Tag: Obama

Obama’s Budget is a Giveaway Grab Bag; You Don’t Know What Will Come Out of It

We’ve already seen how Barack manages large programs, under the Annenberg Challenge with Bill Ayers he gave away a total of 150 million to gaggle of community activist groups to improve schools. Some of those groups were radical, but putting that aside a moment you can see that the vague “feel good” instead of results-oriented direction under Obama just created monumental waste with zero results. The other cities given these grants saw improvement, Chicago stands alone with zero improvement.

His proposed budget for the country should give everyone pause, especially with Annenberg as the only real executive track record to judge by. Traditional media has ignored this because of the Ayers weather underground terror connection and Marxist ideology, but it’s essential to examine Annenberg because it’s the only executive “achievement” that Barack Obama has. The MSM failure to examine the results and goals of Annenberg in detail is journalistic and moral bankruptcy.

The McCain-Palin campaign has critized his tax plans as welfare, so Barack’s campaign has come back and tweaked it to add a work requirement. (They will materialize things out of thin air as needed to get elected.) This comes from the New Hampshire Union Leader in reply:

“Facing criticism from John McCain that his tax plan constitutes ‘welfare,’ Barack Obama recently added a work requirement to one of his proposals. ‘They started saying this was welfare,’ said Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee. “So, just so they would absolutely not be able to say that, we decided that for the last two percent we’ll simply add a work requirement.’ …’When did this change? I’m just curious,’ an incredulous Holtz-Eakin asked Goolsbee. ‘About two weeks ago,’ replied Goolsbee, adding that when the proposal was announced in September 2007, 98 percent of its benefits went to workers.” — ABC News

“The bottom line is that Obama is not being honest about his tax and spending plans. It is impossible — impossible! — for him to finance his giveaways by taxing only those making $250,000 or more. He will have to raise taxes substantially on people making much, much less than that. If you think you are going to avoid a tax increase on Obama’s watch because you aren’t ‘rich,’ remember this: A government that arbitrarily picks $250,000 as a dividing line can, using the same purely political considerations, pick any number as a dividing line.” — New Hampshire Union Leader

 

Kudos to the NH Union Leader for pinning down the specifics on this, as we know Obama prefers to be vague — he puts forth sweeping general statements that sound good, and we are not supposed to question. Barack is running for president however, and it’s every journalist’s duty to question.

So once again you see that the Obama campaign is a weather vane moving in the wind, and as everyone knows you don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows…

Down the Road is 2011: Dems Plan to Raise Taxes By Letting Bush Tax Cuts Expire

Barney Frank on MSNBC talking about how “down the road” [translation: after Barack is elected] we need to tax “the rich” more to pay for even more stimulus now [translation: money for cronies and democrat groups.] The Democrat definition of “rich” changes depending on audience, but in the end you will pay. You always do:

Rep. Frank: “Yes, I believe later on there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road and recover some of this money.”(CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” 10/20/08)

As stated before, when you “tax the rich” (2/3rds of small businesses) YOU end up paying.

F- For Ayers and Obama’s Education Efforts

 More on this here.

“Chicago’s former schools chief has flunked the education foundation headed by Barack Obama and founded by 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers – saying it failed to monitor projects and funded school ‘reform’ groups that campaigned against boosting academic standards.” — New York Post

“‘F’ For Barack’s School Fix”
By Carl Campanile
New York Post
October 20, 2008

Chicago’s former schools chief has flunked the education foundation headed by Barack Obama and founded by 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers – saying it failed to monitor projects and funded school “reform” groups that campaigned against boosting academic standards.

“There was a total lack of accountability. If you went back and asked, you’d be hard-pressed to find out how the money was spent,” said Paul Vallas, the city’s school superintendent when Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Foundation from 1995 to 1999.

Annenberg spent $49.5 million, mostly on grants to 211 public schools that partnered with community-based groups. But despite collecting millions, those schools performed no better than other public schools, a study found.

Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois and an ex-Weather Underground bomber, wrote the grant that won the Windy City funding from the national Annenberg Challenge. He was a key adviser to the Chicago Annenberg board.

While much debate has centered on Obama’s relationship with Ayers, there’s been virtually no discussion about how the Annenberg schools performed.

“Very little of the money found its way directly into the classroom,” Vallas said.

Most frustrating, Vallas said, was that Annenberg under Obama and Ayers funded groups that fought his mission, under Mayor Richard Daley, to impose uniform standards and stricter accountability in low-performing schools.

Many of Vallas’ goals were later adopted by Mayor Bloomberg in Big Apple schools.

“Many of the school-reform groups viewed greater accountability as an infringement of local control. Some opposed ending social promotion and grade retention,” Vallas said.

Spreading the Joe’s Wealth Around – Obama’s New Welfare Plan

There are quite a few things wrong with Obama’s new Tax plan, but I’m going to focus on two that are egregiously wrong. The worst thing about it is the built-in socialism, he would tax most busineses in America and pass the money on in the form a of check to the thirty percent of taxpayers who pay no taxes now. Ignore Obama’s protestations about business owner income taxation, it’s a dodge, a smokescreen –most businesses are incorporated and must file their own return and they would be Taxed. It’s welfare revisited, as outlined in this Fox and Friends segment:

On top of taxing most businesses in the US, Obama would also hit the large corporations that just lost huge chunks of net worth; which directly impacts your pension and 401 K plan during a recession. Besides the huge raid on your pension or 401K net worth, Obama’s trickle-down taxation would tax Joe the plumber, Jill the hairdresser, Bill the baker, Bob the butcher and hosts of others who you depend on day in and day out for goods and services.

Do you think you might end up paying a bit more next time you call a plumber, a furnace repairman, shop for groceries, buy gas, or get your hair done under Obama’s plan? Whatever segment of society is taxed you will pay the end. Thus has it always been, thus it will always be until death do you part from the IRS.

Obama will tax the engine of america’s productivity while we are in a recession to re-introduce welfare, make no mistake: no matter how much he talks about the middle class he’s talking about spreading your wealth around. Last point: if Obama is elected he might initially cut your tax, but it would all be washed away as a Democrat congress and a Democrat president let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 — so don’t be fooled by Obama’s shell game with your tax dollars.

This next video spells it out and is hilarious, so I expect the Obamabots to get it flagged down at Youtube pretty quickly, watch while you can:

UPDATE: This is one of those posts I look back on in horror – “Joe the plumber” turned out to be the standard christian fundamentalist zealot and RWNJ everyone was warning me about…

How Obama Supports Acorn

Senator Obama has worked hand in glove with ACORN, the group under investigation for voter fraud in many states, for many years. You won’t find our press reporting these connections, so if you want the true facts on Barack Obama sometimes you have to read foreign papers, strange as it seems. Here you seen an article at Canada Free Press that outlines those recent legislative ties:

Not only did Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign pay more than U.S. $800,000 to a front of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform, Now, ACORN, currently under investigation in a dozen States for voter registration fraud and bribery schemes, for “get-out-the-vote-efforts”; Obama co-sponsored legislation called the “Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2007”– that was supported by ACORN and protects them.

On the surface the goal was noble, but like his record with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack’s efforts on the housing front led to zero results, unless you want to look at the monumental meltdown of financial companies from choking on sub prime loans forced down their throats, which is a very bad result. If you go to the areas Obama organized in, if you look at housing in his state, you see people no better off or worse off. See Here.

Acorn has fought foreclosures but also supported legislation that enabled this credit market meltdown for almost two decades. They are particularly responsible for helping raise the caps on permissible loan to values, lowering of the standards at Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac (FNMA & GMAC,) as well as legislation that increased the percent of subprime loans they had to carry. So in a way Acorn helped open the subprime floodgates and helped create a whole new class of victims to feed into their political causes.

You won’t see the McCain campaign bring this up for a few reasons. Even though Acorn and Democrat legislators created the sub-prime valley of vultures that poor people were fed into, even though they profited with donations from the very predatory lenders that they trailblazed the market for, it’s a no go simply because the defense will be to show America a non stop calvacade of poor people getting foreclosed upon. Poor people who were sold a dream that was really a nightmare by pernicious legislators who would rather crush our economy than lose an election.

See previous articles here and here.

UPDATE: From their 2002 Brochure you can see Acorn lobbying for money for their “credit counseling groups”:

  •  
    • Congress should increase funding for the HUD Housing Counseling program from $50 million to
      $75 million, with some of the increase earmarked for foreclosure prevention counseling.
    • Cities, Counties, States, and the Mortgage Industry should provide funding for community outreach to
      borrowers in danger of losing their homes and to housing counseling programs to help homeowners
      avoid foreclosure.
    • States and the Federal Government should set up and provide the start-up money for Rescue Funds (such as the state of Ohio is doing), but these funds should be fully financed by the Mortgage Industry.

What this amounts to is creating victim classes and then using them to shake-down the mortgage industry – it took 20 years, but recently Acorn got what they really wanted through their support of regulations in Congress that led to this very debacle, and they are profiting by it just as much as those fat cats at Countrywide.

Barack Obama and William Ayers: Monumental Failure

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama also spoke at at educational forum together, and they were invited by Michelle Obama to participate. Barack Obama gave an endorsement blurb on Bill Ayers education book, and their key initiatives together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge were all in the education sector. Are these the sort of people Barack will look to for shaping the education policy in America if he’s elected?

New footage of Bll Ayers speaking in this Ad:

Bill Ayers and Barack Obama also spoke at at educational forum together, and they were invited by Michelle Obama to participate. Barack Obama gave an endorsement blurb on Bill Ayers education book, and their key initiatives together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge were all in the education sector. Are these the sort of people Barack will look to for shaping the education policy in America if he’s elected?

More on the AYERS OBAMA connections and past education bills here.

More on Obama’s ties to ACORN here.

More on how the Obama Campaign is trying to sweep all of this under the carpet at the Chicago Tribune

More on the Annenberg Challenge at NY Post:

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Ayers and Obama worked for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. “CAC translated Mr. Ayers’ radicalism into practice,” notes the Journal. “It required schools to affiliate with ‘external partners’ ” for their funding.

“Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead, CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers,” such as ACORN.

Ayers seemed to envision schools as “sites of resistance” and for teaching kids to oppose “oppression,” with a focus on America’s evil and racist past – and an eye toward “social transformation.”

This is the swamp in which Obama operated: The Journal notes that Obama was chairman of the CAC board, which handled fiscal matters.

All told, Ayers and Obama won more than $150 million to ladle out.

McCain, to be sure, has never accused Obama of sharing Ayers’ terrorist views.

He’s merely questioned the Democrat’s judgment in having worked with Ayers – and having launched his political career from the ex-terrorist’s living room.

It’s a fair point.

Incredibly, an Obama aide suggested that the senator didn’t know about Ayers’ terror past – which is a little disquieting, if true.

But he had to know what Ayers was

The biggest scandal in all of this is that the CAC was Barack Obama’s biggest executive achievement – about the only one. As Chairman he oversaw the dispersement of 150 million in grants, matching funds and donations which became a monumental failure:

The results of an August 2003 final technical report of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project by the Consortium on Chicago School Research “suggest that among the schools it supported, the Challenge had little impact on school improvement and student outcomes, with no statistically significant differences between Annenberg and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain, classroom behavior, student self-efficacy, and social competence.”

Even without the Ayers connection you can see why presidential candidate Barack Obama wanted to leave this off his thin resume.