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$100 million was spent with no discernable effect on educational outcomes, we know that. But you don't throw around that kind of cash on "community leadership building" efforts, without creating a *clientele*. The base Obama built on for his political career, was the activists he handed other people's money to, working with Ayers.

People know who Ayers is by now in terms of the weatherman activities. Fewer realize what a wheel he was in Chicago politics or understand why. Ayers' father was the chairman of Commonwealth Edison, the biggest utility and one of the largest companies in the state. And a close ally of Daley the elder. When Ayers spoke about revolution being all about killing the rich and your parents, he meant his dad.

The reason he got off for all the terrorism was, superficially, supposedly tainted wiretap evidence. The real reason was more like, he was too rich and powerful to touch, and had a license to murder. He was the perfect example of the guilty rich kid, and he adopted communism and went slumming around Chicago as a way to be cool. All the while, his family's power and money was still protecting him.

The blacks of Chicago got the role of the a Marxist proletariat in this little leftwing fantasy drama. Ayers was going to come down out of the power structure and side with them and lead them forward to revolution and victory. Authenticity schtick demanded proof of radicalism from Ayers through his embrace of violence, and it demanded in turn of him, that he use self appointed black leaders as spokesmen and proteges for his radicalism.

So don't try to tell us Ayers is just some whacked out professor who happens to live next door in Hyde Park. He is a rich, powerful, lifelong communist organizer with legions of toadies and fronts doing his biding, to this day.