Going To The Library

Steve Diamond of Global Labor has been leading the charge on the Obama/Ayers connection to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Today he has lots of questions about the role being played by the library where the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives were housed. 

Conservative critic Stanley Kurtz had contacted the University of Illinois at Chicago library requesting permission to review the archives.  For some reason, this set off alarm bells at the library.  Mr. Diamond writes:

An earlier statement by a UIC spokesperson stated that UIC contacted the donor of the CAC records and that it was then discovered that an "ownership agreement" had not been prepared for the CAC records. This is most likely not accurate.  No such agreement is likely in this situation. A gift of corporate records, such as those of the CAC, is valid without a written instrument.

...

But more fundamentally there would be no reason for anyone in the Special Collections Library to even question the validity of the gift of the CAC documents! 

And a donor would never be allowed to know who or when someone is asking to review a validly granted gift of documents. That violates the confidentiality of library users. It reminds me of the concerns that civil libertarians have properly raised about the Patriot Act.

That leaves only one possible conclusion:  Someone inside the UIC Library clearly was concerned that a critic of Barack Obama might be attempting to examine these public records. That led to an unprecedented and, in my view, highly inappropriate notice to the donor of the CAC documents that a potential political critic of Obama was interested in the documents.

They told Glenn Reynolds that if Bush were re-elected no library user would have any privacy.  And they were right!

Comments

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

The bio that I just watched said Obama was living at 94th and 1st, on the fringe between Manhattan and Harlem and if not an activist, at least a crusader. He was having an "awakening" of some kind.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

From the article I linked earlier, this is what was filling Obama's head as he went off to college:

n his memoir, Mr Obama recounts how he visited Mr Davis on several occasions, apparently at junctures when he was grappling with racial issues, to seek his counsel. At one point in 1979 Mr Davis described university as “an advanced degree in compromise” that was designed to keep blacks in their place.

Mr Obama quoted him as saying: “Leaving your race at the door. Leaving your people behind. Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going there to get trained.”

He added that “they’ll tank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.”

[JM Hanes]

Yes, MayBee, list gathering and getting a crack at everybody's books in order to come up with income and, I suspect, expenditures which could conceivably be characterized as "matching" funds which the Challenge would not then have to raise itself (as well as potentially soliciting sources of "private funds" themselves in future). A certain amount of such activity is probably not all that uncommon, and they would not control funds already designated for non-CAC generated purposes, of course. Would they have had to make it looks as though they did, I wonder? If the matching was done on a rolling basis, as opposed to up front, it would be interesting to see how they described or reported what they were doing to the Annenberg assessment group.

I don't know whether there's any connection here, but I keep remembering that there was some uncertainty (in the offical assessment?) about why CAC appeared so determined to spend so much of the money, (in big chunks?), so quickly right at the beginning, with a certain unstated implication of questionable due diligence, it seemed to me.

I figure the wee hours are not just for typos, but for thinking out loud too.:-)

[JM Hanes]

Rich:

Wow, that's a pretty amazing coincidence, isn't it? Put them together, "exchanging ideas" in New York, and Obama's demurrers get blown out of the water, in a way than anybody can understand.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Do we know why Obama chose to go to Chicago? And when?

[Soylent Red]

I'd say that the topic needs to be softed up a bit before the link between Ayers WUO terrorism and the classroom can be made. But the link should and needs to be made.

If the goal here is persistence, the key is to use terms that force Barry to respond, but allow him a degree of wiggle room in his response. That wiggle room keeps the story alive with continued stories.

For instance, you could take a page from the left and refer to them as "radical" or "extremist" groups.

Barry responds with, "These groups weren't radical they were community service/education/whatever"

Next article is about the radical organization that Barry channeled money to and what they advocated.

Barry responds that he didn't know that the money would be used for radical stuff.

Next article refutes an item about that, and so on.

Point is, you make the big picture issue of "Who does Barry hang out with" into a series of pieces by sticking to a single subject, letting that be refuted, then moving on with another part of the same story.

[JM Hanes]

Jimmy Page, white hair, ponytail, still pickin' up a storm. Rarely see a legendary rocker who looks like, well, a nice guy. And did I mention that I love long hair on guys? White/Gray, works for me. Not required, of course. Awesomely awesome.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

I just heard an Obama spokesperson tell Shep on Fox that the Obama Campaign "hired" Joe Biden to be their VP. Huh?

[JM Hanes]

Have you done the powerpoint on that yet, Soylent? I think I was sort of vaguely stumbling in that direction earlier upthread. I can see you as the right's answer to Alinsky. Your hair's probably too short for me, but you're awesomely awesome too.

[JM Hanes]

Sara:

Thought you might enjoy this reader comment over at The Corner:

Mitt’s wonkish grasp of facts and quick mind is the perfect foil to Biden’s verbose speechifying. The debates will be “The guy who thinks he’s the smartest man in the room versus the guy who is the smartest man in room”.

[bgates]

JMH - he's been doing that for a loooong time.

(Jimmy Page, not Soylent).

[PeterUK]

"In the only known instance where Obama had executive authority he failed Chicago's children.As the executive entrusted with control of a $100 million dollar attempt to change substandard schools, he enriched his domestic terrorist friends with money meant for the children's benefit."

Just needs tidying up for front page copy.

"Obama stole from the poor blacks and gave to the white rich".

There,even a DUmmer could understand that.

[M. Simon]

I contacted Steve Diamond about my gang involvement theory. He said he had seen no evidence of it.

[M. Simon]

JMH,

I keep my hair from short to Jerry Garcia length. I do have a well trimmed beard.

I'm angling for a date.

Is there an Old Hippies For McCain group?

[M. Simon]

JMH,

I just Googled "Old Hippies for McCain" nothing.

"Hippies for McCain" got 25 hits.

[M. Simon]

Here is one I used to listen to when I was going to Nuke Power School in Idaho. Listened to it on KOMA from Oklahoma. They used the ending as their theme music that year.

Heart Full of Soul

[BobS]

Morning All: Fell asleep at my lap top and had to crash. Gotta be at school by 630. Don't worry. Todays's lesson is distinguishing between dependent and independent variables.

[M. Simon]

Denver is only one mile high.

This is Eight Miles High.

[Pagar]

Good Morning to All!

In one of the comments above, someone asked why Obama went to Chicago. I've heard several versions, but this American Thinker article states:
"Barack Obama had just graduated from Columbia and was looking for a job. Some white leftists were looking for someone who could recruit in a black neighborhood in the south side of Chicago.

Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a position as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Obama was 24 years old, unmarried, very accustomed to a vagabond existence, and according to his memoir, searching for a genuine African-American community.

Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community agitation, wherein paid organizers learned how to "rub raw the sores of discontent," in Alinsky's words."

And includes a bonus part on Alice Palmer.

"Obama had returned to Chicago and practiced civil rights law for 3 years, when he spied an opportunity to run for the state senate. A longtime, widely-revered matron of the civil rights movement named Alice Palmer had held the seat for a number of years, but she announced that she wanted to run for Congress. So, Obama seized the opportunity and proclaimed his intention to run for Alice's open seat.

Well, Alice lost the congressional race and decided that she wanted to hang onto that hard-won state senate seat. Most of the community leaders tried to persuade Obama to withdraw and wait his turn; he was a newcomer after all.

Instead Obama performed his first real act of political jujitsu. He sent his aides to the courthouse to carefully examine all of Alice Palmer's signatures to see if enough could be disallowed to knock her off the ballot altogether. And indeed, some of Alice's signatures were fake. The aides also found enough other fake signatures on opponents' ballot initiatives to knock them off the ballot as well."

LUN

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

"Barack Obama had just graduated from Columbia and was looking for a job. Some white leftists were looking for someone who could recruit in a black neighborhood in the south side of Chicago.

So he was hanging out with white leftists in New York. Wonder who?

[royf]

Well M. Simon since you brought up the Byrds, Gene Clarke is and always will be my favorite. So here's one of his songs.

"Feel a Whole Lot Better"

[RichatUF]

Here is an IBD editorial about Alice Palmer and I'm looking but I thought she had her own connections to Frank M Davis. Interesting sea he swam in...would probably be easier to make a list of those that aren't red in Obama's past.

[bad]

Does this bit make anybody else's antennae wobble?

I would like to know what kind of program funds were redirected. Was money intended for one-on-one tutoring or classroom aides stuck down the CAC black hole?

[RichatUF]

Sara-

So he was hanging out with white leftists in New York. Wonder who?

Obama was pretty emphatic in his book that he sought out the socialist students and radical professors at Columbia. I'd be shocked if Columbia's then most notorious student-Ayer's-didn't pop up on his radar screen. Also Obama had some socialist stret cred seeing as how he was "sent" by Frank Marshall Davis. Could only imagine what an open mike night at some Bleaker St bar would have been link?

[RichatUF]

link...like

[bad]

Obama wasn't just on a quest for identity. He was searching for approval and validation from a father. Ayers was just the right age to fit the bill.

[bad]

Perhaps this is an illustration of money intended for Chicago public schools that was redirected to the failed CAC project.

Why hasn’t the door to the bathroom stall been fixed? How do we get the parent room outlets and wiring done? Why don’t we have a new school?

The above passage is from a group called "Designs For Change." LUN They offer training to Local School Councils.

This group was also listed as part of the ABC's Coalition, Ayers brainchild, back in 1988. According to the 1999 tax return for CAC they received funding from CAC.

[Ranger]

My factoid up there is absolutely correct and doesn't claim that CAC made things worse. I agree that a claim that "made things worse" is unprovable - "without a net positive result" is accurate though.

It's still money wasted - and worse than wasted in the sense that had CAC accepted Chicago School Board methods, overall results would have been higher.

Posted by: Rick Ballard | August 25, 2008 at 12:00 AM

No dispute with that at all Rick. Mine was just a cautionary note.

I think it is worth possibly pointing out that CAC spent over $100M directly fighting what became one of the most respected and successful school reform efforts in the country at that time.

[Pagar]

"would probably be easier to make a list of those that aren't red in Obama's past."

OK, Maybe someone else can think of others,but here all the ones I know.---------------------

[M. Simon]

So he was hanging out with white leftists in New York. Wonder who?

A couple of Jewish guys. It got him labeled a carpetbagger. Which may have impelled him to Trinity for Street cred.

[clarice]

bad:"He was searching for approval and validation from a father. Ayers was just the right age to fit the bill."

Ayres is only 13 years older than O.

[M. Simon]

BTW it just occurred to me that Ferraro speaking at the R convention may have been a hint on the VP pick. A female maybe?

[M. Simon]

BTW it just occurred to me that Ferraro speaking at the R convention may have been a hint on the VP pick. A female maybe?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Okay, folks, it's started. My first day's coverage is up at PJM.

[ben]

"This looks like a step backward for Obama, who had a 51 to 44 percent advantage last month,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland"

If the numbers were reversed, and it was McCain who had taken "a step backward", one could imagine the comment from Keating Holland "Obama has gained tremendous momentum with this dramatic and momentous shift in public opinion"

[Rocco]

Found this interesting socialist progressive site called Global Labor and Politics

[bad]

Ayres is only 13 years older than O.

The substitute father figure in my life was only 10 years older.

[Jane]

Bravo Charlie!

[Cecil Turner]

Thanks Charlie, that was interesting. I'm all about the entertainment value of Dem conventions, and hoping this one won't disappoint.

(And I know it was early, but hanging out with Stephen Green and then drinking Fiji water? Don't know if I can support that.)

[kim]

We might get a little fear and loathing from Stephen Green.
===================================

[Soylent Red]

I can see you as the right's answer to Alinsky.

I hope you meant that as a compliment.

[clarice]

very good, charlie

[bio mom]

So Obama and Ayers were at Columbia at the same time. May not mean anything but may mean something. Interesting.

[anduril]

Here's what I consider to be a very good story: The Biggest Missing Story in Politics.

It's my contention that it's precisely because the overwhelming majority of Americans regard themselves as conservative that the GOP is held to a higher standard. We're almost always more disappointed with those who claim to be on our side when they screw up or betray us. The GOP loses when they abandon principles, and the Dems increase their chances when they pretend to share the same principles.

Unfortunately, the author only gives two examples of conservative opinion. To account for what happens in American politics I think there needs to be a better understanding of what people understand by "conservative."

[MarkO]

Charlie: great work.

[anduril]

Need another laugh at Biden? The details behind the IQ claim: Joe Biden: The "Mr. Show" Candidate. Via Sailer, Kaus, Dionne.

[bad]

Charlie

I want play-by-play description of a PUMA grabbing an Obama supporters official Obama handbag and beating the Obama supporter with it. Gently, of course, so as not to cause permanent damage.

[Porchlight]

Thanks, Charlie! Looks great. Am thinking of questions for your askcharlieanything grab bag....

[bad]

Charlie

Instapundit has a link to your article. Way to go dude!!

[bad]

I like Glenn Reynolds suggestion that the McCains adopt Obama's inconvenient brother George.

[Rick Ballard]

Obama's godfather in the Illinois State Senate beating the Uncle Tom-Tom for BHO. I find the racial unity engendered by The One to be truly touching. If we all could just touch the mane of his unicorn....

H/T Dmac at Patterico

[Jane]

I wonder if there is any traction pointing out what a jerk Joe Biden is, and his behavior particularly with nominations. that stuff bothers me a lot, but I'm not sure how it applies.

[clarice]

I don't either, Jane. Anyone who watched them has to know what an utter jerk he is, but those who haven't aren't likely to sit thru anything pointing that out.

[kim]

It's a bad bideness. He may actively lose votes. The pasted on grin(I know, I know) next to the Flim-Flam Man. Which way to the Egress? Past the Tigress you say? Miaaaaoooowwww!
======================================

[kim]

When she purrs at the convention, watch her tail flick; that's really growling.
================================

[Rick Ballard]

The deal with Biden might best be approached by asking which part of "Hope & Change" the selection of a 65 year old, 30 year sitting Senator addressed. I've been reading some of Steve Diamond's non-CAC posts and his disillusion with The One stems from a lack of adherence to "true progressivism". Peeling some of the 13%er volunteer foot soldiers away through the proper application of Alinsky tactics should be easy - and fun.

[Ann]

Does anyone know why Biden didn't serve in Vietnam?

There is definitely a new meme today about McCain bragging to much about being a POW. Jake Tapper even titled his piece "The POW Card?" It is making be sick considering how they kissed Kerry's arse.

On top of that, you have The One who has only obtained personal success by doing absolutely zero for anyone else.

[PeterUK]

"Ayres is only 13 years older than O."

According to another of Obama's mentors, that is old enough.

[clarice]

I think O and his gang are so out of touch with Catholics that they figured with Biden they'd get a pro-abortionist Catholic who'd appeal to both sides of the issue. DONG! Wrong!!

[JM Hanes]

Jane:

I think a collection of colorful clips, with cartoon music fading in and out could do the trick. He's certainly provided plenty to work with, from preening to nonsense to nasty. The sheer volume of available material would be daunting, though, as would agreeing on a Top 10 Best of Biden in order to reduce a preliminary selection from 20 hours to 2 minutes.

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

It appears that Archbishop Chaput clarified the issue in Denver last night. I don't doubt that he will continue to clarify the issue well past the elections.

[Pagar]

Rick B, The reason Obama picked Biden might have to do with the fact that Biden will apparently never object to any thing Obama wants to offer to the "Ones Obama says he will stand with"

"Obama has categorically stated that he would meet with the rogue terrorist regime in Iran. A regime that has promised the removal of Israel and death to America. Biden, not surprisingly, is a tool for the Iranian jihad as well."

" Biden the appeaser:

Remarks by Joseph R. Biden, Jr. "Prospects for Progress: America and Iran After 9-11"

LUN

[JM Hanes]

bgates:
Do you suppose there's any video left that hasn't been YouTubed?

Soylent:
"I hope you meant that as a compliment." What part of awesomely awesome did you not understand?:)

M. Simon:
"I just Googled "Old Hippies for McCain" nothing."
I mostly suffered from hippie envy. It was hard for me to believe that anyone my age would actually flout both their parents and the law, risking permanent excommunication from polite society -- not to mention the sky falling in, of course. My brother was a pretty straight arrow studying architecture in Chicago (of all places!), where he grew a neatly trimmed beard. On vacation back home in South Carolina, he'd walk over to his girl friend's house -- which caused my mother much concern; it was not hippie friendly territory!

Per anduril's link the country was probably at least 60% conservative back then too, but it would be a much more conservative conservative. The leftest 9% probably hasn't changed a whole lot more than faces though, and not even all of those, as we're in the process of discovering.

[GMax]

I think O and his gang are so out of touch with Catholics that they figured with Biden they'd get a pro-abortionist Catholic who'd appeal to both sides of the issue. DONG! Wrong!!

I dont think the Pelosi comments were just coincidence. This was a concerted effort by the Obama camp, of which Pelosi is deeply embedded, to put this issue to rest. Given how brazen she was about doctrine, it would appear you are correct and they are getting their information on the Roman Catholic Church from San Fran Nan and John Kerry! Oops.

[Jane]

Wow - did you guy see the Biden- Rezko ties over at Hot Air?

LUN

The one thing I don't quite get is why Biden is the least wealthy guy in the senate.

[bad]

The one thing I don't quite get is why Biden is the least wealthy guy in the senate.

Maybe he was picked hoping his lack of wealth, in spite of being a senator, would bolster his perceived integrity.

[bad]

Or maybe BO and MO just want to hang around some lower tier white folk to bolster their open mindedness creds.

[Jane]

Yeah but why hasn't Biden accumulated money like everyone else in the senate? His kids have taken advantage of his name for sure.

Then again just because he has the least amount of wealth doesn't mean he is not wealthy.

I was a bit of a hippie. My problem was I always had a lot to lose and no cushion. I simply couldn't afford to get into trouble because I had no way to get bailed out.

[bad]

Yeah but why hasn't Biden accumulated money like everyone else in the senate?

Sounds like a good project to undertake. There should be a fair amount of open record financial disclosure after so many years in the Senate.

Offhand, the guy has run for president often. Maybe those runs were self-financed because fund raising never got off the ground.

[GMax]

On Biden, they dont call him Slow Joe for nuthin'! In those congressional workshops on how to work over lobbyists for fun and profit and real estate flips to make your day, Joe never could grasp the concept and then the train left early so he could not hang around for remedial training!

[Daddy]

"Barack Obama had just graduated from Columbia and was looking for a job...Obama answered a help wanted ad for a position...Obama was 24 years old, unmarried, very accustomed to a vagabond existence..."

This sounds like the resume' of one of the Spice Girls.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Gay Patriot writing at Blogs for Victory takes a trip down memory lane talking about what it was like in America when Biden entered the Senate in 1972:

On the day Joe Biden was first elected to the United States Senate, I was a couple weeks shy of my 8th birthday. This isn’t as bad as Ted Kennedy (who became a Senator before I was born), but it does show the vast gulf of time and experience between Biden and real life. While Biden talks a great game of being one of us, the fact that he’s lived in the Senatorial coocoon since I was a regular viewer of Bugs Bunny indicates that he just might not be aware of what day to day life for Joe Average is like. Obama said in his intro for Biden that the good Senator has been bringing change to DC “for decades”. Lets have a look at that, shall we?

In 1972 gasoline was 36 cents a gallon. We were about quarter century away from the first major school shooting incident. The median price for a house was about $65,000.00. The de-facto legalisation of pornography under Miller vs California was a year away. The Roe decision legalising abortion nationwide was also a year in the future. Everyone who was paying attention learned just how big a threat terrorism was during the 1972 Olympics. We were still some years away from HBO first putting obscene language on television - and cable television at that, and plenty of warnings from the network prior to broadcast. “Rap” was a hip phrase meaning “talk”. Gangsters were terrible criminals no one would want to emulate. A majority of African-American babies were born to married couples. Illegal immigration wasn’t a problem, yet.

I don't know where he was living, but we bought our first house in '72, a brand new just built 1900 sq. ft. 4 BR 3 full BA 2-story, $36,500. It was tough to qualify because we were still a few years away from a married woman's income being counted if she was still in child-bearing years and women could not get credit in their own name. So, although I made more money working full time than my active duty military husband, my income did not count to qualify for a mortgage.

I worked full time, my husband was in one of his long deployment periods where I only saw him 31 days in 3 years, and I had a 7 year old and 3 year old to raise. Nixon was still president and making his historic trip to China. He won reelection over McGovern in a huge landslide. Agnew was still the VP.

I had a tubal pregnancy that year with some severe complications that landed me in the hospital 3 times from May to Sept. of that year. I watched the Munich Massacre at the Olympics from a hospital bed at Balboa Naval Hospital, San Diego. My husband was in a combat zone and they wouldn't notify him, even though at one point my condition was considered life threatening. Families, to the military back, then were a nuisance factor that distracted from the Mission. The POWs were on our mind alot.

As far as being a Hippie, call me a fringe participant when I had the time. I had to work, take care of two kids, and like JMH, afraid to violate the social norms established in my youth. Plus, as a military wife, even hanging around the weekend fringes was risky. It was definitely against the rules and could ruin my husband's career.

If anything, I envied those who were the free spirits, but I never ever identified with the anti-war crowd. In 1972, instead of love beads and free love, I was bowling on the Navy Officers Wives bowling league and wearing pearls. Oy.

[JBean]

If I may emerge momentarily from lurkitude here...

I've been following both Kurtz and Diamond's writings for a while, and it seems to me they have two different, but not necessarily divergent goals. Diamond is a liberal union backer, and his focus is most importantly on the threat posed by Ayers/Obama to the teachers unions, and, therefore to to the educational system, and liberty, itself.

Kurtz, on the other hand, is more interested in Obama's insidious connections to so-called “community activists,” specifically, ACORN and the Gamaliel Foundation. If you read what Kurtz has written in the past year, you form a picture of these organizations, most particularly ACORN, as “Obama's army,” with the same Marxist goals (and in the case of Gamaliel, add Liberation Theology to the mix) as the candidate. I think of the CAC as a tradeoff – Obama's minority status and savvy in herding this type of support, in return for Ayers' extensive familial Chicago connections. And of Ayers' Chicago clout there can be no doubt – he had barely earned his Ed. D at Columbia School of Ed in '87, when he is listed as a “Professor” at UIC in '88, thanks to the connections of his dad, Tom Ayers.

What Kurtz may find in the records is questionable, but we already know, from the Fordham Foundation study, that “the percentage of grants given to school-reform and community- activist groups increased over time, according to the 1999 Consortium report. A full 25 percent of the implementation grants went to these groups in 1995, according to the report. This figure exceeded 50 percent in 1996, when eight of the fourteen grants awarded went to these groups. An additional eight grants were awarded to community organizations and reform groups in 1997. Adjustments were made, yes, but no major effort to break from the reform groups or reconsider the network strategy. In terms of appearances, it didn’t help matters much that the Challenge twice shared office space with reform organizations.”

ACORN, by that name, does rear its head on at least one CAC grant list, but ACORN is a many-headed hydra, and often disguises itself under other names.

As far as the CAC financial reports/tax returns, I think we'd need a forensic accountant to figure them out, except to say that the touted $100 million in “matching funds” appears to owe much of its existence to creative accounting, where foundations and corporations that already had existing school-reform endowments which preceded Annenberg merely agreed to the CAC's goals, and were counted as “matching,” although their funds were controlled independently of the CAC.

[Rick Ballard]

JBean,

Thank you. Delurk more often.

[clarice]

Are you MY J Bean? If So, smooches.

[MayBee]

which preceded Annenberg merely agreed to the CAC's goals, and were counted as “matching,” although their funds were controlled independently of the CAC.

Interesting you note that, JBean. JMH was picking up on that last night, too.

[sbw]

Long observation:

Obama had good reason to minimize his chairmanship of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and association with its instigator, radical educationist William Ayers. The more we learn about the Challenge, the more Michelle Obama's "You know, this conversation doesn't help my kids" seems achingly true.

Under Barack Obama, the Challenge not only failed to help the kids, it siphoned some of the $100 million from those kids to educate a radical farm team prepared to subvert education by warping curricula along their own political lines. They stole from children their education and their opportunity just so they could promote a definition of social justice at odds with American experience and undermine that which has made America good and successful.

Early in his career Obama fell in with these parasites whose bankrupt ideas have failed every time they have been tried. Having once tried violence, Ayers and his friends grabbed for money and influence to co-opt the tools of society -- the schools, the press, and the good hearts of the people.

The Ward Churchill experience warns against the idea that credentials guarantee sound ideas. CAC was used to improve credentials. Malleable College education departments of good conscience took CAC money to advance the educational credentials of people Ayers would have promote political correctness through warped words, history, and thoughts. Ayers' ideas encouraged class warfare, promoted victimhood and entitlement, as if somehow society owed everyone a better living instead of helping people achieve the opportunity to earn a better living.

Exposed by Obama's own campaign minimization of Ayers and CAC, one radical beneficiary of $175,000 recently accused those who examined the Challenge of "new McCarthyism". How ironic to project on others the politically correct control they themselves practice.

The question remains: Should Obama get criticized for understanding the consequences of his actions while chief executive of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge -- or for not understanding what was going on?

[JBean]

Rick -- thanks (blush).

Clarice -- I don't think so. I've gotten that response before, but note the space. It must be my better angel.

[JBean]

Maybee -

Interesting you note that, JBean. JMH was picking up on that last night, too.

The Loyola study infers that:

"the newly minted Chicago Annenberg Challenge received 49.2 million dollars. The Chicago Challenge raised $5 million as part of the match to the $49.2 for grant giving. This was the amount from which the Chicago Challenge directly funded over five years, ending in 2001. To this amount was joined another almost $100 million in required matching funds. The rest of the match was composed of concurrent giving already targeted to school reform by local foundations and corporations that met Challenge goals and from Title One –public money already allocated to the low income schools that received Chicago Challenge funding.”

[MayBee]

"bean" is such a cute word. Welcome, jbean.

Here's Obama's Ad:
ANNCR: With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the sixties, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?

McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers’ crimes, committed when Obama was just eight years old.

Let’s talk about standing up for America today.

John McCain wants to spend $10 Billion a month in Iraq, tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas, selling out American workers.

John McCain, just more of the same.

So Ayers gets reconfirmed as a radical.
Obama could have started his ad with:

ANNCR: With all our problems, why am I talking about John McCain's houses?

but he didn't.
The problem isn't just what Ayers used to do, Obama, it's how he thinks now. G ood try though, buddy.

[bad]

JBean

Yeah, what Rick said. Welcome!!

[bad]

sbw

Did you see the CAC grant instructions posted on the thread last night. You were right on about the matching funds not all running through CAC.

[bad]

–public money already allocated to the low income schools that received Chicago Challenge funding.”

Cool beans, JBean. You are now officially a Rove Boy.

[JBean]

McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers’ crimes, committed when Obama was just eight years old.

How about his wife, Bernardine Dohrn? Obama was 20 years old, and living in the Columbia U. area, when the Rockland County 1981 Brinks robbery went down. A security guard and two policeman were killed, and nine children were orphaned, the youngest being six-months-old.

Dohrn, who, with Ayers, also lived in the Columbia U. area, worked in a baby boutique that stole customer ID's and used them to for a string of robberies culminating in the 1981 murders, refused to testify before a grand jury about her knowledge of the crimes.

She was sentenced to a year in prison, of which she served 7 months in 1982 in a NYC federal jail. When released, she and Ayers married (they already had two children), so that they could adopt Chesa Boudin -- son of the couple accused and sentenced for the crime.

[Rick Ballard]

MayBee,

Everyone knows that Obama was still perfecting his Arabic for the muslim call to prayer when Ayers was at the height of his terrorist career. Shoot, that was well before Obama even began to be mentored by a child raping commie.

The ad still doesn't address the fact that Ayers continues to brag about his bomber days, nor does it enlighten anyone as to the date of their actual first meeting and the relationship between them which followed. The ad invites the supply of additional information.

Which we will be more than happy to furnish.

SBW,

I really liked that statement. Very well said.

[bad]

Maybee

When I run for office you get to preview all my ads and make changes.

[clarice]

I still don't get how much CAC blew away--The $110 million Diamond says they did, the $150 million the grant implies or something else?

[bgates]

why hasn't Biden accumulated money like everyone else in the senate?
Why hasn't Biden accumulated money like everyone else on the planet?
His 2006 financial disclosure claimed less than $420,000 in assets, let alone net worth. I commented about this over the weekend. If Biden saved nothing before age 40, saved only from his Senate salary (and only 8% a year of that), while compounding a whopping 6% investment interest during the years 1985-2006, he would have ended up with more than $420,000.

[JBean]

Clarice --

I still don't get how much CAC blew away--The $110 million Diamond says they did, the $150 million the grant implies or something else?

Neither do I, or apparently, anyone else. If you read the CAC Program Reports that Steve Diamond posted, there are numerous references, particularly in Board minutes, to "fund-raising," (though nothing on the scale of $100 million) but since the records to which Brown U. allowed Diamond access are far from complete, who knows?

[bad]

I still don't get how much CAC blew away

The cynical side of me says we can exploit from all angles.

If Obama blew his job of raising matching funds, it doesn't reflect well on him and his ability to fulfill the requirements of his job.

If he did raise all of the matching funds, then we nail him for wasting $150 million.

And if money was diverted from other programs to artificialy meet the grant's matching fund requirements, then he looks like an exploiter of disadvantaged minority children in pursuit of political gain.

[bad]

I forgot the honesty angle of the Annenberg grant which required 2:1 matching to receive $49.2 million. If all of the matching funds weren't raised, what documentation was given to Annenberg to secure the full grant?

[Porchlight]

Clarice, I was just over at Charlie's Denver blog and noticed that your CAC article is currently Most Popular at Pajamas Media!

[JBean]

bad --

If all of the matching funds weren't raised, what documentation was given to Annenberg to secure the full grant?

From the Loyola report:

"there was constant communication with the Annenberg Challenge staff in Rhode Island, with concept papers and comments being exchanged. This iterative process both refined the Chicago proposal and again ensured the centrality of the Working Group’s efforts. It also influenced the thinking of Annenberg staff regarding the national design (Shipps et al., 1999)."

IOW, Ayers managed to influence the neophytes at the Annenberg HQ -- to accept as "additonal funding" that which already existed.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

I don't get the connection of Brown University in all this? How did they get in the mix other than Michelle Obama's brother used to be the basketball coach there and Amy Carter got in trouble there alot? /snark

[clarice]

Thank you, jbean and bad. I plan to do another piece on this with a Thur deadline and I took the $110 for my original story because it was the most conservative , reliable figure.
Does anyone see what I do about how Obama's role re the CAC puts him on the opposite side re public education of a number of prominent Dem mayors like Fenty (per the Kaus article yesterday.) It looks to me that those few pragmatic mayors have caught on to what the rest of us have, these lefties and their union friends are destroying urban schools, standing in the way of real reform, and making it impossible to attract middle class families back to cities.

[Gabriel Sutherland]

The matching funds question is one that should be posed to the Annenberg Center. Someone directed this national program as it was hosted at Brown University. They would have retained responsibilities for holding the city affiliates to their pledge to raise matching funds.

Right now, do any of the CAC financial records indicate that they received any funds beyond the 49.2 million? From my reading the answer to that question is "no".

It appears that CAC would give $1 to a community group, the same community group would receive $1 in private money(corporations) and then $1 in public funds(foundation, government, philanthropists). I haven't found any documentation that tells us from where, and how much the matching funds included and then tells us where that money went.

It's a complete mystery. This story is potential dynamite for any muckraking reporter. Secure the pages, get the backing, and tackle this beat. Within the CAC story is a narrative to completely disassemble the community activist driven model for government reform.

Want to guess why few newspapers are really trying to cover this story?

You know who should be pumping the crap out of this story? The teacher unions.

[clarice]

Wow, porchlight! That is something.
Brown probably got a cut of the Annenberg grant for all its hard work in administrating the pissing away of millions of dollars. Someone at Brown's Dept of Educ undoubtedly spent a great deal of time strooking someone at Annenberg.

[Gabriel Sutherland]

It looks to me that those few pragmatic mayors have caught on to what the rest of us have, these lefties and their union friends are destroying urban schools, standing in the way of real reform, and making it impossible to attract middle class families back to cities.

This is the domestic war in the United States. What capital finance model should be used to support government services like education, publicly assisted living, and healtcare? Will it be top to bottom, as it is now, or will it be bottom to top as it should be since getting rid of these government services is damn near impossible?

Bottom to top is working in education through vouchers. It isn't really working in housing since crime and poverty merely follow the voucher holder. It's mixed results in healthcare.

[glenda waggoner]

Biden is hiding $$. I am a little fish. I have much more than he lists but certainly don't have a many acres mansion nor wear custom suits as he and his wife evidently do. Just what kind of perks do senators get?

[Gabriel Sutherland]

Look at the Annenberg Challenge in this light. Break out the aluminum hats.

Think for a moment that you're Walter Annenberg and you really care about education, but you're also a businessman so you don't exactly throw away money unless you're getting something out of it.

Local School Councils were the big urban thing in the late 80s built up by left of center groups that pegged Ronald Reagan between Lucifer and Beezelbub in regards to education. LSCs grew like wildfire because all they did was tell the parents what they wanted to hear. "My kid isn't failing because of what I'm doing. My kid is failing because of what they're not doing."

LSCs went nowhere in the suburban enclaves. Those parents were already in control with their radical James Madison plan for owning property to dictate their future. Almost all of these parents grew up in or around a major city with the same exact urban schooling issues they're parents witnessed that led them to sound the alarms to move to the burbs. Ayers, et al, remember this push. They call it "racism".

An LSC isn't going to solve the problems in urban schools. Shall we put persons without a high school diploma in charge of a high school? Holy shit, NO! But what if I throw in some smart guys with masters in education and tons of leftist tripe to get people motivated about subjects they're told are racist anyway.

But this is about Annenberg. What the hell is he doing wasting 500 million dollars to answer a question he already knows the answer to. LSCs don't work.

The Annenberg Challenge created the opportunity for Liberals, mainly Democrats that endorse top to bottom capital finance models for education, to learn everything about everyone that really wants the LSCs. You give Bill Ayers money and he tells you everything he knows about "problem solving".

Walter Annenberg gets the death of LSCs and the protection of the top to bottom liberal finance model that directly helps sells TV Guide and Seventeen.

The industrial complex of Walter Annenberg can be summarized in one single event.

In 1966, Annenberg used the pages of The Inquirer to cast doubt on the candidacy of Democrat Milton Shapp, for governor of Pennsylvania. Shapp was highly critical of the proposed merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad with the New York Central and was pushing the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission to stop it.

Sorry Milt. It was "just business" for Mr. Annenberg.

I wonder what Charles Murray thinks about Local School Councils.