The real Ayers threat

I've been researching a piece on the Ayers connection, so was glad when Palin started focusing on Obama's relationship with this "unrepentant domestic terrorist", and have, like many in the conservative blogosphere focused my own blog often on Obama's work with Ayers at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. I'm glad that the mainstream media is finally being forced into addressing the issue -- even as they continue to whitewash the issue in their determination to make Obama president. But in looking deeper into the Ayers connection, I realize that part of the story has not been effectively told -- and that is the practical impact that Ayers will have on the education policy of an Obama presidency. The most significant aspect is a focus on "education debt" -- essentially paying reparations to minorities for the "history of oppression" perpetrated by Whites. This is a cornerstone of Bill Ayers' education reform program, and is also a key element in the race-based education philosophy of Linda Darling-Hammond -- a Professor of Education at Stanford, Obama's primary education adviser and prospective Secretary of Education in an Obama administration.

Here's part of what I found -- excerpted from my piece entitled "Reading, Writing and Radicalism": The radical orientation of Ayers as an “educational reformist” should be well known, as he has written more than a dozen books on the subject and has been a leading educational scholar and advisor in Chicago for the past two decades. Ayers was recently elected vice-president for curriculum for the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association -- the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. His work with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has been highly emphasized by the Obama campaign as a form of “legitimization”, and Daley was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying “People make mistakes. You judge people by their whole life”. Daley’s view is likely based on a politician’s appreciation for Ayers’ role in doling out $100 million in grants within the city during the 1990s rather than any deep analysis of Ayers’ political or educational views – none of which have changed since the 1960s. Ayers continues to describe himself as a “radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist”, and has written that he believes “teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression”. He sees teaching as a natural extension of the quest for social justice – which he feels requires a revolution in the capitalist economic, political and education system. In a speech given in November, 2006 before Hugo Chavez and the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, Ayers said the following:

As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion! It is in this context that the Obama-Ayers relationship should be viewed. While the Ayers’ terrorist connections are significant retrospectively, his education goals that were actively endorsed and sponsored by Barack Obama are prospectively even more important.

And this is where things get interesting. While it is obvious that Ayers will not have a formal role in an Obama administration, it is equally obvious that Obama’s experience with Ayers and the CAC will animate his education policy as president. The Obama Campaign’s primary education adviser is Linda Darling-Hammond, a Professor of Education at Stanford University, and well-known expert in school design and teacher training. Hammond has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of Education in an Obama administration, has been a vocal supporter of traditional teacher certification programs, current union control of public education and opposes charter school programs. She also has been a vocal critic of the implementation of the current No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. More importantly, she is an advocate of a race-based paradigm for education that fully embraces the concept of “education debt” – a form of reparations for generations of racial bias perpetrated by White America. Hammond argued forcefully last year in the liberal magazine The Nation, for example, the importance of “pay(ing) off the educational debt to disadvantaged students that has accrued over centuries of unequal access to quality education.” The concept of education debt is an idea laid out in 2006 by Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings of the University of Wisconsin, the then-president of the American Education Research Association and actively supported by Ayers. Ayers wrote himself in January of 2008 on his website the following:

The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white…the monster in the room: white supremacy. Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans…transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up. Further, the long-standing professional relationship between Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings – and thus Barack Obama -- is well established. As legal analyst Steve Diamond writes at No Quarter, a chapter called “Education for Democracy” by Darling-Hammond appeared in a volume co-edited by Ayers called “A Light in Dark Times”. In addition, a chapter co-authored by Ladson-Billings on “racing justice” appeared in a book co-edited by Ayers called “Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader”. Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword to Ayers’ book “To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher” and Ayers and Ladson-Billings are co-editors of “City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row” just published. All have been consistent in support of a radical education reform program.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s piece in The Nation is an excellent illumination of what may underscore education policy under a President Obama. She makes abundantly clear that she supports the notion of education reparations and that this should be paid in part by a wholesale revamping of NCLB to focus on more on investment and less on testing – modifications that the Obama Campaign’s education platform also supports . She calls for a “New paradigm for national education policy…guided by dual commitments to support meaningful learning on the part of students, teachers and schools; and to pay off the educational debt, making it possible for all students to benefit from more productive schools.” This is education code-speak for vast sums of money to be poured into minority schools and community programs to atone for past sins.

The Ayers-Hammond approach to education debt has been essentially supported by Barack Obama on the campaign trail. In fact, Obama has spoken repeatedly about the need for reparations to make amends for the past oppression of minorities. On “Meet the Press” in July he said:

The biggest problem that we have in terms of race relations, I think, is dealing with the legacy of past discrimination which has resulted in extreme disparities in terms of poverty, in terms of wealth and in terms of income…And that involves investing in early childhood education, fixing the schools in those communities, being willing to work in terms of job retraining. And those are serious investments.Obama’s education platform as outlined at his campaign website is full of community-focused programs that will be ripe targets for massive “reparation” investments in a reformulated NCLB. His K-12 Education Fact Sheet discusses at length the expansion of Head Start programs, universal preschool and includes “enlisting parents and communities to support teaching and learning”, including “school-family contracts” and a massive school redesign project that includes increased funding for teacher recruitment and retention. It is a blueprint taken almost whole-cloth from one written by Darling-Hammond that calls for a “Marshall Plan” for teaching and the institution of a more authoritarian structure for driving curriculum development, testing and investment. Like Ayers’ own admiration of Venezuela’s centralized educational dictatorship, Darling-Hammond has expressed support for countries such as Singapore that have instituted highly structured systems that are the antithesis of school choice – signaling what will certainly be a strong emphasis on the unionized public education system in the U.S. under an Obama administration.

The real impact of the Obama-Ayers relationship is not in Ayers’ radical past but rather in his radical present. The influence that Ayers’ has had on Obama’s view of education during his time at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge can be seen in his appointment of Linda Darling-Hammond as his primary education advisor, and signals what is certain to be radical reform at the core of Obama’s education policy as president. This will include more investment into the current public school monopoly at the expense of free market solutions like vouchers and charter schools, and a more aggressive social change agenda that will result in greater control by unions and community organizations – all orthodox elements of the William Ayers radical agenda.

BHO vs. McCain on health care & energy

Health care and its rising costs, and declining availability, have become issues, and on this score McCain’s proposals are superior to Obama’s. Between government domination of the market through Medicare, Medical and other publicly funded programs, and tax-free employer-based plans, Americans have less and less say over the cost of their health care. Instead of budgeting for routine visits to the doctor, just as we do with food, clothing, gasoline and other household costs, and purchasing health insurance, as we do for our homes and our vehicles, for catastrophic expenses, we refer all our medical costs to the government or to private insurers. Is it any wonder that costs have skyrocketed? That both public and private plans have sought to cut costs? When asked Tuesday night if medical care was a responsibility, a right or an entitlement, McCain chose the first and Obama chose the second. These differences are telling. Knowing the advantage of being in a preferred group, as a recipient of government care or tax-free employer care, has over being in business for yourself or being unemployed, McCain proposes that every citizen, and not just employers, be given a $5000 a year refundable credit so that they can get the best deal they can. Not only that, they would be free to buy health insurance anywhere, not just in their own state, as the situation is now. Obama, on the other hand, wants to make a problematic situation even worse by instituting a government benefit for all who desire it. This would crowd out the private market for health insurance, just as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have done for housing loans, making the profitability of private plans highly dubious. Obama tries to play down this inevitable consequence by insisting that people would still be free to purchase private plans. Ask Canadians if they have that freedom under socialized medicine. And he adds that those who keep their employer-based plans will be taxed more. What he doesn’t tell you is that employers will be able to pay their employees more in lieu of health-care coverage, but employees will pay more taxes only because they are unjustly penalized for making more money!

Although McCain has been sidetracked by "environmental" concerns in regards to oil drilling and alleged global warming, he has long endorsed the full range of affordable and practical alternatives to dependence on foreign oil. More recently, he has endorsed drilling off our coastlines so long as affected states concur. He knows that the most eligible alternative for power is nuclear energy, which even environmental "greens" admit is safe and clean. He wants to stop the flow of oil money to despotic regimes that aid and abet terrorist groups abroad who threaten us and our allies, and everybody else. He supports research and development but not wholesale subsidies to as-yet unproven technology. But Obama is famous for advocating pitifully small conservation measures such as keeping up air pressure in our tires and driving at slower speeds. He makes rhetorical gestures toward oil and nuclear development, but does not commit himself to it.

This is as good a place as any to take on the bugaboo of the greedy oil companies, which even McCain feels compelled to harp on. In the first place, they buy most of their oil from overseas, spend gigantic sums for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, attempt to make a profit for their shareholders and supply gasoline at the lowest possible price. Media reports of "huge" profits never mention the much greater costs incurred, nor the necessity to obtain the means for securing more oil in the future. It makes literally no sense to believe that oil companies deliberately jack up prices and thereby infuriate their customers. They are dependent largely on their foreign suppliers, inasmuch as Congress has forbidden offshore drilling for 30 years. There is no more public, recurring and palpable cost than the per gallon price of gasoline. We had it good for so many years we thought it could go on forever. Now the only sensible thing to do is drill for more, the sooner the better.

America needs President McCain

Tuesday night’s town hall debate format between John McCain and Barack Obama was supposed to be advantageous to the Arizona Senator, and perhaps for the first hour or so when domestic economy was the chief topic, it was. But between the Illinois Senator’s clever speaking, "moderator" Tom Brokaw’s unwelcome intrusion with his own questions at the expense of those being asked by the citizens present or from the Internet, and McCain’s own inability to articulate adequately his thoroughly defensible positions, the public interest in sound deliberation was not served. In what follows, I will attempt, from fresh and not-so-fresh memory, to flesh out the issues at stake. Even though McCain staked out a much more credible position on domestic economy than Republicans traditionally have been able to do when public concerns about high prices, tight credit, growing unemployment and fears of massive losses are dominant, he failed to make as clear, as he needed to, that the Democratic party in general and the government-backed mortgage industry in particular are the cause of the current debacle. As my friend Prof. Richard Williams of Glendale Community College recently reminded me, only the United States government has the power to cause a massive economic crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as the quasi-governmental agencies that dominate the housing market are affectionately known, have put into effect Gresham’s Law, or "bad money drives out good."

It begins with federal legislation that permits so-called "subprime" (translation: bad) loans to be made to people who do not qualify because of low income, poor credit history or lack of collateral, or all three. Yet trillions of dollars in such housing loans were made in the name of diversity or increasing opportunities for enjoyment of the American dream, especially to members of racial minorities. When, beginning in 2003, Republicans raised questions in Congress about this impending runaway train wreck, they were stiffed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives by Democrats who not only unwisely supported the financial bubble but were receiving huge campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, chief among them Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Sen. Obama, a rising political star and a member in good standing of the Congressional Black Caucus. Cries of racism, designed to intimidate those who raised questions, were thrown at conscientious Republicans, who, in one of history’s greatest ironies–if not one of politics’ greatest deceptions–are now condemned by the Democrats for their failure to regulate Wall Street bankers and investment houses!

Obama recites this claim like litany, hoping that public ignorance will enable him to take advantage of the made-to-order economic distress that promises to deliver him the lofty office which he now seeks. He says that the free market is the culprit, when any fair-minded analysis will demonstrate that the trillion-dollar colossus constituted by Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac is the one. McCain is right to single out greed, but the guilty parties in question are not private investors both caught up in and affected by the much larger transactions of their government-backed competition, but powerful men in the government. When private entrepreneurs make bad investments, they must pay for them. When government "entrepreneurs" make them, the taxpayers are on the hook.

The term sub prime reminds the historically minded of the sub treasury scheme of the Democratic party in its earliest days 170 years ago during the era of Jacksonian democracy. President Andrew Jackson vetoed the charter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1832, which helped win him the election by an electorate suspicious of bankers, but which left an unstable financial system to his successor, Martin Van Buren. Whereas the federal government had once invested its surpluses in the National Bank, the absence of that institution led to storage of excess cash in the basement of the Treasury building. There it sat "winking" at officials in charge of safekeeping it, several of whom decided to abscond with funds and flee to foreign countries. As Abraham Lincoln shrewdly observed, the interest of these officials was in conflict with their duty, for they could not make money for anyone from investments so they simply helped themselves to it rather than let it go to waste!

Similarly, current Democratic party hacks presiding over federal mortgage agencies saw a way to profit even as surpluses from a previous administration offered the hope that guarantees for bad loans could be made in an expanding economy. McCain has the duty, as well as the opportunity, to make the case plain to his fellow citizens that the cause of our current credit contraction is not the multitude of decisions made by free people in a free market but by a handful of well-placed profiteers who used governmental power for their own financial aggrandizement. As Franklin Raines and Timothy Johnson walked off with millions of dollars, the nation suddenly found itself on the short end of the stick. The great virtue of republican government is public accountability, precisely what is needed now.

McCain’s taxing and spending policies are the best antidotes to the wild spending spree generated by the Democrats. He proposes to raise no one’s taxes so that private individuals, rather than government-protected financial manipulators, can risk their money in enterprises governed by traditional standards of lending. Lowered tax rates generate more economic activity than higher rates, even as they generate more revenue for the government from the most successful entrepreneurs. Refreshingly, however much he may deplore greed, McCain sees no reason to punish anyone for being successful. Obama professes to be for the "little guy," promising a tax cut for 95 percent of our citizens. That appears to be based on the calculation that those who make $250,000 annually are in the remaining five percent. The large majority, according to Obama, work hard for their money, but those in the top five percent apparently just play with other people’s money.

When McCain was asked at Saddleback Church by Rev. Rick Warren what was his definition of "rich," (the question lurking behind this was, who gets taxed the most) he jokingly said "$5 million." Democrats saw this as more evidence that Republicans simply want to avoid taxation. But more likely McCain was signaling that the definition of wealth is not, and cannot be, static, and there’s nothing shameful about success in business. All the more reason to regard with suspicion Obama’s fixation on a quarter of a million dollars as the indicator of taxable wealth.

To maintain that the moment an American grosses $250,000 through long hours, hard decisions, high costs of doing business, in an unpredictable marketplace he becomes "rich," is both absurd and unjust. Thus far and no farther? Be successful but not too successful? Don’t make the transition from small business to big business or else we have license to commandeer as much of your income as we decree? We Americans have every right to ask, Why should we strive to provide an increasing amount of goods or services when our reward is to be treated like an enemy of the people?

Under all "progressive" income tax schemes, at least one of the two things happens. Either people rein in their dreams and settle for less than they are capable of, or they examine tax laws carefully for legal ways to avoid paying taxes. McCain is right therefore to prefer taxing and spending policies that reward rather than punish entrepreneurship, and Obama is wrong to flatter the prejudices of those who covet the wealth and resent the success of merchants, bankers and investors. Worse, Obama is discouraging the very virtues that have made America the most prosperous nation on earth. Government has an important function to protect all of us in a fairly regulated marketplace. But government cannot of itself generate prosperity. It can only facilitate it by low taxing and spending

Early Debate Returns: Bad for McCain

I watched the debate tonight with growing frustration at John McCain's failure to attack Obama squarely on his confiscatory economic policies. I've finally come to the conclusion that John McCain is unable (or unwilling) to promote the kind of conservative economic message that I think much of this country is wanting to hear.  Instead, he's splitting hairs with Barack Obama on the economy -- and losing in the process. I'm always interested in the views of Steven Hayes at the Weekly Standard -- he's a smart, reasonable writer who I read frequently.  His review of the debate is that Obama won. Here's part of what he had to say:

"John McCain had a very strong debate tonight. It’s too bad for him that it came on a night when Barack Obama was nearly flawless.

The debate began with questions on the economy and for thirty minutes Obama answered those questions with the kind of substance that I suspect anxious voters wanted to hear and with exactly the right tone – empathic, aggravated and determined. Most important, he spoke to voters in their own language. In his first answer, in response to a question about things the government can do to help average Americans through these tough economic times, Obama spoke of a $400,000 junket that AIG executives took after the government bailed them out. “Treasury should get that money back,” he said, “and those executives should be fired.” Sure, a little demagoguery. But it’s exactly the kind of story – in a debate that included back-and-forth accusations and lots of statistics – that voters will remember and talk about tomorrow with their neighbors.

McCain took that first question and he turned immediately to energy. “Americans are angry, they’re upset and they’re a little fearful. And it’s our job to fix the problem. Now, I have a plan to fix this problem and it’s got to do with energy independence.  It didn’t work. Two months ago, when gas prices were nearing $5 and the cost of oil dominated the headlines, the McCain campaign deftly used anxieties about energy as a proxy for anxieties about the economy. So when McCain proposed to lift the ban on offshore drilling, voters responded positively and the polling reflected their enthusiasm."

This is what I was afraid of: McCain being unable to clearly articulate why Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress is a danger to our economy. The reflexive return of McCain and Palin to the energy issue is a comfort zone and understandable -- but not good enough in this economy. McCain seems unable to explain to the American people that Obama's tax policies and his liberal record will be a poison pill to an economy that needs liquidity. It needs low taxes to fuel growth -- something that simply isn't possible with Obama's tax-and-spend plan.

Even worse, McCain's populist instincts are taking him down the wrong path. Rather than returning to a free-market solution to what should be a free market problem, his instinct is to increase regulation and government control -- exactly what Obama and the Democrats want to do. He again misses a chance at differentiation. Here's Hayes again:

"But while energy issues remain important and cannot be separated from the broader economic picture, the convulsions in world markets over the past two weeks and the need for a $700 billion federal bailout have rendered worries about gas prices and energy independence to second-tier status. It’s not that these issues don’t matter, it’s just that they matter less now than they did over the summer. He later broadened his answer to include spending, tax cuts and his jaw-dropping plan to have the federal government buy up “the bad home loan mortgages in America” to “let people make those payments and stay in their homes.” So bigger government is bad, quasi-governmental entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “ignited” the current economic crisis, too much government spending is leaving us broke and we want the U.S. Treasury to renegotiate individual home mortgages? Seriously? No thanks."

No thanks is right. The correct and powerful answer here is to reignite the economy through lower taxes to stimulate jobs and growth so people can pay their mortgages -- NOT to have the government take over that role. This mess in the housing market is partly an issue of personal behavior -- not simply predatory lending. I, for one, am not interested in my tax dollars going to bail out people who made bad decisions. I think many Americans would agree with that. Unfortunately, McCain's instincts don't lead him down that path. He's still in the "Wall Street greed" mode.

I hate to throw in the towel here, but...it is now clear that the issues that many conservatives have with McCain are legitimate and real. That despite his great personal story, his maverick personality often betrays a message that would greatly appeal to a great swath of America. He's actually give people less of a choice by co-opting the position of Obama on so many issues.

My guess is that the polls are not going to be good for McCain after this performance tonight. In a debate where he really needed to help himself, I'm afraid he's come up short.

We'll see.

Business chumps fund their opponents

Colorado's so-called "business leaders" just don't get it but, oh boy, are they about to. Shrewd in making deals in their own respective realms, the power brokers who agreed to pay labor union bosses $3 million in exchange for withdrawing four job-killing ballot initiatives have been played for suckers. Politics is a different ballgame. These business executives consented to an extortion racket and will pay the price for years to come.

It is understandable that business leaders didn't want to risk passage of even one of these four destructive initiatives. But the peace they have purchased is only temporary.

Anyone who still believes that businesses are philosophically conservative should take note. CEOs are more pragmatic than ideological, especially in big business. Their primary interest is building a profitable enterprise and they disdain uncertainty. From that perspective, negotiating a truce seems like a better plan than trying to score a big win over labor at the risk of suffering a costly loss.

However, trading something tangible for something intangible is always a lousy deal. Years ago, Israel learned that trading land for peace with the Palestinians doesn't work. Peace is a promise that can be rescinded at any time while land can be reclaimed only with force.

The business participants in these negotiations made an even worse bargain, trading cash for peace. By this time next month, labor bosses will have spent the $3 million. Business will then be out $3 million and left only to trust labor's good will for as long as it lasts.

These are many of the same business types who bought the myth of Bill Ritter as a pro-business Democrat, only to watch him unionize state workers and raise property taxes. About the only business benefiting from Ritter's reign are trial lawyers and electric utilities - which might well explain Xcel Energy's participation in this newest trade-off.

Now, thanks to the gullible generosity of these business leaders, labor - which had already raised $12 million for this election - can re-direct much of its cash to electing more labor union puppets and trial lawyer lackeys to the state legislature where they can haunt business interests for years.

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Colorado State University professor Ray Hogler sees the big picture clearly, noting that "labor will now enjoy an even bigger financial advantage" and can "divert some of their campaign cash to help Democratic allies."

How this obvious strategy escapes business executives who have lived through the hostile legislative climate of the past two years is utterly inexplicable.

If labor is successful in defeating Amendments 47 (right to work) and 49 (ethical standards), its agenda will be bolstered by an apparent voter mandate.

Labor's iron grip over the legislature will be strengthened by electing more of its own and by more political clout to intimidate the few remaining business-friendly Democrats and any Republican silly enough to think that labor will ever back him or her against a Democrat.

Nothing prevents labor bosses from trotting out these same anti-business initiatives at any time in the future to extract another payoff from business.

Business leaders just purchased the ammunition for their own execution. Labor bosses and Democrat activists - like shrewd negotiator Ted Trimpa who helped engineer this deal and just happens to be an advisor to Democrat financier Tim Gill - will be laughing all the way to the ballot box.

Labor union leaders understand strength and toughness. Unfortunately, many Colorado's self-proclaimed business leaders have responded with weakness and timidity. In so doing, they have thrown to the wolves the handful of gutsy business leaders who truly understand labor's political strategy and therefore backed Amendments 47 and 49.

Labor will continue its racket of extortion and intimidation until business executives grow tired of being beaten with their own hammer or until so few of them remain that their opinion doesn't matter.