Obama's Alinsky-Style Power Analysis

New York Times columnist Jodi Kantor’s book, The Obamas, tries very, very hard to paint a sympathetic picture of her eponymous subject matter–she gets her digs in against the supposedly racist tea party everywhere she can–but every once and a while the truth cracks through. Take this interview at the Texas Book Festival for example:

The Obamas often don’t mingle freely – they often just stand behind the rope and reach out to shake hands but he sees Jerry Kellman, his old community organizing boss, and he’s so happy to see him he reaches across and pulls him in. And Obama says, “I’m still organizing.” It was a stunning moment and when [Kellman] told me the story, it had echoes of what Valerie Jarrett had told me once – “The senator still thinks of himself as a community organizer.” How fully has this guy resolved himself to what he’s really doing? On the one hand, he’s passing these backroom deals to pass health care reform, but on the other he’s telling his old boss he’s still a community organizer. I think that plays into what will happen in the 2012 race.

Jerry Kellman was Barack Obama’s former boss, a student of Saul Alinsky’s in the 1970s, and a permanent fixture of the progressive left in Chicago.

While some have downplayed Obama’s connections to Saul Alinsky, Kellman’s link is pretty easy to discern.

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CHICAGO – The new documentary film is called “A Tale of Two Missions,” and it’s focused on current conditions in Chicago Public Schools.

One “mission” is led by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is working hard to provide fresh opportunities for kids stuck in failing city schools.

The other is led by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who is determined to kill the expansion of school choice in the city, so her union can keep students (and the tax money attached to them) trapped in subpar neighborhood schools.

And now, just as the documentary is released to the public, Emanuel, Lewis and their respective teams have started negotiating a new labor contract that will go a long way toward determining the future of Chicago Public Schools.

The current teachers union contract expires June 30. Negotiations on a new pact are expected to take months, perhaps even beyond the expiration date of the current contract.

Lewis had made it clear that teachers want higher salaries and more expensive benefits, despite the district’s estimated $720 million budget deficit and the continued threat of layoffs for young teachers and cancellation of student programs.

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Here is new video from RebelPundit’s continuing coverage of Occupy the Dream, an event held at the Peoples[sic] Church of Chicago, Sunday January 15th. The following video reveals the overwhelming and until now, unseen tone of the event.

The event had little to do with Martin Luther King, Jr., or any of his larger than life accomplishments in the civil rights movement, or changing dynamic of the racial divide in America. Perhaps this is not very surprising. What it did have plenty to do with, however, was in fact, occupying the dream.

Progress Illinois even titled their coverage, “Occupy Chicago, Religious Leaders Use MLK Holiday As Means To Call For Change.” There could not have been a more appropriate description of the event.

Religious leaders, community organizers and local politicians joined Occupy Chicago to occupy the dream, occupy the church and occupy the state for one grand revolutionary extravaganza.

Community organizers even called elected officials of the Democrat Party to the pulpit to get their commitment to pushing forward the radical agendas of the groups participating in the event. State senator Heather Steans took to the pulpit to blast Republicans, with other members of the Illinois general assembly calling for progressive tax reform in Illinois. (video) And Jesse Jackson spoke of spending a “mere $900 billion” in taxpayer dollars for the federal government to directly hire 15 million workers at $40,000 per year. (video) Jan Schakowsky was also present and demanded that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share. (video)

But what was not so present at the event was a celebration of the victories the King achieved and how different the landscape of this country has become since his death. The sermon, delivered by Dwight Gardner of the First Trinity United Baptist Church of Gary, Indiana, only referred to King periodically in his address, but only to emphasize the need to “occupy the dream of King” while making tremendous calls for revolution.

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The Obamas have developed quite the reputation for wasting taxpayer dollars on unnecessary global trips. Michelle Obama’s family vacation to Africa is one very recent example. Another is the Obamas’ failed bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago back in 2009.

Just to set the stage, while the nation was facing a large-scale crisis involving Iran’s nuclear ambitions, two wars abroad and a failing economy at home, the Obamas decided to take an extraordinary excursion to Copenhagen, Denmark, to visit the International Olympics Committee (IOC). Their goal was to persuade the committee to choose Chicago, the Obamas’ hometown, for the next Olympics games. It was the first time a sitting president was present for an Olympics vote (they usually have better things to do).

Michelle Obama reportedly made an “impassioned” plea to the IOC, but it fell flat. Chicago did not make it past the first round of voting, and the Obamas came home empty-handed and utterly embarrassed.

Judicial Watch immediately launched an investigation to find out how much this “embarrassment” cost the American taxpayers.

And after more than two years of stonewalling and obfuscating, JW investigators finally got hold of records detailing costs associated with the two-week trip. According to these records obtained from the Obama Department of Defense (DOD), expenses for the trip appear to have far exceeded $467,175. And this number doesn’t even cover the in-flight costs associated with the aircraft ‒ two Boeing 747s and several Air Force cargo planes – which have not been made available. (more…)

Americans celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday to honor his contributions to our Republic. His struggle against racial prejudice and discrimination brought the words of the Founders–“that all men are created equal”–to true fruition.

Dr. King used non-violent protest, and an appeal to universal principles, to bring Americans together. His birthday should be a holiday that unites us.

Instead, Democrats are using it to divide Americans.

Consider the sermon offered by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett yesterday, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Dr. King preached. She told the audience: “Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because Congress–well let me be specific–because [of] the Republicans in Congress.”

Those in the audience laughed and applauded at Jarret’s brazen–and false–partisan attack.

Democrats have rewritten the history of the civil rights struggle to portray Republicans as the villains, when in fact most segregationists were Democrats. Republicans, in fact, voted for civil rights laws in greater proportions than Democrats. Moreover, Dr. King himself had been a Republican. Regardless, Dr. King was careful not to divide Americans along party lines in his struggle for justice–nor would he approve of it today.

Another Obama administration official who is exploiting Dr. King’s memory for political gain is Attorney General Eric Holder, who used the holiday to renew his attack on voter ID laws in South Carolina, falsely claiming they are racially discriminatory.

It is Holder, in fact, who practices racial discrimination by refusing to apply voting laws equally, notably in the New Black Panther Party case, an open-and-shut example of voter intimidation. (more…)

Jose Rico has been named the new director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, a key position that could help close the achievement gap between white and minority students.  But if his history is any indication, his influence may do more harm than good.

Perhaps most troubling is Rico’s connection to unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and communist radical Mike Klonsky through the Chicago-based “Small Schools Workshop.”

The “Small Schools Workshop” was founded by Ayers and Klonsky.  In Klonsky’s words, Rico “toiled in the vineyards at the Small Schools Workshop” prior to obtaining an administrative position within Chicago Public Schools.  According to a U.S. Department of Education biography, Rico worked for the Small Schools Workshop some 6 years.  Klonsky beamed like a doting father on his website when Rico was appointed to the White House position.

While Rico’s CPSalumni.org bio doesn’t mention Small Schools Workshop, it describes his time in Chicago working as a “community organizer.”

Even after leaving Small Schools Workshop, Rico continued to associate with Klonsky.  In early 2009, he appeared on a panel with Klonsky titled “Prospects for Change in the Obama Years.” And Klonsky’s track record would make any American wonder why he’s been allowed to teach in American public schools.

After leading the violent Students for a Democratic Society with Ayers in the late 1960s, Klonsky left to fully embrace his communist roots.  Believing that the Communist Party-USA was not radical enough, in 1971, Klonsky founded the Communist Party-Marxist Leninist.

While serving as its chairman, Klonsky advocated for the overthrow of the world’s two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union.

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Ever wonder why the Occupy protester became the Occupy protester?

“….upon waking each morning in the Tent City, he was struck by an overwhelming feeling of being part of a family.”

If you see their signs and hear their chants, you might conclude that they are more than displeased with corporate fascism, bank bailouts, and special-interest favors paid by politicians in return for hefty political contributions. However, The Frontier Lab, a marketing research nonprofit in Chicago, has just completed a study that applies science to that question. Their report, “Short-Selling America,” finds that while the messages on their signs might convey an anger with cronyism in the financial sector, this isn’t the whole story and, in fact, is only true at the surface level. There are deeper values, ones The Frontier Lab mapped through a series of research in-depth interviews, that must be examined for a more comprehensive understanding of their movement.

“While their rhetoric might decry crony capitalism or bank bailouts, their values reveal self-centered and fear-based motivations.”

Occupy Chicago’s presence in the financial district may seem to have quieted down a bit from the circus show it was earlier this fall, but organizers in the group are just beginning to put the pieces in place to continue their assault on America. The revolutionaries have identified a desirable piece of real estate for their new headquarters where the movement leaders will be able to thrive during the cold months ahead as they finalize plans to disrupt the G-8/NATO summits in Chicago this spring.

Occupy Chicago’s New Lair

The Occupy leaders could not have found a more perfect location to occupy. A loft warehouse just far enough off the beaten path, yet close enough to the city’s financial district to continue their strategizing.

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The Daily Caller reported Sunday that “for the low, low price of $2,500, you can have dinner cooked for you by Weather Underground agitators and terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine [sic] Dohrn.”

This is the low state of the world that we have become inured to. The absence of morality and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and good and evil renders dinners with terrorists for… $2,500.

In the sixties, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground, a communist terrorist group that planted bombs at the Pentagon, the Capitol building, and other government buildings. Ayers himself planted a bomb at a statue commemorating police casualties during the 1886 Haymarket riots in Chicago. When a bomb he was hoping would kill American soldiers in New Jersey exploded prematurely in a house, Ayers became for ten years a fugitive from justice, but all charges against him were dropped in 1980 when an FBI program that was investigating the Weathermen was accused of improprieties.

Ayers, however, remains unrepentant, saying in 2001: “I don’t regret setting bombs… I feel we didn’t do enough.” (more…)

In a video shot at #Occupy Chicago, Aisha Karim, a professor from Saint Xavier University, is shown preaching the gospel of Karl Marx to a cheering crowd in a display of stunning economic and historical ignorance – but was her speech part of a wider effort to unionize St. Xavier?

The video titled Communist Manifesto Teach-In @ Occupy Chi showing a speech by Professor Aisha Karim has flown under the radar for a couple of months – it had fewer than 400 views when I found it – but it’s another clear example of the explicitly Marxist strain in the #Occupy movement, how it relates directly to unionization, and how just plain silly its ivory tower thinking actually is.

Professor Karim is molding the minds of American’s young adults through her work as a teacher at places like the University of North Carolina, Greensboro where parents have spent their hard earned money so their kids can sit through classes like English 209: The Terrible Logic of Capitalism: A Survey of Postcolonial Literature.

Currently, Professor Karim teaches at Saint Xavier University, Chicago’s oldest college. In this video of her teach-in, she begins by asking the Occupy Chicago crowd whether it’s time to reconsider whether Marx, socialism and communism aren’t actually pretty awesome after all (1:33 to 2:00):

And what we want to do at point is to wonder (unintelligible) if we are still skeptics about socialism or communism, we need to wonder if Marx was also right about socialism and the necessity for capitalism to turn into something completely different.

(Whoops and applause from audience)

Professor Karim then goes on to discuss Marx’s central concept of the exploitation of labor, and she makes an revealing choice for her example of an exploited worker: Professor Karim herself (2:30):

I’m going to take my example of what I do and how my labor is actually taken away from me–the fruits of my labor is taken away from me–but it is not just me. This is representative of every single person in this world who works for wages in this world right now.

(Audience member – “That’s right.”)

Professor Karim goes on to disclose her shocking plight:

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CHICAGO (AP) – Rod Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor whose three-year battle against criminal charges became a national spectacle, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday, one of the stiffest penalties imposed for corruption in a state with a history of crooked politics.

Blagojevich’s 18 convictions included allegations of trying to leverage his power to appoint someone to President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to raise campaign cash or land a high-paying job.

“When it is the governor who goes bad the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired,” Judge James Zagel said.

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Yesterday we stumbled across a marketing team promoting GM vehicles at the University of Chicago. Students were being offered $10 to test drive Chevy’s inferior quality cars around campus, and promised an additional $10 to the Colleges Against Cancer fund at the school for each participant.

Passersby were also offered free pizza and soft drinks on GM’s dime.

$20 bucks and pizza, not bad….

While donating money to this presumably noble cause seems like a nice thing for Chevy to do, who decided now is a good time for them to do so? And a $10 giveaway to students? Who decided that was a good idea?

We spoke with one of the marketing team members who said this was a promo that Chevy was just kicking off around the Midwest. He estimated the economically brain-challenged auto company, who received a $49 billion TARP bailout from the taxpayers, would be giving away about $1,200-$1,500 that day.

Sadly, after the smoke-and-mirror reporting over the past year or so, GM has still not repaid its TARP loan, and 33 percent of the company is still owned by the taxpayers.

$1,200-$1,500 to students who hardly pay taxes at all, roaming around a university campus on a Saturday…. All the while, the likelihood that these kids are even in the market to buy a car is slim.

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CHICAGO – If well-known people want to avoid controversy, they should avoid making ugly comments about respected citizens and public officials, particularly in public.

That’s a lesson Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has yet to learn.

Last week, while researching footage of Lewis for a documentary project, we at Education Action Group came across a YouTube video of Lewis giving the keynote address at the recent Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference in Seattle.

During the course of her remarks, Lewis attempted to draw a few laughs by making fun of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s speech impediment.

“Now you know he went to private school ’cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed,” she said.
Lewis went on to laughingly talk about her former marijuana use during her college days.

“I spent those years smoking lots of weed – self-medicating,” she said. “Self-medicating – thank you! Sounds like you all did, too. Oh, I’m sorry, there’s kids here. I wasn’t supposed to say that, right? Too late!”

We thought Lewis’ comments were highly inappropriate for the leader of one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, so we released the pertinent clips of the video to the media.

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Last week, Capitol Confidential reported that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is considering hiking taxes on non-cigarette tobacco products in an effort to bring in more revenue from tobacco users who have apparently rejected heavily-taxed cigarettes in favor of cheaper options such as rolling their own or using products such as snuff.

On Monday, it emerged the Cook County Board endorsed Preckwinkle’s tobacco tax proposal by a 10-7 vote.  The Cook County Board is set to take a final vote on the proposed budget on Friday.

Now, it is being reported that separate to this proposed tax hike, Chicago aldermen are looking at their own tobacco tax hike. From the Chicago Trubune:

Two aldermen looking for last-minute ways to head off painful budget cuts proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel floated the idea Wednesday of extending the city’s cigarette tax to other tobacco products.

Ald. Matthew O’Shea, 19th, and Leslie Hairston, 5th, brought up that option at a City Council meeting in an effort to soften spending cuts at city libraries, mental health clinics and the 911 center.

[...]

Aldermen and administration officials weren’t sure how much new money could be raised by broadening the tobacco tax — as Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle plans to do so she can raise $12 million for the county next year.

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From The Chicago Tribune:

The emerging portrait of Herman Cain’s most recent accuser shows a suburban homemaker with a history of financial and legal troubles, but one who supporters say has the guts to do the right thing.

Sharon Bialek, 50, is the fourth woman — and the first publicly — to accuse the Republican presidential hopeful of sexual harassment. In a dramatic news conference Monday in New York, Bialek, a former employee of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, said she had sought Cain’s help in finding a new job in July 1997 shortly after the organization had fired her.

Instead, Bialek said, Cain, who was then head of the restaurant association, reached under her skirt while the two were seated in a parked car and attempted to move her head toward his crotch. Cain’s campaign quickly issued a denial, calling her allegations “completely false.”

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This one ought to make the “down staters” happy.

That’s right, everyone’s favorite “budget-friendly” pals, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Pat Quinn, have a “great deal” for you!  It’s a new $1 billion CTA Red Line renovation, and Chicago taxpayers only have to pick up 4% of the bill!!!

The rest of the state will kick in $646 million from a grant from the $31 billion Illinois Jobs Now program that Governor Quinn signed into law in 2009. In other words, all the increased taxes and fees “everyone” has been paying all across the land of Lincoln will now go towards more than 60% of the renovation costs for Chicago’s mass transit line.

According to Crain’s Chicago Business, the renovation will cover 11 stations and include new track and power systems. Sadly, $1 billion doesn’t go as far as it used to, and fairly large portions of the line’s most dilapidated sections will remain in their current dilapidated condition.

From Crain’s:

“Since I became governor, I have focused on creating  jobs and improving transportation service for our citizens. This major investment in the CTA’s Red Line does both,” Mr. Quinn said.

“These investments will make our city a more enticing place to live, to start a business, to raise a family,” Mr. Emanuel said. The city will provide $44 million for the project. The source was not immediately known.

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Last week, the Chicago Tribune published a commentary piece I wrote about the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Chicago. They’ve been camped out near my office for the past few weeks, and I decided to engage them in conversation on my way home one night.

The media has likened the Occupy Wall Street protesters to the Tea Party, making the case that these protesters are the left’s version of the small government movement that has swept the nation.

Let me be clear: The Occupy Wall Street protesters and the folks who hold tea party rallies are not the same, and I do not believe there is any real opportunity for a union between the two groups. But what I learned that night is that these movements both are rooted in the idea that this country is moving in the wrong direction.

If we look back to the 2008 presidential election, I’d argue that part of the reason President Obama won is because he strategically listened to disaffected economic conservatives, independents and Republicans. He took what he heard and then crafted a message for them, ultimately winning over some who normally vote for Republican nominees. Though we knew then and know now that he was being disingenuous, the lesson should not be lost on us; we cannot ignore the value of listening. (more…)

The following video features the demands made by Occupy Chicago activists Andy Thayer and Joe Iosbaker during the invasion they led into City Hall yesterday.

The march of the moochers stormed the building and marched clockwise in the lobby, rather than their usual counter-clockwise marching. The angry mob then proceeded to the 5th floor and continued their protest at the doors to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office.

Thayer’s demands included being granted permits to protest the G-8 and NATO Summit being held in Chicago this coming May as well as dropping the charges against fellow “occupiers.” He was followed by Iosbaker with statements on an SEIU resolution to support their demands and comments on his current investigation by the FBI.

Iosbaker also noted that they were notified that Northwestern University Law School has changed their graduation so that the students will not be downtown during the G-8 and NATO protests next may. They were reportedly warned by the FBI that it would be too dangerous.

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On Tuesday, militant, Marxist, anti-war, and gay-rights activists–including some suspected of providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations–led the Occupy Chicago protesters into City Hall to stage an “in your face” protest directed at Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

We caught up with one protester, Roger Fraser, a retired Palatine, Illinois school teacher. Fraser is a proud member of the “99%” who earns a modest $7,792.75 a month from his pension.

Fraser is also known as a militant gay rights activist and a member of the Gay Liberation Network–the same organization founded by Chicago G-8 and NATO protest organizer–and militant, anti-war, social-justice radical–Andy Thayer.

You may remember a previous interview from earlier this year, released by Andrew Breitbart, filmed at a Code Pink-led protest against the Koch brothers in Palm Springs, California–where Fraser called for “Revolution now,” and exclaimed, “Just like in Egypt!“

In the following interview, conducted yesterday inside City Hall, we asked Fraser if “this” was the kind of revolution he was talking about. Fraser told us, “This is the beginning.”

When asked what he thought it would take to achieve the activists’ goals, he remarked: “This kind of thing on a massive scale.“ He also answered in the affirmative as to whether or not the revolution would require collapsing the American government, and explained: ”Because….the resistance against this will be overwhelming…very strong….and relentless.”

Cross Posted at: RebelPundit

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Today Occupy Chicago protesters stormed City Hall to let Mayor Rahm Emanuel know their displeasure in the recent arrests of the Occupy campers at Grant Park on Michigan Avenue.

They were lead by radical anti-war activists Joe Iosbaker and Andy Thayer, who we have reported on in the past for their ongoing investigations by the FBI. In September of 2010 they were targeted for suspicion of providing material support to Hamas, the F.A.R.C. and other terrorist organizations.

Photo H/T: FoundingBloggers

Here is footage of Thayer last spring addressing a Chicago crowd and calling for “action” like we saw in Egypt.

Thayer and Iosbaker have played a key roll in organizing massive demonstrations in Chicago this coming May for the G-8 and NATO summits. The recent anti-war and Occupy protests have served as a clear rally cry to build momentum and support for these demonstrations next spring. The tandem duo worked their message and demands for G-8 and NATO protest permits into todays Occupy City Hall protest.

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