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Barack Obama, Legal Scholar

Barack Obama promises to accomplish quite a lot if he becomes our next President. These promises are symbolized in his campaign themes: hope and change. But just how likely is he to fulfill his own promise and the promises he has made to the American people?

Judging by his previous career, not very likely. We have seen this movie before in Barack Obama's life, and the end is not a happy one. In fact, when you examine his career in its various dimension, it seems to be marked disturbingly often by failure.

Faced with his failures, he tries to obscure the record; or else he blames mistakes on staffers or other people.

The "successes" he uses as campaign tropes often turn out to be due to the work of others for which he has claimed credit, or to be much less significant than meets the eye. Fortunately, the spell seems to be wearing off and the media has begun to scrutinize his career a bit more, and it has been found wanting.

Far more serious scrutiny of Obama's professional track record is necessary, for there is a danger when an unexamined candidate meets an uninformed voter. In the case of Barack Obama, disheartening aspects emerge when one pulls off the rose-colored glasses.

His career has three chapters: academia, community organizing, and politics.

Today we begin where his national career first took off: Harvard Law School and examine his legal career. Future articles will cover Senator Obama's community organizing and his political career.

Harvard Law Review president

Barack Obama originally emerged on the national scene as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. This selection may have been based on factors that do not necessarily reflect merit, as he himself recognizes.

He has refused to answer questions about his days at Harvard (such holes in his life are a recurring feature). He was clearly a man of promise given the historic step that was taken when he was appointed President of the Law Review.

Has he fulfilled his promise as a legal scholar?

One thing he did not do while at the review was publish his own work. . The absence of a paper trail is a pattern throughout his academic and to some extent his political career.

The pattern of leaving no intellectual footprints pre-dates Harvard. He has claimed he lost his senior thesis from Columbia University, where he majored in political science . The thesis was on Soviet nuclear disarmament. The depth of knowledge on display in Barry Obama's undergraduate thesis is of particular interest because he was wrong about a crucial Kennedy-Khrushchev conference, and about the diplomatic history between America and the Soviets.

How likely is it that someone would lose his senior thesis -- particularly someone who thought his life was compelling enough that he would write an autobiography just a few years later?

Legal scholar

Indeed, he has left little in the way of a record for Americans to judge his legal abilities. No written records, no signed legal papers, no research papers authored or co-authored by him. Nothing.

This is especially surprising because he served as a senior lecturer and law professor (there is some dispute over his title) at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years. He was certainly popular with his students, who were, like him, young and enthusiastic. "Liberals flocked to his classes" and they give him high marks as a professor.

But among his fellow faculty members, apparently the verdict was mixed.

He shied away from intellectual jousting that is otherwise the hallmark of academia. Jodi Kantor of the New York Times portrayed his shortcomings as a colleague in an academic community:

The Chicago law faculty is full of intellectually fiery friendships that burn across ideological lines. Three times a week, professors do combat over lunch at a special round table in the university's faculty club, and they share and defend their research in workshop discussions. Mr. Obama rarely attended, even when he was in town.

"I'm not sure he was close to anyone," Mr. Hutchinson said, except for a few liberal constitutional law professors, like Cass Sunstein, now an occasional adviser to his campaign. Mr. Obama was working two other jobs, after all, in the State Senate and at a civil rights law firm.

Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama "doesn't have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from," Mr. Epstein said. "He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues."

Legal expertise

Senator Obama often invokes his expertise on constitutional law. Does he actually have any? You can't tell from his publications, and he even lacks a record of intellectual engagement as a legal scholar.

Although he was president of the Harvard Law Review as a student, in which capacity he no doubt wrote some unsigned notes, a search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time. This is yet more indication that his status as "lecturer" at Chicago was not a regular faculty appointment, since regular full-time faculty are expected to produce scholarship. Notwithstanding an apparent eleven-year teaching career in constitutional law at a top-flight law school, not one single article, published talk, book review, or comment of any kind, anywhere in the professional legal literature, under Barack Obama's name,

As a person who prides himself on his legal background, should we be surprised that he did not seek a seat on the judiciary committee, a coveted spot for the Senate's most legal beagles?

Casting doubt

On the campaign trail he has issued a series of statements that cast doubt on the breadth and depth of his legal knowledge.

During a fundraiser in Denver, Barack Obama was asked what he hoped to accomplish in his first hundred days in office. His response:

"I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution," said Obama"

One should not have to remind the former President of the Harvard Law review that a President of the United States cannot overturn a law. Only the Supreme Court can overturn a law; Congress can change laws. A President -- even one consumed by his own grandiosity -- cannot "overturn" a law. That is Constitutional Law 101.

He has certainly been wrong about the law and terrorism, and was wrong about the applicability of the Nuremberg trial in terrorism related legal matters (Does Obama Know What He Is Talking About? ). He certainly missed key legal aspects.

Blaming others

He misjudged the constitutionality of Washington D.C.'s gun control law -- which is surprising considering this has been a signature issue for him throughout his political career. He believed the DC handgun ban was constitutional and supported it. The Supreme Court disagreed and threw out the ban. In a move that has become a pattern with Barack Obama, he sought to distance himself from his earlier opinion, blaming an "inartful " statement from an "unnamed aide" for stating that Obama believed that DC ban was constitutional. Blaming staffers for his mistakes and problems may not be an inspiring campaign slogan but it is certainly a motif for Barack Obama.

Neither he nor his campaign objected or sought to clarify that statement when it was published last year in the Chicago Tribune. Only when the Supreme Court ruled and decided his view was legally wrong did he and his campaign try to disavow this position. This will a problematic pattern: blame others for mistakes and seek to recreate history

Constitutional misinterpretation

State Senator Obama willfully misinterpreted a "Born Alive" bill that came before the Illinois State Senate when he served there. This legislation was meant to address the issue of babies who were born during abortion procedures. Illinois had been rocked by scandals of babies being allowed to die (there were even macabre "comfort" rooms set aside in hospitals where nature was allowed to take its tragic course). Legislation was submitted that afforded these babies the protection of the law. Babies born alive during an abortion would be treated just like every other baby born alive and prematurely. The legislation was also clear that it did not apply to unborn babies and would not restrict abortions or violate Roe v. Wade. Nevertheless, Obama spoke out against the bill saying it would not pass "constitutional muster" and three years later, in his book The Audacity of Hope, wrote that it would have overturned Roe v. Wade.

He was wrong. For those with a legal bent, the elements of this bill may seem familiar -- as it should. Almost the exact same bill: the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which passed in the U.S. Senate in 2001 by a margin of 98-0, supported by Senators such as Barbara Boxer who are fervent pro-choice advocates. Neither these Senators nor has the Supreme Court seen any constitutional problems with the legislation.

But Barack Obama, the constitutional law expert, somehow did. The superb new book, The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate provides a very insightful treatment to this and many other issues involving Barack Obama; see also this.

However one may feel about abortion, the fact remains that Barack Obama was completely wrong on the legal merits of this legislation. Disappointing for a man who prides himself on being a constitutional expert.

For a man who was President of the Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law for 12 years, he seems to have a very odd conception of the law. Or is there something more at work -- a yearning to interpret and apply the law to advance his liberal goals, even if it means ignoring case law and the Constitution?

This leads one to question how Barack Obama would see to it that he fulfills his Presidential obligations as outlined in Article 2 of the Constitution to

"take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Article 2)?

We may be skeptical of his fealty to this principle, when he told the Teamsters union he would end federal oversight of the union in exchange for their electoral support. Such oversight was the result of a long history of corruption of the union. It was an unusual stance for a Presidential candidate; one not taken at any time before by any candidate. Up until now, union anti-corruption efforts have been treated as a legal matter left to the Justice Department. Barack Obama instead offers to lift this monitoring -- meant to prevent crime -- in order to gain votes.

How actively will he and the attorneys and judges he appoints monitor groups such as ACORN?

The Courts

Finally, how will a President Obama select Supreme Court nominees? They, too, apparently do not require a rigorous grounding in constitutional law. He disagreed even with fellow Democrats over the selection of Justices Roberts and Alito and voted against their confirmation -- despite (or maybe because of?) their sterling academic and legal credentials. He refused to participate in the so-called Gang of 14, a bipartisan group of Senators (including John McCain) who worked together to overcome roadblocks in the way of judicial confirmations.

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Obama and Tax "Fairness"

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:39PM CST on August 27, 2008

The so called "rich" already pay far more than their "fair share" - in fact, they pay almost all of the taxes in this country already. It's not about fairness, it's about playing Robin Hood, or in the words of George Bernard Shaw, "Those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul."
For Obama,
Taxes Are About Fairness
August 19, 2008; Page A15

On Saturday night at the Saddleback Church in Southern California, Rick Warren showed Jim, Gwen, Tom, Bob and Co. what a presidential moderator can accomplish when he makes the debate about the candidates and not himself.

Over the course of a two-hour, televised forum, the best-selling evangelical author and pastor took a novel approach to our presidential debates. He asked Barack Obama and John McCain the same simple questions -- and then gave them time to answer.

Barack Obama and John McCain with Pastor Rick Warren, Aug. 16.

For example, here is how Mr. Warren asked the candidates to talk about their flip-flops: "Give me a good example of something, 10 years ago, you said that's the way I feel about [it] and now, 10 years later, I changed my position."

Likewise on abortion: "I know this is a very complex issue. Forty million abortions, at what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?" And again on the Supreme Court: "Which existing Supreme Court Justice would you not have nominated?"

These are not your standard-issue Beltway questions, and their directness made them hard to evade. Nowhere was this more evident than in Mr. Warren's attempt to get the candidates -- both of whom are trying to persuade the American people they are tax cutters -- to draw some fundamental distinctions between their approaches. In simple but arresting language, he cut to the chase.

Here's how he put it: "OK. Taxes. Define rich. I mean give me a number. Is it $50,000, $100,000, $200,000? Everybody keeps talking about who we're going to tax. How can you define that?"

Plainly this is a man who understands that it is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get a direct answer from a politician running for election. And indeed, while Mr. McCain was at first shy about giving a specific number, in the end he did allow that someone who had an income of, say, $5 million could pretty definitely be said to be rich.

Yesterday's Politico hooted that with this response Mr. McCain handed his opponent the perfect fodder for a TV commercial. That, of course, overlooks those who might actually find attractive Mr. McCain's fuller explanation. "I don't want to take any money from the rich," he said, "I want everybody to get rich."

Mr. Obama, by contrast, started out much more directly, suggesting that if you make $150,000 or less you may be poor or middle class. A family with an income above $250,000, he went on to say, is "doing well." And if you find yourself in that category, he's going to target you for a tax hike -- all in the name of creating "a sense of balance, and fairness in our tax code."

In fact, the idea of fairness is at the heart of his whole economic argument. And he goes back to it in almost every public appearance.

He talks about it as a general theme: "It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share."

He invokes it as a solution for Social Security: "[W]e will save Social Security for future generations by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share."

He points to how it guides his energy policy: "The first part of my plan is to tax the windfall profits of oil companies and use some of that money to help you pay the rising price of gas."

And he stuck to it on capital gains, even after ABC's Charlie Gibson noted that the record shows increased taxes on capital gains -- which would affect 100 million Americans -- would likely lead to a decrease in government revenues: "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."

Translated into ordinary English, what that means is that it doesn't really matter whether a tax increase actually brings in more revenue. It's not about robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Robbing from the rich will do, especially if it's done in the name of fairness.

Now there are good reasons Mr. Obama is not likely to pursue the revenue side of the fairness question. As this newspaper noted in a recent editorial, the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service does not show to Mr. Obama's advantage. As we come to the end of the Bush administration, the top 1% of American taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes -- the highest level in 40 years. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the taxes.

Mr. Warren, a man of the cloth, has done us a great service by asking the candidates to answer a pretty secular question: What kind of income makes an American "rich"? Maybe in the more secular setting of an upcoming debate, one of our nonpastor moderators could ask the candidates the moral question: What specific rate of individual taxation would it take for the rich to be paying their fair share?

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Tuesday August 26, 2008

The audacity of resume-padding (or, why Obama makes things up)

Posted by: Iconoclast at 10:04PM CST on August 26, 2008

The audacity of resume-padding (or, why Obama makes things up)

Aug. 17, 2008
Abraham katsman and Kory Bardash , THE JERUSALEM POST

One of the knocks on Barack Obama is that his résumé is, so to speak, paper-thin. But that is not entirely accurate. Obama, in fact, has held some major job titles which are noteworthy all by themselves: United States Senator, Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Harvard Law Review President-each of these titles puts him in rarefied company. Tack on a few Illinois State Senate terms, and his resume actually appears solid. Yet, in spite of these prestigious positions, Obama has increasingly resorted to making claims of accomplishment that are so patently inflated that even his cheerleaders at CNN and the New York Times are taking notice. Why?

It seems that Obama recognizes that while his résumé titles are impressive, his actual accomplishments are weak. It's as if he were jockeying to be the next company CEO with little to show for his prior high-profile management positions. So, he does what anyone else does who has spent years coasting on charisma without doing any heavy work: he pads his résumé--stretching the truth here, stealing credit there, and creating the illusion of achievement during his lackadaisical, undistinguished tenure in previous jobs.

A few examples? Take Obama's first general election ad. We are told that Obama "passed laws" that "extended healthcare for wounded troops who'd been neglected," with a citation at the bottom to only one Senate bill: The 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, which passed the Senate by a 91-3 vote. Six Senators did not vote-including Obama. Nor is there evidence that he contributed to its passage in any material way. So, his claim to have "passed laws" amounts to citing a bill that was largely unopposed, that he didn't vote for, and whose passage he didn't impact. Even his hometown Chicago Tribune caught this false claim. It's classic résumé-padding--falsely taking credit for the work of others.

Or take one of Obama's standard lines: his claim of "twenty years of public service." As pundit Michael Medved has pointed out, the numbers don't add up. Shall we count? Three years in the US Senate (two of which he's spent running for President), plus seven years in the Illinois State Senate (a part-time gig, during which time he also served as a law professor) equals, at most, ten. Even if we generously throw in his three years as a "community organizer" (whatever that means, let's count it as public service), that still adds up to just thirteen.

Obama's other activities since 1985 have included Harvard Law School, writing two autobiographies (including several months writing in Bali), prestigious summer law firm jobs, three years as an associate at a Chicago law firm, and twelve years part-time on the University of Chicago Law School faculty. As Medved notes, it takes quite the ego to consider any of those stints "public service." Which of them is Obama including?

Obama made yet another inflated boast last month during his visit to Israel. At his press conference in Hamas rocket-bombarded Sderot, Obama talked up "his" efforts to protect Israel from Iran:

"Just this past week, we passed out of the US Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon." (Emphasis added.)

Nice try. But as even CNN noted, Obama is not even on that committee. That is one peculiar "mistake" to simply have made by accident. Again, his claiming credit for the work of others just looks like clumsy, transparent résumé embellishment.

Would someone with Obama's stellar list of job titles resort to making stuff up? He seems to think he has to. In spite of the many impressive positions he's held, he's done almost nothing with them. If he wants to claim specific, relevant accomplishments, his only resort is to stretching the truth.

Look at his record: he's now completed over half of a Senate term; yet, is there even one signature issue he has taken hold of, other than his own presidential run? Similarly, as the New York Times recently pointed out, Obama spent twelve years on the University of Chicago Law School faculty--singularly famous for its intellectual ferment and incubator of scholarship--and produced not even a single scholarly paper. He was President of Harvard Law Review, but wrote nothing himself. Even as a state legislator for seven years-or community organizer for three years, there is little that shows his imprint. OK, to be fair, he did write two books. About himself.

For all his glowing job titles, Obama has never gotten much done. Is it any wonder that his spokesmen respond with sweeping generalities when asked what Obama has actually accomplished relevant to the presidency?

Obama has held several serious positions from which a serious man could have made a serious impact. But Obama made none. He remains a man of proven charisma, but unproven skill--and not for lack of opportunity. He's treated his offices as if they were high school student council positions-fun to run for, fun to win, affirmations of popularity, heady recognition from superiors, good resume-builders for stepping up to the next position of power, and…well, that's about it-actual accomplishments are not expected; heavy lifting is never on the agenda.

Obama's record of accomplishment is thin not because of lack of opportunity, but in spite of it. For twenty years, Obama has walked the floors of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, but has left no footprints other than those from his runs for whatever office came next.

It's been said that some people want to be President so they can do something; and some want to be President so they can be something. Obama has accomplished nothing noteworthy despite the golden opportunities and positions he's had; why should we believe he'd be a different man in the White House?

No company would hire anyone with Obama's empty track record, pattern of underachievement and padded résumé to be CEO. Is America really ready to hire him as President?

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Obama Played by Chicago Rules

Posted by: Iconoclast at 9:27PM CST on August 26, 2008

Obama is just another Chicago political hack...
Obama Played by Chicago Rules

By DAVID FREDDOSO
August 20, 2008; Page A19

Democrats don't like it when you say that Barack Obama won his first election in 1996 by throwing all of his opponents off the ballot on technicalities.

By clearing out the incumbent and the others in his first Democratic primary for state Senate, Mr. Obama did something that was neither illegal nor even uncommon. But Mr. Obama claims to represent something different from old-style politics -- especially old-style Chicago politics. And the senator is embarrassed enough by what he did that he misrepresents it in the prologue of his political memoir, "The Audacity of Hope."

Barack Obama talks with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, June 6.

In that book, Mr. Obama paints a portrait of himself as a genuine reformer and change agent, just as he has in this presidential campaign. He attributes his 1996 victory to his message of hope, and his exhortations that Chicagoans drop their justifiable cynicism about politics.

When voters complained of all the broken promises politicians had made in the past, Mr. Obama writes that he "would usually smile and nod, and say that I understood the skepticism, but that there was -- and always had been -- another tradition to politics, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done."

Mr. Obama writes that even if the voters were not impressed by this speech, "enough of them appreciated my earnestness and youthful swagger that I made it to the Illinois legislature."

In real life, it did not matter what Mr. Obama said on the stump or whether South Side voters were impressed. What mattered was that, beginning on Jan. 2, 1996, his campaigners began challenging thousands of petition signatures the other candidates in the race had submitted in order to appear on the ballot. Thus would Mr. Obama win his state Senate seat, months before a single vote was cast.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Mr. Obama's petition challengers reported to him nightly on their progress as they disqualified his opponents' signatures on various technical grounds -- all legitimate from the perspective of law. One local newspaper, Chicago Weekend, reported that "[s]ome of the problems include printing registered voters name [sic] instead of writing, a female voter got married after she registered to vote and signed her maiden name, registered voters signed the petitions but don't live in the 13th district."

One of the candidates would speculate that his signature-gatherers, working at a per-signature pay rate, may have cheated him by signing many of the petitions themselves, making them easy to disqualify.

In the end, Mr. Obama disqualified all four opponents -- including the incumbent state senator, Alice Palmer, and three minor candidates. Ms. Palmer, a former ally of Mr. Obama, had gathered 1,580 signatures, more than twice the 757 required to appear on the ballot. A minor, perennial candidate had gathered 1,899 signatures, suggesting the Obama team invested much time working even against him.

The act of throwing an incumbent off the ballot in such a fashion does not fit neatly into the narrative of a public-spirited reformer who seeks to make people less cynical about politics.

But Mr. Obama's offenses against the idea of a "new politics" are many, and go well beyond hardball election tactics. It is telling that, when asked at the Saddleback Forum last weekend to name an instance in which he had worked against his own party or his own political interests, he didn't have a good answer. He claimed to have worked with his current opponent, John McCain, on ethics reform. In fact, no such thing happened. The two men had agreed to work together, for all of one day, in February 2006, and then promptly had a well-documented falling-out. They even exchanged angry letters over this incident.

The most dramatic examples of Mr. Obama's commitment to old-style politics are his repeated endorsements of Chicago's machine politicians, which came in opposition to what people of all ideological stripes viewed as the common good.

In the 2006 election, reformers from both parties attempted to end the corruption in Chicago's Cook County government. They probably would have succeeded, too, had Mr. Obama taken their side. Liberals and conservatives came together and nearly ousted Cook County Board President John Stroger, the machine boss whom court papers credibly accuse of illegally using the county payroll to maintain his own standing army of political cronies, contributors and campaigners.

The since-deceased Stroger's self-serving mismanagement of county government is still the subject of federal investigations and arbitration claims. Stroger was known for trying repeatedly to raise taxes to fund his political machine, even as basic government services were neglected in favor of high-paying county jobs for his political soldiers.

When liberals and conservatives worked together to clean up Cook County's government, they were displaying precisely the postpartisan interest in the common good that Mr. Obama extols today. And Mr. Obama, by working against them, helped keep Chicago politics dirty. He refused to endorse the progressive reformer, Forrest Claypool, who came within seven points of defeating Stroger in the primary.

After the primary, when Stroger's son Todd replaced him on the ballot under controversial circumstances, a good-government Republican named Tony Peraica attracted the same kind of bipartisan support from reformers in the November election. But Mr. Obama endorsed the young heir to the machine, calling him -- to the absolute horror of Chicago liberals -- a "good, progressive Democrat."

Mayor Richard M. Daley -- who would receive Mr. Obama's endorsement in 2007 shortly after several of his top aides and appointees had received prison sentences for their corrupt operation of Chicago's city government -- was invested in the Stroger machine's survival. So was every alderman and county commissioner who uses the county payroll to support political hangers-on. So was Mr. Obama's friend and donor, Tony Rezko, who is now in federal prison awaiting sentencing after being convicted in June of 16 felony corruption charges. Rezko had served as John Stroger's finance chairman and raised $150,000 for him (Stroger put Rezko's wife on the county payroll).

Mr. Obama has never stood up against Chicago's corruption problem because his donors and allies are Chicago's corruption problem.

Mr. Obama is not the reformer he now claims to be. The real man is the one they know in Chicago -- the one who won his first election by depriving voters of a choice.

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Saturday August 23, 2008

Wisconsin Democrats Again Caught in Election Fraud

Posted by: Iconoclast at 9:23AM CST on August 23, 2008

Non-partisan my @ss. These groups are closely aligned with the democratic party, and on election day, those van loads of people going from polling place to polling place who need to consult the slip of paper in their hand to know what their name is will be using these false voter identities to disenfranchise the rest of us.

City refers 32 more to DA for voter fraud

Milwaukee's election chief turned 32 more voter registration workers in to the district attorney's office for possible prosecution today, after they tried to submit falsified registration cards.

That brings to 39 the number of registration workers under scrutiny, and the number could grow, said Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman. An organization warned the commission staff late this afternoon about some questionable cards in the latest batch collected by its workers, Edman said.

All of the workers targeted for investigation were paid employees of two liberal groups running voter registration drives, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Community Voters Project.

In many cases, the groups have said they caught the fraud and fired the workers before handing the cards over to the commission. The groups also have said the problems represent a small fraction of the tens of thousands of cards collected by hundreds of workers.

But in a presidential election year, the incidents have revived partisan debate over Wisconsin's voter registration rules and over the question of whether requiring photo identification for voters would prevent fraud or suppress turnout.

Of the 32 ACORN workers referred today to Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, Edman said:

17 apparently filled out applications and then signed the cards themselves. That involved two to four cards in each case.

12 submitted cards for individuals who later told ACORN that they never filled out an application. That involved one card in each case.

One submitted a card for a dead voter. That was the second such case; a voters project worker previously submitted a card for a deceased voter.

One was apparently making up driver's license numbers for an unknown number of voters.

One submitted about a half-dozen applications for voters who already were registered.

With today's action, Edman has now referred 35 ACORN workers to Landgraf. She also has referred one worker from the voters project and one whose employer is unknown, and she plans to refer two more from the voters project.

But more workers from the voters project will come under scrutiny because the group identified problems with a handful of the 7,500 cards it turned in today, Edman said.

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Monday August 18, 2008

Drug Test Welfare Recipients

Posted by: Iconoclast at 11:32PM CST on August 18, 2008

This is a great idea: Requiring recipients of public assistance to submit to regular drug testing as a condition of receiving assistance. It was introduced by Rep. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican.

Drug Free Families Act of 2008 (Introduced in Senate)

S 3361 IS

110th CONGRESS 2d Session

S. 3361

To amend title IV of the Social Security Act to require States to implement a drug testing program for applicants for and recipients of assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

July 29 (legislative day, July 28), 2008

Mr. VITTER introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance

A BILL

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Drug Free Families Act of 2008'.

SEC. 2. DRUG TESTING PROGRAM FOR APPLICANTS FOR AND RECIPIENTS OF ASSISTANCE UNDER STATE TANF PROGRAMS.

(a) State Plan Requirement of Drug Testing Program- Section 402(a) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 602(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

`(8) CERTIFICATION THAT THE STATE WILL OPERATE AN ILLEGAL DRUG USE TESTING PROGRAM-

`(A) IN GENERAL- A certification by the chief executive officer of the State that the State will operate a program to test all applicants for assistance under the State program funded under this part, and all individuals described in subparagraph (B) of section 408(a)(12), for the use of illegal drugs (as defined in subparagraph (E)(i) of such section), and to deny assistance under such State program to individuals who test positive for illegal drug use or who are convicted of drug-related crimes, as required by such section.

`(B) AUTHORITY FOR CONTINUED TESTING- The program described in subparagraph (A) may include a plan to continue testing individuals receiving assistance under the State program funded under this part for illegal drug use at random or set intervals after the initial testing of such individuals, at the discretion of the State agency administering such State program.'.

(b) Requirement That Applicants and Individuals Receiving Assistance Be Tested for Illegal Drug Use- Section 408(a) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 608(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

`(12) REQUIREMENT FOR DRUG TESTING; DENIAL OF ASSISTANCE FOR INDIVIDUALS FOUND TO HAVE USED ILLEGAL DRUGS AND INDIVIDUALS CONVICTED OF DRUG-RELATED OFFENSES-

`(A) IN GENERAL- A State to which a grant is made under section 403 shall not use any part of the grant to provide assistance to any individual who has not been tested for illegal drug use under the program required under section 402(a)(8).

`(B) TRANSITION RULE- In the case of an individual who is receiving assistance under the State program funded under this part on the effective date of the Drug Free Families Act of 2008, or whose application for assistance is approved before such date if such assistance has not begun as of such date, a State may not provide assistance to such individual unless such individual is tested for illegal drug use under the program described in subparagraph (A) after the 3rd month that begins after such date.

`(C) DENIAL OF ASSISTANCE FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO TEST POSITIVE FOR ILLEGAL DRUG USE AND INDIVIDUALS CONVICTED OF DRUG-RELATED CRIMES- In the case of--

`(i) an individual who tests positive for illegal drug use under the program described in subparagraph (A); or

`(ii) an individual who is convicted of a drug-related crime after the effective date of the Drug Free Families Act of 2008;

the State shall not provide assistance to the individual under the State program funded under this part unless such individual enters and successfully completes (as determined by the State) a drug rehabilitation or treatment program and does not test positive for illegal drug use in the 6-month period beginning on the date the individual enters such rehabilitation or treatment program. The State may test the individual for illegal drug use at random or set intervals, at the discretion of the State, after such period.

`(D) PERMANENT DENIAL OF ASSISTANCE AFTER THIRD DRUG-RELATED DENIAL- In the case of an individual who is denied assistance under subparagraph (C) 3 times, as a result of 3 separate positive tests for illegal drug use, 3 separate convictions for drug-related crimes (not including convictions that are imposed concurrently in time), or any combination of 3 such separate tests or convictions, a State may not provide assistance to such individual under the State program funded under this part at any time after the 3rd such test or conviction.

`(E) DEFINITIONS- For purposes of this paragraph--

`(i) ILLEGAL DRUG- The term `illegal drug' means a controlled substance as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802).

`(ii) DRUG REHABILITATION OR TREATMENT PROGRAM- The term `drug rehabilitation or treatment program' means a program determined by the State to provide treatment that can lead to the rehabilitation of drug users, but only if such program complies with all applicable Federal, State, and local laws and regulations.

`(iii) DRUG-RELATED CRIME- The term `drug-related crime' means any crime involving the possession, use, or sale of an illegal drug.'.

(1) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in paragraph (2), the amendments made by this section shall take effect on the 1st day of the 1st calendar quarter that begins on or after the date that is 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act.

(2) DELAY PERMITTED IF STATE LEGISLATION REQUIRED- In the case of a State plan under section 402(a) of the Social Security Act which the Secretary of Health and Human Services determines requires State legislation (other than legislation appropriating funds) in order for the plan to meet the additional requirements imposed by the amendments made by this Act, the State plan shall not be regarded as failing to comply with the requirements of such section 402(a) solely on the basis of the failure of the plan to meet such additional requirements before the 1st day of the 1st calendar quarter beginning after the close of the 1st regular session of the State legislature that begins after the date of enactment of this Act. For purposes of the previous sentence, in the case of a State that has a 2-year legislative session, each year of such session shall be deemed to be a separate regular session of the State legislature.

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Sunday August 17, 2008

Obama's 10 reasons for supporting infanticide

Posted by: Iconoclast at 1:52PM CST on August 17, 2008

Obama's 10 reasons for supporting infanticide

Posted: January 16, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

By Jill Stanek
© 2008

I was intimately involved in the five-year process to pass the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, testifying before committees twice that then-state Sen. Barack Obama sat on.

Following are 10 excuses Obama has given through the years for voting "present" and "no" on the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act, or BAIPA.

10. Babies who survive abortions are not protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Obama, the sole opponent ever to speak against BAIPA, stated on the Illinois Senate floor on March 30, 2001:

I just want to suggest ... that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny.
Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – child, a 9-month-old – child that was delivered to term. …

I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional.

9. A ban to stop aborted babies from being shelved to die would be burdensome to mothers.

Before voting "no" for a second time in the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 5, 2002, Obama stated:

What we are doing here is to create one more burden on women, and I can't support that.

8. Aborting babies alive and letting them die is a doctor's prerogative.

An Obama spokesman told the Chicago Tribune in August 2004 that Obama voted against BAIPA because it included provisions that "would have taken away from doctors their professional judgment when a fetus is viable."

7. Anyway, doctors don't do that.

Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times in October 2004 he opposed BAIPA because "physicians are already required to use life-saving measures when fetuses are born alive during abortions."

6. Obama apparently read medical charts and saw no proof.

Also, during a speech at Benedictine University in October 2004, Obama said "there was no documentation that hospitals were actually doing what was alleged in testimony presented before him in committee," according to the Illinois Leader.

5. Aborting babies alive and letting them die is a religious issue.

During his U.S. Senate contest against Obama, Alan Keyes famously said:

Christ would not stand idly by while an infant child in that situation died. ... Christ would not vote for Barack Obama, because Barack Obama has voted to behave in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved.

Obama has always mischaracterized Keyes' condemnation as a blanket statement against Obama's pro-abortion position, which is untrue. Keyes was pointedly discussing infanticide.

Nevertheless, induced labor abortion, the procedure that sometimes results in babies being aborted alive, must be included as one Obama condones. Obama responded first to Keyes as he recounted in a July 10, 2006, USA Today op ed:

... [W]e live in a pluralistic society, and … I can't impose my religious views on another.

4. Aborting babies alive and letting them die violates no universal principle.

In that USA Today piece, Obama said he reflected on that first answer, decided it was a "typically liberal response," and revised it:

But my opponent's accusations nagged at me. ... If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons but seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

3. Introducing legislation to stop live aborted babies from being shelved to die was a political maneuver.

During the Benedictine University speech, Obama said, "The bill was unnecessary in Illinois and was introduced for political reasons," according to the Illinois Leader.

2. Sinking Born Alive was about outmaneuvering that political maneuver.

Obama has this quote on his website:

Pam Sutherland … of … Illinois Planned Parenthood … told ABC News, "We worked with him specifically on his strategy. The Republicans were in control of the Illinois Senate at the time. They loved to hold votes on 'partial birth' and 'born alive.' They put these bills out all the time ... because they wanted to pigeonhole Democrats. ..."

And the No. 1 reason Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was:

1. Introducing Born Alive was a ploy to overturn Roe v. Wade.

During a debate against Keyes in October 2004, Obama stated:

Now, the bill that was put forward was essentially a way of getting around Roe vs. Wade. ... At the federal level, there was a similar bill that passed because it had an amendment saying this does not encroach on Roe vs. Wade. I would have voted for that bill.

This was a lie on two points.

First, there was no such amendment.

Second, both definitions of "born alive" were always identical. The concluding paragraph changed in the federal version. But Obama, as chairman of the committee that vetted Illinois' version in 2003, refused to allow an amendment rendering both concluding paragraphs identical. He also refused to call the bill and killed it.

The federal paragraph (c) actually weakened the pro-abortion position by opening the possibility of giving legal status to preborn children, the opposite of Obama's contention:

Illinois' paragraph (c): A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law.
Federal paragraph (c): Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species ##### sapiens at any point prior to being "born alive" as defined in this section.

At any rate, so what if stopping hospitals and abortion clinics from aborting babies alive and leaving them to die did theoretically "encroach on Roe v. Wade"?

Obama was admitting he supported infanticide if that were true.

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Wednesday August 13, 2008

A Catholic Case Against Barack

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:33PM CST on August 13, 2008

A Catholic Case Against Barack

In the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama rolled up more than 90 percent of the African-American vote. Among Catholics, he lost by 40 points. The cool liberal Harvard Law grad was not a good fit for the socially conservative ethnics of Altoona, Aliquippa and Johnstown.

But if Barack had a problem with Catholics then, he has a far higher hurdle to surmount in the fall, with those millions of Catholics who still take their faith and moral code seriously.

For not only is Barack the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, with his straight A+ report card from the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood. He supports the late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion, where the baby's skull is stabbed with scissors in the birth canal and the brains are sucked out to end its life swiftly and ease passage of the corpse into the pan.

Partial-birth abortion, said the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, "comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary."

Yet, when Congress was voting to ban this terrible form of death for a mature fetus, Michelle Obama was signing fundraising letters pledging that, if elected, Barack would be "tireless" in keeping legal this "legitimate medical procedure."

And Barack did not let the militants down. When the Supreme Court upheld the congressional ban on this barbaric procedure, Barack denounced the court for denying "equal rights for women."

As David Freddoso reports in his new best-seller, "The Case Against Barack Obama," the Illinois senator goes further than any U.S. senator has dared go in defending what John Paul II called the "culture of death."

Thrice in the Illinois legislature, Obama helped block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion. Thrice, Obama voted to let doctors and nurses allow these tiny human beings die of neglect and be tossed out with the medical waste.

How can a man who purports to be a Christian justify this?

If, as its advocates contend, abortion has to remain legal to protect the life and health, mental and physical, of the mother, how is a mother's life or health in the least threatened by a baby no longer inside her -- but lying on a table or in a pan fighting for life and breath?

How is it essential for the life or health of a woman that her baby, who somehow survived the horrible ordeal of abortion, be left to die or put to death? Yet, that is what Obama voted for, thrice, in the Illinois Senate.

When a bill almost identical to the one Barack fought in Illinois, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, came to the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2001, the vote was 98 to 0 in favor. Barbara Boxer, the most pro-abortion member of the Senate before Barack came, spoke out on its behalf:

"Of course, we believe everyone should deserve the protection of this bill. ... Who could be more vulnerable than a newborn baby? So, of course, we agree with that. ... We join with an 'aye' vote on this. I hope it will, in fact, be unanimous."

Obama says he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act because he feared it might imperil Roe v. Wade. But if Roe v. Wade did allow infanticide or murder, which is what letting a tiny baby die of neglect or killing it outright amounts to, why would he not want that court decision reviewed and amended to outlaw infanticide?

Is the right to an abortion so sacrosanct to Obama that killing by neglect or snuffing out of the life of tiny babies outside the womb must be protected if necessary to preserve that right?
Obama is an abortion absolutist. "I could find no instance in his entire career," writes Freddoso, "in which he voted for any regulation or restriction on the practice of abortion."

In 2007, Barack pledged that, in his first act as president, he will sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would cancel every federal, state or local regulation or restriction on abortion. The National Organization for Women says it would abolish all restrictions on government funding of abortion.

What we once called God's Country would become the nation on earth most zealously committed to an unrestricted right of abortion from conception to birth.

Before any devout Catholic, Evangelical Christian or Orthodox Jew votes for Obama, he or she might spend 15 minutes in Chapter 10 of Freddoso's "Case Against Barack." For if, as Catholics believe, abortion is the killing of an unborn child, and participation in an abortion entails automatic excommunication, how can a good Catholic support a candidate who will appoint justices to make Roe v. Wade eternal and eliminate all restrictions on a practice Catholics legislators have fought for three decades to curtail?

And which Catholic priests and prelates will it be who give invocations at Obama rallies, even as Mother Church fights to save the lives of unborn children whom Obama believes have no right to life and no rights at all?

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You've Gotta Have Heart? How Obama Chooses Judges

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:31PM CST on August 13, 2008

You've Gotta Have Heart? How Obama Chooses Judges

by Deal W. Hudson

8/10/08

Print This Page

Evoking the power of the human heart is the daily bread of American pop culture. It rarely raises an eyebrow. But the use of "heart" by Barack Obama to describe his criteria for picking judges is troubling.

Speaking to Planned Parenthood just over a year ago, Obama said:

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom; the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges.

Certainly, that empathy is desirable for anyone, simply as a human being. But what makes it a desirable quality for a judge or a Supreme Court justice? The phrase "sober as a judge" is a colloquialism for a reason. The senator implies that there's something missing in the Constitution and our law that must be supplied by the heart -- in other words, the empathy or caring of the judge. For him, the judge without "heart" cannot justly rule on cases about those who are gay, African-American, disabled, or "old" (whatever that means).

It's particularly worrisome that Obama's insistence on empathetic judges was aimed at the Supreme Court for upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion. During this horrific procedure, a doctor inserts scissors into a baby's skull and suctions out the brain just before he or she fully emerges from the mother.

An empathetic judge, according to Obama, would have allowed doctors to continue this gruesome procedure. A judge with "heart," presumably, would find the Born Alive-Infant Defined bill unconstitutional, allowing babies to die in hospitals without medical attention -- surely the exact opposite of what most people mean when they use the word.

UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge describes Obama's comment as an example of "how far left-liberalism has strayed from the rule of law." Bainbridge reiterates the view that impartiality -- not empathetic solidarity -- is what makes a judge what he should be: a neutral arbiter.

For Obama, the "first postmodern candidate" for president, there is no such thing as neutrality before the law. All values, and all judgments based upon those values, are the product of a struggle between groups as defined by race, class, and gender. The decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the ban on partial-birth abortion was wrong, according to Obama, because the justices ignored the perspective of women.

It seems that Obama believes that the law is about taking sides before you decide. As Professor Bainbridge puts it, "Settling upon a preferred outcome, without resort to the law, because it favors one group or another ought to be foreign to the judicial role."

Obama's support of gay marriage provides a perfect example of the problem. In his letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, Obama said he supported repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, passing the hate crimes bill, and opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution." He described LGBT rights a "core issue" about "who we are as Americans."

A President Obama will be nominating at least one Supreme Court justice, probably more. With a Congress very likely to be dominated by the Democratic Party, an Obama administration will be positioned to reshape laws and policies according to this postmodern vision.

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Tuesday August 12, 2008

Obama & education

Posted by: Iconoclast at 9:26PM CST on August 12, 2008

Obama & education: Backward Barack

Monday, August 11, 2008

When Barack Obama was young and poor but lucky, he received a scholarship to Honolulu's prestigious Punahou School, an elite private K-12 school where tuition now tops $16,000 a year.

Today, Sen. Obama sends his two daughters to a private school in Chicago that costs $15,528 a year - for kindergarten.

And yet our presumptive president disses school choice because, while "it might benefit some kids at the top," it "leaves a lot of kids at the bottom."

We know that's how "progressives" garner ringing endorsements from the National Education Association, the teachers union whose core mission is protecting public schools from competition.

But as The Wall Street Journal recently editorialized, Obama has it completely backward.

It's not privileged kids who need school choice; they can afford private schools or can move to neighborhoods with decent public schools. It's the poorest kids - those stuck in wrecked inner-city districts - who choice helps the most.

Charter schools, voucher plans, opportunity scholarships and other alternatives exist in our broken cities, but they are still too rare and don't begin to satisfy the demand.

Obama - himself a poster child for the efficacy of school choice - has a unique chance to invigorate the public-private debate in education. Instead, he panders to teacher unions by expressing disdain for the "tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice."

So much for the politics of change.

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Saturday August 9, 2008

Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:53AM CST on August 9, 2008

Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.

During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.

Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who've served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.

And as president, "we'll ensure that economic justice is served," he asserted. "That's what this election is about." Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn't have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.

It's the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we're launching this special educational series.

"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.

In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama's positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.

In his latest memoir he shares that he'd like to "recast" the welfare net that FDR and LBJ cast while rolling back what he derisively calls the "winner-take-all" market economy that Ronald Reagan reignited (with record gains in living standards for all).

Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.

It's clear from a close reading of his two books that he's a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.

Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.

Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.

Among his proposed "investments":

• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.

• "Free" college tuition.

• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).

• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").

• "Free" job training (even for criminals).

• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).

• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.

• More subsidized public housing.

• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."

• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.

That's just for starters — first-term stuff.

Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.

You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress.

But could he really be "more left," as McCain recently remarked, than self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (for whom Obama has openly campaigned, even making a special trip to Vermont to rally voters)?

Obama's voting record, going back to his days in the Illinois statehouse, says yes. His career path — and those who guided it — leads to the same unsettling conclusion.

The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.

A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."

As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.

"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."

After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences "for inspiration," Obama followed in Davis' footsteps, becoming a "community organizer" in Chicago.

His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman's a disciple of the late Saul "The Red" Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the "Rules for Radicals" and agitated for social revolution in America.

The Chicago-based Woods Fund provided Kellman with his original $25,000 to hire Obama. In turn, Obama would later serve on the Woods board with terrorist Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. Ayers was one of Obama's early political supporters.

After three years agitating with marginal success for more welfare programs in South Side Chicago, Obama decided he would need to study law to "bring about real change" — on a large scale.

While at Harvard Law School, he still found time to hone his organizing skills. For example, he spent eight days in Los Angeles taking a national training course taught by Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. With his newly minted law degree, he returned to Chicago to reapply — as well as teach — Alinsky's "agitation" tactics.

(A video-streamed bio on Obama's Web site includes a photo of him teaching in a University of Chicago classroom. If you freeze the frame and look closely at the blackboard Obama is writing on, you can make out the words "Power Analysis" and "Relationships Built on Self Interest" — terms right out of Alinsky's rule book.)

Amid all this, Obama reunited with his late father's communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.

As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough. In an eight-page scholarly paper published in 1965, he argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses "owned by Asians and Europeans."

His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn't stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to "redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all."

"Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed," Obama Sr. wrote. "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."

Taxes and "investment" . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.

(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father's communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)

In Kenya's recent civil unrest, Obama privately phoned the leader of the opposition Luo tribe, Raila Odinga, to voice his support. Odinga is so committed to communism he named his oldest son after Fidel Castro.

With his African identity sewn up, Obama returned to Chicago and fell under the spell of an Afrocentric pastor. It was a natural attraction. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches a Marxist version of Christianity called "black liberation theology" and has supported the communists in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Obama joined Wright's militant church, pledging allegiance to a system of "black values" that demonizes white "middle classness" and other mainstream pursuits.

(Obama in his first book, published in 1995, calls such values "sensible." There's no mention of them in his new book.)

With the large church behind him, Obama decided to run for political office, where he could organize for "change" more effectively. "As an elected official," he said, "I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer."

He could also exercise real, top-down power, the kind that grass-roots activists lack. Alinsky would be proud.

Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."

He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.

Yet a recent AP poll found that only 6% of Americans would describe Obama as "liberal," let alone socialist.

Public opinion polls usually reflect media opinion, and the media by and large have portrayed Obama as a moderate "outsider" (the No. 1 term survey respondents associate him with) who will bring a "breath of fresh air" to Washington.

The few who have drilled down on his radical roots have tended to downplay or pooh-pooh them. Even skeptics have failed to connect the dots for fear of being called the dreaded "r" word.

But too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.

Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.

Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that's made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.

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Obama Wants to Tax You to Save the World

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:51AM CST on August 9, 2008

Obama's Global Tax

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, July 29, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: A plan by Barack Obama to redistribute American wealth on a global level is moving forward in the Senate. It follows Marxist theology — from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

We are citizens of the world, Sen. Obama told thousands of nonvoting Germans during his recent tour of the Middle East and Europe. And if the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433) he has sponsored becomes law, which is almost certain if he wins in November, we're also going to be taxpayers of the world.

Speaking in Berlin, Obama said: "While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history."

What the 20th century really showed was a series of totalitarian threats — from fascism to Nazism to communism — defeated by the U.S. military. Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan and the Soviet Union offered destinies we did not share.

Our destiny of peace and freedom through strength was not achieved by a transnationalist fantasy of buying the world a Coke and singing "Kumbaya."

Obama's Global Poverty Act offers us a global socialist destiny we do not want, one that challenges America's very sovereignty. The former "post-racial" candidate obviously intends to be a post-national president.

A statement from Obama's office says: "With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter and clean drinking water."

These are worthy goals, but note there's no mention of spreading democracy, expanding free trade, promoting entrepreneurial capitalism or ridding the world of despots who rule and ravage countries such as Zimbabwe and Sudan.

Obama would give them all a fish without teaching them how to fish. Pledging to cut global poverty in half on the backs of U.S. taxpayers is a ridiculous and impossible goal.

His legislation refers to the "millennium development goal," a phrase from a declaration adopted by the United Nations Millennium Assembly in 2000 and supported by President Clinton.

It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the "redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.

It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.

We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.

Over a 13-year period, from 2002, when the U.N.'s Financing for Development Conference was held, to the target year of 2015, when the U.S is expected to meet its part of the U.N. Millennium goals, we would be spending an additional $65 billion annually for a total of $845 billion.

During a time of economic uncertainty, the plan would cost every American taxpayer around $2,500.

If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the "international community's" foot in the door.

The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal . . . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."

Co-sponsors of S. 2433 include Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. GOP globalists supporting the bill include Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard Lugar of Indiana.

Lugar has worked with Obama to promote more aid to Russia to promote nuclear nonproliferation. Lugar also promotes the Law of the Sea treaty, which turns over the world's oceans to an International Seabed Authority that would charge us to drill offshore and have veto power over the movements and actions of the U.S. Navy.

Obama's agenda sounds like defeated 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry's "global test" for U.S. foreign policy decisions where "you have to do it in a way that passes the test — that passes the global test — where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Obama has called on the U.S. to "lead by example" on global warming and probably would submit to a Kyoto-like agreement that would sock Americans with literally trillions of dollars in costs over the next half century for little or no benefit.

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."

Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?

In an Obama White House, American sovereignty will become an endangered species. The Global Poverty Act is the first toe in the water of global socialism.

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Obama Wants You

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:49AM CST on August 9, 2008

Obama Wants You

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 31, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Barack Obama calls it "Universal Voluntary Public Service." We call it a plan for national involuntary servitude. Kennedy asked us what we could do for our country. Obama has ways to make us volunteer.

Sen. Obama's call to public service is quite different from JFK's. JFK knew America was already a nation of givers and volunteers, perhaps the most charitable and altruistic nation on Earth. Entities such as the Peace Corps would give Americans an outlet for their kindness and generosity, an opportunity to share what the freest nation on Earth had given them. Obama will force you to share.

Obama's Orwellian use of the words "universal" and "voluntary" together is an indicator of an antithesis to capitalist society deeply rooted in his socialist associations, education and training. Indeed, in 1996, when he ran for an Illinois state Senate seat, one of his first endorsements was from the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America.

On the surface, his plan looks just like typical bureaucratic program growth. He wants to expand Americorps to 250,000 slots and double the size of the Peace Corps. He'll create a Clean Energy Corps to plant trees and otherwise save the Earth. It's how Obama plans to fill those slots that's worrisome.

Announcing his plan July 2 at the University of Colorado, he said: "We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges." He will make us an offer we can't refuse.

Obama says that as president he will "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year." What he doesn't say is that he'll make such voluntarism compulsory by attaching strings to federal education dollars. The schools will make the kids volunteer. It's called plausible deniability.

In a commencement speech at Wesleyan University, Obama advised graduates not to pursue the American dream of success, but to serve others.

"You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should," he told the graduates. "But I hope you don't."

Don't be another Bill Gates and amass a fortune making people more productive and successful in their daily lives and giving your countrymen a standard of living the world will envy. Exchange your cap and gown for sackcloth and ashes. Leave your possessions behind and come and follow Obama.

"Fulfilling your immediate wants and needs betrays a poverty of ambition," he opined. Shame on us for being selfish and buying that SUV built by an autoworker trying to fulfill his family's immediate wants and needs.

"Our collective service can shape the destiny of this generation," Obama said. "Individual salvation depends on collective salvation."

We already have a Salvation Army that is truly a volunteer organization. Collective service and salvation is not a classic definition of voluntarism. What Obama has in mind is to turn America into a socialist version of the old Soviet collectives.

And if your idea of service is to join the military and keep others alive and free, forget about it. And never mind about ROTC on campus.

Obama has no place for those who are willing to abandon fame and fortune to lay down their lives for their friends and ours. "At a time of war," Obama says, "we need you to work for peace."

"We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we're asking young people to do," Obama's wife, Michelle, told a group of women in Zanesville, Ohio, during the primaries. "Don't go into corporate America. . . . Become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers we need, and we're encouraging people to do just that."

Don't be the engineers who will figure out better ways to extract shale oil from the porous rock that holds it. Figure out how to extract more money from taxpayers' wallets.

But the Obamas are doing more than "encouraging" or "asking." In a speech in California, Michelle, who has made a small fortune in the "helping industry," said: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. . . . Barack Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed."

But America is not a nation of selfish, self-serving people. Social demographer Arthur Brooks once calculated that Americans volunteered 32% more than Obama's beloved Germans. We also donate seven times more money to charities and causes than the Germans who gathered in Berlin.

In talking about his national service, Obama, the man who seems to be running for "community organizer in chief," also made this startling statement:

"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."

This is an idea worthy of Hugo Chavez.

Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren has estimated that this civilian national security force alone would cost somewhere between $100 billion and $500 billion, or between 10% and 50% of all federal tax receipts. And that doesn't include the cost of the brown shirts.

Adults are not exempt from all this, even adults who've already served in the U.S. military. "People of all ages, stations and skills will be asked to serve," Obama says. Will they be asked, or drafted?

"The future of our nation depends on the soldier at Fort Carson," he concedes. "But it (also) depends on the teacher in East L.A., the nurse in Appalachia, the after-school worker in New Orleans . . ." So drop down and give Sgt. Obama 50 hours.

Require. Demand. Never allow. Obama's version of "voluntary" service is more appropriate for Havana than middle America. He wants to turn America's students, and even adults, into clones of Elian Gonzalez, compelled to serve the state in ways Obama "will direct."

Correction: In the first installment of this series on Tuesday, the Luo ethnic group in Kenya was identified as "communist." The father of the Luo leader cited, Oginga Odinga, did espouse the post-colonial African version of communism in the 1970s and '80s, and his son, Raila Odinga, calls himself a social democrat. But communism as an ideology did not characterize the entire tribe.

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Obama's Dangerous Economic Ignorance

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:46AM CST on August 9, 2008

Obamanomics Flunks The Test

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 01, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: Barack Obama the lawyer-organizer could use a crash course in economics. His economic plan's assumptions, based on long-discredited Marxist theories, are wildly wrongheaded.

In arguing for a heavier mix of government, he assumes that capitalism unfairly favors the rich, almost exclusively so, and fails to spread prosperity.

"The rich in America have little to complain about," he carps. "The distribution of wealth is skewed, and levels of inequality are now higher than at any time since the Gilded Age."

Obama cites data showing a yawning gap between the income of the average worker and the wealthiest 1%. He thinks it's government's job to step in and close it — "for purposes of fairness" — by soaking the rich, among other leftist nostrums.

"Between 1971 and 2001," he complains, "while the median wage and salary income of the average worker showed literally no gain, the income of the top hundredth of a percent went up almost 500%."

But such a snapshot comparison would be meaningful only if America were a caste society, in which the people making up one income group remained static over time.

Of course that's not the case. The composition of the rich and poor in this country is in constant flux, as the income distribution changes dramatically over relatively short periods. Few are "stuck" in poverty, or have a "lock" on wealth.

Obama would discover this if only he'd put down his class-warfare manuals and look closely at the IRS' own data.

Take those megarich he vilifies — the top hundredth of a percent. According to a recent Treasury study, three-fourths of them in 1996 fell out of the group by 2005.

Meanwhile, more than half of those in the bottom income group in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005, with more than 5% leapfrogging to the richest quintile.

(It's no fluke: The same high degree of income mobility is seen in prior comparable periods, as well.)

Some poor moved up through personal effort, while many rode an expanding economy. Real median incomes of all taxpayers rose 24%, but the poor registered the biggest gains of all.

President Kennedy understood that a growing economy is like a rising tide that "lifts all boats." Obama, on the other hand, thinks some are lifted and others lowered, as if the economy were a system of locks operated by a cabal of evil capitalists.

He also fails to understand how taxes change behavior. He thinks raising taxes on the most productive members of society won't "curb incentives to work or invest." Even TV news anchor Charlie Gibson knows better.

During a primary debate, the ABC host took Obama to task for proposing a doubling in the capital gains tax. History shows, he pointed out, that raising the cap gains rate actually ends up costing the government revenues.

Obama just didn't get it. "Well, Charlie," he argued, "what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."

Forget growth and revenues. Let's just punish those "greedy" investors. It's the same Marxist reasoning behind his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts: The rich must be made to pay their "fair" share, Obama asserts.

Never mind that the top 1% of taxpayers already pay 38% of the total tax burden, according to recent IRS data, while the bottom 50% bear just 3% of the load.

Obama's economic plan also calls for mandating a "living wage." He plans to saddle retailers with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation, along with a mandate to provide seven days of paid sick leave to workers.

Obama assumes business owners will just eat the added costs.

But restaurants, the nation's second-largest private-sector employer, already operate on razor-thin profit margins. Faced with such mandatory paid benefits, they'll have no choice but to cut staff.

In fact, the last major minimum-wage increase cost the restaurant industry more than 146,000 jobs, the National Restaurant Association says, while restaurant owners put off plans to hire an additional 106,000 employees.

So Obama would get his wage-and-benefits mandate, but lose jobs in an industry that employs the very minorities Obama claims he's trying to help.

"If restaurateurs had their way, every lawmaker would run a small business before starting to legislate," the industry opined in a recent press release.

Lawmakers aren't the only ones. Leftist presidential candidates also could benefit from such a mandate.

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Obama's Communist Mentor

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:39AM CST on August 9, 2008

Obama's relationships ought to be cause for concern: Among his friends are the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the unrepentant terrorist murderer Bill Ayres - but less well known was Frank Davis, a member of the Soviet-funded American Communist Party who hated this country and everything it stands for:
Young Obama's Red Mentor

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 05, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: The mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing Barack Obama's early mentor. But they've downplayed the mystery man's communist background.

As noted in the July 29 curtain-raiser to this series, the seeds of Obama's far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager growing up in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or media profile has portrayed.

Poet-journalist Davis speaks in Hawaii in this undated photo.

A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to the age of 18 — a man he refers to only as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."

In a belated story on the relationship, the Associated Press describes Davis as "left-leaning."

In fact, Davis was a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA, according to the 1953 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities of the Territory of Hawaii, which labeled him "a bitter opponent of capitalism." The report was introduced as evidence in the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee hearings probing the "Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States."

"Davis scholars dismiss the idea that he was anti-American," the AP reports. But one of them, ex-University of Hawaii professor Kathryn Takara, acknowledges in a Ph.D. paper on Davis (not quoted by AP) that he'd been fingered as "a Communist."

Davis wrote militant poems as a black writer in Chicago, including one in which he hails the Soviet revolution: "Smash on, victory-eating Red Army." He also attacked traditional Christianity, titling one inflammatory screed, "Christ is a Dixie N*****."

As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis' feet in his Waikiki bungalow for bitter nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal shots of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.

"They'll train you so good," he said, "you'll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**."

In the eyes of white America, Davis warned Obama: "You may be a well-trained, well-paid n*****, but you're a n***** just the same." He also nurtured anti-white hatred in his young mulatto subject, telling him, "Black people have a reason to hate."

AP conveniently glossed over these quotes.

How much influence did Comrade Davis have on Obama? The Democrat White House hopeful refuses to talk about the relationship now. In the book, he only shares that he was "intrigued by old Frank, with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge."

However, Obama followed in Davis' footsteps after college, working as a "community organizer" for the same socialist network in Chicago. He even considered a career in journalism like Davis.

Obama attended socialist conferences, and took a shine to other black Marxist revolutionists. Not long after Davis died in 1987, Obama came under the spell of another black nationalist-socialist, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who, like Davis, wore a dashiki and became a father figure.

If the relationship with Davis was as blase as the Associated Press makes it sound, why is Obama mum about it? And why did he try to hide Davis' identity in his first memoir, published in 1995?

"With the exception of my family and a handful of public figures," he wrote in the preface, "the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of privacy." But there was no need to protect Davis' privacy. He had long been dead.

More likely, the cryptic references to his communist mentor were — and still are — designed to protect Obama's background from the scrutiny it deserves.

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Obama, Election Fraud, and Socialism

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:27AM CST on August 9, 2008

Obama has long been involved with ACORN, a group synonomous with election fraud here in Racine and elsewhere - in fact, he worked as an ACORN organizer in Chicago for several years. In 2004, ACORN volunteers were charged with fraudulent voter registrations and other election law violations. Last month, ACORN employees were charged in Milwaukee for similar offenses. ACORN's agenda is to commit election fraud in order to advance the socialist cause.

Obama Finds An ACORN

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, August 06, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Election '08: The man who includes being a community organizer on his short resume has a long association with a far-left group that would organize our communities into socialist gulags.

In 1995, Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar balked at implementing the federal motor voter law out of concern that letting people register via postcard and blocking the state from pruning voter rolls might invite vote fraud.

A young lawyer, a community organizer himself, sued on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) and won. The young lawyer was Barack Obama. Acorn later invited Obama to train its staff.

When Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, the Woods Fund frequently gave Acorn grants to fund its agenda and voter registration activities.

Acorn has been in the lead in opposing voter ID laws and other efforts to ensure ballot integrity. Acorn has been implicated in voter fraud and bogus registration schemes in Ohio and at least 13 other states. Acorn staffers will presumably be out registering voters again this year.

Obama also opposes voter ID laws. He believes they disenfranchise voters. Last year, Obama put a hold on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. It seems von Spakovsky, as an official in the Justice Department, had supported a Georgia photo ID law. Acorn espouses the leftist view that voter ID laws are racist.

In addition to subverting American democracy to promote a leftist agenda, Acorn's radical agenda amounts to "undisguised authoritarian socialism." wrote Sol Stern in the 2003 City Journal article, "Acorn's Nutty Regime for Cities."

Acorn opposed welfare reform and opposes securing American borders to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Acorn was heavily involved a few years back in opposing Rudy Giuliani's efforts to privatize failing New York schools.

Acorn also has been in the lead supporting the "living wage" and opposing efforts by big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart to bring the bounty and benefits of free-market capitalism to inner cities.

Wal-Mart has faced resistance to its plans to expand into urban centers — most notably Chicago and Los Angeles — where unions and liberal orthodoxy remain strong. Opponents there charge that such big-box stores exploit workers, depress wages and drive out community businesses.

Acorn, Obama's former client, supported a big-box living-wage ordinance vetoed by Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley to require stores of at least 90,000 square feet operated by firms with $1 billion or more in annual sales nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $10 an hour plus $3 in benefits.

Critics such as Acorn, who complain that Wal-Mart employees live paycheck to paycheck, forget that many of Wal-Mart's customers also live paycheck to paycheck and seek quality merchandise at decent prices, which is why 100 million people shop there every week.

How can they oppose "low" wages for Wal-Mart employees while in effect supporting higher prices for Wal-Mart customers? They can because they believe the socialist orthodoxy that capitalism is bad, government is good and that the solution to poverty is to make everyone equally poor.

Wal-Mart gives people what they want at a price they can afford. It believes a fair wage is one agreed upon between employee and employer. It is the poster child for roll-up-your-sleeves capitalism. It is efficient, innovative, successful and nonunion — everything government is not — and is opposed for all these reasons.

Advocates of the so-called living wage see their efforts as putting money directly into workers' pockets. But it merely transfers money from one person's pocket to another person's pocket. This is classic socialist income redistribution — not economic justice, but economic extortion.

In the real world, companies that pay workers more than the value of the goods and services they produce go out of business. Workers should be paid what their labor is worth, not what their lifestyle requires.

On his Web site, Obama embraces Acorn's socialist goal, pledging to "raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation and housing."

That money would come from taxpayers and business owners or, as Marx would say, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

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Obama Supports Reparations for Slavery

Posted by: Iconoclast at 8:06AM CST on August 9, 2008

Slavery was wrong, undoubtedly. However, this country would never have been founded without compromise on the issue of slavery, which deferred until the Civil War a final resolution of that great evil, at the cost of over 360,000 dead union soldiers. One of my ancestors was among them, but most of my family emigrated here long after slavery ended, and I refuse to accept guilt, or pay reparations, for something I had nothing to do with, and did not benefit from. It seems Barack Obama has other ideas, however.
Reparations By Another Name

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 08, 2008 4:30 PM PT

Election '08: Barack Obama says Washington shouldn't just offer apologies for slavery, but also "deeds." Don't worry, he says, he's not talking about direct reparations. Relieved? Don't be.

'I consistently believe that when it comes to . . . reparations," Obama recently told a gathering of minority journalists, "the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."

A few days later, he clarified his remarks, saying he's not calling for direct cash payments to descendents of slaves, but rather indirect aid in the form of government programs that will "close the gap" between what he sees as white America and black America.

He says government should offer "universal" programs — such as universal health care, universal mortgage credits, college tuition, job training and even universal 401(k)s — that "disproportionately affect people of color."

In other words, reparations by another name.

Obama knows that if he pushes too hard on reparations, he might scare off white voters. So he couches race-specific welfare as "universal" social programs that appeal to broad-based political coalitions — "even if they disproportionately help minorities," he confides in his book, "Audacity of Hope."

Obama has a name for his scheme: "universal strategies."

"An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn't just good policy," he wrote. "It's also good politics."

Maybe so. But not all his plans for reparations are roundabout. His book and Web site outline a separate plan calling for essentially a government bailout of the inner cities. Among other things, he proposes:

• Doling out faith-based grants "targeting ex-offenders."

• Subsidizing supermarket chains that relocate to the inner city to deliver "fresh produce" to blacks, helping wean them off unhealthy fast food.

• Imposing "goals and timetables for minority hiring" on large corporations whose work forces are deemed too white.

• Continuing to fund the Community Development Block Grant program, Head Start and HUD public housing subsidies.

• Funding Small Business Administration loans for minority businesses who train ex-felons, including gangbangers, for the "green jobs" of the future, such as installing extra insulation in homes.

• Doubling the funding for federal after-school programs such as midnight basketball.

• Subsidizing job training, day care, transportation for inner-city poor, as well as doubling the funding of the federal Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program.

• Expanding the eligibility of the earned income tax credit to include more poor, and indexing it to inflation.

• Adopting entire inner-city neighborhoods as wards of the federal government.

• Spending billions on new inner-city employment programs, including prison-to-work programs.

This is just a down payment on the "economic justice" Obama has promised the NAACP — financed by "tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth," he says in his book.

And the indirect aid he's proposing now could quickly turn into cash transfers once Obama is safely ensconced in the White House.

Claiming "blacks were forced into ghettos," Obama is certainly sympathetic to the idea of reparations. His church has actively petitioned for them for decades. And he's strongly suggested there's a legal case to be made for them.

"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," he said. "We still haven't fixed them."

He assumes the economic gap is a legacy of discrimination and largely unrelated to personal responsibility. He also makes it seem things haven't gotten better for blacks.

In this, Obama is intellectually dishonest. In his book, he cites statistics showing a 70% rise over the past two decades in the number of "Latino families considered middle class," but never cites one stat showing the even more impressive gains of the black middle class. He complains about low black wages, but never mentions the quantum leap in black home-ownership rates.

Why? Such stats would undermine his case for roundabout reparations. Even if it were true, he says, "better isn't good enough."

"The problems of inner-city poverty arise from our failure to face up to an often tragic past," Obama said.

Now it's payback time.

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Tuesday August 5, 2008

House Dems Go On Vacation, While Republicans Work for Lower Gas Prices

Posted by: Iconoclast at 11:10PM CST on August 5, 2008

House Republicans, American People Protest “Drill-Nothing” Congress

Aug 4, 2008

Washington - The U.S. House of Representatives truly became the People’s House on Friday, August 1 when hundreds of American citizens and families joined Republicans on the House floor to protest Democratic leaders’ decision to send Congress home for a five-week break without voting on energy reform legislation.

This historic event was not just about gas prices; it was about the power of democracy. Throughout the summer, the Democratic leadership in the House had refused to allow a vote on legislation to help lower fuel costs and put us on the road to energy independence, despite widespread public support for such legislation among the American people. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) closed down the U.S. House for the five-week break on August 1 without an energy vote, House Republicans took to the Floor in protest. When the lights, microphones and cameras were shut off, we raised our voices to speak for the American people who for too long have been ignored by this "Drill-Nothing Congress.”

Rather than listen to the American people, Speaker Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are listening to radical special-interest groups that believe we’re better off with expensive gas because fewer people will be able to drive. When she was asked why she refuses to allow a vote on the energy reforms Americans want, this was the Speaker’s explanation: “I am saving the planet.”

But the notion that we have to choose between “saving the planet” and making America energy independent is false. I recently visited Northern Alaska, where energy production and wildlife have not only co-existed, but generally thrived together for decades. I saw firsthand that energy production can be done in a manner that protects the environment and the plants and animals that exist in such regions. It’s also notable that the people of northernmost Alaska – those who know the land best and care for it most – favor opening areas such as ANWR to careful, environmentally responsible drilling.

I prefer to help working families by lowering gas prices, creating American jobs and getting us off our addiction to foreign energy. Every year, we send $700 billion a year overseas to pay for our oil addiction. That money would be better spent here at home to create good-paying jobs. Twenty-five years ago, about 60 percent of the oil we used was produced here in America; today, just 25 percent of the oil we use is American. While some Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have called on Saudi Arabia to increase its production, I believe that more people agree with Republicans in calling for the United States to increase production.

House Republicans have introduced a comprehensive energy reform bill we call the American Energy Act. The American Energy Act calls for “all of the above” when it comes to the reforms needed to lower gas prices and liberate America from its dependence on foreign oil: more conservation, more alternative and renewable energy, and more production of American-made energy. It would accelerate the development and implementation of clean, renewable fuels; create new incentives for conservation and development of alternative energy sources; and lift the government ban on drilling in the frozen North Slope of Alaska and deepwater ocean energy zones far off the U.S. coast. We need to make use of these untapped American resources for affordable energy in the short-term as we work to develop and implement new, cleaner energy sources for the 21st Century.

I reject the notion that American families have to suffer with $4 and $5 per gallon gasoline before America can successfully transition to the widespread use of new, cleaner energy. And clearly the American people reject it too. The American people want Congress to take action on an “all of the above” energy reform strategy. It starts with a vote on the American Energy Act, which would pass with bipartisan support today if Speaker Pelosi would simply allow it to come to a vote. Unfortunately, to date, she has refused to allow such a vote to take place. That’s why House Republicans, joined by hundreds of American citizens, rose in protest on the House floor on August 1.

August 1 was a defining day for the U.S. House, and it will be remembered as the day the people took control and demanded action from their democratically elected representatives. While House Republicans stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the people, the Democratic leadership sent their Caucus home.

Boehner represents Ohio’s 8th District, which includes all of Darke, Miami and Preble counties, most of Butler and Mercer counties, and the northeastern corner of Montgomery County. He was first elected to Congress in 1990.

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The Journal Times Online - Racine, Wisconsin

Barack Obama, Legal Scholar

Obama is just another Chicago political hack... Obama Played by Chicago Rules

July 29 (legislative day, July 28), 2008

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

SEC. 2. DRUG TESTING PROGRAM FOR APPLICANTS FOR AND RECIPIENTS OF ASSISTANCE UNDER STATE TANF PROGRAMS.

Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism

Obama's Global Tax

Obama Wants You

Obamanomics Flunks The Test

Obama is just another Chicago political hack...
Obama Played by Chicago Rules