Obama, Ayers and Annenburg

In American Thinker, Clarice Feldman writes of Diana Aviv. Aviv is the head of Independent Sector, "an organization which assists almost 600 nonprofit organizations around the country and the world to establish and maintain appropriate ethical standards and practices of transparency." Has Aviv remained non partisan? Not according to recent events.

She also serves on the JStreetPac's Advisory Council. The organizations states: "JStreetPAC is the first and the only federal Political Action Committee established to explicitly promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israel conflicts peacefully and diplomatically." However, 31 of the 32 candidates being supported by this organization are Democrat. How did this happen? Seems the Independent Sector has been taken over by Soros money. And ardent Obama supporters.

Two new members on the members list include: The Center for Public Service at Brown University - an Annenberg Challenge site which "gave Obama and Ayers all that money to waste in Chicago in the nonsensical operation purportedly designed to improve public education in Chicago but, in fact, to aid Ayers and Obama and their friends. When I last looked the center was blocking efforts to see the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in its possession." Another new member, Be the Change, "seems quite obviously another Obama front. Its board includes David Gergen, Michelle Nunn(daughter of Sam Nunn who for some time has been considered a potential Obama running mate) and John Schnur formerly of "New Leaders for New Schools" who on September 22 of this year left to join the Obama campaign."

The Bill Ayers/Barack Obama connection, if Obama was a Republican, would normally be well known to the average American voter. But, much red tape has been strewn to keep past activities out of the press. Or, the press doesn't care to look too deep into their candidate, Obama. Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground of 1960's domestic terrorist claims to fame, and Barack Obama go way back. Obama, as he is prone to do, downplayed his association with Ayers as questions were emerging. "A guy who lives in my neighborhood" and "Not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." In The Wall Street Journal, Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and past recipient of the Obama machine's mass efforts to block his radio interview in Chicago, writes about the attempt of the Obama/Ayers team to not reform the Chicago school system for which they received grant money from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge but to radicalize the system. More than $100 million was put into the program left in the hands of community organizers and nothing but failure occurred.

"The Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy." Some papers have been public record. Others have been in the Daley archive and show Obama and Ayers worked "as a team to advance the CAC agenda." Ayers founded and was the guiding spirit of the CAC, according to the paper trail. That is how a "former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation" and the rest is history. This is the stepping stone Obama used in his political career aspirations.

The article is detailed and eye opening. "CAC translated Mr. Ayer's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as ACORN." ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is notoriously corrupt and under investigation and sending organizers to jail in many cities across the country. Currently, Milwaukee is investigating and considering charging at least 19 people with corrupt voter registration actions.

"Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with ACORN, and ACORN members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners ...focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education." No improvement to the public school system was ever found.

They recruited parents to advocate the political agenda of the leadership. One board member voiced concerns that parents who were 'organized' by the group might be seen by school principals as "a political threat". "Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections."

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

Ayers and his wife, another Weatherman alumni, were the first to host a Senate campaign kickoff fundraiser for their neighbor, Obama, in their home.

Read Mr. Kurtz's piece.