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Election '08: At an education forum in Venezuela, Bill Ayers showed the real issue is not his terrorist past. It's the socialist revolutionary agenda that he and Barack Obama want to impose on the nation's schools.Still more evidence of how the media are in the tank for Obama was evident in Tom Brokaw's description of Ayers on Sunday's "Meet The Press." "School reformer" is how Brokaw identified the co-founder of the Weather Underground, the radical organization that, among other activities, bombed government buildings, banks, police departments and military bases in the early 1970s. Yeah, right: Ayers is a school reformer...

Imagine if, as you chat with your child's first-grade teacher and ask about how he decided to embark on a career in education, he told you, "I walked out of jail and into my first teaching job." Imagine him furthermore telling you that his days in jail and violent protesting were formative to his teaching philosophy. Most parents would have a serious discussion with the principal, at the minimum. But the teacher who brags about such beginnings is now a "Distinguished Professor of Education." Despite his specialty as "Professor of Curriculum and Instruction," he trains future teachers to dispense with...

Education: Barack Obama's choice for education secretary tried to run Chicago schools like a business. As with most monopolies without competition, the result was an inferior product at high cost.Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools since 2001, has garnered much praise for his efforts to improve them. But his efforts have largely amounted to pouring new wine into old bottles with little to show for them. Duncan holds a degree in sociology, not education. He supports higher teacher pay and more training but has done little to loosen the teachers' unions' grip on education. Like the UAW, these...

Upon splitting off from the SDS, Klonsky formed a Maoist organization, first known as the “October League,” which ultimately became the “Communist Party (Marxist Leninist).” [NOT CPUSA -ETL] Klonsky was CP(ML)’s chairman. He was so highly thought of by Mao’s regime that he was among the first Americans invited to visit Communist China. When he was feted there in 1977, a year after Mao’s death, the communist leadership hailed Klonsky’s party as “reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people.” Klonsky was a regular guest of the Chicoms until 1981, when the relationship soured over the post-Mao leadership’s free-market...

Upon splitting off from the SDS, Klonsky formed a Maoist organization, first known as the “October League,” which ultimately became the “Communist Party (Marxist Leninist).” [NOT CPUSA -ETL] Klonsky was CP(ML)’s chairman. He was so highly thought of by Mao’s regime that he was among the first Americans invited to visit Communist China. When he was feted there in 1977, a year after Mao’s death, the communist leadership hailed Klonsky’s party as “reflecting the aspirations of the proletariat and working people.” Klonsky was a regular guest of the Chicoms until 1981, when the relationship soured over the post-Mao leadership’s free-market...

_________________________________________________________________________________ "The Communist Party USA views the 2008 elections as a tremendous opportunity to defeat the policies of the right-wing Republicans and to move our country in a new progressive direction. The record turnout in the Democratic Presidential primary races shows that millions of voters, including millions of new voters, are using this election to bring about real change. We wholeheartedly agree with them."http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/907/1/4/_________________________________________________________________________________ Bill Ayers TODAY (April 6, 2008), from his own red communist star-headed website, begging to debate communism vs capitalism with Sean Hannity and STILL calling for revolution! "Imperialism. I’m against it, and if Sean Hannity and...

Now that It's becoming obvious based on Obama's own words that the guy is a communist, there's this talking point/narrative emerging out there that the reagans and annenberg were communists. You should know a few things about the annenberg challenge, if you don't already know. It was not Ayres by himself, his lonesome. He was not just a single terrorist who decided to ask for money. Ayres had help from two other people. Anne Hallet and Warren Chapman co authored the proposal. And Ayres had the backing of 70+ other groups and professors. Add in that Ayres had the backing...

The mainstream press steadfastly refuses to delve into Barack Obama’s radicalism, his Leftist revolutionary collaboration with self-identified communists from Frank Marshall Davis to Bill Ayers. The McCain campaign, moreover, has contributed mightily to the whitewash by ineptly seizing on the issue’s least important aspect: Obama’s abject dishonesty about the depth of his relationships with committed Leftists — e.g., the portrayal of Ayers as just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” (Petrified of being smeared as a racist, McCain has never mentioned Davis, whom Obama identifies only as “Frank” in his memoir. And, of course, utterance of Jeremiah Wright’s name...

It’s nice to be the guy getting tips for once instead of the guy sending them. Yesterday I got two great tips from Morgen, a reader who had found my earlier posts digging into the Obama Ayers connection. Both tips appear to check out and the second one is, I think, big news.First, the smaller one…This Chicago Annenberg Challenge website from 2002 shows the total amount of funds given to Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop from 1995 to 2001. The amount is not the $175K I had reported earlier. According to this page, the total given under Barack Obama’s direct...

Two Bloggers' Work Makes Closeness of Obama-Ayers Ties More Obvious Than Ever By Tom Blumer October 19, 2008 - 11:44 ET Two recent finds noted by bloggers have put further dents in the Obama campaign's core claim about its candidate's relationship with Bill Ayers, the unapologetic domestic terrorist who has not ruled out recidivism, as seen here at Obama's FightTheSmears.com home page: The first was discovered by SeeDubya, former weekend blogger at Michelle Malkin's site. SeeDubya came out of retirement for one morning to note a neighborly reference to Obama by Ayers in the former Weather Underground leader's 1998 book...

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money too is located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 [Note the link is to a year 2000 version of their website]. Here’s a screen grab from the website’s footer: In 1998, the address for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where Obama presumably worked, was 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607. Here’s a copy of their 1998 tax return with that address: The CAC moved to a new address sometime in 1999 or 2000, but the shared office probably persisted...

Barack Obama started serving as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education grant program, in 1995, the same year he was elected to the Illinois state Senate. As chairman, Obama oversaw the disbursement of $49.2 million in Annenberg grants, most of which went to non-profit groups with the stated intent of improving Chicago’s public schools. Since the start of his political career, Obama has received a total of $331,528 in campaign contributions from people who served as staff and board members of non-profit groups that received grants from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). In 2005 and 2006, board members...

Education: The joint effort between Barack Obama and terrorist William Ayers to "reform" Chicago schools was a flop. After spending $160 million, Chicago's children were still being left behind.It was, and some say still is, his only claim to have executive experience qualifying him for high government office. "My experience previous to elected office equips me for the job," Obama said in a 2000 televised debate during a failed campaign to unseat incumbent Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush. Of that experience, Obama said: "I have chaired major philanthropic efforts on the city, like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) that gave $50...

The contrast between, on the one hand, the huge amount of material about Obama’s radical associations that has been published in on-line journals and in a few brave newspapers, and on the other the refusal by big media to address it and to vilify those who do, becomes more astounding by the day. The Obamaniacs are spinning the relationship between Obama and William Ayers, former of Weather Undergound Terrorism Inc, as of no consequence because this was supposedly a chance acquaintance and because the educational project they worked on, the Annenberg Challenge, was a worthy one. Stanley Kurtz now nails...

Stanley Kurtz's examination of the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge provides us evidence of the sort of educational policies Barack Obama funded when handing out scores of millions of dollars he was entrusted with. In a must-read article at National Review Online, Kurtz provides the detailed history of the movement Obama backed with tax-free charitable funds. It is absolutely fair to quiz Obama on his views toward education today based on his track record. A few brief samples: Obama gave legitimacy - and a whole lot of money - to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology...

The problem of Barack Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers will not go away. Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn were terrorists for the notorious Weather Underground during the turbulent 1960s, turning fugitive when a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. Prior to that, Ayers and his cohorts succeeded in bombing the Pentagon. Ayers and Dohrn remain unrepentant for their terrorist past. Ayers was pictured in a 2001 article for Chicago magazine, stomping on an American flag, and told the New York Times just before 9/11 that the notion...

Obama-Run Foundation Gave Millions to Liberal Groups, Including One Run by Bill Ayers Monday, October 13, 2008 By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – William Ayers, a one-time leader of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group that in the 1970s took credit for bombing the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, became the founder of the Small Schools Workshop at the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1992 and was the group’s co-director through 2002. During those years, the Smalls Schools Workshop received at least $800,000 from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge--an organization that Ayers also helped found and that Barack Obama chaired starting...

Forget he was terrorist for a moment. Bill Ayers’ Annenberg Challenge provided Barack Obama with sole executive experience before heading his own presidential campaign and his most extensive venture into educational reform. Sol Stern tells us something about Ayers as a school reformer: Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. . . For instance, at a November 2006 education forum in Caracas, Venezuela, with President Hugo Chávez at his side, Ayers proclaimed his support for “the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We...

In the best tradition of Bill Clinton's famous declaration that the answer to the question of whether or not he was having an affair with Monica depended on "what the definition of is is," Obama was clearly splitting hairs and concealing the truth when he said that William Ayers was "just a guy who lives in my neighborhood." The records of the administration of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) released last week by the University of Illinois show that the Ayers-Obama connection was, in fact, an intimate collaboration and that it led to the only executive or administrative experience in...

Abstract:      The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was a $160 million dollar reform effort in the Chicago public school system led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. An analysis of the Challenge suggests that an authoritarian form of politics shared by Ayers and Obama was a critical part of the reform effort. This form of authoritarian radicalism has its roots in the American New Left and Black Power movements. The paper contrasts the authoritarian and anti-union approach of the Challenge with a democratic alternative. Keywords: Law, poliitics, education, Obama, Ayers, Annenberg Challenge JEL Classifications: None Working Paper Series Date...

In the best tradition of Bill Clinton’s famous declaration that the answer to the question of whether or not he was having an affair with Monica depended on “what the definition of ‘is’ is,” Barack Obama was clearly splitting hairs and concealing the truth when he said that William Ayers was “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” The records of the administration of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), released last week by the University of Illinois, show that the Ayers-Obama connection was, in fact, an intimate collaboration and that it led to the only executive or administrative experience...

The mainstream media are currently excusing Barack Obama's friendship with unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers, in a couple of ways. They either claim that Ayers was just a "neighborhood friend" of Obama and/or that Ayers was merely some benign 60s radical while conveniently avoiding mention of his terrorist activities in the Weather Underground. The first point that Ayers was just some neighborhood friend of Obama is undercut by the working relationship between the two as we saw in yesterday's NewsBusters blog by Clay Waters quoting Ed Morrissey of Hot Air: ...Obama worked as CEO of the project that Ayers helped found,...

Prepare yourself for a shock — the New York Times article on Barack Obama’s associations with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers did not tell the whole story: NY Times Confirms Ayers’ Role in Obama Appointment as Chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. I can easily understand why some readers may have become confused by the explosion of stories today on the Obama/Ayers relationship. The partial story of the Ayers/Obama relationship told by the New York Times today is collapsing of its own weight but has likely added to the confusion. Since I am one of the “bloggers” referred to...

Prepare yourself for a shock — the New York Times article on Barack Obama’s associations with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers did not tell the whole story: NY Times Confirms Ayers’ Role in Obama Appointment as Chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. [Steve Diamond writes:] I can easily understand why some readers may have become confused by the explosion of stories today on the Obama/Ayers relationship. The partial story of the Ayers/Obama relationship told by the New York Times today is collapsing of its own weight but has likely added to the confusion. Since I am one of the...

Was Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers really just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," ... Barack Obama and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers have worked closely together on education reform since 1995, and possibly since 1987. Obama has obfuscated and minimized this association in his public statements and on his website. Why the cover-up? It’s becoming known as the Annenberg Challenge cover-up ... Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education reform group co-founded by Bill Ayers in 1995 and chaired by Barack Obama from 1995 to 1999. Bill Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a violent radical student group...

An exchange of letters in late 1994 (links below) between Vartan Gregorian, the President of Brown University, Adele Simmons, President of the MacArthur Foundation, and Bill Ayers, the founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, demonstrate that Ayers played a direct personal role in the recruitment of members of the Challenge's board of directors. The Board was chaired by Barack Obama. The Obama campaign recently issued a statement stating that Bill Ayers had "nothing to do with Obama's recruitment to the Board." The campaign contends that the only people involved in the appointment of Obama were Deborah Leff, then president of...

It appears that Barack Obama has trained his minions well—very very well, in fact. Obama’s group ACORN is under scrutiny or indictment in at least 14 states for voter fraud, embezzlement and misuses of taxpayer funds. One of the states—Missouri—is the state in which the Obama campaign now has Missouri police, St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce using their offices to intimidate and threaten those who speak ill about Kandidate Obama. Note: There are also rumblings that Missouri police may use their color of authority to intimidate all non-Obama voters. The chance...

Obama, using his gifting of $50M for school reform in Chicago with the Annenberg Challenge as a qualification to be an IL senator in 2000

Subversives for Obama Friday, 26th September 2008 There are two American election campaigns currently running. The first, in the mainstream media, accepts Barack Obama at face value, no questions asked, while it viciously turns over Sarah Palin and her family whom it subjects to lies, smears and character assassination. The second, being conducted in the blogosphere and (with one or two notable exceptions such as the Wall Street Journal) not alluded to at all by the mainstream media, is the site of verbal warfare between Camp Obama and bloggers who are practising journalism as it used to be practised –...

Jim Lehrer asked a question about how the respective candidates would alter their agenda as President in the light of the huge financial obligation of the bailout. Obama waffled about various things but then said "I'd still like to expand early education". "Expand early eduction" ?? What does he actually mean by that, and why did single it out of all the items on his agenda? Tonight he sent a little signal to his master that he was still the obedient servant. Here's a clue. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge that he chaired in the mid 90's was a scheme to...

t is incomprehensible that anyone would entrust the education of children to an admitted -- and unapologetic -- domestic terrorist. Yet Sen. Barack Obama has done just that. From 1995 to 2001, the Democrats' presidential nominee was an integral part of the radical leftist Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) education foundation, formed by William Ayers, a founder of the violent Weather Underground gang. It's the same Mr. Ayers who (along with his followers) bombed the Pentagon and never expressed remorse about his wickedness. And it's the same Ayers in whose home Barack Obama launched his political career in 1995. Hand in...

New evidence strongly suggests that Barack Obama has been less than forthcoming about the role that unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers may have played in choosing him to lead the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, I have obtained an e-mail message from former CAC executive director, Ken Rolling, to Warren Chapman and Anne Hallett, two of CAC’s three co-founders. Bill Ayers was the third founder. In Rolling’s message, sent the morning after I first requested access to CAC records housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), he admits to avoiding...

Obama and Bill Ayers

Stanley Kurtz's articles today on NRO and in the Wall Street Journal are must reads. Three takeaways: * Obama had a long-term working relationship with William Ayers. * The Chicago Annenberg Challenge ("CAC"), the only executive experience on Obama's resume, was an objective failure despite the expenditure of millions of dollars. * Through the CAC, Ayers and Obama financed radical organizations, including one with a history of engaging in voter fraud. Stanley's work is a challenge to mainstream journalists. A candidate for the presidency has a demonstrated working relationship with — indeed funded — an unrepentant terrorist, yet the media...

Records show collaboration on funding leftists despite claim he's just 'a guy' in neighborhood JERUSALEM – In spite of Sen. Barack Obama's claims to the contrary, the Democratic presidential nominee had a close working relationship with former Weathermen terrorist leader William Ayers when the two served alongside each other on a hundred-million-dollar education foundation, according to the group's own archived records. The records also show Obama's and Ayers' foundation granted money to radical leftist activist causes. News reports, archived records, interviews and Ayers' own curriculum vitae document that Ayers was the founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, or CAC, which...

Today, in a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools,” I offer a report on my research into the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), an education foundation once headed by Barack Obama. As I explained in “Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?” the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago first agreed to grant, then abruptly denied me, access to the files of this foundation. Subsequently, the Daley Library again reversed their decision and made the CAC files available. As I note in today’s Journal piece, I’ve conveyed the...

Here is the article from the Wall Street Journal: Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

The news regarding the presidential campaign has been delivered on two tracks. On one track the mainstream media have played their usual role of the Victorian gentleman described by Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff. In this capacity, to borrow Wolfe's formulation, the mainstream media have prescribed the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, that must be establishedl; and all information that muddies the tone and weakens the feeling has been thrown down the memory hole. Wolfe's description has obvious application to the press's treatment of Barack Obama during this campaign season, with the result that important...

As most observers predicted at the time, records from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where Barack Obama served as President of the Board and terrorist William Ayers as head of the action arm of the organization were almost certainly scrubbed; the result of a tip from the University of Illinois to the Obama campaign: The President of the University of Illinois, B. Joseph White, and the University Counsel of the University of Illinois, Thomas Bearrows, contacted Kenneth C. Rolling, the former Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and a professional colleague of Barack Obama for many years, prior to...

The President of the University of Illinois, B. Joseph White, and the University Counsel of the University of Illinois, Thomas Bearrows, contacted Kenneth C. Rolling, the former Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) and a professional colleague of Barack Obama for many years, prior to the release of CAC records to the public late last month and offered Rolling an opportunity to recommend to the University which records of the CAC held at the University's Chicago campus (UIC) should be restricted from public access....

Obama/Ayers Update: Chicago Annenberg Challenge Donor Revealed http://globallabor.blogspot.com/ As Global Labor readers are well aware the University of Illinois at Chicago denied Stanley Kurtz of National Review access to the official records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the six year long $160 million education reform project led by, among others, Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. The denial of access to the archives of the CAC was unusual and possibly illegal. It was done after the University, again without any legal justification that I am aware of, contacted someone they said was the "donor" of the records. That "donor" wanted to...

I wonder if we're not all looking at the Annenberg trees (Ayers) and missing the forest. Obama controls a huge amount of grant cash in corrupt Chicago. Subsequently strange things happen to his opponents, starting with the incumbent state Senator in his district, ending with Jack Ryan. This would be the Chicago Way.

Election '08: The Obama camp tries to suppress a campaign ad and university archives linking the candidate to a '60s terrorist who hosted his first campaign fundraiser. Is he being "swiftboated," or is this a cover-up? When Obama's association with William Ayers was raised at a Democratic debate this year, Obama replied: "This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood. . . . He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

IN THE COMMENTS SECTION--->>> Have searched for much on this issue, and see nowhere that anybody is attempting to radicalize Annenberg or his generosity to public education. It's most unfortunate for the 470,000 public school students in the south side of Chicago that were disenfranchised by the financial shenanigans that Ayers, Obama, and Klonsky pulled off. $ 50 million or so from Annenberg, matching funds from foundations to make perhaps $ 125 million or more total, and they simply coordinated grants to many schools, many local 'charities', and all those 'leadership' grants to provide many to stand for elected office....

"One of Bill Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s comrades in the late 60s Students for a Democratic Society was Mike Klonsky. When Dohrn and Ayers moved in one direction toward the violent tactics of the Weather Underground, Klonsky, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, dropped the pro-Russian communist politics of his parents and became a committed Maoist. As leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977 [not to be confused with Communist Party USA. CPML no longer exists, CPUSA formed decades earlier and is still around-ETL], he travelled to Beijing and was toasted by the senior Beijing leadership....

Annenberg Challenge a radical enclave? Gimme a break! There is nothing to condemn about Ayers’ leadership over the past 20 years. August 30, 2008 BY LINDA LENZ Somewhere in the afterlife, Walter Annenberg must be shaking his head and wondering what in the world is going on in Chicago. First, the Sun-Times and the Tribune gave up precious inches of their dwindling news space to report that the University of Illinois at Chicago was refusing — and then later agreed — to release documents detailing Sen. Barack Obama’s role in a nonprofit education project "started" by William Ayers, a founder...

Do Democratic presidential campaign committees think we are all stupid or do they suffer from some sort of group delusion? In 2004 they tried to peddle a man who made claims about his military career that were easily proven to be lies (Christmas in Cambodia, outrageous charges about war crimes by his fellow soldiers) as a war hero “reporting for duty.” This time around they are trying to take a man whose entire career has linked him with far-left anti-American characters, political agendas focused on redistribution of wealth, and racial spoils and pawn him off on us as a...

Check out Bill Ayers November 2006 blog entry from his website to see why he is in the education business: WORLD EDUCATION FORUM, Centro Interncional Miranda, Caracas, Venezuela, November, 2006 "President Hugo Chavez, Vice-President Vicente Rangel, Ministers Moncada and Isturiz, invited guests,comrades. I’m honored and humbled to be here with you this morning. I bring greetings and support from your brothers and sisters throughout Northamerica. Welcome to the World Education Forum! Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana! This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter...

Let’s suppose that a public official has something in his past that he would prefer remain there. Something that might make voters wonder whether the rhetoric of today is something that should be believed. Let’s suppose that someone got their hands on documents about the skeleton in the closet, and went on a popular radio show to talk about them. And let’s suppose that instead of a civilized debate about what may have happened years ago, the public official ordered his legions to jam the radio station’s phone lines in an effort to make sure that whatever happened all those...

Do Democratic presidential campaign committees think we are all stupid or do they suffer from some sort of group delusion? In 2004 they tried to peddle a man who made claims about his military career that were easily proven to be lies (Christmas in Cambodia, outrageous charges about war crimes by his fellow soldiers) as a war hero “reporting for duty.” This time around they are trying to take a man whose entire career has linked him with far-left anti-American characters, political agendas focused on redistribution of wealth, and racial spoils and pawn him off on us as a man...