The partial story 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 without an explanation in the Times’ story I thought I would summarize the top ten highlights of the current state of play.  These ten key points confirm what I have argued all along – that Bill Ayers was responsible for the elevation of Obama to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge board.

1) The key question is whether Bill Ayers had a role in the selection of Barack Obama to become Chairman and President of the $160 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a multi year school reform effort started in 1995.

2) This is the key question because if it is true that Ayers played a role in Obama’s selection it indicates that Ayers and Obama had a pre-existing relationship.

3) If Ayers and Obama did have a pre-existing relationship it undermines claims by the Obama Campaign that the relationship between Ayers, an authoritarian political figure who once engaged in bombings to implement his politics, was “tenuous” or “casual” and that Ayers was just a neighbor of Obama’s in Hyde Park.

4) I believe that Obama and Ayers shared a similar world view with respect to education issues, at least. For example, during their time together running the Chicago Annenberg Challenge they supported funding for groups like the Small Schools Workshop and Local School Councils. These groups were criticized as engaging in “teacher bashing”  by union activists and as a “political threat” to school principals by Arnold Weber, a fellow Annenberg board member.

5) I have presented evidence here at Global Labor [published at No Quarter and at the Global Labor blog] that Ayers did in fact play a direct and personal role in Obama’s elevation to the CAC board. This evidence consists of letters exchanged at the time of these events between the national Annenberg Challenge led by Vartan Gregorian, the President of Brown University, and Bill Ayers, on the one hand, and between Gregorian and Adele Simmons, President of the MacArthur Foundation, an advisor to Ayers, on the other. 

Those letters state clearly that Ayers was actively engaged in the board selection process in November and December of 1994.

I described those letter to the Times when asked about this and provided them copies.

6) I also argued that these letters are consistent with the legal responsibility Ayers had as the representative of the recipient of the $50 million Annenberg Challenge grant.

7) According to the Obama campaign and now according to emails I have received from the New York Times, Ayers had “nothing” to do with the selection of Obama for the board Chairmanship. 

They claim that according to Deborah Leff and Patricia Graham that only Leff and Graham recruited and nominated Obama, respectively. However, in their published story the Times did not quote Leff to that effect. Neither did the Obama campaign in its statement on the matter. I have asked the Times for clarification.

If Leff’s and Graham’s current recollections are true, then the written contemporaneous documentation I provided to the Times (letters to and from Vartan Gregorian and Ayers) appears to be contradicted and this leads to a very odd conclusion: that Leff, a lawyer, and Graham went around the back of the legal representative of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (Ayers) to recruit and nominate the CAC board Chairman (Obama).

Why would they have done that? In fact, I do not think they did.

9) In August of 1994, Leff wrote a letter to Brown’s Gregorian lauding Bill Ayers for his leadership in organizing the grant application and said that her Joyce Foundation was awarding $80,000 to his Annenberg working group, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, to continue their work to secure and establish the Annenberg program. This Collaborative was the group which Ayers represented when he submitted the final Annenberg grant application in November.

Thus, as of August, 1994, Leff’s Joyce Foundation also recognized officially that Ayers was the formal agent for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge applicant, the Collaborative, and they were financially aiding him in that effort.

In addition, letters from the Governor of Illinois, the Mayor of Chicago, the Superintendent of the Chicago school system, the Executive Director of the Woods Fund, the Executive Director of the Polk Bros. Foundation, the Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Council of Chicago Area Deans of Education all sent to Vartan Gregorian acknowledge the leading role of Ayers and/or the Collaborative he formed in the formation of the Annenberg Challenge.

10) To accept the story 14 years later of the Times and the Obama campaign requires us to conclude that Leff, unilaterally against her own board of directors (which in November added Obama), went around the back of Bill Ayers to impose on him secretly Barack Obama as the chair of the Annnenberg Challenge! That is a remarkable conclusion – and of course one that is not yet backed up by Leff herself!

Why not? Most likely because Leff as a lawyer understands now as she did then that whatever her personal role in the selection process, the legal power that Ayers possessed, as the agent of the CAC grant recipient – the Collaborative, to either reject or accept Obama as CAC Board Chairman was clear.

Thus, while Ayers may not have suggested the Obama name directly to Leff, only Ayers could approve of the appointment of Obama. No one else possessed the legal power to do so.

At their November meeting together, Ayers may have delegated to Leff, Ayers and Simmons the task of recruiting a pool of potential board candidates but only he could give the final approval – a condition of the Collaborative’s receipt of the grant, as set forth in the exchange of letters between Gregorian and Ayers. 

There are any number of ways that Ayers could have gotten Obama’s name into the mix.

For example, how did Leff think of Obama? Perhaps because Ayers had suggested his name to Simmons – an old friend of Leff’s from their days at Princeton – who passed it on to Leff without telling Leff that the name came from Ayers. Perhaps because Ayers had first suggested Obama to Leff for the Joyce Foundation board earlier in 1994 and then it occurred to Leff that Ayers would approve of Obama for the CAC as well. 

Or perhaps when Ayers asked Leff to help with the selection process he provided her with clear guidance on the kind of board chair he wanted: someone young, dynamic, a lawyer, with a background of supporting the CAC agenda of school reform, and someone who represented, as committed by Ayers to Gregorian, the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago. There were actually very few, if any, such individuals in Chicago other than Barack Obama, in light of the hostility of mainstream black organizations to the CAC agenda.

Or perhaps Leff, Simmons and Graham came up with several names and only when Obama’s was finally mentioned did Ayers grant his approval.

It does not really matter how Obama’s name got into the mix because in the end only Ayers had the legal authority to approve of Obama, whether or not Leff, Simmons and Graham understood that, much less the New York Times. Only if the Collaborative had revoked Ayers power to represent them, could that have changed. Of course, the opposite happened – they made Ayers co-chair and he represented the Collaborative at the board meetings of the CAC itself once it was established in March, 1995. 

Actually, the Times indirectly confirms this explanation when it quoted Ben Labolt that Ayers and Obama met for lunch, after Obama met with Graham.  Since LaBolt says this was the “first time” Ayers and Obama met, this lunch must have taken place before the CAC’s first board meeting in March of 1995. Although it is undoubtedly true that Ayers and Obama met long before this, that is legally sufficient evidence that Ayers approved of Obama as the board chair.

To test this proposition, ask what would have happened if Ayers, as the legal agent of the CAC grant recipient had said after that lunch, no, I do not want this person for the board? Leff, Graham and Simmons would have had no choice but to go back to the drawing board. They were only agents of Bill Ayers, the legal representative of the Collaborative, for the purpose of recruiting potential board members. They had no legally cognizable ability to impose a choice on Ayers and the Collaborative. This is true no matter what Graham or others may have thought when they told the Times that Ayers was not involved.

The individual with the legal power to overrule a decision is the person with the actual decision making authority.  

That was Bill Ayers and his decision was: Barack Obama.

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I am a lawyer, political scientist and law professor. I teach courses and conduct research on the global capital markets, business law, international human rights and labor law.

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SusanUnPC’s note: We all know Steve Diamond for his investigative work on Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers. Steve is a lawyer, political scientist and law professor. His blog is Global Labor and Politics.

They sent a 30-something New Yorker named Ryan Lizza to Chicago.  And Chicago ate him for breakfast and never looked back.

Of course, as patient readers of Global Labor well know, we asked, and answered, the age old Chicago political question – Who Sent You? – back in April of this year and we updated it several times most recently on June 23.  No mention of our work in the New Yorker – but that’s ok, they likely would have screwed it up anyway.

As we wrote then, the key to understanding Obama’s rise to power in Chicago politics is knowing which questions to ask, and of whom, and to understand why some will give you a straight answer while others will smile as broad as daylight at you and feed you a pile of horse manure. Lizza ate a lot of the latter. Now he wants you to eat it, too.  Don’t be fooled.

Let’s just take apart one paragraph as an example, about the critical relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers.

Lizza writes as follows:

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, another activist Hyde Park couple, also held an event for Obama. Forty years ago, Ayers and Dohrn were leaders of the Weathermen, the militant antiwar group that bombed the Pentagon and the United States Capitol. By the time Obama met Ayers, the former radical and onetime fugitive had been accepted into polite Chicago society and had been reborn as an education expert, eventually working as an informal adviser to Mayor Daley. (Those ties remain intact in the jumbled culture of Chicago politics. When Obama’s association with Ayers first became a campaign issue, Daley, whose father, in 1968, sent his police force into the streets to combat Ayers’s fellow-radicals, issued a statement praising Ayers as “a valued member of the Chicago community.”)

Of course, Ayers and Dohrn are hardly “another activist couple.” Dohrn is a convicted criminal and both were terrorists who helped destroy the best of the student left and anti-war movement in the late 1960s. And is Bill Ayers a former radical? What is the evidence of that? In fact, Ayers loses no opportunity to make clear to all willing to listen that nothing has changed for him since his days in the Weather Underground – which ran until about 25 years ago, not 40 – except that he is longer tossing homemade bombs around.

Notice what Lizza does here though: “by the time Obama met Ayers” he writes, Ayers had been accepted into polite Chicago society.  He never asks, or answers when, in fact, Ayers and Obama actually met.  And, of course, experienced Chicagoans like Abner Mikva and Marilyn Katz, two key Obama allies, are never asked and do not tell.

But when did Obama meet Ayers? That is critical. It helps determine whether or not there is any shred of support for Obama’s own claim that Ayers, whose name is clearly toxic for the Obama camp, was “just a guy from the neighborhood.”  And, frankly, all the rest of Obama’s political history in Chicago is pretty meaningless unless one tackles this issue.

The New York Times reported some weeks ago that according to unnamed Obama aides they first met at the fundraiser that Lizza mentions, which took place in the fall of 1995.  Of course, that is wrong because by late 1995 Obama was already chairman of the board of directors of the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge, recruited to that post by Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Challenge, who himself co-chaired the Chicago School Reform Collaborative which was the operative arm of the Challenge.

The natural follow-up to that question of when Ayers and Obama met is why did Ayers want Obama as chair of the Challenge Board?  Of course the board chair would have to share the values and goals of the Challenge’s leading founder, Bill Ayers.  

And how would Bill Ayers know that the young Mr. Obama, a fresh lawyer out of Harvard, shared his goals and values?  

A job interview?  Not likely.  

The goal of the Annenberg Challenge was to enter intense political warfare – a battle royale over the future of Chicago’s giant, long-troubled public school system. For that kind of battle, as they also say in Chicago, if your enemy brings a knife, you bring a gun.

So Ayers would have been looking for some heavy weaponry as he waded back into the Chicago school wars in 1993 and 1994 through the generosity of Walter Annenberg.

Sure, Richie Daley would shake hands with Bill Ayers down the road – more than that, he would give him the key to the damn city, naming him “Chicagoan of the Year” in 1997. So what? Of course, Daley shook his hand – keep your friends close, your enemies closer.  Again, we explained this some time ago here.

But in 1994, Ayers was at war with Daley.  Daley was attempting to reverse the radical school reform law put in place in 1988 in the wake of an unpopular teachers’ strike.  That reform effort had among its supporters, Bill Ayers, Bill’s power broker father Tom, his brother John and, oh yeah, Barack Obama.  They had all been part of the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs, which lobbied heavily for the 1988 reform bill that put in place a new power center in Chicago schools, so-called Local School Councils, of LSCs, to watchdog teachers and principals.

But their impact on student achievement was mixed at best so Daley was angling to re-centralize power in his office. Ayers saw the Annenberg money as a way to pump up support for the LSCs.  And he recruited, of all the possibilities, the young Barack Obama to head up the board of directors of the Challenge in that effort.

It was a huge step up for the young lawyer at a critical point in his political career.  Sure, as Lizza notes, he had run a successful get out the vote campaign in 1991-2 which helped put Carole Mosley Braun into the Senate. But running the Annenberg Challenge put him into another layer of Chicago power and prestige altogether, allowing him to rub shoulders with the most powerful players in the city and yet to do so on behalf of a radical and troubled school reform effort. Picking Obama meant that there had to already have been a strong relationship between Obama and Ayers, perhaps one that dated as far back as the 1987-88 school reform movement.

But the Annenberg Challenge is never once even mentioned by Lizza.  Funny.

Lizza does say in passing that Obama sat on the boards of two liberal foundations but presumably he means the Woods Fund, which was smaller and less controversial than the Annenberg Challenge, and the Joyce Foundation, another small liberal non profit, both of which have been written about extensively.

But that means one key post for Obama is missing – the Annenberg Challenge where he not only was on the board but chaired it and did so from day one.  And was recruited to it by one of the most controversial figures in Chicago politics, Bill Ayers.  They would work closely together on the Challenge for five years, not only handing out the original $49.2 million grant but soliciting another $60 million from Chicago foundations and corporations as well.

Now, for sure, Lizza says Ayers and Obama met after Ayers had been “reborn as an education expert” and accepted into polite society.  God only knows when Lizza thinks that happened but if he meant to date the relationship between Obama and Ayers to 1988 or 1987 then he should say so.  

Of course, as Chicagoans well know, Ayers was not accepted into polite society, he was born into it.  His father, Tom, was the city’s leading business figure for several decades, responsible as far back as the mid-60s for brokering peace between Martin Luther King and Daley the First, and still active in education policy and other issues well into the 1990s. It was Tom who placed Ayers’ wife Dohrn into his one of his law firms, Sidley Austin, where Obama also worked just after Dohrn had left. Dohrn had also gone to law school with Judson Miner, the lawyer who first hired Obama out of Harvard in 1991.

Of course, if Lizza put the Obama-Ayers relationship back as far as the 1987-88 ABCs days, that would contradict the line being put out by the Obama campaign and would open up another wound in the credibility of the Obama machine. At some point those add up, a turning point is reached and the magic wears off. That, surely, is something Lizza clearly and no doubt desperately wants to avoid.

The willful blindness of the liberal left to the origins of Barack Obama’s rise to power, including his close and long standing political relationship to Bill Ayers, is something we have not seen in this country since the run-up to the Iraq war.  That war had Judith Miller, this year’s Presidential campaign has Ryan Lizza.

Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama – The New Yorker

_____________
Stephen Diamond
Associate Professor of Law
Santa Clara University School of Law

http://www.scu.edu/law/faculty/profile/diamond-stephen.cfm

_____________

See also: LisaB’s “The Making of a Politician”

Obama’s most questionable tie is to a leftist organization called ACORN. His connection to this group begins with a woman named Madeleine Talbot. She embraced Obama and taught him the ropes. He remained a part of this group’s training cadre. Obama taught leadership conferences for the group while working for Miner, Barnhill & Galland. His connections don’t end there. Obama actively sought and received the endorsement by ACORN for his local campaigns. He has now done the same in his bid for the USA presidency.

According to its web site ACORN (an acronym for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. At first glance, this organization seems to be benign. This is not true since it uses very aggressive tactics to get its work done.

Some recent reports about their activities include the following things. They have disrupted and blocked activities within the Chicago City Council during living wage discussions. In Baltimore, MD, they burst into the scene of a private law dinner. They bussed four loads of protesters to the site of a mayor’s house, where they spewed profanities at the mayor and his family. And these are just the ones we know about. Their thuggery is over the line by far.

These are not their only questionable actions. In the past they have been tied to illegal voter registration in at least three states. These three states are Washington, Missouri, and North Carolina.

In Missouri, the voter fraud case was tied to at least one campaign, the senate campaign of Claire McCaskill.

In 2004, the Washington state Secretary of State described ACORN’s illegal activity as the “largest case of voter fraud in the state’s history”.

They were fined $25,000 and promised to instruct their paid canvassers on the state election requirements. In 2005, according to the complaint filed with Mecklenberg County, North Carolina, the voter fraud involved the registration of homeless people. ACORN agrees they break the law but said “no one told us”. In 2006, in Kansas City, MO, five low-level operatives were charged with voter fraud. Four pleaded guilty, with the fifth person released because it came out that an ACORN worker had stolen her identity.

This is just the first layer of radicalism. According to Sol Stern’s 2003 City Journal article, “ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities,” this group is the key modern successor of the 1960 ‘s “New Left” with a 1960′s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism to match. While ACORN still uses the old tactics of the National Welfare Reform Organization to get things done, the targets and strategy have changed. They prefer to fly under the radar, taken their tactics to liberal urban areas like Chicago and now here in Kansas. Their national goals are municipal “living” wage laws, targeting big companies like Costco, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks.

ACORN drives companies like Costco from urban areas that actually need jobs. Their opposition to welfare reform tends to keep the people in poverty in these areas, while causing family breakdown. The worst of their tactics is the regulation of banks. They protest “predatory lending,” putting pressure on banks to make large donations to them to finance their “non-partisan motor voter drives.” Stern says that these tactics tend to be “undisguised authoritarian socialism.”

Don’t let its tactics fool you though. According to Kurtz, “ACORN is a savvy and exceedingly effective player.” They prefer to take over the system from within rather than overthrowing the system from without. Stern calls this a political version of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In Chicago, where the largest organization exists, an ACORN member won a seat on the Board of Alderman as candidate of the leftist New Party.

Obama in his pre-law days was a community organizer. He was supposed to teach the residents to press for improvements in places like their parks which were eyesores back in his day. Part of Obama’s employment was to organize demonstrations, much in the same way groups like ACORN do. Some of Obama’s claims, in his book Dreams from My Father, about his actions to remove asbestos are false. It was actually a woman named Hazel Johnson who discovered the asbestos problem and who led the removal efforts.

Once again, Madeleine Talbot, Obama’s ACORN mentor, reappears on our radar screens. It turns out Talbot was in some sense responsible for the attempted unsuccessful coup of the Chicago City Council meeting on the living wage issue in 1997. Two hundred ACORN supporters were present. While the actions did disrupt the meeting, six members were arrested that night, charged with “mob action and disorderly conduct.” Among those six was Talbot, Obama’s ACORN mentor.

Does it mean Obama used these tactics? I highly doubt it since he would have been above those tactics in order to protect his political future. He wouldn’t have wanted to break the law with such aggressive behavior. I do believe by this time Obama was well aware of their tactics and understood them, maybe even teaching them in his leadership conferences.

It seems that in reality that Obama is ACORN’s way to overthrow the system from the inside. This jives with his words such as “I am for hope and change, I am for a new Washington, D.C.” While Axelrod coined the term “Hope and Change,” ACORN is fully behind Obama’s opportunity to overthrow our government, if you will, from the inside. They are not alone in their quest for this because it seems that the Service Employee’s International Union is one of ACORN’s strange bedfellows.

The extent of his ties is often dismissed. They are however covered in another article found in the journal Social Policy entitled “Case Study: Chicago – The Barack Obama Campaign” by Tom Foulkes. In this article, Foulkes claims that ACORN specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the “motor voter case,” remembering him from his pre-law days and his work with Talbot. He also trained many of the new volunteers and employees in Leadership Training Conferences even as he was working as a law professional.

This is only the beginning of his continued use and cooperation on the part of ACORN. Obama used them as volunteer “thugs” for his first bid for the Illinois state senate in 1996 and again in his failed 2000 bid for Congress. Obama doesn’t forget his old friends, many of his newly trained volunteers, and used them again in his 2004 successful bid for the United States Senate. By this time ACORN and Obama were like old friends.

ACORN as well as other groups were the recipients of foundation money from both the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation. Why is this important? Obama sat on both boards. Through his board positions, he was able to assist in the funneling of many millions of dollars in grant money to various ultra-liberal organizations like Chicago’s ACORN. It may not be illegal but it gives me pause.

It would be illegal for Obama to funnel money to his main “get out the vote” volunteers in his position on those boards. So it would seem, at least on the exterior, that ACORN probably did observe the “rule of law” in its non-partisan efforts. It claims that its get-out-the-vote drives are segregated from its political arm. I am certain that much grant money has been received from these two foundations. And I am left with a nagging question. Where does ACORN get the money for its never-empty war chest? Could it be they receive funding from someone like George Soros, who has poured millions into presidential campaigns like Obama and even Howard Dean, according to a blog piece at No Quarter, “Hitler and the New Democratic Party.”

According to Kurtz in his NRO article, while these questions about funding and partisanship are important, what is more troubling are Obama’s ties to ACORN, “arguably the most politically, radical, large-scale activist group in this country.” ACORN sneaked its first political insider on the Board of Alderman in Chicago as a “New Party” candidate elected to that board. As ACORN has managed to sneak its operatives within the system legally through elections, one would think that Obama is able to do the same. Why do we know this? Because Obama has trained many of their current leaders.

The LA Times returned to that same Chicago neighborhood where Obama worked as a community organizer to take a look at the same neighborhood. What they found was a real disappointment. They found one of those parks that Obama “helped” restore to its natural beauty is now overrun by drug dealers and thugs again. It seems nothing changed for very long in the old Obama stomping grounds.

The best finish to this article is Stanley Kurtz’s own words. “The community organizer may generate feel-good moments and best selling books, but I suspect that a Costco as the seed bed of a larger shopping complex would have done far more to save the neighborhood where Obama worked to organize in the progressive fashion.” Unfortunately, Chicago ACORN is blocking that effort.

References:

National Review
ACORN
BillJames.org
Seattle Times
No Quarter
NLPC.org

SEN. OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about.
This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.
So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow — somehow their ideas could be attributed to me — I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.

“I think the American people are smarter than that”. Well, Senator Obama, some are smart enough not to take your word for it but to investigate it. And what is revealed once again, as it was with Rezko and with Rev Wright: you lied!

Let’s challenge the media to report. Will they have the honesty and integrity to do so?

In my previous piece, I mapped the workings of the Chicago machine surrounding Obama. It was a tad lengthy, but I had to show the people in play in Chicago!

Now it is time to follow the money and the players!

As I discuss in my previous essay, there is a two-tier power structure in Chicago: tier one is the Money, specifically Foundation and Associations money, and tier two is the Organizers of people and votes. So let’s examine some of them for a moment, specifically those related to the School Reform of the 1980’s.

Mary O’Connell wrote a report in the spring of 1991, giving a lengthy 40-page narrative overview of the School Reforms in Chicago in the 1980’s. Bill McKersie also wrote a lengthy 50 plus page report in the Spring of 1992 outlining the functionality of the various groups involved in the Chicago School Reform battles that took place. Both concentrated mainly on the years 1987 to 1990. Neither knew that in the year 2008 they would be referenced in order to place the following three people together during that period of time: Barack Obama, Thomas Ayers and William Ayers.

What is learned through the reports is as in any contest or battle there are different factions. There were the Business Community Organizations, the Business Association Groups, the Charitable Foundations, the Community Organizer Groups, who worked with and did the bidding for the People, and finally the Government. Now prior to 1987 it is presently unclear as to the alliances formed, as there are no reports on them (but they will be done shortly in another piece incorporating more of the Obama story he refuses to tell). What are known are the alliances made in 1987 in one alliance called the ABC’s Coalition (Alliance for Better Chicago Schools). This summary will strictly concentrate on three (3) groups in the ABC’s Coalition.

The first is the Developing Communities Project (DCP), Obama’s group. Now Obama was the Executive Director of the DCP at the time. He was pretty much since he was hired in 1985. If you look on the last page of O’Connell’s report, it shows the DCP as a member of the ABC’s alliance. Now the information provided by O’Connell does not list the members of the DCP or persons, but one can deduce from news reports that Executive Director Barack Obama represented the group.

The second is the powerful Commercial Club of Chicago Civics Commitee, a section of the jewel of Chicago and Illinois Clubs, The Commercial Club of Chicago, of which everyone who is anyone in the Chicago Business world is a member. One of its most powerful people was Thomas Ayers, the father of Bill Ayers. The Commercial Club of Chicago Civics Comitee was put in place in 1983 in response to Mr. Thomas Ayers sounding the alarm of the poor quality of Chicago Public Schools in 1980, when he was Chairman of the Board of Education at the time. Thomas Ayers was also a high ranking member of Chicago United, who released a report of the state of Chicago Schools with the intention to provide business sector leadership in support of the reform of the Chicago public school system and public school financing. The head of the Chicago School Reform impulse since 1987 was Mr. John Ayers, son of Thomas and brother of terrorist William. If you look on the last page of O’Connell’s report, it shows the Commercial Club of Chicago Civics Committee as a member of the ABC’s alliance.

The third part is the ABC’s Coalition itself. If you look again on the last page of O’Connell’s report, it shows the go to person for the ABC’s Coalition is Professor William Ayers of the University of Illinois Chicago, the terrorist who was a member of the Weather Underground.

Barack Obama collaborated with William Ayers, Thomas Ayers and John Ayers when they coalesced to form the ABC’s Coalition in 1987.

One of the major Charitable Foundations behind the push for School Reform, as noted in Bill McKersie’s report, was the Woods Fund Chicago, the fund on whose board both Obama and William Ayers sat. The Woods Fund was and is primarily a foundation for the underprivileged in Chicago’s Southside, which had some of the worst schools in Illinois. The reasoning for the Foundation’s funding of Activists was to make sure that multiple and diverse voices were heard! Obama was recruited by the Woods Fund to work the Afro-American community on the Southside, the one community that they could not previously reach with their previous white Jewish Organizers, thus putting Obama front and center finally for the Southside Black group of voices representing the DCP with all the powers to be since the movement for School Reform started in 1984. Slate is correct in stating Obama has more than 20 years experience in School Reform. Unfortunately for Obama, his work in School Reform has been a failure!

The Woods Fund worked mostly at the grass roots level, and on the last pages of McKersie’s report, it shows the dispersal of funds during the period of 1987 to 1990. It is noted that these funds listed on McKersie’s report are funds directed solely for work done on the School Reform as noted in the different Funds’ tax returns.

Now if you follow the money, the Woods Fund provided the DCP the following:

• 1987 – $7,500
• 1988 – $10,000
• 1989 – $7,500 again
• 1990 – $3,750 (first half of 1990 was to implement the passed legislation on School Reform)

First off, the DCP was the only organization member of the ABC’s Coalition representing African-Americans. Obama was the only Organizer of Blacks working for the DCP.

Second, why the 25% increase in funding in 1988? Sound deduction leads to only one thing: Obama was leaving in the last quarter of 1988 for Harvard, and thus a replacement was needed to be trained in his work for School Reform. Obama made it clear in 1987 he was going to Harvard the next year: hence the bump in funding.

Third, Obama’s mode of operating was to be in the background, a Saul Alinsky mode to empower people and not become exposed as a leader but have the people to lead under an organizers control.

O’Connell’s report states: the coalition was made up of all sorts of people working together, meeting weekly, expecting to be spending what Mayor Washington estimated 7 or 8 hours a week resolving the School problem. But as one person in O’Connell’s report put it, it worked out to more like 28 hours a week, including weekends at peoples homes.

One thing noted throughout O’Connell’s report was the passage by the State legislature of state Senator Emil Jones’ School Reform Act. Obama actually met Emil Jones in 1986, when they immediately became friends.

Another quick note here, which will be revealed more in another piece: Miner of Davis and Miner, the law firm Obama that represented Rezko for whom Obama worked from 1991 through 2004, after Harvard, wanted more political contacts. This is why he joined Davis Miner. But Obama had plenty of political contacts of his own from his DCP days! This could only have come from the School Reform work with terrorist William Ayers!

What this endeavour of School Reform brought to Obama, and why Obama doesn’t talk about it, is the open door to William Ayers. It also brought him closer to the powers to be at the Woods Foundation and other organizations such as the The Joyce Foundation and ACORN, who not coincidentally endorsed Obama. The Joyce Foundation, by the way, is an anti-gun foundation that has funneled money to corrupt Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago.

When the coalition was finally formed and Thomas Ayers finally implemented his vision with his terrorist son William and Barack Obama, imagine who the head of the school reform coalition was? None other than Thomas Ayers’s son and Bill Ayers brother John Ayers! Coincidence?

It opens the door now for “Who Really Brought Obama to Chicago”?

That will become clearer in another essay.

So responding to Senator Obama’s Debate Statement at the beginning: Senator Obama, your relationship with this TERRORIST goes back over 20 years and your association is not based upon a howdy on the streets, but is one of you working side by side putting forth this TERRORIST’S agenda, especially when it comes to educating children! If they are not your values you share with him, then why did you sit on many foundations, support many of his causes and work so closely with him?

Yes, we are smarter than to be conned by a liar who collaborates with known terrorists, Senator Obama! You claim to be a true Christian and believer in Jesus Christ. It is a sin to lie, and a moral sin to lie in the House of the Lord, Senator Obama. You lied in the church where Civil Rights began about the Kennedys airlifting your father out of Kenya (you need to work on the accent, by the way), just as you lied about your deep and problematic relation to Ayers during the ABC debate in Philadelphia:

You may have bamboozled and hoodwinked some people with your fake accent and your lies, but you did not bamboozle and hoodwink me with your lies during the ABC debate in Philadelphia.

Chicago Politics Godfather passes Down the Reins and Anoints Obama! Follow the Money!

Since Carl Bernstein, Keith Oldberman, Tim Russert et al have exposed their complete lack of journalism ethics, exemplified by acting like awe struck teens of the 1960’s over the arrival of The Beatles combined with the excitement of dirty old men in a sleazy, out of the way, XXX Porn Theatre, WE THE PEOPLE are forced to do a long line of Googles, reading, investigating in order to find the truth about Barack Obama!

In an August 2006 interview with Ayers and Dohrn it was stated: Despite their critiques, Ayers and Dohrn are eternal optimists. Over coffee, Dohrn reflected that their activist days can serve as a metaphor for a “candle” that illuminates the past—and the future. Stay vigilant. The light will come.
Funny how Obama started doing due dilligence in August 2006 to run for POTUS!

One thing Obama said during the ABC debate in Philadelphia was: “I think the American people are smarter than that.” Well Senator Obama, some are smart enough to not take you word for it, but to investigate and what is revealed once again, as it was when we investigated Rezko and Rev Wright, is that you lied! How big a lie, unlike Rev Wright where it is all on tape, is revealed with time, as it was with Rezko. But once a liar always a liar. So with that said, let’s begin investigating!

Mountie Captain: I do not approve of your methods!

Ness: Yeah, well… You’re not from Chicago.

- The Untouchables, 1987.

Let’s challenge the media to report. Will they have the honesty and integrity to do so?

What makes Illinois run and who controls the actual power in Illinois, especially in Cook County, isn’t some Mayor or some Senator, or even some Judge; it is actually a two tier power control. Tier one is the Money, and not just any money, but the Foundation and Associations money. Tier two is the Organizers of people and votes. So let’s examine them for a moment!

Foundations and Associations

Chicago has some of the strongest Foundations and Associations in the country, not because of what they control, but because of the large dollars they control and the powerful philanthropists controlling those dollars. These Foundations and Associations have and control Billions upon Billions of dollars. The circle of people within these groups is small, and while claiming to be philanthropists, they like everyone else are simply pushing their own agendas under the guise of doing so for the well being of the community. The more Foundations and Associations a person is on defines the power that person controls, because the greatest of strengths is the networking of the Foundations and Associations, thus controlling more of the money and its usage.

The Foundations and Associations of which a person is allowed to become a member is based upon the position they have in the working world. Status also increases the person’s chances of securing a Chairmanship of Foundations and Associations. That can bring immortal power and even more status to such an individual.

Chicago has many such Foundations and Associations, but the top ones that control the workings of Illinois life are:

• the Chicago Urban League ,
• the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ,
• Chicago Chamber of Commerce and Industy ,
• the Chicago United,
• the Community Renewal Society (Project funder for the United Church of Christ – Rev Wright anyone? Today a Minister from TUCC sits on the board),
• the Illinois Council on Economic Education,
• the Chicago Public Education Fund,
• the Chicago Community Trust,
• the Erikson Institute,
• the Woods Fund Chicago

and the jewel Commercial Club of Chicago, Chicago’s most prestigious business group.

These philanthropy associations drive politics in Illinois.

First discover who is Thomas Ayers. This man welded power in every way!

Thomas G Ayers was many things, but most importantly, he was the behind the scenes Godfather of Illinois Politics right up to his death last June and beyond. He passed the torch to his sons, especially Bill Ayers, Obama’s terrorist friend.

Normally, when you have a child who turns out to be a criminal of major proportions, more so when a child is one of the FBI’s most wanted and a terrorist, life usually becomes unbearable: you’re shunned from the community, and employment is at risk. But not for Thomas Ayers. While his son Bill was bombing America, Thomas Ayers was being promoted to one of a highest profile and prestigious positions in Illinois and the country. He was also handed the keys to the most Nuclear Plants in the country as Chairman of Con Ed!

So why did no one questioned his promotion? When you control a monopoly and you’re the Godfather of Illinois politics, anything is possible and no one can stand in your way.

Many think Mayor Richard J. Daley was the Chicago Kingpin till his death, only to be followed by his son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, but that is not really so. They in fact are simply crooked politicians in fancy suits, mouthpieces for those behind the scenes!

A lot of the following information was pulled from Tom Ayers Obituary of June 8, 2007, at the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, but for some reason they are no longer available. This is also the case with stories on Thomas Ayers. But other sources were found with it!

He was the Chicago establishment, he served on many boards, including that of G.D. Searle & Company (Donald Rumsfeld was CEO from 1977 to 1985 – that why Obama had such high praise of Rumsfeld?), Chicago Pacific Corp (sold Hoover to Maytag in 1985 – Crown Family), Zenith Corp., Northwest Industries, First National Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Cubs and Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune.

But it was during his time as CEO of Con Ed that Thomas Ayers learned to work both sides of the street, making him the go to person in Illinois, the man with the “power”. It all started in the early 1960’s when he helped negotiate the first labor contract between Con Ed and the 12,000 member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers! Thomas Ayers learned then that power comes from the streets; he also learned that power came from championing the plight of the Black community that provided real power in Chicago!

When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr brought his open house campaign to Chicago in the mid 1960’s, Thomas Ayers was called upon to negotiate between Mayor Richard J. Daley’s administration and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He also developed the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities to fight racial discrimination in housing.

Mr. Thomas Ayers learned then the power of philanthropy and became a leader in Chicago Philanthropy circles and an agent for change. He worked with many powerful nonprofit groups and many Foundations, serving as the chair of the Chicago Urban League, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber of Commerce and Industy, Chicago United, Community Renewal Society (Project funder for the United Church of Christ – Rev Wright anyone? Today a Minister from TUCC sits on the board), Illinois Council on Economic Education, The Chicago Public Education Fund, the Chicago Community Trust, Bank Street College of Education in New York (where Bill Ayers went to school after surfacing in 1980), Erikson Institute and the jewel Commercial Club of Chicago, Chicago’s most prestigious business group. These philanthropy associations drive politics in Illinois, especially with a combined worth exceeding $5 billion. Thomas Ayers knew how to network (new name for manipulate) them all for his own agenda!

If you look at all these Associations and Foundations Board of Directors, you will see the Who’s Who behind Obama’s campaign! According to Thomas Ayers, it all starts at the basics, elections and grass roots, in order to be working from inside the establishment and not fighting from the outside!

James O’Connor, former Chairman and CEO of Com Ed summed it all up about Thomas Ayers: “He had an extraordinary social conscience. He was willing to step into situations where very few people were willing to risk their reputation. He had total courage and never seemed to weigh the consequences of that sort of activity. He never did anything for applause or for any sort of recognition.” In other words it was “all about the power”!

“He was a guy of great intelligence and integrity, and he was willing to put the time in as well,” former Northwestern U president Arnold Weber said. “Those offices are not just honorary or for social distinction.” Again, it is for the “POWER.”

Michael Klonsky (former SDS leader and Founder of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) USA, and author of “Remembering the Summer of ’66″ (Klonsky also collaborated with Bill Ayers on several projects over the years, and the duo, along with Gabrielle Lyon, of A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools) had these comments about Thomas Ayers:

Tom Ayers, was a force in the civic life of Chicago. “He will be remembered, not only as a business leader, but as an individual committed to civil rights and school reform. I loved to argue politics and baseball with Tom although I can’t say I ever made him see it my way in either area.”

Equally important to Mr. Thomas Ayers was the educational and financial advancement of African-Americans. “He felt the black community’s success was key to Chicago’s success,” son John Ayers said. “He pushed business people to be more open in the 1960s.”

Look at Thomas Ayers present day successor at Con Ed, Mr. Frank M Clark, who joined Con Ed under Ayers’s reign in 1966. Now compare Clark to Ayers by the Foundations Clark is on: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Family Services, The Chicago Community Trust, the governing board of the Illinois Council on Economic Education, the Economic Club of Chicago, The Commercial Club of Chicago, and the Executives’ Club of Chicago. Clark also was ranked among the 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America by Fortune magazine in 2002. Mr. Clark also happens to be a super bundler for Obama. He is also a lobbyist.

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“In the ’60s and ’70s, we went through some rough patches in our family,” he said. “He was very sweet and supportive of us all. He used to say, ‘It takes all kinds’ to get the world moving forward.” John Ayers worked on School Reform in the 1980’s representing the powerful Commercial Club of Chicago Civics Commitee that was put in place in 1983 in part to provide business sector leadership in support of the reform of the Chicago Public School system and public school financing.

During a 1993 interview by the Chicago Magazine with Bernadine Dohrn, many revelations materialized, some lies (she is a terrorist, after all), some not! She and her husband Bill Ayers have held high-profile dinner parties and seem to do so often. Obama’s campaign and political career launch party in 1995 was just one in a line of them.Terrorism today according to Bill Ayers’s good friend and fellow Weather Underground member, who is also today’s MDS partner, Mark Rudd is explained on his website. It starts at the basics, elections and grass roots, to be working from inside the establishment, according to Thomas Ayers, and not fighting from the outside!

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So how powerful a man was Thomas Ayers? Well when Bernadine Dohrn was seeking her NY State law licence, two people wrote on Dohrn’s behalf to the Ethics Committee in her application. Her supporters included two powerful lawyers, Don H. Reuben (Sydley Austin), at one time the Chicago Tribune‘s lawyer. The other supporter was a very well respected Federal Judge Harold Tylor!

How did she get into Sidley Austin Law Firm, where both Michelle and Barack Obama not coincidentally both worked? Howard Trienens, a partner at Sidley Austin since 1956, has been a member of the Northwestern University board of trustees since 1967 and chairman of the board from 1986 to 1995, replacing Thomas Ayers as Chairman (One more item: Ayers’ wife, fellow ex-terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, is a law-professor (without a licence to practice law) at Northwestern U since 1991. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but Thomas Ayers served as the Chair of the Board of Trustees from 1975 to 1986 at the prestigious college. He was named a Life Trustee in 1987). He received two degrees from Northwestern, a bachelor’s degree in 1945 and a J.D. in 1949, and was editor in chief of the Illinois Law Review. Read More. And Read More.
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Equally important to Mr. Thomas Ayers was the educational and financial advancement of African-Americans.
“He felt the black community’s success was key to Chicago’s success,” son John Ayers said. “He pushed business people to be more open in the 1960s.” “In the ’60s and ’70s, we went through some rough patches in our family,” he said. “He was very sweet and supportive of us all. He used to say, ‘It takes all kinds’ to get the world moving forward.” John Ayers worked on School Reform in the 1980’s representing the powerful Commercial Club of Chicago Civics Commitee that was put in place in 1983 in part to provide business sector leadership in support of the reform of the Chicago Public School system and public school financing.

When William Ayers resurfaced in the 1980s, it was as though no time had passed between him and his father. “It was as if we were in the middle of a conversation and nothing much had changed,” William Ayers said. Probably because the communication was always there while in hiding!

While chairing the Northwestern University Board of Trustees, he helped start Chicago United in 1968 upon the request of Mayor Daley. Chicago United was dedicated to racial minority group access to jobs and education. In 1973, Chicago United joined with other civic organizations to create the Regional Transit Authority.

After the Board of Education’s financial collapse of 1979, Mayor Jane M. Byrne named Mr. Thomas Ayers as her choice for president of the new board.

In 1987, Mayor Harold Washington asked Chicago United (Thomas Ayers) to head a broad-based school reform coalition, one that lead directly to the landmark School Reform Act of 1988.

Active in the local control from below, on the “community” side of this effort was the University of Illinois, where Bill Ayers who had returned to Chicago in 1987 as an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Illinois’ Chicago Circle campus. Another ally in this battle at the same time was Executive Director Barack Obama’s Developing Communities Project (DCP), as Obama notes briefly in his Dreams From My Father. The DCP had its origins in the “radical” movement started by Saul Alinsky.

A lengthy report done by Bill McKersie, published in 1992, on Philanthropy’s Paradox: Chicago School Reform (The Role of Chicago Foundations in Reform, 1987-1990) for the American Educational Research Association, exposes several things. McKersie wrote this having experience on the inside, having worked for the Joyce Foundation.

McKersie points out that the money funnelled to Community Activists was to represent parents and Community residents and that these Activists were pushing for a fast moving change agenda. The shift of Foundation money only occurred after the School Reform act was completed and sent for passage at the State level. Thus prior to late 1988, Foundation money was used and targeted to Activists to voice the peoples concerns to those involved in representing the Government (Thomas Ayers group) and the researchers and developers of the Reform Act (Bill Ayers group).

Two of the Foundations continually funded mainly Community Organizations, the Wieboldt and the Woods Fund. In 1987, the DCP, Obama’s group, was given in excess of $36,000/yr directly for School Reform work. What is important to note is that these two Foundations used Community Organizers to shape the agenda for School Reform for much larger Education funders, demanding also faster action to Reform. How does this happen? By being active with the Communities and those working for the Government and Institution researchers setting the agenda for School Reform!

But unfortunately, the Activist side of setting the agenda was squashed in late 1987, hmm-same time Obama decided to go to Harvard! It was in early 1988 that AT&T, Chicago Community Trust (Thomas Ayers), Joyce Foundation and McArthur Foundation came together and decided it was time to look at everything and actually do something concrete after linking up with the Community Renewal Society (Thomas Ayers), and the project came to fruition. Basically, it was the convergence of groups, the Activists (Obama et al) attempting to set an agenda without a plan and the Institutions able to forge a plan (Thomas/Bill/John Ayers et al). Basically, it is noted that the Foundations via the Activists attempted to have “Bought Reform.” But in the end, they didn’t: all they bought was moving certain ideas through discussions, but it took the Institutions to enact the final outcome and resolve. Sounds exactly like a POTUS campaign going on presently!

The reasoning for the Foundations funding of Activists was to make sure that multiple and diverse voices were heard! Obama was recruited by the Woods Fund to work the Afro-American community, the one community that they could not previously reach with their white Jewish Organizers, thus putting Obama front and center for the Black group of voices representing the DCP with all the powers to be, namely Thomas Ayers, since 1985 when the movement started on School Reform! Therefore, Slate is correct in stating Obama has more than 20 years experience in School Reform. Unfortunately, Obama’s work in School Reform has been a failure!

What this endeavour of School Reform also brought to Obama was not only his meeting Thomas Ayers, but also brought him closer to the powers to be at the Woods Foundation and other organizations such as the Joyce Foundation and ACORN, who endorses Obama, just to name a few.

When the ordeal was finally resolved, imagine who the head of the school reform coalition was, none other than Thomas Ayers son and Bill Ayers brother John Ayers! Coincidence?

So who brought Obama to Chicago? The DCP? Well, yes and no! The DCP brought him, but actually was funded by The Woods Fund Chicago!

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So what is the Woods Fund?

Frank Woods had a broad vision of philanthropy. Under his leadership, institutions like the Art Institute, which he chaired, were great beneficiaries. But he also gave grants to help equalize opportunities before the Civil Rights era and supported small community-based groups. He appeared to have valued risk taking in philanthropy, setting up fund at Chicago Community Trust (Thomas Ayers), whose purpose was to encourage “high risk grants.” He was known to be very open to community organizing and got involved early in its funding. Following Frank Woods’s death, George Kelm provided leadership. One critical leadership contribution of Mr. Kelm was hiring the Fund’s first full time staff director, Jean Rudd. She shaped the Director’s philanthropic visions into clear grant making guidelines, creating two major grant making programs – in community organizing and in public workforce development policy – that remain to this day. So you know, George Kelm was President and CEO and Chair of Sahara Enterprises and Sahara Coal Company, Illinois largest coal company, a main supplier to Con Ed (Thomas Ayers, David Axelrod and Obama’s vote for the Bush-Cheney Energy Bill)!

The Woods Foundation has a lot bigger a role than expected!

The Woods Fund, in many ways, is responsible for helping start Obama as an organizer and shaping his political identity. In 1985 the foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project, which hired Obama, at 24, as an organizer on Chicago’s economically depressed South Side. Obama became friendly with Woods director Jean Rudd (why if he was working for the DCP? The School Reform Act of course), and after he graduated from Harvard Law School and moved back to Chicago (1991), Rudd asked him to join the board, which met four times a year to review grant proposals. (Obama also served on the board of the larger Joyce Foundation, which specialized in environmental conservation, welfare reform and education.) “Community organizing was a central priority of this foundation, so more and more we drew him in,” says Rudd, who retired in 2000. Obama and Ayers happened to not only fund Rezko on the board, but also Dohrn and Rev. Wright via the Gamaliel Foundation.

Note: Obama was on the Woods Fund board for at least 6 years before Ayers joined it! Also, the Joyce Foundation is an anti-gun foundation hidden under the guise of being an environmental Fund. How come Obama never mentions this Fund he was on? Maybe because the NRA calls the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose “shadowy web of huge donations” leads “straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups.”

What seems to be critical is why would Obama be known to a Foundation, when the money was a grant to the DCP? Following this logic of Jean Rudd being involved in where the Woods Fund money goes, then is Jean Rudd’s involved in the money the Woods gave to Rezko, Ayers, Klalhia, and other assorted people, as today she heads the oversight for all Chicago slum rehabilitations?

I found the old Woods Fund site (hidden not removed). Some links don’t work, but I find it interesting who they gave money to! And notice the dates: everything is deleted during Obama years. Wonder why?

Obama also tends not to mention another Foundation he was on in the 1980’s, the Gamaliel Foundation, which teaches the works and practices of Saul Alinsky to community organizers! The Gamaliel Foundation is a church based Foundation, supported by many of Tom Ayers Foundations and happens to be a part of the United Church of Christ. Rev. Wright ring a bell?
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Also, another lie of Obama’s is his claim to meeting Illinois Senator Emil Jones in the Senate, not true; Obama met his State Senate Godfather in 1986!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/politics/main3858237.shtml

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Richard M. Daley, Chicago Mayor and member of Mayors against Illegal Guns member that receives big funds from The Joyce Foundation, stated after the ABC debate:

The liberal blogs are still aghast about the whole incident, and to varying degrees; many mainstream voices have denounced what’s being called a smear campaign.

On the surface, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s statement on the affair is surprising.

There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington politics. And one more example is the way Senator Obama’s opponents are playing guilt-by-association, tarring him because he happens to know Bill Ayers. I also know Bill Ayers. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally renowned school reform program. He is a nationally recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community.

I don’t condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40 year old battles.

So while it would appear on the surface that Richard M. Daley picked William Ayers, well, out of the air, to help guide the reform of Chicago’s school system; upon a closer look, in a city like Chicago, where people get ahead on who they know and who they are related to, Daley’s selection made a lot of sense.

But there is something else the mayor will remember. Ayers father was Thomas G. Ayers, the head of Commonwealth Edison, which was then Chicago’s electrical utility. Just as Obama and the younger Ayers are, in the words of Obama aide and Com Ed lobbyist David Axelrod, “friendly,” so were the elder Daley and the senior Ayers.

Funny for Axelrod to say, considering David Axelrod happens to come from a politically communist family: his mother use to write for the NY paper “PW” which was a communist oriented paper. Axelrod also met Obama in the early 1990’s (1991 to be exact), when Obama was a community organizer leading a voter-registration drive on the South Side. Axelrod served as advertising director for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign. A former political reporter, Axelrod, 53, left the Chicago Tribune in 1984 (started in 1977) to become press secretary for then-Rep. Paul Simon, D-Ill., who was running for the Senate. He established himself as a fixture in Windy City politics, as well as statewide. In 1989, Axelrod went to work for Richard M. Daley in his first successful bid to be Chicago’s mayor, and he has remained close to the Daley machine ever since by displacing the African-American leadership from City Hall. Read More.

Then there is Valerie Jarrett: Jarrett in 1991 was Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Deputy Chief of Staff. After serving at Daley’s side, Jarrett was a Commissioner in the city’s Planning and Development Department (key to distort Obama’s claims of not knowing about Rezko’s dealings and failures) and went on to chair the Chicago Transit Board (Thomas Ayers created Board), which oversees the city’s flawed and failed public transportation system. Jarrett is a fixture in Chicago politics and in the Obama family. Jarrett, 51, is a senior unpaid adviser to the campaign, and is a confidant of both the candidate and his wife, Michelle. Jarrett’s role as an honest broker in the campaign stems from her deep friendship with the candidate and his wife. Barack Obama met Jarrett in 1991 when she was interviewing Obama’s then-fiancée for a job in City Hall. The three have been close ever since. A lawyer, Jarrett got her start in city government as a deputy corporation counsel for finance and development. She is also a member of the University of Chicago’s board of trustees, and she chairs its Medical Center Board. She served as chairman of Obama’s finance committee during Mr. Obama’s 2004 (alongside Tony Rezko) campaign for U.S. Senate. Her associations also helped pave the way for Mrs. Obama’s job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Ms. Jarrett was on the board of directors. Read More. Jarrett also is a Director of The Joyce Foundation, which claims to be an enviromental Foundation, although it is also an anti-gun foundation. Since 2003, the Joyce Foundation has paid grants totaling over $12 million to gun control organizations. Gun rights groups including the National Rifle Association call the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose “shadowy web of huge donations” leads “straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups. Read More. Obama was a Director of the Joyce Foundation also. Read More. Was Jennett put in place to keep control over the OBAMA’s?

The list of names go on, but they all lead back to Mr. Thomas Ayers!

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So as stated above, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, upon return to Chicago, spent a lot of time holding “High Profile Dinner Parties”, basically doing the passing of the torch from Tom Ayers to the new Godfather duo of Illinois Politics based upon Thomas Ayers years of building power and control by ways of civil rights and school reform!

Everyone remember Senator Leahy (D-VT) speaking out for Clinton to quit a couple of weeks ago? Well, actor and activist Peter Coyote talking on the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago on his website mentions a couple of times about having to inform his wife “Martha that I’m dragging her to the apartment of old friends, ex-Weathermen, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, hosting a party for Senator Leahy. Perhaps Edward Said will be there I urge her to come by promising that the event will push the edges of the envelope of her centrist politics.” (Wonder who got Senator Leahy to demand Clinton withdraw?)

But, all these social trappings notwithstanding, she and her husband say they have not lost any of their old, anti-Establishment fervour. Ayers, who still carries his SDS card in his wallet, says he feels no better about this country “just because a bunch of 40-year-olds are now part of the Establishment.”

Ayers says electoral politics is a tool to connect causes, like gay rights, disability rights, voting rights, human rights. “That’s how you use electoral politics. Not as an end in itself, but as an organizing mechanism. Our deepest belief, I think, is that we need to connect all these good projects and build the movement. …we should always be positioning ourselves, thinking, okay, if I’m involved in this next election, how am I positioned to help contribute to building a movement, raising consciousness, making the connections, and that’s a real tricky business.” (Any wonder who is behind Obama?)

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So what would attract someone like Obama to William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn?

Obama’s relationship with communist Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s adopted grandfather and life advisor, of course. Add to that Obama’s continual obsession for following Marxist types of organizations and education makes Obama a natural fit with his gift for being illusive!

So we are left to figure out, was 1987 the first time Obama met the Ayers or was it sooner, such as:

• At Cooper Union in New York during a Marxist convention?
• At Columbia U with Ayers or Dohrn as a political Science class guest speaker? (Is that why Obama’s Columbia records are locked up)?
• Any other time in NYC at some rally?

And do not forget, the Anti-war speech Obama gave in 2002, was organized by former terrorists of the SDS days, Carl Davidson, Marylyn Katz and others!

Lies, deception, corruption and so many links to radicals, and the Democratic Party feels someone like this is the future?

Answer: Dohrn stated: “I don’t look to the Democratic Party. I don’t have hope for the Democratic Party. I think the Democratic Party is bankrupt. And I think the only answer is for us to build an independent, radical movement, and, I mean, the big ‘us.’ “Stay vigilant. The light will come”…….is the light Obama, yes to them he is! JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!!

And this is what Obama stated during the Philadelphia ABC debate when questioned about his relationship to William Ayers:

SEN. OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about.
This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.
So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow — somehow their ideas could be attributed to me — I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.

My Response: Senator Obama, first, your guy who lives in your neighborhood happens to be a terrorist teaching education to children and not English, and you, sir, being a Political Science Major from Columbia U should know that! Second, your children cannot possibly go to school with Ayers kids, as his kids are all over 21 years of age, Mr. Liar! Third, your relationship with this TERRORIST goes back over 20 years and your association is not based upon a howdy on the streets, but is one of you working side by side putting forth this TERRORIST’S agenda, especially when it comes to educating children! If they are not your values you share with him, then why did you sit on many foundations, support many of his causes and work so closely with him? Simple answer is because you are one of him! Yes, we are smarter than to be conned by a thug and a corrupt Chicago politician, Senator Obama! You claim to be a true Christian and believer in Jesus Christ, it is a mortal sin to lie and a moral sin to lie in a place of worship, Senator Obama, but you did.

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Now in 1990, Obama was pretty much set as far as power from the streets was concerned, since Michelle Obama’s father was a powerful Democratic Precinct Captain, but timing is everything and Michelle’s father died in 1990, thus Obama lost his street power and to recoup it went out and worked for the Project Vote and registered 150,000 new voters in 1992 (Marilyn Katz of SDS fame happened to be leading Project Vote and working on many of Thomas Ayers Foundations, including working for Davis Miner Law firm, Barack Obama’s former employer, doing PR work). Funny thing, Miner happened to work on Mayor Washington’s staff from 1984 to 1987 and also happened to be classmates at the University of Chicago law school with Bernadine Dohrn!

Why must we do the media’s job to find out the workings of the corrupt Chicago underground attempting to control the DNP and now the White House?

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has worked to assure uneasy gun owners that he believes the Constitution protects their rights and that he doesn’t want to take away their guns.

As Jerlyn at TalkLeft points out, “At Wednesday’s debate, Barack Obama wouldn’t say what his position is on the DC law banning handguns.” She notes that Obama “dodged, saying he wasn’t familiar with the facts of the case.” She asks:

Why didn’t Obama answer the question at the debate instead of weaving and bobbing? Was it because he didn’t want to alienate PA voters, many of whom favor strong gun ownership rights? And, did he fail to tell the truth?

Jeralyn affirms that in November, “his campaign told the Chicago Tribune he supported the ban. (Chicago Tribune November 20, 2007.)” So which is it, Sen. Obama? You can’t have it both ways.

Obama’s efforts to woo gun owners in states like Pennsylvania may be further damaged when gun owners and gun rights groups learn of Obama’s long association with the Joyce Foundation, which “doled out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the opposite positions.”

This is the second board position about which voters have become aware, the first the Woods Fund, a board he sat on with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers.

LaBolt [a campaign spokesperson] said Obama, an Illinois senator, “does not remember each of the over 1,500 individual grant requests and his assessment of their merits, but he considered all requests in light of the foundation’s goal of developing a robust public dialogue around reducing gun violence.”

Voters need to learn more about Obama’s association with liberal boards that voters outside large cities may question. Reports Politico:

Obama’s service on the board of the Joyce Foundation and a few other Chicago-based nonprofits including the Woods Fund of Chicago remains one of the least scrutinized parts of his career. But it’s one that could hamper his efforts to woo populations of rural pro-gun voters in Pennsylvania, which votes April 22, and in a general election match-up with the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

In his appeal to gun owners, Obama has not emphasized his own legislative record, which includes supporting a ban on semiautomatic weapons and concealed weapons, and a limit on handgun purchases to one a month. He has blamed his staff for indicating on a questionnaire filled out during his 1996 state Senate bid under his name that he supports banning “the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.”

Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago and served as president of the Harvard Law Review, has instead focused on his respect for what he contends are constitutionally guaranteed gun owners’ rights, the “passion” of hunters and the “tradition” of handgun ownership.

Many pundits have criticized Obama’s vague, confusing answers to questions about gun ownership and rights during last Wednesday’s debate.

One blogger summed up Obama’s performance this way:

By the time Gibson got around to the issues, Obama looked lost and upset. It got worse when Gibson asked about capital-gains tax rates, which Obama has pledged to raise. When Gibson repeatedly pointed out that decreasing the rates actually increased the revenues, Obama simply couldn’t come up with an answer, stammering while trying to change the subject. On guns, both Hillary and Obama stumbled through tortured explanations of how they support a Constitutional right for individuals to own guns while backing gun bans like the one in DC.

The winner of this debate? John McCain. Both Democrats came out of this diminished, but Obama got destroyed in this exchange. If superdelegates had begun to reconsider their support of Obama after Crackerquiddick, they’re speed-dialing Hillary after watching Gibson dismember Obama on national TV tonight.

Here is ABC News’s transcript of the debate, and here is the video of the portion of the debate on gun rights and the Second Amendment: