FACT: "William Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a leftist fringe of the 1960s antiwar movement. Known as the Weathermen, the group was responsible for bombings of the New York City police headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971 and of the Pentagon in 1972."
FACT:" Deborah Harrington, president of the Woods Fund, a philanthropic organization in Chicago, said Obama was a director from 1994 through 2001. That overlaps Ayers’ time as a director by three years. It also means Obama served with Ayers for the final months of 2001, after Ayers made his comments to the New York Times."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/440/
FACT: "Ayers Was on Woods Fund Board with Obama When He Stepped on Flag. In fact, at the same time Ayers was in a Chicago alley desecrating the flag, he and Barack Obama were serving on the board of the Woods Fund together."
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31476_Ayers_Was_on_Woods_Fund_Board_with_Obama_When_He_Stepped_on_Flag
FACT: Obama says he met Ayers the first time in 1995 - a year before - which would be when he was appointed as Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
FACT: Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (not English as Obama stated), is still on the seven-member Woods Fund board.The CAC structure is adeptly explained in full by Steve Diamond, and I suggest you read all from the horse’s mouth. But to summarize, the CAC had three divisions in it’s structure - the Board, the Collaborative, and Consortium of Chicago Schools Research (CCSR).
Obama chaired the money arm of the CAC structure - the Board. Everything fiscal including fund raising, fund matching and the grants. In other words, Obama oversaw the original grant funds, and the ensuing funds raised which ultimately totalled $160 million.
Ayers co-chaired the Collaborative arm, which was the “clearing house” for ideas, strategies, plans etal all for the CAC. This arm also represented the “various constituencies in the Chicago schools and wider community”.
Together, they controlled the money, and the decisions where the money went.
The failure? The third arm, the Consortium of Chicago School Research, was charged with monitoring the impact of the projects. Apparently it was a lot of money down the drain. There was no statistical difference between Annenberg schools and demographically similar non-Annenberg schools.
It needs to be also mentioned that a more than healthy bulk of that money actually went to political purposes, electing local officials friendly with Ayers and Obama’s approach to education. The CCSR report specifically mentioned this political conflict of the CAC’s political promotions as a possible factor in the lack of impact in student achievement.
CONCLUSION? Obama, in control of a hefty sum of cash, funneled *most* of it to his and Ayers’ political allies… not to the schools. Additionally, in order for the schools to receive the CAC funds, they were required to ally with particular organizations.
Bottom line? He made his and Ayers’ political friends powerful, but did nothing to achieve the educational improvement that was the object of Annenberg’s national challenges.
McCain should be pointing out that Obama’s leadership for educational reform, and his control over the budget, was politically oriented/influenced, and the student beneficiaries were left in the lurch. Bad leadership for both handling money, and for educational reform.
FACT: In 2001, Ayers wrote a book, ''Fugitive Days'' — he called it a memoir — in which he wrote that he participated in the bombings of New York City police headquarters, the Capitol building and the Pentagon. "
FACT: I will be shocked if this issue is portrayed accurately by the media.
7 comments:
Good luck.
This is the one pathetic straw your party has to grasp.
He served on a board, with some who was a member of a domestic terrorist group when he was 8 years old.
EXCELENTE
No, we're not grasping at straws like Rep. John Lewis's ridiculous assertions, or the liberal pundits on CNN who don't understand the difference between CAUSATION and CORRELATION when blaming Republicans for every down day in the market.
Ties to domestic terrorists aren't straws, my friend. This is a question of judgment. Sen. Obama clearly lacks it. As he talks about slowing the production of future combat systems, the Russians test long-range strategic ICBM's in the Pacific ocean, closer to us than ever before. While he says he "will not weaponize space" the Chinese develop space-based weapons systems capable of taking down our satellites. While Obama criticizes the 'big oil' companies for high gas prices, he simultaneously calls for increasing taxes on the very product that already costs so much to begin with. Criticizing companies for sending jobs overseas, while calling for tax hikes on the very people who employ us is not sound policy.
www.offeringcommonsense.blogspot.com
William Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with whom Barack served on the board of an education-reform organization in the mid-1990's. According to the Associated Press, they are not close: "No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago ..." (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D93KD6Q00&show_article=1)
Smear groups and now the McCain campaign are trying to connect Obama to acts Ayers committed 40 years ago - when Barack was just eight years old. Here's what the New York Times reported on the connection (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html)
But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."
Barack has publicly denouncedAyers' radical actions from the 1960's (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html):
Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.
Libtards like partywatcher and Jessica just continue to carry the water and use back-links to biased media reports.
The facts are out there people. You have completely ignored the facts presented in this discussion. He and Ayers are in fact very good friends and have been for more than 15 years. He knows exactly who this guy was before this election and only spoke out about Ayers' actions AFTER he was called out on it.
You guys need to get your heads out of your asses and start thinking for yourselves.
"William Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago"
AND A RADICAL ONE AT THAT.
That's the point - Ayers NEVER STOPPED BEING A RADICAL.
"Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers"
A LIE.
OF COURSE THEY AGREED ON THINGS. THEY SPENT $100 MILLION TOGETHER!
"Barack has publicly denouncedAyers' radical actions from the 1960's"
Just as Barack Obama threw Rev Wright under the bus - HE DOES WHAT HE NEEDS TO DO TO GET ELECTED.
WE NEED TO STOP OBAMA'S SOCIALISM.
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