Gatewaypundit has a video today from Naked Emperor News with some comments from BO back in 1995. Yeah, it’s a few years ago. But he talks about the same thing he mentioned to “Joe the Plumber.” This sounds like the real BO to me – not the sanitized stump speech version. After all, there are no white people who willingly pay taxes for AA children to go to school, are there?

Here’s the video:

I wonder – will people try to convince us BO’s politics have changed or his attitudes? Given that he was at Trinity until last spring, I’d say the only viable thing to say is his politics have changed. But the BO campaign will do whatever they can get away with, not what is true or even passes the sniff test.

ALERT! Obama uses Bait and Switch to get college kids into his candy house before he eats them. No. That is not an exaggeration. This is me. Father Eastan. I offer a call to action at the end of this piece. I hope, after reading about this deception, you will consider getting on your horse and riding down main street yelling the BrownShirts are coming – the BrownShirts are coming! Read on. This got me angry.

On Obama’s website there is a line for students:

Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service.

Students will think OK. I go to college. When I get out I put in a few hours at ACORN. Cool. But if you download the actual plan you will see the rest of the FULL sentence.

Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service a year, either during the school year or over the summer months.

The intention of leaving the last part of the offer off of the web site is to lure the kids in so they will pitch their parents. This type of bait and switch for impressionable young votes is an unconscionable, unforgivable act of deceit and an attack against the wondrous, pure innocence of our nations youth.

In the middle of this bail out crisis I want to temporarily change the subject. As a father who put one kid through college, have one enrolled now, and the third coming close behind, I have been investigating the Obama plans for higher education. It may actually have some loose links to the current economic crisis. You can decide. This, my observation, will be broken down into two parts. Funding – not just funding of the schools, but how I fund the cost of my kids’ education – and Community Service. Let’s start with a statement from Obama’s web site.

Obama on Higher Education

Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit: Obama and Biden will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit. This universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans, and will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students. Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service a year, either during the school year or over the summer months.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

Making good marks in school is important to the quality of opportunities students discover available to them after graduation, so taking time away from studies to work on a voter registration project, or whatever noble service may be offered, is not going to be the option most students select. So an unpaid summer job, that will cost them time, gas and meals, will be the most likely method they choose to repay this annual loan – which is what it really is. It is a time loan.

The real world result will be that the rich kids get to go out during the summer, intern with companies and have yet another advantage as they merge, via the acceleration ramp, onto the employment superhighway, while all those who’s parents needed a tax credit to make up for the existing pure grants that may have to be eliminated to pay for the new credits will be traveling the slim pickings back roads hoping to get a low level job working under their former classmates who got an Obama-made jump start.

Is Obama being honest with the kids? No! On his website the last twelve words

“a year, either during the school year or over the summer months”

are left off. The last sentence of the above paragraph ends thusly:

“Recipients of the credit will be required to conduct 100 hours of community service.”

Go back up and click on the link to his site. I set it up so it will open a new window or tab. You won’t leave here. I also took a snap shot of the site so that, when it is changed, I still have a copy of it. There is no dot dot. On the Obama web site this paragraph ends with a period. Only if the young aspiring students download the detailed plan, using the well tucked away link at the bottom of the page, and read the pdf document carefully will they see the whole truth. They will think that their entire payment will be that they give 100 hours of services, such as cleaning other peoples’ neighborhoods, after they graduate from college. That, of course is the intention of leaving the last part of the offer off of the web site. This type of bait and switch for impressionable young votes is an unconscionable, unforgivable act of deceit and an attack against the wondrous, pure innocence of our nations youth.

Here is the full document on that subject. Well, it is not full. There remains missing in that document what will happen to grants currently made available to students of middle income families as greater emphasis is given to low income applicants:

I am unapologetic for making that distinction above. I am middle income and see very little up side in any plan that has Obama playing with my money.

Obama on Community Service

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” – Barack Obama, Colorado Springs, July 2, 2008.

It may come to no surprise that a Civilian National Security Force (CNSF) like the one Obama suggests can be and have been proposed or implemented in places like Cuba, the Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, North Korea and East Germany. But we live in what is now considered a country that values individual freedom and freedom of choices.

To make this concept even more disturbing, Obama has also called for greater integration between his CNSF and public schools, so that young Americans are better prepared to be active citizens. He said he would make federal assistance conditional on school districts establishing service programs and setting the goal of 50 hours of service a year for middle and high school students.

“Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously,” he said.

This sounds like coerced patriotism for the lower and middle class. Get out there and volunteer for something, kid, or we’ll have to shut down the library and charge you double for your books. Private schools, like the one Obama’s daughters attend will be inherently exempt, of course. His girls will never be forced to take target practice lessons and patrol the borders of Hyde Park, protecting the locals from moderate low information interlopers who may try to climb the gates for a better look onto how the other half lives. You know – like the One who, three years ago entered into a joint real estate business relationship with a convicted Syrian Felon and today is running for the right to conscript your kids into his brown shirt urban army.

In the months and years ahead, with the engineered deconstruction of the economy, a “domestic security force” possibly the size of the U.S. military will be required “to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals,” as Rockefeller functionary Brzezinski might describe it. Kurt Nimmo, Infowars, July 16, 2008

Nimmo’s caption might not be that far fetched. Obama’s top advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is a close Rockefeller protégé and a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member. Obama’s wife, Michelle, is a member of the Chicago branch of the CFR. Disgraced former Obama advisor, James A. Johnson, former Fannie Mae CEO and consummate Washington insider, is a member of the American Friends of Bilderberg and the Council on Foreign Relations. Big donors to the Obama campaign basically constitute a who’s who of corporate and Wall Street banking interests, and some believe they would welcome profits even if it meant subduing those of us who may resist an accelerated move toward corporate globalization and a one-world economy.

I am not sure I see such grand planned cooperation between so many powers with the intent of keeping us in our place solely for their wealth appropriation. But I am troubled by Obama’s talk about forced copulation between two fundamental, yet distinct cornerstones of our modern society, education and community service. It is – well – un-American.

I have an All American plan. And, since I do not live in Missouri, I might be able to pull it off. Free Speech. I tried this on my son and he is ready to march, for his freedom, straight to the polling place and vote for anyone except Obama. Good boy. Smart boy. My plan? And, by the way, you can do this too. It sure beats sobbing over our keyboards.

Two-fold. First I am going to finance the printing of some simple flyers explaining the Obama Tax Credit to Servitude Shell Game and get them to college republicans in my state to distribute around campus. For that I will likely be accused of attempted voter suppression because I will be told that the only thing that could possibly be the result of such action would be the freezing of the youth vote. Nobody would ever believe the students will actually vote for someone other than Obama. I’m willing to take that heat.

Second, I am going to take a few bucks and buy some radio spots, where allowed, at the student run radio station at the university he attends. The language of the spot will be something like this.

If the wrong president is elected he will expect you to perform community service each summer to pay back the tax credits your parents took for sending you to school. While affluent students spend their summers interning in their major, the rest of you will be in soup kitchens, cleaning roadsides or registering voters – for no pay. Visit eCivic.org to learn more. Your urgent attention is needed to spread the word. Do it now.

If anyone has any ideas for composing the radio script or the flyer please add your ideas in a comment here or compose it and email it to EastanMcNeal@yahoo.com I will work on layout for the flyer and provide original music for the radio ad, and we can share master copies to send out en masse.

The website will, of course, be focused around the Obama plan and why they should not even think about letting him drive them into involuntary service – The Obama Draft.

If you want to go back to the subject that has taken all our attention these days, try looking at this. It has nothing to do with my article. Or does it?

Well, not really all of a sudden, it’s just a few days after the AFL-CIO decided to throw in the towel and endorse Obama over Clinton now that Clinton has put her campaign on ice.  And just a few days before Obama is scheduled to appear before the national conventions of both of the major teachers’ unions.  The AFT has recommended its convention meeting next week in Chicago endorse Obama, as has the National Education Association, before which Obama speaks tomorrow, July 5.

When I pointed out at the Edwize Blog sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers, the big New York division of the AFL-CIO affiliated AFT, that Darling-Hammond backs the same key policy proposal (repayment of centuries of “education debt” to people of color) as Bill Ayers, long-time education advocate and co-worker of Obama, and that Ayers and Obama are far from being “casual acquaintances” as Leo Casey of the AFT had contended, Casey replied with the following false claims on the Democratic Left Yahoo group: 

1) that I had painted an “unrecognizable caricature” of Darling-Hammond;

2) that I had contended that the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge that Ayers and Obama ran together for five years was a “political front” for Ayers and his politics;

3) that Obama had only a “quite superficial grasp of what [was] going on” at the Annenberg Challenge the board of which he chaired and was not “involve[d] in the nitty-gritty” of the five year long project and that he was only “lending..his name and his ability to make a couple of telephone calls to get things done.”

4) that I contended there was “some sort of sinister hidden connection between Obama and Ayers”

None of this is true and Casey provides no documentation at all for any of his specious contentions.  I wrote the following reply to both Democratic Left and Edwize, but so far neither site has “approved” my posts (pretty remarkable for Democratic Left, a site that considers itself an opponent of authoritarianism in modern political life) so I am putting up a copy here:

Well, at least Leo now seems to be admitting that Ayers and Obama were more than “casual acquaintances” as he asserted on Democratic Left and on Edwize.

So now on to the second line of defense.

Frankly, I am not sure what that is because I only assert two things: Obama and Ayers have a longstanding political relationship – which is clear from the public record; and two, Ayers and Darling-Hammond are now advocating a race-based solution to education – the repayment of centuries of “education debt” to people of color or, in other words, reparations. Nothing you have said contradicts this.

I did not paint a portrait of Darling-Hammond or caricature her as you have speciously asserted. I only stated the facts as supported by her public record. She and I have exchanged emails on this issue and this is reported on my blog. She herself has never suggested that I have made any factually incorrect statements about her.

I never suggested the Annenberg Challenge which Obama and Ayers ran together, though not alone, was a political front as you, again without substantiation, contend I did. In fact, Ayers was quite open about his political goals and those goals run right through the lengthy grant proposal, the annual reports of the organization and its board minutes, which I have reviewed (though some board minutes were not provided me).

Some in Chicago shared those goals. Some understood the background of his views and others did not. I view the local schools councils as an attempt to create a new center of power that was aimed at the power of the teachers’ union. They were set up in the wake of an unpopular teachers strike in 1987. Obama and Ayers were active in the lobbying effort for that “radical” reform, as Ayers called it in his proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.

I do not consider such local councils a democratic step forward for school progress, but rather as a potential base of power for those with a different kind of agenda, based on racial politics and “social justice” teaching. A genuine democratic alternative would be built, as Dorothy Shipps has written, in district wide assemblies elected by the public that are transparent and accountable.

I have not imputed any particular agenda to Ayers, Obama or Darling-Hammond, other than to note that Ayers and Darling-Hammond support repayment of the education debt as a top priority. Obama has not stated what his views are on this very clearly though he indicated sympathy for the idea while campaigning in South Carolina. 

Given the long and close ties between Ayers and Obama and the professional ties among education debt repayment advocates Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings, it is reasonable to ask if this kind of race-based approach to educational problems is going to be part of the Obama presidency.

Obama was not as you contend an elected official when he first worked on school reform with Ayers in the late 80s, nor was he even yet a candidate when he became Chairman of the board of the Annenberg Challenge in 1995. He was a relative unknown and quite a junior person at that point, just two years out of law school when Ayers submitted the grant proposal, with only a voter registration drive to his credit since leaving Harvard.

Thus, I think it is a fair question to ask why Obama would have been chosen to head up such a prestigious effort as the $110 million Annenberg Challenge. I think Ayers backed him because he knew he could rely on Obama to support Ayers’ agenda of propping up the troubling and troubled local schools councils.

And, in fact, the record of the Challenge – its annual reports, mid term reports and board minutes – indicate that that is precisely what happened. Even when concerns were raised by a business sector representative on the board that the councils represented a potential “political threat” to school principals (and unions??) Obama backed Ayers in pushing money into the school council election process.

Finally, when you suggest that Obama played no significant role in directing the Challenge, are you suggesting that as chairman of the board of a major non profit corporation in the state of Illinois, that Obama had a hands-off attitude? That he was NOT aware that the Challenge was signing off on, for example, a $175,000 grant to Ayers buddy Mike Klonsky, as they did in 1995 for the Small Schools Workshop Klonsky was recruited to head up by Ayers? That suggests to me a problem of fiduciary duty. Quite unlikely for a Harvard Law School graduate – and frankly, more worrying for me about Obama if true.

No, I think Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he voted as a board member to approve the disbursement of millions of dollars in order to intervene in the Chicago school wars. And so did Ayers. They were using each other for advancement of their careers and their shared political perspective on education policy. 

The Challenge ended in 2001. It is certainly reasonable for voters to ask seven years later for Obama to explain the relationship and Ayers’ influence on his approach to education policy.



While no one could, or should, impute to Obama any support for the terroristic activity of Ayers, Dohrn and others, there is an important connection between Ayers’ politics then and his approach to education policy today: Ayers and the Weather Underground promoted a politics built around the absurd idea of “white supremacy,” which Ayers calls even today the “monster in the room” at the heart of American life. 

This was linked to another idea that was widely held among the maoist elements that took hold in the early 70s in the US: that American workers and their unions were part of a giant labor aristocracy that exploited workers of the south, the so-called Third World. Inside the US, the Weather Underground argued that global form of “unequal exchange” was reproduced in the relationship between white and black workers.

Thus, when an idea like repayment of centuries of accumulated “education debt” is proposed as the top priority of the next federal government as it has been by Darling-Hammond, Ladson-Billings and Bill Ayers, all of whom have links to Obama it is reasonable to ask what Obama’s view are on such a critical issue. The presumptive nominee has yet to explain how it is that his education advisor can promote such an idea and yet he remains silent on it.

I would think the members of America’s teachers’ unions would like to know the answers to such questions as well before they decide how to approach the upcoming elections.

::::::

My most recent previous article here: “How is it under that bus, Comrade Klonsky?”

Read my other posts here at No Quarter.

About me: I am a law professor and political scientist on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley. I teach courses on the global capital markets, the international economy, corporate governance and international labor and human rights. Prior to joining the faculty I was in private legal practice in New York and in Palo Alto. I also have an extensive background in the labor movement and advise a wide range of unions, workers and institutional investors on financial and legal issues. This website is an independent project and hence is my responsibility and it is not affiliated in any other way with the law school or Santa Clara University.

It’s worth the read. Part one starts out like this:

In 1998, as six years of a national campaign to demonize First Lady Hillary Clinton — funded by conservatives and rooted in profound anti-feminism — was reaching a fevered crescendo, then-conservative David Brock (now of Media Matters) penned a book called The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. The publisher’s note for the tome says of its subject: “No public figure in contemporary life has elicited more polarized reactions than Hillary Rodham Clinton. The first presidential spouse who pursued a major policymaking role, the beleaguered first lady has been a heroine and role model to her feminist allies – and a malevolent, power-mad shrew to her conservative foes.”

Sometime in the last decade, her liberal foes evidently decided that whole “malevolent, power-mad shrew” thing sounded pretty good, too.

Throughout the course of the Democratic primary, it was neatly repackaged as “wildly ambitious person who will do anything in her voracious quest to win including destroying the Democratic Party while cackling monstrously and whose womanness totally doesn’t matter we swear.” The classic misogynist charge once used against Clinton by the vast right-wing conspiracy became the rallying cry of large swaths of the erstwhile reality-based community.

Without a hint of irony.

Read the rest ->

Part two starts out like this:

It was an indication of how thoroughly the left co-opted the use of the GOP and media-created scandals, to smear Hillary Clinton during the presidential primaries, that the Republicans weren’t even mentioning them much anymore, content to let the Left do its dirty work. There was little reason for GOP operatives to get their hands dirty reviving the villainous First Lady Macbeth caricature, when many liberals were happy to do it for them.

Not content to merely destroy the entire Democratic party single-handedly, Hillary Clinton was hell-bent on murder. Evidently having failed to satiate her bloodlust after murdering Vince Foster – or such was the claim of her ideological enemies, a charge still being chanted like a demonic incantation by rightwing pain-maker Rush Limbaugh – now she was openly lusting for the assassination of her opponent, Barack Obama. (That is not to suggest there were no legitimate concerns about her statement.) And Randi Rhodes – a “progressive talk radio personality” – fresh from calling Clinton a “fucking whore,” fanned the same flames when she announced fearing for her life after delivering the insult to someone who routinely has her enemies whacked.

Give this a read. Although stomach-churning, it calls out the that orange place and Randi Rhodes for their smears. And it’s not a bad thing to remember why we’re still fighting for HRC.

2) This morning, CNN has a story about Clinton supporters not going for Obama. According to a poll, fewer Clinton supporters say they will vote for Obama than a month ago. (See also: “Obama Fails to Attract Hillary’s Supporters.”)

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday, the number of Clinton supporters who plan to defect to Republican Sen. John McCain’s camp is down from one month ago, but — in what could be an ominous sign for Obama as he seeks to unify the party — the number of them who say they plan to vote for Obama is also down, and a growing number say they may not vote at all.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey completed in early June before the New York senator ended her White House bid, 60 percent of Clinton backers polled said they planned on voting for Obama. In the latest poll, that number has dropped to 54 percent.

In early June, 22 percent of Clinton supporters polled said they would not vote at all if Obama were the party’s nominee, now close to a third say they will stay home.

Looks like PUMA and Obama’s many position switches may have had an effect here. Unfortunately, CNN still ascribes this unwillingness to vote for Obama to sour grapes rather than for any principles or ideas about leadership.

“These things always take time to heal,” said Bill Schneider, CNN senior political analyst. “I think Clinton’s supporters are waiting to see if Sen. Obama will pick her as vice president. That would certainly be very healing to them.”
———————————
“If he doesn’t pick her, a later stage of grief is depression and then acceptance,” Schneider said. “In the end I expect Clinton supporters will accept Obama, because they will listen to Sen. Clinton, who has said the stakes are too high for Democrats to sulk.”

Then the article slinks down to talking about how Bill Clinton needs to “repair” his image. Blech. CNN would have spent their time better to figure out exactly what the voters’ objections to Obama really are.

But I guess it’s a step up from saying it’s just a racist plot against Obama, right??? Racists, sore losers, bitter old white women and, later, just bitter white people. And the ideas that we need to just “get over it” and “come home.”

Yeah, yeah, we know. The beatings will continue until morale improves. Yada, yada, yada.

3) Over at Redstate, conservatives ponder Obama’s position(s) on abortion and figure he might not be so bad after all. Of course, they also recognize you can’t tell where he really stands. Hey, Redstate, we can’t tell either!

4) ABCnews blogger Greenburg finds it interesting that Obama has supported the gun ban reversal and death penalty decisions from SCOTUS. In particular, Obama’s position on the abortion question (saying mental distress is not a reason) is one held previously only by Justices Thomas and Scalia. Not the usual playground buddies for a Democrat.

“. . . McCain and . . . Obama praised the conservative’s position [on the DC gun ban]. The same thing happened the day before in another sharply divided 5-4 case over whether states can execute people who rape, but do not kill, children. This time conservatives lost, but again McCain and obama were on the same side, blasting the liberals’ decision striking down laws that allowed the death penalty for child rape.

“But on two of the biggest social controversies to reach the Court this year, Obama, too, [like McCain] sided with conservatives — rejecting opinions by the liberal justices who, presumably, are of the kind he would appoint if elected President.

But that’s nothing compared to Obama’s most recent comments about the most controversial social issue of them all: abortion.
————

. . . there’s no mistaking that Obama says he no longer will support what’s long been a cornerstone of the abortion rights debate: The Court’s insistence that laws banning abortions after the fetus is viable (now about 22 weeks) contain an exception to allow doctors to perform them if necessary to protect a pregnant woman’s mental health.”

Greenburg notes that Obama’s current position is in opposition to the current law of the land on this issue. She notes as well that his current position contradicts earlier legislation co-sponsored by Obama himself.

“The Freedom of Choice Act specifically allows abortions after viability where necessary to sprotect a woman’s health, and the legislation refers repeatedly to the guarantees of Roe and Doe, which protect the right to an abortion where necessary for a woman’s physical and mental health.

One of its co-sponsors? Barack Obama.

5) At fivethirtyeight.com there’s an article from June 26 about which candidate, Obama or McCain, has a problem with his base. The answer is both of them.

We’ve long assumed this about McCain, but this is a change for Obama. It may even be stronger now. We’ll just have to see. Perhaps the more interesting question now is whether or not the Obama campaign cares if its most enthusiastic base is fully behind him. Judging by his recent moves, I’d say no.

6) At therealbarackobama, Steve Diamond writes that the American Federation of Teachers is defending Obama and his education advisor Linda Darling-Hammond and suggests the AFT doesn’t want Obama and Darling-Hammond’s close relationship to Bill Ayers to get much attention. Both the AFT and National Education Association will endorse Obama.

Diamond wrote about the relationship between Obama, Darling-Hammond and Ayers before.

When I pointed out at the Edwize Blog sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers, the big New York division of the AFL-CIO affiliated AFT, that Darling-Hammond backs the same key policy proposal (repayment of centuries of “education debt” to people of color) as Bill Ayers, long time education advocate and co-worker of Obama, and that Ayers and Obama are far from being “casual acquaintances” as Leo Casey of the AFT had contended, Casey replied with the following false claims . . .

Diamond outlines Casey’s counterclaims and then states his position on those. While all this is a little “weedy” for those not involved in education, it is noteworthy that Diamond’s ends his post with the following:

While no one could, or should, impute to Obama any support for the terroristic activity of Ayers, Dohrn and others, there is an important connection between Ayers’ politics then and his approach to education policy today: Ayers and the Weather Underground promoted a politics built around the absurd idea of “white supremacy,” which Ayers calls even today the “monster in the room” at the heart of American life.

This was linked to another idea that was widely held among the maoist elements that took hold in the early 70s in the US: that American workers and their unions were part of a giant labor aristocracy that exploited workers of the south, the so-called Third World. Inside the US, the Weather Underground argued that a global form of “unequal exchange” was reproduced in the relationship between white and black workers.

Thus, when an idea like repayment of centuries of accumulated “education debt” is proposed as the top priority of the next federal government as it has been by Darling-Hammond, Ladson-Billings and Bill Ayers, all of whom have links to Obama, it is reasonable to ask what Obama’s view are on such a critical issue. The presumptive nominee has yet to explain how it is that his education advisor can promote such an idea and yet he remains silent on it.

I would think the members of America’s teachers’ unions would like to know the answers to such questions as well before they decide how to approach the upcoming elections.

I’ve heard from teachers for a long time now that “there are NO stupid questions, only the ones you don’t ask.” Well, how about asking a few? Of course, even if Obama promised the unions he wouldn’t significantly change education policies they advocate, why should they believe him?

After all, the Obama bus has a lot of blue meat under it already. Of course, teachers’ unions aren’t favorites of a lot of “middle America,” so there may simply be a collective yawn when the unions find themselves at odds with Obama later. Because, you know, all the truly progressive educated people loooooovvvveee Obama. And they make more money than teachers.

Center on Education Policy

_____________________

From my blog, Global Labor and the Global Economy.

Read my other posts here at No Quarter.

About me: I am a law professor and political scientist on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley. I teach courses on the global capital markets, the international economy, corporate governance and international labor and human rights. Prior to joining the faculty I was in private legal practice in New York and in Palo Alto. I also have an extensive background in the labor movement and advise a wide range of unions, workers and institutional investors on financial and legal issues. This website is an independent project and hence is my responsibility and it is not affiliated in any other way with the law school or Santa Clara University.