Kurtz, Obama and Ayers

No, it's not a Law firm, but rather the linking of three men in a struggle for information. 
One seeking it, two, hiding it.

Like a pit bull, Stanly Kurtz , a reporter and social commentator, has latched on and stayed relentless in his objective of unearthing and unraveling the linkage between Barack Obama and William Ayers.  Their relationship, despite an attempt by Obama to dismiss it, was significant and meaningful in terms of providing insight into the activities of the man people know so little about.

Mr. Kurtz pursuit of the records of that relationship on the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge have been blocked and thwarted relentlessly, but he seems to have prevailed in obtaining them.  The records he has sought after consist of a large cache of documents housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). That document cache contains the internal files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The records in question are extensive, consisting of 132 boxes, containing 947 file folders, a total of about 70 linear feet of material.  But as noted, they are in the Daley Library in Chicago.  Politics runs deep in Chicago, where the current Mayor is also named Daley, and a supporter of Sen. Obama.  

It appears that Mr. Kurtz's tenacity has finally payed off, and he has been granted access to files.  Here's his latest report from posted in the Wall Street Journal.  It demonstrates that the relationship between Ayers and Obama was much more significant than Obama has indicated, and it also details the type of activity that Barack Obama was engaged in.  It is significantly different from what a small town mayor does.


Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home.

The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.

The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative.

The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place.

Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin.

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Story.... 

Assault with a friendly weapon

The NY Times Assaulted Barack Obama with 40 Marsmallows!
Politico columnist Mike Allen has a report on the McCain campaign's complaint regarding the NY Times lopsided coverage of the two candidates.

Steve Schmidt, a McCain campaign senior adviser, declared on a conference call with reporters Monday that The New York Times is "not ... a journalistic organization.”

“Whatever The New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization,” Schmidt said. “It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day impugns the McCain campaign, attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. [Sarah] Palin. It excuse Sen. Obama. …

“Everything that is read in The New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective — that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition, to advocate for the defeat of one candidate — in this case, John McCain — and to advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.”

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said in a statement of response: "The New York Times is committed to covering the candidates fully, fairly  and aggressively. It's our job to ask hard questions, fact-check their statements and their advertising, examine their programs, positions, biographies and advisors. Candidates and their campaign operatives are not  always comfortable with that level of scrutiny, but it's what our readers expect and deserve."

Bill Burton, the Obama campaign's national press secretary, called Schmidt's accusation laughable, and said the Times had published more than 40 "probing stories ... over the course of the campaign about Barack Obama, his life, his religion, his childhood, his politics, his time in the state Senate, his time in the U.S. Senate, his family, his religion, his friends, his fundraising and all other manner of associations."  MORE....

Burton's list of Times articles probing Obama is detailed below.  I've read most of the articles, and came away with the impression that the authors, like some other political commentators we know of,  probably "got tingles up their legs" when they spoke with Sen. Obama.  "Probing" is not the word that I would use.  "Fawning", however, does come to mind.  


The Bill Ayers relationship is not investigated in a thorough manner, nor is Sen. Obama's  record of accomplishments as a Community Organizer detailed in any meaningful way.   In addition, the absence of review of Saul Alinsky's philosophy and methodology of agitating for change through community organizers, and Sen. Obama's deep schooling in Alinsky's teachings is not even broached upon.  The NY Times didn't even get to the beanbag level of hard questions.  Just marshmallows.  Judge for yourself....
:
1. In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice [New York Times, 1/28/07]
2. So Far, Obama Can’t Take Black Vote For Granted [New York Times, 2/2/07]
3. Obama Had Slaveowning Kin [New York Times, 3/3/07]
4. Disinvitation by Obama Is Criticized [New York Times, 3/6/07]
5. Obama, in Brief Investing Foray In '05, Took Same Path as Donors [New York Times, 3/7/07]
6. Obama Says His Investments Presented No Conflicts of Interest [New York Times, 3/8/07]
7. Charisma and a Search for Self In Obama's Hawaii Childhood [New York Times, 3/17/07]
8. Clinton Camp Challenges Obama on Iraq. [New York Times, 3/22/07]
9. After 2000 Loss, Obama Built Donor Network From Roots Up [New York Times, 4/3/07]
10. A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith [New York Times, 4/30/07]
11. An Obama Patron and Friend Until an Indictment in Illinois [New York Times, 6/14/07]
12. In Illinois, Obama Proved Pragmatic and Shrewd. [New York Times, 7/30/07]
13. In 2000, a Streetwise Veteran Schooled a Bold Young Obama. [New York Times, 9/9/07]
14. Loyal Network Backs Obama After His Help. [New York Times, 10/1/07]
15. Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say. [New York Times, 10/30/07]
16. It’s Not Just ‘Ayes’ and ‘Nays’: Obama’s Votes in Illinois Echo. [New York Times, 12/20/07]
17. Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate [New York Times, 2/3/08]
18. Daschle Uses Senate Ties To Blaze Path for Obama [New York Times, 2/5/08]
19. Old Friends Say Drugs Played Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life [New York Times, 2/9/08]
20. Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide [New York Times, 2/12/08]
21. Obama Walks a Difficult Path as He Courts Jewish Voters [New York Times, 3/1/08]
Obama in Senate: Star Power, Minor Role [New York Times, 3/9/08]
22. A Free-Spirited Wanderer Who Set Obama’s Path [New York Times, 3/14/08]
23.cPastor Defends His Predecessor at Obama’s Chicago Church [New York Times, 3/17/08]
24. Obama’s Narrator [New York Times, 4/1/07]
25. Wright Remains a Concern for Some Democrats [New York Times, 5/1/08]
26. A Strained Wright-Obama Bond Finally Snaps [New York Times, 5/1/08]
27. A Pulpit-and-Pews Gulf on Obama’s Ex-Pastor [New York Times, 5/2/08]
28. A Fiery Theology Under Fire [New York Times, 5/4/08]
29. Obama Secret Service Agent Tied To Sex Joke [New York Times, 5/15/08]
30. The Story of Obama, Written by Obama [New York Times, 5/18/08]
31. Following Months of Criticism, Obama Quits His Church [New York Times, 6/1/08]
32. Many Blacks Find Joy in Unexpected Breakthrough [New York Times, 6/5/08]
33. Where Whites Draw The Line [New York Times, 6/8/08]
34. Obama’s Organizing Years, Guiding Others and Finding Himself [New York Times, 7/7/08]
35. As a Professor, Obama Enthralled Students and Puzzled Faculty [New York Times, 7/30/08]
36. Delicate Obama Path on Class and Race Preferences [New York Times, 8/3/08]
37. Big Donors, Too, Have Seats at Obama Fundraising Table [New York Times, 8/6/08]
38. Is Obama the End of Black Politics? [New York Times, 8/10/08]
39. Obama’s 2003 Stand on Abortion Draws New Criticism in 2008 [New York Times, 8/20/08]
40. Obama Aides Defend Bank’s Pay to Biden Son [New York Times, 8/25/08]
41. Once a Convention Outsider, Obama Navigated a Path to the Marquee [New York Times, 8/27/08]
42. Obama Looks to Lessons From Chicago in His National Education Plan [New York Times, 9/10/08]

Russian warships set sail for manoeuvres in the Caribbean

Russia sends ships on exercises in U.S. 'backyard'

Russian Warship Peter the Great heads the fleet traveling 15,000 miles to Venezuela 

This is number 8 !

1. Invasion of Georgia
2. Recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia
3. Sending Bomber to 'visit' Chavez
4. Signing mutual defense agreements with S. Ossetia and Abkhazia
5. Signing contracts with Iran for S-300 surface to air missiles, adding on to the 29 Tor -M1 Missiles they've already delivered
6. Negotiating with Venezuela for missile defense systems, SU-35 jets, and other military hardware.
7. Russian warships in Syrian Port
8. Russian Warships in Caribbean

At some point, the West is going to have to say NYET!

Russian warships set sail on Monday for manoeuvres in the Caribbean area calculated to demonstrate to the United States Moscow's return as a global power on the military and political stage.

The exercises, drawing on a strong alliance with Venezuela's anti-American President Hugo Chavez, will be closely watched by Western navies as the first such projection of Russian power close to U.S. shores since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said the nuclear-powered heavy missile cruiser Peter the Great and antisubmarine destroyer Admiral Chabanenko left their base near Murmansk with two support ships for the 15,000 mile passage to Venezuela.  MORE....

and More....

Who's In Charge?

Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches.


We learn about them in school, and they are written and spoken about by our news reporters, but its seems to me that many still don't understand the role and responsibilities of each Branch.

Most of us seem to invest an inordinate amount of power and responsibility in our view of the President, and  view the Congress as having limited power.  However, the opposite is true.  Congress initiates all the laws, and appropriates funds for the budget.  The President administers the laws.

Paul Weyrich presents a dire economic forecast for us.  Whether or not his forecast will become our reality, can only be debated at this time, however it is important to note that although the focus of attention in the election is on the race for the Presidency, it is equally, if not more important to focus on the races for Congress.  It is Congress that sets the direction of this country through legislation and appropriations.

Looking back over the past two years, it is evident that the current leadership of the House and Senate, has been anything but.  If the theme this year is "Change", that's where the focus should be most appropriately applied .

We always will have our economic downturns. They basically are cyclical and we’ve suffered through many since World War II. There is simply no way of getting away from them.

Our current situation, however, is quite different. This time the difficulties are not a few in numbers but entail a rather long list. Neither are they simplistic but instead very complex, and I believe that they will take quite a long time, perhaps even a decade, to resolve.

Instead of looking at a recession, we might very well be looking at a complete economic meltdown more global in nature, rather than national, something that most of us never have seen.

The problems include a very weak American dollar; a trade deficit that will come to roughly $700 billion at year-end; the cost of foreign oil that has literally tripled over the past two years; possible trade wars with countries like China, which own sizable portions of our bond markets; a ballooning federal budget that has gone from $2.1 trillion to $3.6 trillion in just eight years — a whopping growth of 75 percent; a national debt of $9.6 trillion, closing fast on $10 trillion with a debt ceiling placed at $10.6 trillion and which cost the American taxpayer $230 billion in interest alone last year; untold numbers of jobs that are being outsourced to foreign nations through Free Trade acts adding long-term pressure to unemployment; a nation which has maxed out on credit-card debt; millions of Americans losing their homes due to the subprime lending debacle; and last, but not least, tens of millions of baby-boomers now coming close to retirement, which will dry-up America’s tax base while adding huge amounts to Social Security and Medicare outlays.

A growing number of financial institutions, including banks, are tanking-out with government picking up the tab in bail-outs and payments to depositors at taxpayer expense. Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and IndiMac and so many other big names, believe it or not, are only the early warning signs of what I fear is yet to come.  MORE....

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis

Follow the money....it usually leads to the cause.

Mr. Kevin Hassett has published a damning indictment of the Democrats as the causal agents in the current financial crisis.  But the story starts earlier, Back with President Carter and the Democratic Congress passing the Community Development Act in 1974, under which the concept of pressuring financial institutions to lend money to non-credit worthy recipients began.  Through the Clinton years when Andrew Cuomo, HUD Secretary, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. In 2000, Cuomo required a quantum leap in the number of affordable, low-to-moderate-income loans that the two mortgage banks—known collectively as Government Sponsored Enterprises—would have to buy.  (The Village Voice has an extensive report on Cuomo's role in this debacle here)


During the same period, the Justice Department under Janet Reno was intimidating financial institutions to issue no-money-down mortgages to minorities. Following this, Fannie and Freddie expanded exponentially buying up these potentially toxic obligations, leading some - mostly Republicans to call for restraints to be placed on this out of control couple.  However, every Cuomo disastrous decision was later ratified by his Bush successors.

Back in 2005, Fannie and Freddie were, after years of dominating Washington, on the ropes. They were enmeshed in accounting scandals that led to turnover at the top. At one telling moment in late 2004, captured in an article by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Peter Wallison, the Securities and Exchange Comiission's chief accountant told disgraced Fannie Mae chief Franklin Raines that Fannie's position on the relevant accounting issue was not even "on the page'' of allowable interpretations.

Then legislative momentum emerged for an attempt to create a "world-class regulator'' that would oversee the pair more like banks, imposing strict requirements on their ability to take excessive risks. Politicians who previously had associated themselves proudly with the two accounting miscreants were less eager to be associated with them. The time was ripe.

Greenspan's Warning

The clear gravity of the situation pushed the legislation forward. Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee. The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets.

Different World

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn't even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. Wallison wrote at the time: ``It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. The Democrats and the few Republicans who oppose portfolio limitations could not possibly do so if their constituents understood what they were doing.''

Mounds of Materials

Now that the collapse has occurred, the roadblock built by Senate Democrats in 2005 is unforgivable. Many who opposed the bill doubtlessly did so for honorable reasons. Fannie and Freddie provided mounds of materials defending their practices. Perhaps some found their propaganda convincing.

But we now know that many of the senators who protected Fannie and Freddie, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd, have received mind-boggling levels of financial support from them over the years.

Throughout his political career, Obama has gotten more than $125,000 in campaign contributions from employees and political action committees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, second only to Dodd, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who received more than $165,000.

Clinton, the 12th-ranked recipient of Fannie and Freddie PAC and employee contributions, has received more than $75,000 from the two enterprises and their employees. The private profit found its way back to the senators who killed the fix.

There has been a lot of talk about who is to blame for this crisis. A look back at the story of 2005 makes the answer pretty clear.

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

Jump forward to today. The same folks (Sen. Dodd, Sen. Schumer, Rep. Frank, Rep. Rangel, Rep. Pelosi)  who have been heavily involved in creating and perpetuating this travesty, are now participating in designing the "solution".  Why do I feel depressed?

MORE....

Kevin Hassett, is a director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Bloomberg News columnist.  He is also an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. It should also be noted that Mr. Franklin Raines has been acting as an advisor to Sen. Obama.