Wall Street, it is said, is driven by the swing of the pendulum between two extremes -- excessive greed and excessive fear. And we have had plenty of greed, with the Dot-Com boom, followed by the mortgage boom.

Each of these has been followed by a bust. The Dot-Com bust, together with 9-11, led the powers-that-be to try to re-stimulate the economy by artificially lowering interest rates, to the lowest level in a generation. This was combined with strong pressure on the lenders to make housing affordable for *all* Americans -- including, apparently, those who had no business borrowing in the first place. And now, to borrow a phrase from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "America's Chickens...are coming home...to ROOST!"

The question is, who is responsible for this? Some shadowy cabal of bankers? The Bush Administration, pandering to the foreseen (and encouraged) wave of illegal immigrants, whose future votes were being counted? Congress, fattened on campaign contributions and sweetheart deals?

The answer, I believe, is "All and None." Let us take a step back and look at a few seemingly unrelated topics, which may help us to get a handle on this. First, instead of Wall Street, which is driven by greed and fear, let's go over to Madison Avenue, which promotes greed and fear (and the other seven deadly sins) in order to move products. Everything from sexual insecurity (the now-defunct Smilin' Bob and Enzyte, K-Y Jelly, Cialis, and finally Valtrex for the resultant herpes), to food (Fast Food, Potato Chips, Beer, Soft Drinks, then NutriSystem and Bowflex to eliminate all the extra fat), to buying what we can't afford (Hummer, Lexus, MasterCard, American Express, and then credit counseling or Pawnshops to try to recover); all is paraded before us. With an array of badgering and bullying, seeking our emotional weak points, with the promise that if we only purchase *this* product, forsaking all others, we will be happy.

And how do we pay for all of these items? Or at least, how *should* we pay, since conservatives don't approve of bailouts? Out of our wages. We perform a function or service, we sell, we earn a payment in token of our labors. And we exchange this payment for goods and services which we choose. And the point here is, except for recessions and layoffs, our money, and our labour, is freely given, and renewable. "Another day, another dollar."

Now let us consider yesterday's man of the hour, onetime Vice President, Nobel Prize winner, and self-proclaimed prophet of doom, Al Gore. He is primarily famous for two things: unsuccessfully trying to sue his way into the White House, and of course, Global Warming. (Many parts of the US and of Europe are experiencing their coldest weather in over a decade as we speak; and Arctic Sea Ice has recovered to 1979 levels.)

The interesting thing with Al Gore (as with many liberals) is his incurable habit of projection. When he was ranting and raving about the unfairness of the election results ("He Played on Our Fears! He BETRAYED this country!") he was quite literally explaining his plan for eliminating global warming. The United States, as the world's foremost polluter^TM, must give up its dependence on fossil fuels, large cars, and a comfortable lifestyle. You peons should be more like the Europeons -- drive small cars for short distances, and learn to enjoy walking, bicycling, and living in small, cramped, uncomfortable, and ancient hovels. We, your beneficient overlords, are naturally exempt, because we *deserve* the finer things in life as a reward for being so selfless as to take care of you.

The same appeal as with Madison Avenue, alternately cajoling, mocking, and bullying. And all to separate us from something we have, and the speaker wants.

Only this time, it's not just our money, which is renewable. It is our way of life, our FREEDOM.

And this brings us back to the economic mess, the bailout, and the election of Barack Obama.

As it turns out, there are a couple of Columbia University professors, named Cloward and Piven, who, back in the 60's, came up with a methodology to encouragea socialist takeover of the United States. Not just by hippie peace marches, nor by Soviet bombing, but by a gradual encroachment. Their methodology has come to be known as the "Cloward-Piven" strategy, and it explains why life in the US has (in many ways) continued to get steadily worse over the past 40 years or so. The idea is that people do not give up their power or their freedom willingly, except in one case. And that is when there is a crisis or an emergency. So, to an enterprising socialist, what is the best way to gain power? Why, *create* a crisis, of course. Then, when the mass of people are frightened enough, they will cede power and freedoms to the government. And then, you see, under the guise of bureaucracy, ineptitude, or accident, one can use the new powers to...create *another* crisis. Which will lead to the usurpation of more power.

There is one other step in this process. Remember the famous quote "the capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with"? All you have to do is wave -- not even dollars, just the promise of dollars -- in front of capitalists, and they stop thinking with their heads, but start thinking out of greed. The Wall Street crowd, the investment bankers, soon, most of the financial industry, all found ways to get rich off of the selling of mortgages to those who could never pay back. Simply come up with a clever way of selling the mortgages to someone else, and then you never have to worry if the mortgages default. Right? And just in case, the bankers bought *insurance* against the possibility of default.

They got carried away by their own greed -- when everyone started selling the bad mortgages, soon there was nobody left to buy them.

When that happened, the people buying the mortgages couldn't refinance their way out of debt.

And the insurance companies -- who actually convinced themselves that prices would go up forever -- suddenly had to pay off on a gigantic number of claims at the same time.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Richard Andrew Cloward

1926-2001

Nationality: American

Entry Updated : 08/09/2002

Place of Birth: Rochester, NY

Award(s):: Dennis Carroll Award from International Society of Criminology, 1965, for Delinquency and Opportunity; C. Wright Mills Award from Society for Study of Social Problems, 1971, for Regulating the Poor.

Table of Contents:

Personal Information
Career
Writings
Obituary
Obituary Sources

Personal Information: Family: Born December 25, 1926, in Rochester, NY; died of lung cancer in August 2001, in New York, NY; son of Donald B. and Esther Marie (Fleming) Cloward; married Ethelmarie McGaffin, March 25, 1951 (divorced, 1978); children: Leslie Anne, Mark, Kevin, Keith. Education: University of Rochester, B.A., 1949; Columbia University, M.S.W., 1950, Ph.D., 1958. Memberships: American Association of University Professors, American Sociology Association, American Association of Social Workers, New York Civil Liberties Union (member of board of directors, beginning 1958), Poverty/Rights Action Center (member of board of directors, beginning 1966).

Career: Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor, 1954-58, associate professor, 1958-62, professor of social work, beginning 1962. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1944-46. U.S. Army, 1951-54; became lieutenant.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

(Coeditor with Herman D. Stein) Social Perspectives on Behavior: A Reader on Social Science for Social Work and Related Professions, Free Press, 1958.
(With Lloyd E. Ohlin) Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs, Free Press, 1960.
(With others) Theoretical Studies in Social Organizations of the Prison, Social Science Research Council, 1960.
(With Frances Fox Piven) Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Pantheon, 1971.
The Politics of Turmoil: Essays on Poverty, Race, and the Urban Crisis, Pantheon, 1974.
(With Frances Fox Piven) Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, Pantheon, 1977.
(With Frances Fox Piven) The New Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences, Pantheon, 1982.
(With Frances Fox Piven) Why Americans Don't Vote, Pantheon, 1988.
(With Frances Fox Piven) Why Americans Still Don't Vote: And Why Politicians Want It That Way, Beacon Press, 2000.

Contributor to New Republic, Nation, Saturday Review, Transaction, and other journals in his field.
Obituary Notice:
--Born December 25, 1926, in Rochester, NY; died of lung cancer August 20 (some sources cite August 19), 2001, in New York, NY. Sociologist, educator, and author. Cloward is remembered as an advocate for the poor and the disenfranchised. He taught social work at Columbia University from 1954 until his death; he also wrote books that explained his outspoken views and he worked actively as a proponent for welfare reform. Early in his career he wrote Delinquency and Opportunity, in which he claimed that inner-city juvenile delinquency was a rational response to the lack of economic potential available to poor urban youth. He then created the Mobilization for Youth to work with urban gang members. His best-known volume may be Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, in which he and his wife, Frances Fox Piven, claimed that the welfare state as it existed in 1971 provided the government with a powerful tool whereby it increased welfare funding in hard economic times to control social unrest among the poor and decreased funding in more prosperous times to maintain a pool of low-paid laborers. The work earned its authors a C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems, but it also sparked controversy at several levels. Cloward remained active in grassroots efforts to aid the poor, creating the National Welfare Rights Organization in 1966 and the national voter registration reform group Human SERVE in 1982; he was a strong advocate for the so-called "Motor Voter Act" of 1993 which encouraged mass voter registration, especially among the poor. For his efforts he received lifetime achievement awards from both the National Association of Social Workers and the American Sociological Association. Among Cloward's other books are The Politics of Turmoil, Poor People's Movements, and Why People Don't Vote: And Why Politicians Want It That Way.

Obituary and Other Sources:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2001, Elaine Woo, "Richard A. Cloward; Sociologist Fought for Welfare, Voter Rights, " p. B17.
Miami Herald, August 24, 2001, "Richard A. Cloward, Sociologist, Welfare-Rights Activist."
Nation, September 3, 2001, "Nation Notes."
New York Times, August 25, 2001, Stephanie Flanders, "Richard Cloward, " p. A19.

Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004.

Gale Database: Contemporary Authors

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frances Fox Piven

1932-

Nationality: Canadian

Entry Updated : 06/03/2001

Place of Birth: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Award(s):: Ford Foundation study grant, 1968-69; C. Wright Mills Award of Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1971, for Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare; Metropolitan Applied Research Corp. fellowship, 1971; Guggenheim fellowship, 1973-74.

Table of Contents:

Personal Information
Career
Writings
Works in Progress

Personal Information: Family: Born October 10, 1932, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; daughter of Albert and Rachel (Paperny) Fox; children: Sarah. Education: University of Chicago, B.A., 1953, M.A., 1956, Ph.D., 1962. Memberships: Society for the Study of Social Problems, American Political Science Association, Caucus for a New Political Science, Union of Radical Political Economists, Planners for Equal Opportunity (president, 1971-73), American Civil Liberties Union (member of board, 1973--). Addresses: Home: 35 Claremont Ave., New York, N.Y. 10027. Office: Department of Political Science, Boston University, Boston, Mass. 02215.

Career: Free Press, Glencoe, Ill., assistant editor, 1953-54; Voorhees, Walker, Smith & Smith, New York, N.Y., assistant in preparation of rezoning proposal for New York City Planning Commission, 1956-58; Columbia University, New York, N.Y., research fellow, Metropolitan Region Program, 1958-60, research associate, School of Social Work, 1962-66, assistant professor, School of Social Work, 1966-68, associate professor, 1968-72; Boston University, Boston, Mass., professor of political science, 1972--. Lecturer at Hunter College of the City University of New York, 1966-67. Consultant to Mobilization for Youth, Inc., 1962-67, National Welfare Rights Organization, 1966-72, and other agencies; member of Metropolitan Council on Housing.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

(With Richard A. Cloward) Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Pantheon, 1971.
(With Cloward) Politics of Turmoil: Race, Poverty, and the Urban Crisis, Pantheon, 1974.
(With Richard A. Cloward) Why Americans Don't Vote, Pantheon Books (New York City), 1988.
(Co-author with Richard A. Cloward) The Breaking of the American Social Compact, New Press, 1998.

Contributor:

Murray Silberman, editor, The Role of Government in Promoting Social Change, Columbia University Press, 1966.
Personnel in Anti-Poverty Programs: Implications for Social Work Education, Council on Social Work Education (New York), 1967.
George Brager and Francis Purcell, editors, Community Action against Poverty, College & University Press, 1967.
Mathew Ahmanad and Margaret Roach, editors, The Church and the Urban Crisis, National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, 1967.
R. H. Connery, editor, Urban Riots: Violence and Social Change, Random House, 1969.
Robert Paul Wolff, editor, 1984 Revisited, Random House, 1972.
Wil J. Smith and Frederick A. Zeller, editors, Public Welfare, Right or Privilege: A System under Attack, West Virginia University Press, 1972.
Herbert G. Gutman and Gregory S. Kealey, editors, Many Pasts: Readings in American Social History, 1965 to the Present, Prentice-Hall, 1973.
(Editor), Labor Parties in Postindustrial Societies, Polity Press (Cambridge, UK), 1991.

Contributor to Nation, New Republic, Commonweal, Social Work, Transaction, and other periodicals; a number of the articles have been reprinted in anthologies, readings, and other books. Member of editorial and publications committee, Society for the Study of Social Problems, 1973--; member of editorial board, Civil Liberties Review, Social Policy, and Working Papers for a New Society.

Works in Progress:With Richard A. Cloward, Poor Peoples' Movements and Why They Fail, for Pantheon.

Source: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2002.

Gale Database: Contemporary Authors

This is likely the REAL reason Obama doesn't want us to see his Columbia school records. I'm sure his classes dealt directly with Socialist and Marxist studies.

From here:

"The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript, despite an academic career that led him to Harvard Law School and, later, to a lecturing position at the University of Chicago."
.....
"The Obama campaign declined to comment for this article and did not offer an explanation for why his transcript has not been released."
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/obamas-years-at-columbia-are-a-mystery/85015/

Who else was at Columbia -- no other that Ayers the bomber. For insight into the Obama-Ayers relationship, one has to understand the goal of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Additionally, be on the lookout for the Alinsky/Gramsci strategy. I believe one or both taught classes in Hawaii and would have influence ma and pa Obama. The Alinsky/Gramsci has been unfolding for years, quite honestly, but Mr. Obama is at full throttle with it.

Saul Alinsky

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In the 1930s, Alinsky organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle on the horrific working conditions in the Union Stock Yards). He went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation while organizing the Woodlawn neighborhood, which trained leftist organizers and assisted in the founding of community organizations around the country. In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published one year before his death), he addressed the 1960s generation of leftist radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. The documentary, "The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy," claims that "Alinsky championed new ways to organize the poor and powerless that created a backyard revolution in cities across America."

In his Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing,

   "There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.."

  Alinsky is often credited with laying the foundation for the grassroots political organizing that dominated the 1960s.[3] Later in his life he encouraged stockholders in public corporations to lend their votes to "proxies", who would vote at annual stockholders meetings in favor of social justice. While his grassroots style took hold in American activism, his call to stock holders to share their power with disenfranchised working poor only began to take hold in U.S. progressive circles in the 1990s, when shareholder actions were organized against American corporations.

Alinsky was a critic of a passive and ineffective mainstream liberalism. In Rules for Radicals, he argued that the most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired ends, and that an intermediate end for radicals should be democracy because of its relative ease to work within to achieve other ends of social justice. He was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for "Peace on Earth."

[edit] Students of Alinsky

Many important community and labor organizers came from the "Alinsky School." Some of the below studied at the Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute.

   * Ed Chambers 
   * Cesar Chavez 
   * Tom Gaudette 
   * Michael Gecan 
   * Andrew Vachss 
   * Patrick Crowley 
   * Fred Ross

Alinsky was the subject of Hillary Rodham's senior honors thesis at Wellesley College, "There Is Only The Fight...": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model. Rodham commented on Alinsky's "charm," but rejected grassroots community organizing as outdated. Once Hillary Rodham Clinton became First Lady of the United States, the thesis was suppressed by the White House for fear of being associated too closely with Alinsky's ideas.

Alinsky also had a significant influence on Barack Obama, who is a United States Senator and candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Obama particularly used Alinsky's techniques while participating in Chicago community organizations in the 1980s.

Return to the Article

September 28, 2008

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

By James Simpson

America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again.

Despite the mass media news blackout, a series of books, talk radio and the blogosphere have managed to expose Barack Obama's connections to his radical mentors -- Weather Underground bombers William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis and others. David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks.org have also contributed a wealth of information and have noted Obama's radical connections since the beginning.

Yet, no one to my knowledge has yet connected all the dots between Barack Obama and the Radical Left. When seen together, the influences on Obama's life comprise a who's who of the radical leftist movement, and it becomes painfully apparent that not only is Obama a willing participant in that movement, he has spent most of his adult life deeply immersed in it.

But even this doesn't fully describe the extreme nature of this candidate. He can be tied directly to a malevolent overarching strategy that has motivated many, if not all, of the most destructive radical leftist organizations in the United States since the 1960s.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis

In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don't laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

Newsmax rounds out the picture:

Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth.

In their Nation article, Cloward and Piven were specific about the kind of "crisis" they were trying to create:

By crisis, we mean a publicly visible disruption in some institutional sphere. Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest which either generate institutional disruption or bring unrecognized disruption to public attention.

No matter where the strategy is implemented, it shares the following features:

The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

Capitalizing on the racial unrest of the 1960s, Cloward and Piven saw the welfare system as their first target. They enlisted radical black activist George Wiley, who created the National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO) to implement the strategy. Wiley hired militant foot soldiers to storm welfare offices around the country, violently demanding their "rights." According to a City Journal article by Sol Stern, welfare rolls increased from 4.3 million to 10.8 million by the mid-1970s as a result, and in New York City, where the strategy had been particularly successful, "one person was on the welfare rolls... for every two working in the city's private economy."

According to another City Journal article titled "Compassion Gone Mad":

The movement's impact on New York City was jolting: welfare caseloads, already climbing 12 percent a year in the early sixties, rose by 50 percent during Lindsay's first two years; spending doubled... The city had 150,000 welfare cases in 1960; a decade later it had 1.5 million.

The vast expansion of welfare in New York City that came of the NWRO's Cloward-Piven tactics sent the city into bankruptcy in 1975. Rudy Giuliani cited Cloward and Piven by name as being responsible for "an effort at economic sabotage." He also credited Cloward-Piven with changing the cultural attitude toward welfare from that of a temporary expedient to a lifetime entitlement, an attitude which in-and-of-itself has caused perhaps the greatest damage of all.

Cloward and Piven looked at this strategy as a gold mine of opportunity. Within the newly organized groups, each offensive would find an ample pool of foot soldier recruits willing to advance its radical agenda at little or no pay, and expand its base of reliable voters, legal or otherwise. The radicals' threatening tactics also would accrue an intimidating reputation, providing a wealth of opportunities for extorting monetary and other concessions from the target organizations. In the meantime, successful offensives would create an ever increasing drag on society. As they gleefully observed:

Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely.

The next time you drive through one of the many blighted neighborhoods in our cities, or read of the astronomical crime, drug addiction, and out-of-wedlock birth rates, or consider the failed schools, strapped police and fire resources of every major city, remember Cloward and Piven's thrill that "...the drain on local resources persists indefinitely."

ACORN, the new tip of the Cloward-Piven spear

In 1970, one of George Wiley's protégés, Wade Rathke -- like Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- was sent to found the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. While NWRO had made a good start, it alone couldn't accomplish the Cloward-Piven goals. Rathke's group broadened the offensive to include a wide array of low income "rights." Shortly thereafter they changed "Arkansas" to "Association of" and ACORN went nationwide.

Today ACORN is involved in a wide array of activities, including housing, voting rights, illegal immigration and other issues. According to ACORN's website: "ACORN is the nation's largest grassroots community organization of low-and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country," It is perhaps the largest radical group in the U.S. and has been cited for widespread criminal activity on many fronts.

Voting

On voting rights, ACORN and its voter mobilization subsidiary, Project Vote, have been involved nationwide in efforts to grant felons the vote and lobbied heavily for the Motor Voter Act of 1993, a law allowing people to register at motor vehicle departments, schools, libraries and other public places. That law had been sought by Cloward and Piven since the early1980s and they were present, standing behind President Clinton at the signing ceremony.

ACORN's voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards.

In this effort, ACORN sets up registration sites all over the country and has been frequently cited for turning in fraudulent registrations, as well as destroying republican applications. In the 2004-2006 election cycles alone, ACORN was accused of widespread voter fraud in 12 states. It may have swung the election for one state governor.

ACORN's website brags: "Since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote." Project vote boasts 4 million. I wonder how many of them are dead? For the 2008 cycle, ACORN and Project Vote have pulled out all the stops. Given their furious nationwide effort, it is not inconceivable that this presidential race could be decided by fraudulent votes alone.

Barack Obama ran ACORN's Project Vote in Chicago and his highly successful voter registration drive was credited with getting the disgraced former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun elected. Newsmax reiterates Cloward and Piven's aspirations for ACORN's voter registration efforts:

By advocating massive, no-holds-barred voter registration campaigns, they [Cloward & Piven] sought a Democratic administration in Washington, D.C. that would re-distribute the nation's wealth and lead to a totalitarian socialist state.

Illegal Immigration

As I have written elsewhere, the Radical Left's offensive to promote illegal immigration is "Cloward-Piven on steroids." ACORN is at the forefront of this movement as well, and was a leading organization among a broad coalition of radical groups, including Soros' Open Society Institute, the Service Employees International Union (ACORN founder Wade Rathke also runs a SEIU chapter), and others, that became the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform. CCIR fortunately failed to gain passage for the 2007 illegal immigrant amnesty bill, but its goals have not changed.

The burden of illegal immigration on our already overstressed welfare system has been widely documented. Some towns in California have even been taken over by illegal immigrant drug cartels. The disease, crime and overcrowding brought by illegal immigrants places a heavy burden on every segment of society and every level of government, threatening to split this country apart at the seams. In the meantime, radical leftist efforts to grant illegal immigrants citizenship guarantee a huge pool of new democrat voters. With little border control, terrorists can also filter in.

Obama aided ACORN as their lead attorney in a successful suit he brought against the Illinois state government to implement the Motor Voter law there. The law had been resisted by Republican Governor Jim Edgars, who feared the law was an opening to widespread vote fraud.

His fears were warranted as the Motor Voter law has since been cited as a major opportunity for vote fraud, especially for illegal immigrants, even terrorists. According to the Wall Street Journal: "After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote..."

ACORN's dual offensives on voting and illegal immigration are handy complements. Both swell the voter rolls with reliable democrats while assaulting the country ACORN seeks to destroy with overwhelming new problems.

Mortgage Crisis

And now we have the mortgage crisis, which has sent a shock wave through Wall Street and panicked world financial markets like no other since the stock market crash of 1929. But this is a problem created in Washington long ago. It originated with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), signed into law in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. The CRA was Carter's answer to a grassroots activist movement started in Chicago, and forced banks to make loans to low income, high risk customers. PhD economist and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm has called it: "a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks."

ACORN aggressively sought to expand loans to low income groups using the CRA as a whip. Economist Stan Leibowitz wrote in the New York Post:

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"-claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications-but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

ACORN showed its colors again in 1991, by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. Obama represented ACORN in the Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1994 suit against redlining. Most significant of all, ACORN was the driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton Administration that greatly expanded the CRA and laid the groundwork for the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac borne financial crisis we now confront. Barack Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort. With this new authority, ACORN used its subsidiary, ACORN Housing, to promote subprime loans more aggressively.

As a New York Post article describes it:

A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

The lender they were speaking of was Countrywide, which specialized in subprime lending and had a working relationship with ACORN.

Investor's Business Daily added:

The revisions also allowed for the first time the securitization of CRA-regulated loans containing subprime mortgages. The changes came as radical "housing rights" groups led by ACORN lobbied for such loans. ACORN at the time was represented by a young public-interest lawyer in Chicago by the name of Barack Obama. (Emphasis, mine.)

Since these loans were to be underwritten by the government sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the implicit government guarantee of those loans absolved lenders, mortgage bundlers and investors of any concern over the obvious risk. As Bloomberg reported: "It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit."

And if you think Washington policy makers cared about ACORN's negative influence, think again. Before this whole mess came down, a Democrat-sponsored bill on the table would have created an "Affordable Housing Trust Fund," granting ACORN access to approximately $500 million in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac revenues with little or no oversight.

Even now, unbelievably -- on the brink of national disaster -- Democrats have insisted ACORN benefit from bailout negotiations! Senator Lindsay Graham reported last night (9/25/08) in an interview with Greta Van Susteren of On the Record that Democrats want 20 percent of the bailout money to go to ACORN!

This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN's efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.

Enter Barack Obama

In attempting to capture the significance of Barack Obama's Radical Left connections and his relation to the Cloward Piven strategy, I constructed following flow chart. It is by no means complete. There are simply too many radical individuals and organizations to include them all here. But these are perhaps the most significant.

The chart puts Barack Obama at the epicenter of an incestuous stew of American radical leftism. Not only are his connections significant, they practically define who he is. Taken together, they constitute a who's who of the American radical left, and guiding all is the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Conspicuous in their absence are any connections at all with any other group, moderate, or even mildly leftist. They are all radicals, firmly bedded in the anti-American, communist, socialist, radical leftist mesh.

Saul Alinsky

Most people are unaware that Barack Obama received his training in "community organizing" from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation. But he did. In and of itself that marks his heritage and training as that of a radical activist. One really needs go no further. But we have.

Bill Ayers

Obama objects to being associated with SDS bomber Bill Ayers, claiming he is being smeared with "guilt by association." But they worked together at the Woods Fund. The Wall Street Journal added substantially to our knowledge by describing in great detail Obama's work over five years with SDS bomber Bill Ayers on the board of a non-profit, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to push a radical agenda on public school children. As Stanley Kurtz states:

"...the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago."

Also included in the mix is Theresa Heinz Kerry's favorite charity, the Tides Foundation. A partial list of Tides grants tells you all you need to know: ACLU, ACORN, Center for American Progress, Center for Constitutional Rights (a communist front,) CAIR, Earth Justice, Institute for Policy Studies (KGB spy nest), National Lawyers Guild (oldest communist front in U.S.), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and practically every other radical group there is. ACORN's Wade Rathke runs a Tides subsidiary, the Tides Center.

Carl Davidson and the New Party

We have heard about Bomber Bill, but we hear little about fellow SDS member Carl Davidson. According to Discover the Networks, Davidson was an early supporter of Barack Obama and a prominent member of Chicago's New Party, a synthesis of CPUSA members, Socialists, ACORN veterans and other radicals. Obama sought and received the New Party's endorsement, and they assisted with his campaign. The New Party also developed a strong relationship with ACORN. As an excellent article on the New Party observes: "Barack Obama knew what he was getting into and remains an ideal New Party candidate."

George Soros

The chart also suggests the reason for George Soros' fervent support of Obama. The President of his Open Society Institute is Aryeh Neier, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As mentioned above, three other former SDS members had extensive contact with Obama: Bill Ayers, Carl Davidson and Wade Rathke. Surely Aryeh Neier would have heard from his former colleagues of the promising new politician. More to the point, Neier is firmly committed to supporting the hugely successful radical organization, ACORN, and would be certain back their favored candidate, Barack Obama.

ACORN

Obama has spent a large portion of his professional life working for ACORN or its subsidiaries, representing ACORN as a lawyer on some of its most critical issues, and training ACORN leaders. Stanley Kurtz's excellent National Review article, "Inside Obama's Acorn." also describes Obama's ACORN connection in detail. But I can't improve on Obama's own words:

I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career (emphasis added). Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work. - Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007 (Courtesy Newsmax.)

In another excellent article on Obama's ACORN connections, Newsmax asks a nagging question:

It would be telling to know if Obama, during his years at Columbia, had occasion to meet Cloward and study the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

I ask you, is it possible ACORN would train Obama to take leadership positions within ACORN without telling him what he was training for? Is it possible ACORN would put Obama in leadership positions without clueing him into what his purpose was?? Is it possible that this most radical of organizations would put someone in charge of training its trainers, without him knowing what it was he was training them for?

As a community activist for ACORN; as a leadership trainer for ACORN; as a lead organizer for ACORN's Project Vote; as an attorney representing ACORN's successful efforts to impose Motor Voter regulations in Illinois; as ACORN's representative in lobbying for the expansion of high risk housing loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to the current crisis; as a recipient of their assistance in his political campaigns -- both with money and campaign workers; it is doubtful that he was unaware of ACORN's true goals. It is doubtful he was unaware of the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

Fast-forward to 2005 when an obsequious, servile and scraping Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus swearing in ceremony for newly-elected Illinois Senator, Barack Obama. Mudd called, the Congressional Black Caucus "our family" and "the conscience of Fannie Mae."

In 2005, Republicans sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Senator John McCain was at the forefront of that effort. But it failed due to an intense lobbying effort put forward by Fannie and Freddie.

In his few years as a U.S. senator, Obama has received campaign contributions of $126,349, from Fannie and Freddie, second only to the $165,400 received by Senator Chris Dodd, who has been getting donations from them since 1988. What makes Obama so special?

His closest advisers are a dirty laundry list of individuals at the heart of the financial crisis: former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson; Former Fannie Mae CEO and former Clinton Budget Director Frank Raines; and billionaire failed Superior Bank of Chicago Board Chair Penny Pritzker.

Johnson had to step down as adviser on Obama's V.P. search after this gem came out:

An Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) report^[1] from September 2004 found that, during Johnson's tenure as CEO, Fannie Mae had improperly deferred $200 million in expenses. This enabled top executives, including Johnson and his successor, Franklin Raines, to receive substantial bonuses in 1998.^[2] A 2006 OFHEO report^[3] found that Fannie Mae had substantially under-reported Johnson's compensation. Originally reported as $6-7 million, Johnson actually received approximately $21 million.

Obama denies ties to Raines but the Washington Post calls him a member of "Obama's political circle." Raines and Johnson were fined $3 million by the Office of Federal Housing Oversight for their manipulation of Fannie books. The fine is small change however, compared to the $50 million Raines was able to obtain in improper bonuses as a result of juggling the books.

Most significantly, Penny Pritzker, the current Finance Chairperson of Obama's presidential campaign helped develop the complicated investment bundling of subprime securities at the heart of the meltdown. She did so in her position as shareholder and board chair of Superior Bank. The Bank failed in 2001, one of the largest in recent history, wiping out $50 million in uninsured life savings of approximately 1,400 customers. She was named in a RICO class action law suit but doesn't seem to have come out of it too badly.

As a young attorney in the 1990s, Barack Obama represented ACORN in Washington in their successful efforts to expand Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) authority. In addition to making it easier for ACORN groups to force banks into making risky loans, this also paved the way for banks like Superior to package mortgages as investments, and for the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite them. These changes created the conditions that ultimately lead to the current financial crisis.

Did they not know this would occur? Were these smart people, led by a Harvard graduate, unaware of the Econ 101 concept of moral hazard that would result from the government making implicit guarantees to underwrite private sector financial risk? They should have known that freeing the high-risk mortgage market of risk, calamity was sure to ensue. I think they did.

Barack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!

God grant those few responsible yet remaining in Washington, DC the strength to prevent this massive fraud from occurring. God grant them the courage to stand up in the face of this Marxist tidal wave.

Jim Simpson is a former White House staff economist and budget analyst. His writings have been published in American Thinker, Washington Times, FrontPage Magazine, DefenseWatch, Soldier of Fortune and others. His blog is Truth and Consequences..

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html at June 24, 2009 - 01:54:32 AM EDT

More from the 80's archives (document dump):
Communistic/Marxist seeds from the 80s coming to fruition now?!

Democrats Initiate Economic Studies
Washington Post, The (DC) - Saturday, February 13, 1982
Author: Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post Staff Writer

In the continuing struggle of the Democratic Party to come up with alternative economic strategies, 52 members of Congress have asked the Institute for Policy Studies to produce a wide-ranging series of studies ranging from defense to housing.

"There is a public policy at this point of bribing the rich," Marcus Raskin, a founder of the IPS, the Left's think tank, said at a press conference. "In order to have a decent society, you have to be sure that the rich and the poor are citizens of the same country," he said, arguing that Reagan administration policies are resulting in "second-class citizenship for one-half of society."

Twenty-one separate studies will be put together under the project. Since the major conservative victory in the 1980 presidential and senatorial elections, there has been a growing effort by a number of liberal and Democratic groups to attempt to regain intellectual vigor.

The IPS will finance the studies, which were initiated at the request of Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) along with such other members of the House as Peter Rodino (D-N.J.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee; Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.), chairman of the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee; and Henry S. Reuss (D-Wis.), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee.

The 52 members included one Republican, Rep. Hamilton Fish Jr. (N.Y.). Among the studies and the prospective authors are:

* Frances Fox Piven of Boston University and Richard Cloward of Columbia University, both of whom have written extensively on welfare programs, will produce a paper on entitlement programs.

* Bertram Gross, who wrote major elements of the original Humphrey-Hawkins full employment bill and the book "Friendly Fascism," will write a paper to be called "How to Get Full Employment."

* Martin Carnoy of Stanford University is to write a paper on inflation, capital development and allocation.

Raskin said the papers should be completed by the end of April. He said members of Congress supporting the studies said the papers would be used as the basis of hearings to be held later this year.

SEEDS OF SCHOLARSHIP
Miami Herald, The (FL) - Thursday, May 5, 1988
Author: CARLOS VERDECIA Herald Editorial Board
SOVIET imperialism has more than one way to invade a country. The first option — where applicable —

is to send its own troops and tanks. The second is secretly to send heavy military aid to support either a Marxist government or a Marxist insurgency, whichever may be the case. A third option — and probably the most-effective in the long run — is to form future leaders of that country in the Marxist ideology and the Leninist concept of Communist Party politics.

To achieve this long-term objective, Soviet-bloc countries including Cuba offer full scholarships to Third World students to study at different levels of education, culminating in institutions such as Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, the University of Havana in Cuba, or Eastern European universities.

(snip)

A Troubled Ford Foundation
Washington Post, The (DC) - Saturday, July 4, 1981
Author: Walter Shapiro, Washington Post Staff Writer

The thicket of trees still blooms in the 11-story atrium lobby, the parquet floors are still waxed to a high gloss, and the grant checks still go out on schedule. Nevertheless, these are sad days at the $2.8 billion Ford Foundation .

Robert Schrank, who is retiring voluntarily after 10 years as a program officer at the foundation , described the current level of activity as resembling Sleepy Hollow, and the mood equivalent to that of an undertaking parlor.

At a time when the Reagan administration is cutting funds for domestic social programs and many look to private giving to take up the slack, the nation's largest foundation is in disarray.

Two years after becoming the first black to head a major foundation , Ford Foundation President Franklin A. Thomas is facing a degree of criticism and invective almost unprecedented in the genteel world of major philanthropy.

(snip)

Ford Foundation to Increase Grant Funding
Washington Post, The (DC) - Monday, April 6, 1981
Author: Joyce Wadler, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Ford Foundation will increase its grant funding by at least 15 percent next year. The current $102 million budget of the organization — the wealthiest foundation in the country — will be increased for the first time in eight years with the major portion of the money being earmarked for urban poverty, according to president Franklin Thomas (Columbia alum).

(snip)

Ford trustees, however, including Harriet Raab, an assistant dean at Columbia , insisted that Thomas was "right on schedule."

(snip)

http://www.un.org/partnerships/YAdvisoryBoardPage.htm

United Nations Advisory Board

Mr. Franklin A. Thomas, Head of the Ford Foundation Study Group (TFF Study Group - a nonprofit institution assisting development in South Africa, since 1996)

http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2487/Thomas-Franklin.html

Study Commission on United States Policy Toward Southern Africa, chairman; Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on South Africa, member, 1985-87; September 11th Fund, chairman.

FORD FOUNDATION GIVES KENNEDY SCHOOL $50M
Boston Globe, The (MA) - April 5, 2001
WASHINGTON - Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government will announce today that it has received its largest single donation, a $50 million grant from the nonprofit Ford Foundation.

....................................................

Off topic?

http://www.insouth.org/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=119

Michael Chege
Organization Name: Africa Research and Resource Forum
Organization website: www.arrfoum.org
Country: Kenya
Affiliation / Position: Chairman of the Board of Directors
Profile Status: INSouth Workshop Participants
Region(s) Interest: Africa
Research Interest(s): Population, Migration, Employment, Gender; Health
Short Profile:

Michael Chege is currently an Advisor to the Government of Kenya on International Development Partnerships. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Research and Resource Forum (ARRF), an independent, non-profit, research, resource, reflection and discourse organization devoted to enhancing thinking on African development.

In the years 1994 to 1996, Professor Chege was visiting scholar at Harvard University. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Geneva in 1982/83. Earlier, Professor Chege had served as Program Officer with the Ford Foundation based in Harare, Zimbabwe for six (6) years from 1988 to 1994. Before the assignment with the Ford Foundation, he was Senior Lecturer and Director of the Institute of International Studies at the University of Nairobi where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1980 – 1983. Professor Chege has received several academic awards including awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and Harvard University.

Prof. Chege's publications include 'Democratic Theory and Practice in Africa' (Edited with Afrifa Gitonga and Walter Oyugi in 1988) and several chapters in peer reviewed books as well as articles in international refereed journals.
Michael Chege

Panel includes: Vernon E. Jordan Jr. (Valerie Jarrett's great uncle) and Hanna H. Gray, president of the University of Chicago

FORD FOUNDATION CALLS FOR TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY TO REFORM WELFARE - SYSTEM
Richmond Times-Dispatch - Friday, May 12, 1989
Author: Marsha Mercer ; Media General News Service
Are the nation's elderly ready to foot the bill for a sweeping overhaul of the welfare system?

The Ford Foundation thinks so. It proposes taxing Social Security benefits to pay the $29 billion tab to expand and modernize womb-to-tomb services.

"America has no choice but to try" to revamp welfare, said Franklin A. Thomas , president of the Ford Foundation , firing the opening volley in what he hopes will become a national debate over welfare reform.

"Current social deficits threaten our quality of life, our economic future and our peace of mind," he said.

The Ford Foundation 's report, titled "The Common Good," issued yesterday, declares that the current system, created during the Depression, is unable to cope with today's problems.

"The system leaves too many people dependent, vulnerable and without security at critical points in their lives," the report says.

It recommends a sweeping new approach to welfare based on "the recognition that all Americans at one time or another have to rely upon our system of social welfare protections, beginning before birth with prenatal care and extending through the retirement years."

The $29 billion solution is a new "life-cycle" approach targeting aid to life's stages — infancy and childhood, young adulthood, the working years and old age.

"We believe that by providing adequate protections and opportunities early in life, there will be less of a need for programs later in life," said panel chairman Irving S. Shapiro, a lawyer who retired as chairman and chief operating officer of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.

The report is the product of a three-year, $3 million study by a panel of business, civic and labor leaders and educators who worked with 28 research projects nationwide. One of the biggest changes would make drug and alcohol treatment available "on demand" — at a cost of a billion dollars a year.

To improve life for the youngest of America's poor, the study recommends: * Assuring all pregnant women prenatal care and all infants well-baby care.

* Expanding the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, program as an entitlement program, which would double the number participating.

* Expanding Head Start to enable 3- and 4-year-olds to participate, tripling the number served.

For disadvantaged youth, the study recommends community-based programs to reduce the school drop-out problem, prevent adolescent pregnancy and prepare students for working.

Life during the working years could be improved by raising the minimum wage, expanding the earned income tax credit available to low-income families and expanding employer health insurance and Medicaid.

Unemployment insurance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children also need to be reformed, the study said. It suggests:

* Allowing the jobless to take their unemployment benefits in a lump sum so they can relocate where jobs are.

* Reducing unemployment benefits gradually to provide greater incentive to return to work.

* Limiting the length of time those capable of working can receive welfare benefits.

To help the elderly poor cope, the study recommends increasing federal Supplemental Security Income benefits and subsidizing private insurance for long-term care.

Shapiro said that while the estimated $29 billion it would cost to reform and expand welfare is substantial, it is only a fraction of the $157 billion the government expects to spend to bail out the savings and loan industry.

Taxing Social Security like private pensions could raise $100 billion in five years, he said. The idea would be to tax Social Security benefits that exceed a worker's lifetime contributions.

"We're gambling that many of the people in my generation will feel different about taxing Social Security" if they know the money will be used to help others, Shapiro said.

"The one new idea is to recommend that the tax revenues collected be placed in a trust fund" with the sole purpose of funding welfare programs.

Members of the panel were: Sol Chaikin, president emeritus of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; James R. Ellis, a lawyer in Seattle; Robert F. Erburu, chairman and chief operating officer of Times Mirror Co.; John H. Filer, former chairman of Aetna Life and Casualty Co.; Hanna H. Gray, president of the University of Chicago; Albert O. Hirschman, professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.

Also, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., former president of the National Urban League; Eleanor Holmes Norton, professor at Georgetown Law Center; Henry B. Schact, chairman and chief operating officer of Cummins Engine Co. in Columbus, Ind.; and Mitchell Sviridoff, director of the Community Development Research Center.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:CoHChNu5ONIJ:https://portfolio.du.edu/portfolio/getportfoliofile%3Fuid%3D125407+Hanna+Gray+chicago+ayers&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Hanna Holborn Gray, a former president of the University of Chicago, took up the point, saying "there is a
lot of confusion about what is academic freedom." The concept is often misused, she said, warning of a risk
of "crying wolf" in claiming violations of academic freedom. "There tends nowadays to be a pattern in
which people cry foul when they're being criticized, rather than responding, which after all is the whole
purpose and point of our academic communities, with vigorous speech in return."

She used the example of political attacks that focus on Barack Obama's past connections with William
Ayers, a co-founder of the radical 1970s-era group the Weather Underground and now a professor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. "Those who say today that Bill Ayers' academic freedom is being violated
because he is being attacked by the opponents of Barack Obama are speaking nonsense in my view," Ms.
Gray said. "He may not deserve the attacks that he is receiving, but because he is an academic does not
mean that his academic freedom is being violated, or that he is not perfectly free to speak back if he wishes
to do so or to maintain silence, as he has in a very dignified way chosen to do."

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