Senator Obama's Alleged Connections to Tony Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi, Weatherman Bill Ayers, and Maoist Mike Klonsky

"As [blogger Steve] Diamond relates [here (8-20-08)], one of the first CAC [Chicago Annenberg Challenge]
awards in 1995 was $175,000 for the “Small Schools Workshop,” which had been founded by [Weatherman bomber Bill] Ayers and was then headed by [Maoist] Mike Klonsky. It was only the beginning of the CAC’s generous funding of Klonsky — a committed Maoist who had been an Ayers comrade in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (the forerunner of Ayers’ Weatherman terrorist organization), and who hosted a “social justice” blog on the Obama campaign website until his writings were hastily purged in June [see here] after Diamond called attention to them."--The National Review (8-28-08; page 2)

The famous conservative political columnist Robert Novak (above) has a very serious brain tumor, so he isn't able to write as much. He has been a columnist for 45 years.

Mr. Novak is the journalist who wrote the article that started the CIA leak/Plame scandal that was ultimately investigated by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

On March 3, 2008, the day that Chicago businessman Tony Rezko's corruption trial began, Mr. Novak wrote an article called "Obama and the Fixer" (3-3-08) about Senator Obama's possible financial ties to Tony Rezko and Iraqi-British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi. [See also here; and Novak's 2008 archive.]

It turns out that Tony Rezko's corrupt dealings with politicians were also investigated by the famous United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald.

Mr. Novak's article "Obama and the Fixer" (3-3-08) was published on the very day that Tony Rezko's extortion and money laundering trial opened and is a good overview of concerns about Rezko, Auchi, and Obama being raised by investigative journalists; but a lot more is coming out now.

Two recent articles that helped me to understand Obama's background are "Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?" (8-18-08) by Stanley Kurtz [archive] in the National Review and "Obama Should Come Clean On Ayers, Rezko And the Iraqi Billionaire" (8-30-08) by John Fund in The Wall Street Journal.

You can read about the Obama campaign's ferocious reaction when Stanley Kurtz appeared on Chicago's WGN Radio. By following the link there you can even listen to this very informative radio program. The Obama campaign sent an e-mail to its supporters asking them to call the show and make the points listed in the e-mail.

It is hard to know the truth about Senator Obama's possible connections to Rezko and Auchi, but it is disturbing that Senator Obama's campaign is threatening to use federal agencies to criminalize his critics. [See NRO "Barack Obama, Aspiring Commissar" (8-28-08) page two at the end; See more background here.]

Senator Obama doesn't want investigative journalists snooping into his relationship with the former Weatherman bomber Bill Ayers, who is now a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

The National Review writes (8-28-08):

[Bill] Ayers, as we have previously detailed, is a confessed terrorist who, having escaped prosecution due to surveillance violations that came to light during his decade on the lam after a bombing spree, landed an influential professorship in education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). As he has made clear several times before and after helping to launch Obama’s political career, Ayers remains defiantly proud of bombing the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, and other targets. He expresses regret only that he didn’t do more. Far from abandoning his radical politics, he has simply changed methods: the classroom, rather than the detonator, is now his instrument for campaigning against an America he portrays as racist and imperialist.

...Obama has lied about his relationship with Ayers, whom he now dismisses as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood.” Ayers and Obama have made joint appearances together; they have argued together for “reforms” of the criminal justice system to make it more criminal-friendly; Obama gushed with praise for Ayers’ 1997 polemical book on the Chicago courts; and they sat together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing enterprise that distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to their ideological allies. Most significant, they worked closely together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).

The CAC was a major education reform project, proposed by Ayers, which was underwritten by a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, complemented by another $100 million in private and public funding. The project ran for about five years, beginning in 1995. As the liberal researcher Steve Diamond has recounted, Ayers ran its operational arm, the “Chicago School Reform Collaborative.” Obama, then a 33-year-old, third-year associate at a small law firm, having no executive experience, was brought in to chair the board of directors, which oversaw all “fiscal matters.”

By the time the CAC’s operations were wound down in 2001 it had doled out more than $100 million in grants but had failed to achieve any improvement in the Chicago schools. What little is known about the grants Obama oversaw is troubling. As Diamond relates, one of the first CAC awards in 1995 was $175,000 for the “Small Schools Workshop,” which had been founded by Ayers and was then headed by Mike Klonsky. It was only the beginning of the CAC’s generous funding of Klonsky — a committed Maoist who had been an Ayers comrade in the radical Students for a Democratic Society (the forerunner of Ayers’ Weatherman terrorist organization), and who hosted a “social justice” blog on the Obama campaign website until his writings were hastily purged in June after Diamond called attention to them.

Be sure to read blogger Steve Diamond's post "Behind the Annenberg Gate: Inside the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Records" (8-20-08).

The Iraqi-British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi is also using the British libel laws to intimidate investigative journalists who probe his possible connections to Senator Obama.

I think if Senator Obama had nothing to hide--like funding the Maoist Mike Klonsky--he would not be afraid to sit down and answer journalists' questions. I doubt that most Americans would approve of eductional funds going to Maoists.

It seems to me like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) is another case of communists and terrorists plugging themselves into government funding that is intended to lift historically disadvantaged people out of poverty.

Note: Be sure to listen to Stanley Kurtz' account on Chicago's WGN-AM Radio about how the CAC doled out money meant to boost students' achievement to politicized programs.

One good place to find various articles about Senator Obama and his attempts to intimidate the media can be found at Michelle Malkin's blog. Her most recent article on the topic of Senator Obama's agressive moves to silence questions is called "Barack 'The Silencer' Obama’s Gangland Assault on Free Speech" (8-29-08), but she has an archive of related articles at her categories: Bill Ayers and Fairness Doctrine.