WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama insisted Friday that the U.S. economy is digging itself out of the deepest recession in decades but conceded that “progress has been painfully slow” and many voters in November’s elections may blame him.

Facing a rising jobless rate, Obama told a White House news conference: “For all the progress we’ve made, we’re not there yet. And that means the people are frustrated and that means people are angry.”

“And since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‘What have you done?’”

The president, who also is the leader of the Democratic Party, spent much of his appearance before cameras on the defensive, underscoring his frustration with being unable to convince the public that his economic fixes are working.

At his first formal session with reporters since May, one that lasted nearly an hour and 20 minutes, Obama also appealed to Americans to stand by the nation’s long heritage of religious tolerance.

The Rev. Terry Jones, from a small fundamentalist church in Florida, triggered outrage when he promised to burn the Quran on Saturday’s anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He canceled the plans Thursday but then said he was reconsidering. Obama said he hopes Jones “prays on it and refrains from doing it.”

Declining to mention Jones’ name, Obama referred to him as “the individual down in Florida.”

A debate is also raging over whether an Islamic center should be built near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

Obama said people must remember that the country’s enemy is not Islam but al-Qaida and other extremist groups. He said Americans can’t turn on each other and let their fears lead to divisions.

On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the terror attacks, Obama said the U.S. is still hunting for attacks mastermind Osama bin Laden. He said bin Laden had gone “deep underground” but efforts to hunt him down would go on “as long as I’m president.”

He said “the folks who are most interested in the war between Islam and the West are al-Qaida. That’s what they’ve been banking on.” He said the battle was against just a handful of people “who are engaging in hateful acts.”

He counseled respect and inclusion for Muslims in the United States. He said, “They are Americans. We don’t differentiate between ‘them’ and ‘us.’ It’s just us.”

As for continued terror threats against America, nine years after 9/11, Obama said, “There is always going to be the potential for an individual or a small group of individuals, if they are willing to die, to kill other people. … That threat is there, and it’s important, I think, for the American people to understand that. And not to live in fear; it’s just a reality of today’s world that there are going to be threats out there.”

He added, “We are going to have this problem out there for a long time to come, but it doesn’t have to completely distort us and it doesn’t have to dominate our foreign policy. What we can do is to constantly fight against it.”

On the economy, Obama repeated his contention that Republican obstructionism is hampering his ability to steer the nation into a stronger recovery. He renewed his insistence that Senate Republicans drop their stalling of a bill before the Senate to help small businesses.

And he said yet again that Bush-era tax cuts should be extended for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year and joint filers earning less than $250,000. All the Bush tax cuts are to expire at the end of this year unless Congress acts.

Obama said Congress shouldn’t delay extending the middle-class tax cuts any longer.

“Why hold it up? Why hold the middle class hostage?” he said.

Some prominent Democrats recently have suggested temporarily extending all of the expiring cuts, for perhaps a year or two, as a compromise. But so far Obama has dug in and rejected all talk of such a deal.

He said extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans “is a bad idea.”

Obama repeatedly sought to justify the high-dollar actions his administration has taken to boost a sputtering recovery. And he blamed Republicans for holding back future progress by uniformly opposing other proposals on the table.

His previous revival effort has worked, Obama said, but “it just hasn’t done as much as we needed to do.” With public opinion sour on the first economic stimulus plan, Obama initially refused to call the three-pronged economic plan he laid out this week a “stimulus” plan but then said: “There’s no doubt that everything we’ve been trying to do … is designed to stimulate growth and additional jobs in the economy. That’s our entire agenda.”

Much of the summer has been marked by one discouraging economic report after another.

Yet, reports so far this month –from manufacturing to new jobless claims to home sales to business activity — have topped most forecasts. That has brightened the outlook somewhat as worries of a “double-dip” recession fade.

Still, there is little that Obama can do that is likely to turn the economy around in the short time before Election Day on Nov. 2.

Facing a possible GOP blowout in November, many Democrats who supported Obama earlier this year on his landmark health care overhaul bill have sought to distance themselves from the unpopular law. Some Democrats have actively criticized it as they campaign.

Asked why this was so, Obama cited a “political season” in which he said every candidate has “their own district, their own makeup, their own plan, their own message.”

With the unemployment rate at 9.6 percent, Obama said that Democratic and Republican candidates alike “are going to make the best argument they can right now.”

“That’s how political races work,” he said.

Obama over the past week has outlined a trio of job-creation ideas designed to prod the economy: $50 billion for roads, rail lines and other infrastructure spending, a permanent research and development credit and upfront 100 percent business write-offs through 2012.

Facing a possible GOP blowout in November, Obama sought to rally his struggling party, casting Democrats as warriors for the hard-pressed middle class and Republicans as protectors of millionaires and special interests.

Asked how he had changed Washington, Obama said the dreadful economy made it hard to demonstrate real progress.

“I think that’s fair. I’m as frustrated as anybody by it,” Obama said.

Obama also:

– Said he was naming White House economist Austan D. Goolsbee to succeed Christina Romer as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.

– Said he is encouraging peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians because the alternative is a status quo that puts both parties — and the U.S. — at risk.

– Praised consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor and head of a panel investigating the financial meltdown, but said he’s not ready to make an announcement of whether she is his choice to head a new financial consumer protection bureau.

– His administration has fallen short in his goal of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center after promising to close it within his first year as president. He said he still believes the American justice system is capable of prosecuting, convicting and holding terrorists who have attacked the U.S.

Associated Press writers Liz Sidoti, Anne Gearan, Erica Werner, David Pace, Jim Kuhnhenn, Donna Cassata, Merrill Hartson and Mike Hammer contributed to this report.

The proportion of Americans who can’t find work is likely to “remain elevated for an extended period,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, White House budget director Peter Orszag and Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a joint statement. The officials said unemployment may even rise “slightly” over the next few months as discouraged workers start job-hunting again.

“We do not expect further declines in unemployment this year,” the officials said in testimony prepared for the House Appropriations Committee. They predicted the economy would add about 100,000 jobs a month on average — not enough to bring the jobless rate down substantially.

Today’s projections are in line with the 10 percent average unemployment forecast for this year in last month’s budget plan. Christopher Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, said the administration’s language risks damping expectations for a recovery.

“They need to work on the message, and right now the message is that there is not a lot to be hopeful about,” Rupkey said. “Warning about a slow jobless recovery can help make it a reality.”

Growth Outlook

Geithner, Orszag and Romer reiterated the administration’s forecast that the economy would grow 3 percent this year, as measured by comparing fourth quarter growth in gross domestic product. Growth is projected to rise to 4.3 percent in 2011 and 2012, and inflation probably will remain low, they said.

“The worst now appears to be behind us,” the officials said. “However, the country faces significant and ongoing challenges: high unemployment, the need to build a new and stable foundation for prosperity in the years and decades ahead, and a medium- and long-term fiscal situation that could ultimately undermine future job creation and economic growth.”

The three urged Congress to pass Obama Administration job stimulus proposals including extended unemployment benefits, aid to state and local governments and tax breaks for businesses that hire new workers.

They argued tax benefits for businesses that add new workers would have a large impact in the early stages of an economic recovery.

‘Particularly Effective’

“The current situation — where for many firms the question is not whether to hire but when — is one that may make such programs particularly effective,” they said.

The officials said projected federal budget deficits, which the administration forecasts at more than $1.5 trillion for 2011 and over $751 billion for 2015, “remain undesirably high.”

“Deficits matter. Ours are too high; they are unsustainable,” Geithner said during testimony. “The American people, along with investors around the world, need to have more confidence in our ability to bring them down over time.”

The officials put the greatest blame for the high budget deficits on “years of poor decisions” during the administration of George W. Bush, citing enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit and income-tax cuts without corresponding budget savings to pay for them.

“If these two policies had been paid for, projected deficits — without any further deficit reduction — would be about 2 percent of GDP per year by the middle of the decade, and we would have been on a sustainable medium-term fiscal course,” they said.

Rep. Edolphus Towns said Tuesday he would subpoena data after Ben Bernanke’s Fed told the special inspector general for the financial bailout not to provide documents officials had requested as part of the investigation of deals that sent billions of AIG bailout dollars to banks including Goldman Sachs Group. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York faces a congressional subpoena into bailout decisions made under the leadership of now-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said Tuesday he will subpoena the New York Fed for documents related to the bailout of failed insurer American International Group Inc. Towns chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The committee is investigating details of deals that sent billions of AIG bailout dollars to banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

New York Fed lawyers told AIG not to disclose details of the deal, according to e-mails released last week by California Rep. Darrell Issa, the committee’s top Republican.

Issa asked Towns to subpoena the New York Fed after the Federal Reserve blocked a separate request for documents.

The Fed told the special inspector general for the financial bailout not to provide documents Issa had requested as part of his investigation.

Geithner was president of the New York Fed when it was managing the AIG bailout. AIG paid billions of dollars to banks including Goldman, Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank to cancel complex financial deals.

The special inspector general wrote a report criticizing Geithner for going too easy on AIG’s business partners and questioning the Fed’s refusal to name them. It said taxpayers may have paid billions more than necessary because Geithner did not demand concessions.

The Federal Reserve, the New York Fed and Treasury did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the special inspector general would not elaborate on that office’s letter to Issa.

© Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue warned the U.S. faces a double-dip recession because of the taxes and regulations under consideration by the Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama.

“Congress, the administration and states must recognize that our weak economy simply could not sustain all the new taxes, regulations and mandates now under consideration. It’s a sure-fire recipe for a double-dip recession, or worse,” Donohue said in a speech providing the Chamber’s outlook for 2010.

Donohue said the lawmakers should not let former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts expire at the end of year and lambasted Democratic efforts on healthcare and financial regulatory reform as well as climate change.

If the tax cuts are allowed to expire, “we will likely end up with even bigger deficits and greater economic misery,” Donohue said.

Many tax lobbyists expect Congress to extend the cuts for people with lower tax rates, but to allow higher rates to be reimposed on those in the top bracket.

He also faulted Obama and Democratic lawmakers for not doing more to create jobs.

Donohue criticized a separate tax on banks floated by the administration on Monday, and said that the rationale for any tax increases would be increased spending, not lowering huge budget deficits exacerbated by the recession.

“We are talking about a massive tax increase in a very weak economy — a tax increase whose clearly intended purpose is not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for more spending,” he said.

He also promised the Chamber would be more involved in the 2010 midterm election than it has been in any other before, and will hold accountable lawmakers who vote against the group’s priorities.

Donohue’s speech follows a year in which the nation’s leading business lobbying group consistently butted heads with the Democratic White House, particularly on Obama’s keystone issues of healthcare and climate change.

The Chamber stumbled at times. Several high-profile members, including Apple, left the Chamber because of the group’s opposition to Obama’s pursuit of climate change legislation. Nike quit the Chamber’s board of directors over the same issue, publicly complaining that the business group was not representing all of its members on the issue.

In October, pranksters pretending to be Chamber officials held a fake press conference announcing the group had shifted its stance on climate change. Chamber officials trekked to the National Press Club after a wire service issued an incorrect story based on a fake news release put out by a group known as The Yes Men.

On healthcare, Donohue said the legislation under consideration by Congress would do nothing to rein in costs and was a prescription for “fiscal insolvency and an eventual government takeover of American healthcare.”

He said the House climate bill would raise energy costs and kill jobs.

Donohue also blasted the administration’s policies on trade, hitting it for not sending to Congress pending deals negotiated by the Bush administration with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.

“We need a bold and aggressive trade policy, something we don’t have today,” he said.

The Chamber is predicting the economy will grow at a rate of about 3 percent in 2010. The business lobby has set out a goal of creating 20 million new jobs over the next 10 years.

California businesses can't keep going - more jobs to be lost as Democrats plan to spend trillions focusing on health care, not jobs.

The Obama administration’s new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation’s economy is stabilizing.

As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to lend money, said Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration’s office of advocacy.

“While bankruptcies are up, overall, small-business closures are up even more,” Headd said.

California has been particularly hard hit. The latest data show small-business bankruptcies up 81% in the state for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, compared with the previous year. Filings nationwide were up 44%, according to the credit analysis firm Equifax Inc.

The actual number of small businesses in trouble is probably higher, experts said, because many owners file for personal bankruptcy rather than seek protection for the business.

Dennis McGoldrick, a bankruptcy lawyer in Torrance, said his clients are all stuck in similar situations — capital is hard to come by, customers are tough to attract and debt is piling up.

“We can’t keep up,” McGoldrick said. “There’s more people that want to come in every day than I can see.”

Cecily McAlpine, who filed for bankruptcy protection for her Cold Stone Creamery franchise this spring, said the experience was humiliating but she had no choice.

Receipts at the fledgling Compton ice cream shop plunged dramatically during the recession, and by late 2008 she was paying her employees out of her pocket.

“When the refrigerator died, that was it; I’d just had it,” McAlpine said. “That was the day I broke. I just started throwing stuff away.”

McAlpine recently withdrew her bankruptcy filing after selling all the store equipment and paying off her creditors. She is slowly paying off some back-rent and utility debt, and will officially dissolve her business in the next couple of weeks, she said.

“I still feel scarred and like a loser,” she said. “Even though I’m not in it anymore, it’s still there.”

Recognizing the problems of business owners like McAlpine, the Obama administration has proposed using federal stimulus money to help funnel more loans to small businesses. The White House has also asked Congress to eliminate capital gains taxes for one year on new investments in small-business stock, and called for a new tax incentive to encourage small businesses to hire more employees.

On Dec. 14, Obama called a meeting of executives of Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and nine other large banks, and told them that they owed it to the nation to make more loans to small businesses and help rebuild the economy.

In California, the need is great.

Over the last year, the Los Angeles, Riverside/San Bernardino and Sacramento metropolitan areas have led the nation in small-business bankruptcy filings, said Tim Klein, a spokesman for Equifax.

About 19,000 small businesses filed for bankruptcy in California during the 12 months ended Sept. 2009, up from 10,500 the previous year.

During September alone, 2,229 small businesses filed for protection, up from 1,503 filings in September 2008, the firm reported.

Kathleen March, a bankruptcy lawyer in Los Angeles, said she often pushes her clients to file for personal bankruptcy instead of a business filing because it’s easier.

Many people also close down their businesses thinking that will solve their problems, only to find their companies’ debt lives on, March said.

“The norm is if you’re running a small business, you will have to either cosign or personally guarantee the significant debts,” she said. “The business itself can shut down, but the people cosigned all the debts. So, the individuals are then saddled with these huge debts.”

A client who owned a surf shop was paying for business expenses from the client’s own funds long before filing for personal bankruptcy, she said.

“In this economy, anything that isn’t a necessity is a tough business to be in,” March said. “And the majority of my clients have waited too long to file for bankruptcy and in the process made things worse on themselves financially as a result.”

nathan.olivarezgiles@latimes.com

By Gerald Warner UK Last updated: December 15th, 2009

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) released the following statement today regarding the report commissioned by ACORN released by Scott Harshbarger report on ACORN:

Luther Scott Harshbarger, a lawyer and a Democratic politician from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hired to "Investigate" ACORN.

“How surprising is it that a report paid for by ACORN exonerates them?  There are numerous federal and state investigations currently underway that should ultimately produce a legitimate finding regarding ACORN’s illegal activities.  The reality is ACORN has masqueraded as charitable organization in order to fund and advance a partisan political agenda.  There is no mechanism in place to follow where the use of taxpayer and charitable dollars end and where funds used to pay for their political activities begin.

“At a joint Oversight-Judiciary Committee forum last week, we heard from state government officials and an ACORN whistleblower about the fraudulent and deceptive tactics ACORN uses to manipulate the same people it purports to serve.  The more we have learned about the inner-working of ACORN and its affiliates, the more apparent it becomes that this organization is intentionally structured to deceive and mislead the American people.”

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser says the door remains open for Iran to work with other countries on its nuclear program. But James Jones also says the “picture is not a good one.”

Jones says the clock is ticking toward the end of the year. That’s when Obama has said it would be clear whether Iran was ready to work with the United States, other U.N. Security Council members and Germany to assure the world it was not trying to build a nuclear weapon.

So far, Iran has rejected calls to enter negotiations, and Obama is believed preparing to seek harsher international penalties against Iran. Jones said “the door remains open” for Iran to change course.

Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and it has a right to enrich uranium to produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity.

Jones appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Al Gore accepting his Oscar for "Inconvenient Truths"

December 4, 2009

No, it wouldn’t do anything for the environment.

But two Hollywood conservatives (yes, there are some) have called upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rescind the prestigious, profitable gold Oscar statuette that it gave ex-Vice President Al Gore et al two years ago for the environmental movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, both Academy members, are among a small, meandering pack of known political conservatives still believed to be on the loose in the liberal bastion of movie-making.

In 2007, Hollywood’s Academy sanctified Gore’s cinematic message of global warming with its famous statue, enriched his earnings by $100,000 per 85-minute appearance and helped elevate the Tennesseean’s profile to win the Nobel Peace Prize despite losing the election battle of 2000 to a Texan and living in a large house with lots of energy-driven appliances.

Chetwynd and Simon were prompted to make their hopeless demand this week by the….

…leak two weeks ago of a blizzard of British academic e-mails purporting to show that scientists at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit systematically falsified data to document the appearance of global warming in recent years.

The university is reportedly investigating the claims, which added dry fuel to the never-ending political debate over whether the Earth really is warming as a result of human activity or if it’s just normal natural cycles and the debate is what’s heated. The demand to withdraw Gore’s award provides yet another opportunity to argue.

The startling leak comes at an inconvenient time just before next week’s United Nations’ climate change meeting that will cause an immense carbon footprint with thousands of people flying up or over to Denmark to talk about saving the environment.

These airplanes will include Air Force One with its primary passenger President Obama, who’s returning to the Copenhagen scene where he didn’t help win the 2016 Summer Olympics for Chicago, which could do with a little global warming at this time of year.

Simon, a screenwriter who is also chief executive officer of Pajamas Media, a network of conservative online blogs, conceded he knew of no precedent for the Academy withdrawing a previously-awarded Oscar, despite decades of Hollywood hijinks and worse. But, he added, “I think they should rescind this one.”

The controversial leaked documents have been assembled here by Pajamas Media and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The joint demand by Simon and filmmaker Chetwynd is available on video here.

The television news-watching world in America has not learned much about the so-called Climategate scandal because it has not really been mentioned on the air except for a notorious cable news channel named for a three-lettered, wily, wild animal that often seems to revel in debunking liberal shibboleths.

Network news programs have been far more concerned with the obviously more important White House party-crasher story involving a couple of formally-dressed phonies.

The falsified documents do not come up in Gore interview excerpts published late last night here by Politico’s John F. Harris and Mike Allen.

This week White House Press Secy. Robert Gibbs claimed that global warming was no longer in dispute by most people. But a subsequent Rasmussen Reports poll of Americans finds only one in four adults believe most scientists agree on the topic.

And while only 20% claim to have followed the leaked e-mail story Very Closely, nearly 60% believe it is at least somewhat likely that scientists have falsified environmental data to support their own global warming beliefs and theories.

– Andrew Malcolm