive Director
OurAirspace
Special Advisor to Pound Ridge
P.O. Box 263 Pound Ridge, NY 10576
contact@ourAirspace.org
http://ourairspace.org
917-355-6640

From: Robert Belzer
mailto:rabelzer@verizon.net
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 8:28 PM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: Letter To Obama Admin. Seeking To Block Airspace Redesign Funding

Letter To Obama Admin. Seeking To Block Airspace Redesign Funding

All: below is an email that I received from one of the 12 groups seeking to block implementation of the Airspace Redesign. Please consider participating in this initiative.

Robert Belzer
President, NJCAAN

Dear Friends,
Please see my letter to President Obama regarding the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign.

I urge each of you to also communicate (call, fax or email) to the president on how important it is for him to stop this redesign.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Call 202-456-1111
Fax (202) 456-2461

Best Regards,
Thomas Sullivan
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quiet Rockland - No New Flights Over Rockland County, NY
Thomas Sullivan
P.O. Box 918
Pearl River, NY 10965 USA
(845) 480-1088 (phone)
e-mail:
quietrockland@gmail.com

Tuesday, January 27, 2008

To: Honorable President Barack Obama
cc:
Honorable Senator Charles E. (Chuck) Schumer
Honorable Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
Honorable Governor David A. Paterson
Each Honorable Member of the New York Congressional Delegation Of The United States House of Representatives
Each Honorable Member of the New York State Legislature
All Rockland County, NY County and Locally Elected Officials

Re:
FAA?s NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign, and the Stimulus package

Dear President Obama:

There has been a renewed push lately by the FAA and a certain lone member of congress trying to sell America on the NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign. We are even hearing that some are trying to get this funded in the Stimulus Package. We in Rockland County are very concerned and frankly fearful of the safety issues posed not only by the Redesign, but also by the news on how dreadfully the airlines and the FAA have let safety lapse in the name of profits.

With so many important crises facing our nation, we can?t afford another penny on this dangerous plan.

First a bit on the Airspace Redesign?.

The SCAM - NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign

Touted by the FAA as a solution to flight delay problems, what the FAA promised is an illusory 3 minutes per flight. This Airspace Redesign was a US$50mm+ boondoggle which the FAA?s own COO Henry Krakowski, called a ?Band Aid? solution. And the real sin here is that after wasting all this money the plan can, according to NATCA, actually make the delays worse by putting more planes in the air than the airports can handle. The capacity limitation is on the ground, which is where the Airspace Redesign fails.

The FAA has rushed forward with the Redesign in spite of serious safety issues with the Airspace Redesign, which were raised, by NATCA and others. Issues that are materializing in the 1st phase with confused pilots making wrong way turns out of Newark airport.

We cannot trust the current FAA?s failed (Blakey/Sturgell legacy) regime to carry out this very complicated Redesign given all of its flaws and safety problems. The FAA can?t even get the airlines to properly inspect, fuel their planes or comply with Airworthiness Directives. We in Rockland are gravely concerned about having 600 additional planes a day flying over our heads with pilots who my not be familiar with the new routes; planes that may not have enough fuel; and controllers who are overworked, short-staffed and/or inexperienced. This is a recipe for disaster.

The FAA did not notify the citizens of Rockland County about the Redesign as required by law. This rogue federal agency steamrolled over the rights of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in Orange, Rockland and Westchester counties. This is Un-American! What the FAA can do to some of us in the Lower Hudson Valley today, they WILL do to all of us again tomorrow. The NY/NJ/PHL Airspace Redesign is bad for New York and bad for our country.

The Solution ? Control of bad airline behavior and appropriate Air Traffic Controller Staffing Levels

A recent report published by the New York State Comptroller (?Comptroller?s Report?) entitled ?Soaring Flight Delays Diminish NYC?s International and Domestic Competitiveness while Increasing Local Pollution?, a url of which is attached/enclosed herewith for your reference, highlights the excessive idle time and taxi time that aircraft spend on the airport runways in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut tri-state area (?Metropolitan Area?) resulting from air carriers over-scheduling operations. As an example, please see the below and enclosed chart and analysis related to the over-scheduling of operations at Newark Airport and its relationship to delays.

In a nutshell, it?s the airlines? bad behavior that is really the human cause of these delays (that and the shortage of controllers). Keep the airlines from overbooking the prime timeslots and then maybe you will see a measurable decrease in delays (not the exaggerated 3 minutes that the FAA has promised with this redesign). It?s the Airline overbooking of prime timeslots and increasing use of smaller planes (even to large markets like LAX and Ft Lauderdale) that are really what?s causing the delays.

The same FAA Administration (Blakey/Sturgell legacy regime) that is ramming this Redesign down our throats is also the same agency that has brought us to a national crisis in terms of air traffic controller staffing levels. Air traffic controllers are leaving in record numbers because of the hostile work environment created by the past five years of Blakey/Sturgell. Take that and add the FAA ineptitude of not adequately recruiting over the past five years and this is what you get. When there aren?t enough qualified controllers, traffic must be slowed to avert accidents. There are human limitations on what these hard-working men and women can do.

The FAA likes to tout the past few years of low accident rates, but with those failures to adequately address the concerns above and this foolish rush into an unsafe Airspace Redesign, I fear we are truly on borrowed time. This is a very serious issue for all New Yorkers.

The next time we or our loved ones fly in or out of one of the three NY Metro area airports, we unfortunately need to ask ourselves, ?Is today the day that the FAA?s borrowed time runs out??

Very truly yours,

Thomas Sullivan

Report Internet Link:
http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/bureaus/opm/reports/12-02-07_Airport_Report-grounded_report.pdf
Airport Delays?A Direct Relationship With Volume

Below is a chart of capacity utilization at Newark Airport from the ?Newark International Airport Capacity Enhancement Plan? report dated May 2000. The delay issue at Newark is a function of carriers scheduling operations in excess of instrument flight rule (IFR) capacity and in certain instances in excess of visual flight rule (VFR) capacity. This level of operations is ok until weather conditions deteriorate. At that point, the facility is operating in excess of its available capacity. In the Newark Airport capacity enhancement report, this function is shown in the demand chart illustrated below. At a certain level of operations, the delays go through the roof. We believe that the air carriers routinely push the envelope on this demand curve at Newark Airport (and the rest of the airports in the metropolitan area) until the delays become too costly to maintain.

Read The Full Article:
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com/2009/02/connecticut-njcaan-afsap-our-airspace.h
tml

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WaPo: Obama to raise taxes on wealthy, "wind
down" war

The Washington Post has a sneak preview of the budget President Obama will unveil Tuesday, and on a first quick read, it looks mighty progressive.

Maintaining the estate tax and letting the Bush tax cuts expire seems to be the revenue-raising heart of the budget.

Obama to Unveil an Ambitious Budget Plan

By Lori Montgomery and Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writers

President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on business and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.

In addition to tackling a deficit swollen by the $787 billion stimulus package and other efforts to ease the nation's economic crisis, the budget blueprint will press aggressively for progress on the domestic agenda Obama outlined during the presidential campaign. This would include key changes to environmental policies and a major expansion of health coverage that Obama hopes to enact later this year.....

...Obama proposes to cut spending and raise taxes. The savings would come primarily from "winding down the war" in Iraq, a senior administration official said. The budget assumes that the nation will continue to spend money on "overseas military contingency operations" throughout Obama's presidency, the official said, but that number is significantly lower than the nearly $190 billion the nation budgeted for Iraq and Afghanistan last year.

Obama also seeks to increase tax collections, primarily by making good on his promise to eliminate the temporary tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 for wealthy taxpayers, whom Obama defined during the campaign as those earning more than $250,000 a year. Those tax breaks would be permitted to expire on schedule for the 2011 tax year, when the top tax rate would rise from 35 percent to more than 39 percent.

Obama also proposes to maintain the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million, instead of letting it expire next year. And he proposes "a fairly aggressive effort on tax enforcement" that would target tax havens and corporate loopholes, among other provisions, the official said.