Off and Running: Opportunity of a Lifetime (Communist Party ecstatic over Obama)

Speech delivered at a People's Weekly World event in Cleveland, Ohio (1/31/2009).

I was standing on the Washington Mall on Inauguration Day, alongside nearly two million other people on Inauguration Day, and proudly watched the first African American take the oath of office in our nation’s history. That alone made the day deeply memorable, joyful, and historic. But I couldn’t help but think – and I’m sure that millions of others had the same thought – that the transfer of power from Bush to President Obama not only tore down a barrier that once was thought near impenetrable, but also signified the fading away of one era and the beginning of another.

It was hard not to think on that cold day in our nation’s capital that the worst of the past 30 years of right wing extremist rule is behind us and that an era of progressive change is within reach, no longer an idle dream.

Just look at the new lay of the land: a friend of labor and its allies sits in the White House. Larger Democratic majorities control Congress. A feeling of renewal and hope is in the air. Public opinion polls show a high favorability rating for our new President. And the labor and people’s movement that was so instrumental to the election’s outcome, after a short holiday pause, is off and running.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party, notwithstanding its efforts to distance itself from arguably the worst president in our history, is on the defensive. Its grassroots constituency is dispirited. And, its governing philosophy of free markets, minimal government, fear, and division, and especially racist division, is discredited.

Now no one expects that the going will be easy in the coming months and years. There is, after all, eight years of extreme right-wing misrule to clean up. The multinational corporations and banks haven’t gone into hibernation. Right-wing Republicans, while badly weakened, still retain enough influence in Congress and elsewhere to block or slow down progressive measures. And the challenges facing the Obama administration are immense, and none more than the economic crisis.

If there were such a thing as an economic tsunami, I would say we are experiencing it. Not since the Great Depression has the economy been in such bad shape, which leads many economists to predict that the downturn will be L-shaped, that is, deep and prolonged.

Furthermore, the economic contraction is worldwide. No country or region will escape its pain and long reach. Nor can any national economy, ours included, hope to make a full recovery without global coordination and cooperation. In an integrated global economy, we either swim together or sink together.

While the present economic turbulence was triggered by the collapse of the housing markets over the past two years, its underlying cause goes back to the mid-1970s.

At that time US economy was rocked to its core by the interweaving of seemingly stubborn and contradictory economic problems – high inflation and unemployment, declining confidence in the dollar as a means of international payment, new competitive rivals in Europe and Asia, and a falling profit rate, all of which occurred in the context of overproduction in world commodity markets. Stagflation was the term coined to describe this contradictory phenomenon.

Faced with this unraveling of the economy and a crisis of profitability, then-chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker stepped into the breech and pushed up interest rates to near 20 per cent. This spike in interest rates threw the country into a deep recession, sending unemployment rates to the highest level since the Great Depression, forcing the closing of scores of manufacturing plants and a great number of family farms, laying waste to cities and whole regions, and bringing incredible hardship to the working class, and especially African-American, Latino and other racial minorities and women workers.

The rate hike also opened the door for a many-sided attack on labor and its allies, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the pre-Depression era. Wage and benefit concessions were demanded. New labor saving techniques and computerization invaded the workplace. Rules governing seniority, job classifications, line speed, and safety were either eliminated or routinely violated. And, the relocation of production to non-union and offshore sites became standard fare.

If we thought this was only done to dramatically increase the corporate share of the value that workers create in the production process relative to what they receive, we would be wrong. It was also motivated by the overarching desire of corporate capital to cripple the social power of the labor movement and disrupt its alliance with its most durable and powerful ally – the African American people.

Now we can’t leave it at this, because, in addition to the working class and its allies taking a pounding, there is another side to this intricate story – Volcker’s interest rate spike also wrung inflation out of the economy, restored confidence in the dollar in international money markets, and, especially important to us, redirected domestic and foreign investment capital (and there was plenty of it), abruptly and massively from the “real” economy – auto, steel, machine tool, construction, and so on – into financial channels and speculative ventures where returns were markedly higher.

Once in financial channels, money/speculative capital stayed there, but it did not sit on its hands. Its financial agents (banks, investment houses, hedge funds, private equity firms, mutual funds, and so on) intent on expanding their profits in an increasingly toothless regulatory environment raced at breakneck speed into a massive buying and selling and borrowing and spending speculative spree for the next three decades. And all this led to an explosion of the financial sector in terms of employment, transactions, and profits. Nearly 40 percent of corporate profits came from this sector in the early years of this decade – not to mention the salaries, bonuses, stock options, and dividends of Wall Street insiders.

If this transformation of the US economy into a speculative casino run by the “masters of the universe,” hunkered down on Wall Street, has its roots in the unraveling of the U.S. economy three decades ago, what greased the skids during this period was the production and easy availability, seemingly without end, of staggering amounts of debt — corporate, consumer and government.

Debt is as old as capitalism. But what is different in recent decades is that the production of debt and the accompanying speculative excesses and bubbles were not simply passing moments at the end of the business cycle, but essential to evolution, interrelations, and functioning of the overall economy.

Without the massive piling up of debt and speculative bubbles first in internet technology, then in the stock market, and most recently, in housing, engineered by the Wall Street/Washington complex, the performance of the US and world economy would have been far, far worse.

But, as we are painfully learning, turning our economy into a financial casino built on the pileup of massive amounts of debt and bubbles that eventually burst is a two-edged sword. While it stimulates the economy, restores profitability and enriches the corporate class on a scale never seen, it also introduces enormous instability, economic insecurity, income inequality, and imbalances and distortions into the arteries and structure of the US and world economy.

In other words, the growth of the financial sector and bubble driven economics were an unstable, bloodsucking, leech-like, and temporary fix for a sluggish, underperforming economy and the vehicle for the financial titans of US capitalism to reassert their power.

But as events have shown – it could not forever mask and compensate for stagnation tendencies, declining income of working people, and the shrinkage of the material goods sector of the economy. In fact, its remedy of rerouting capital into finance and turning the financial sector and speculation into the main dynamo of the US and global economy only served to postpone the crisis to a later day and, in doing so, assured that it would be on a much broader scale as we now see.

A Wal-Mart economy of low wages, even when combined with financial speculation and massive debt creation is unsustainable and eventually erupts into crisis. At some point, the chickens do come home to roost..

None of this, however, could have happened without the political ascendancy of the right wing extremism 30 years ago. If Volcker struck the first blow in 1979, it was the Reagan administration, entering the White House shortly thereafter, and then successive administrations that were the decisive ideological and political/practical agent of this reorientation of the economy, upheaval in class relations, and current economic mess.

At the ideological level, the Reaganites said that government is best that governs least, that markets are self-correcting and efficient; that vast income inequality is a good thing, that deregulation and privatization are the best cures for what ails economy and the “welfare state,” and that tax cuts for the wealthy trickle down to working people and lift all boats.

But the Reaganites didn’t stop here. At the political-economic level, they dismantled the model of economic governance at the state and corporate level, a model that had its origins in the New Deal and then was expanded on by successive administrations in the next three decades. It rested on a measure of class compromise, social benefits for the unemployed, the elderly, the young and the sick, a legal environment favorable to union organizing, the removal of discriminatory barriers to equality, the expansion of democratic rights, and expansive fiscal and monetary polices at the federal level that favored broadly shared prosperity.

In its place, the Reaganites built another model of governance popularly called neoliberalism. If Roosevelt’s New Deal favored working people then Reagan’s Raw Deal stripped working people of income and rights, turned racism and other forms of discrimination into an instrument of practical politics and ideological mystification, and provided a feast of riches to the wealthiest corporations and families.

It was no accident that the first actions of the Reagan administration were to bust PATCO, endorse the interest rate hikes of Volcker, and cut taxes for the wealthiest families and corporations. This two bit actor turned the agencies of government that were established to protect labor, civil, and other rights into attack dogs against these very same rights.

This new model of political governance, popularly called neoliberalism, combined with an increased readiness to project military power globally, was designed to strengthen in a qualitative way the position of US capitalism at home and abroad. But, as is said, the best laid plans of mice and men often come to naught, at least in the long run.

If I could sum up before moving on, the present economic crisis cannot be simply laid on the doorstep of the sub-prime leading crisis. Instead it was the result of the interweaving of a short-term cyclical crisis of the economy, especially in housing, with a longer term crisis of overproduction (too many commodities and too little purchasing power) and over accumulation (too much surplus value and too few ways to absorb it profitably), and the political ascendancy of the extreme right, dating back three decades.

It may go without saying, but the crisis in its short and long term form were driven by the system's built-in objective of amassing maximum corporate profits and power through wage exploitation (the process by which a sizeable portion of the values that workers create in the labor process are appropriated by the capitalist class) and the dispossession (usually coerced) of people’s collective possessions (for example, social security) and rights, domestically and internationally.

Given this situation, the Obama administration faces daunting challenges. Nevertheless, the new President, in my view, is off to a quick start. In less than two weeks he has:

* Issued an order to close Guantanamo prison and end torture - a practice that stains our image, violates our constitution, and endangers our troops in the field.

* Signed the Lilly Ledbetter bill that would give much greater scope to workers’ discrimination claims as well as a bill that would extend health care to millions of children.

* Released funds to clinics that serve women heath care needs in the developing countries.

* Expressed support for higher fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles - something the UAW also supports.

* Dispatched George Mitchell to the Middle East in hopes of mediating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – a conflict that cannot be solved by military means, but only by negotiation between the Israeli government and the representatives of the Palestinian people with aim of establishing an independent and viable Palestinian state and the right of both states live peacefully and within secure borders.

* The President met with military generals to map out a withdrawal plan for Iraq.

Of course, the Obama administration’s immediate challenge will be to revive the economy. And the overarching question is: from where will the economic recovery come from in the near term? The only answer is: thru the massive injections of money from the federal government into the economy, into the hands of people who will spend it. Lagging demand for goods and services is the problem.

In this regard, the President's stimulus bill passed this week in the House should be welcomed and supported. Despite what Republicans say, it is a good bill that will ease the pain of this crisis, create jobs, and begin to reflate the economy. Some economists, like Paul Krugman, say that it isn’t enough, that a trillion dollars plus and additional infrastructure spending would be better. I would agree with Krugman, but I also see the current bill as a first installment of the administration’s recovery plan. In fact, Krugman may have the economics right, but the politics wrong.

President Obama in my opinion would make a mistake if he proceeded like a bull in a china shop. He’s the president of the country, not an op-ed writer for the New York Times, and thus has a different set of considerations and pressures. On the other hand, if the President agrees to too many concession demands from the Republican side it will water down the bill’s stimulus potential and come back to bite him later on.

I would further add that even if Obama had introduced and passed a bigger stimulus package, there is no guarantee that a full-blooded and sustained recovery of the economy will follow. According to conventional wisdom and mainstream economists, high growth rates, near full employment, and healthy profit rates are the normal condition of a capitalist economy. Departures from this norm, it is said, are only passing moments during which capitalism removes barriers to future growth and creates the conditions for a new expansion that surpasses old peaks in production, employment and profits.

There is considerable evidence to question this view. Indeed, one has to wonder what the long-run prospects of US and world capitalism are. Was the “golden age” of U.S. capitalism from 1945-1973, during which economic growth rates, investment levels and living standards steadily increased, the norm or the exception to the norm? Will the last thirty years of sluggish and lopsided growth continue, but at a significantly lower level, much like Japan did for an entire decade in the 1990s? Is US capitalism, restrained by big corporate interests (energy, military, health care, pharmaceutical, financial and others), capable of going over to a new and robust growth path, resting on green industry, jobs and technology, on military conversion to peacetime production, on rising living standards and rights for working people, and on racial and gender equality?

Given these realities, I maintain that the economic recovery plan must include not only a sizeable and sustained economic stimulus, but also far-reaching political and economic reforms in order to restructure the economy along new lines. One without the other is not enough. Both economic stimulus and political-economic restructuring are necessary if US economy is to have any chance of resuming a developmental growth path that is robust, sustainable (in a double sense – economically and environmentally) and favors the interests of the working class and its allies.

If this is the case, the Obama administration and the broad coalition that supports him will almost inevitably have to consider – and they already are – the following measures:

* Public ownership of the financial system and the elimination of the shadow banking system and exotic derivatives.

* Counter-crisis spending of a bigger size and scope to invigorate and sustain a full recovery and meet human needs – something that the New Deal never accomplished.

* Strengthening of union rights in order to rebalance the power between labor and capital in the economic and political arenas.

* Trade agreements that have at their core the protection and advancement of international working class interests.

* Democratic public takeover of the energy complex as well as a readiness to consider the takeover of other basic industries whose future is problematic in private hands.

* Rerouting investment capital from unproductive investment (military, finance and so forth) to productive investment in a green economy and public infrastructure.

* Changing direction of our nation’s foreign policy toward cooperation, disarmament, and diplomacy. We can’t have threats, guns and military occupations on the one hand and butter, democracy, goodwill, and peace on the other.

* Serious and sustained commitment to assisting the developing countries that are locked in poverty and misery.

Or to approach the same issue in another way: Will the political-economic reforms be modest, or will they be radical in nature, and when taken together, constitute a new model of political-economic governance at the state and corporate level – a new New Deal? By that I mean a reconfiguring of the role and functions of government and corporations so that they favor working people, the racially and nationally oppressed, women, youth, seniors, small business people and other social groupings.

Such a model would draw from the New Deal experience, but in the end it has to be shaped by today’s conditions and requirements for political and economic advance for the broadest sections of the American people as well as people across the globe.

The new model of governance wouldn’t be socialist, but it would challenge corporate power, profits and prerogatives.

Depression conditions prompted President Franklin Roosevelt and his advisers — albeit with a mighty assist from a powerful all-people’s coalition led by the industrial unions and the multiracial working class — to reconfigure the role and functions of the state to the advantage of the ordinary people. This reconfiguration wasn’t easy or done in a day.

Indeed, it was a hard fought struggle that combined unity of the Roosevelt-led coalition at every turn, mass mobilization, and a good dose of experimentation. The broad people’s movement would do well to study the New Deal experience, not in a mechanical way, but with an eye to gaining insights for today’s struggles and challenges.

In the meantime, we have some immediate struggles on our hands But the good news is that the broad movement that elected President Obama and larger majorities in the Congress is up and running.

This movement, or if you like, this loose coalition in which labor plays a larger and larger leadership role, can exercise an enormous influence on the political process. Never before has a coalition with such breadth walked on the political stage of our country. It is far larger than the coalition that entered the election process a year ago; it is larger still than the coalition that came out of the Democratic Party convention in August.

The task of labor and its allies is to provide energy and leadership to this wide-ranging coalition. Yes, we can bring issues and positions into the political process that go beyond the initiatives of the Obama administration. But we should do this within the framework of the main task of supporting Obama’s program of action.

We can disagree with the Obama administration without being disagreeable. Our tone should be respectful. We now have not simply a friend, but a people's advocate in the White House.

When the administration and Congress take positive initiatives, they should be wholeheartedly supported and welcomed. Nor should anyone think that everything will be done in 100 days. After all, main elements of the New Deal were codified into law in 1935, 1936 and 1937.

Of course, change won’t be easy. The pressures to weaken, even mothball, progressive, anti-corporate measures will come from many quarters.

That said, the opportunities for working class and people's gains are extraordinary. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

First, we have to support the passage of the President's stimulus bill in the Senate.

Second, we have to bloc any Republican efforts to derail the nomination of Hilda Solis, the nominee for the Secretary of Labor. This is the first round in the battle to pass the EFCA. Some may think this is a struggle of only the labor movement. But nothing could be further from the truth. A bigger labor movement in this country would strengthen the struggle on every front. No one expressed this point better than Martin Luther King toward the end of his life.

Third, we have to join others in resisting evictions and foreclosures – not to mention cutbacks and layoffs at the state and city level.

Fourth, the wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have to be brought to a close. As former President Lyndon Johnson realized too late, wars of occupation (in this case Vietnam) can quickly ruin a presidency that has great promise.

In any case, we have our work cut out for us. But I think we can confidently say that change is coming. And we will build a more perfect union.

"The Communist Party USA views the 2008 elections as a tremendous opportunity to defeat the policies of the right-wing Republicans and to move our country in a new progressive direction.

The record turnout in the Democratic Presidential primary races shows that millions of voters, including millions of new voters, are using this election to bring about real change. We wholeheartedly agree with them."

http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/907/1/4/
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A Landslide Mandate For Change

Congratulations on an extraordinary history making election!

We can think back with pride to decades of hard work toward our strategic goal of a big enough, broad enough and united enough labor and all-people’s movement that could overcome the ultra-right blockage to all progress. That all people’s movement has come to life, it is dynamic and it has the potential to keep growing.

The election of Barack Obama and a strengthened Congress creates new conditions in our country. There is now the possibility to shift gears and move forward. This new day requires us to further develop our tactics in order to continue to deepen and broaden labor and people’s unity.

There are thousands of experiences that we all have had in these momentous days, some large, some small, all of which express the enormity of change in thinking and readiness for involvement that is underway and that steels us for the battles ahead.

The tears of joy we all shared as crowds gathered to watch the election results here and throughout the world dramatize the new moment we are in.

http://cpusa.org/article/articleview/991/1/154/
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Exclusive: Bill Ayers Talks About Election Night in Grant Park
[Obama win brings commie Ayers to tears!]

From NBC Chicago, Jan 21, 2009:

Bill Ayers was "overflowing with happiness, relief, love" when he and his wife went to Grant Park with tens of thousands of Chicagoans to celebrate the election of President Barack Obama.

Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, spoke exclusively with NBC Chicago's Dick Johnson about why they joined the Election Night celebration in the park, where 40 years before they helped stage the Days of Rage riots.

The couple said they got last-minute tickets from a friend to be in Grant Park that night.

"I couldn't stop crying a couple of times. I found the exact spot where I was beaten 40 years ago," Ayers said. "But I've never been in a crowd that large that wasn't edged with either anger or drunkenness or gluttony, and it was really an extraordinary feeling."

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Exclusive-Bill-Ayers-Talks-About-Election-Night-in-Grant-Park.html
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Saul Alinsky on "Change"...
From 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 change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution."

Saul Alinsky, The Latter Rain (LatterRain.com is a "Liberation Theology" commie-left website -etl)
http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/alinski.htm
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"Barack Obama told supporters that
'change has come to America' as he
claimed victory in a historic presidential election."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/election.president/index.html

His friend and neighbor Mike Klonsky is a communist.

I don't know if Klonsky is a neighbor of Obama's (like Bill Ayers), but he did work with him on various re-educational programs....

RE: Arne Duncan, Obama's Education Secretary:

"[Bill] Ayers and his co-author Michael Klonsky responded to [Arne] Duncan in an article published in Phi Delta Kappan -- a professional journal for education -- describing him as 'the brightest and most dedicated schools leader Chicago has had in memory,'"

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/16/duncan-praised-bona-fide-reformer-chicago-educators/
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"This is a guy [Bill Ayers] who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

Source: ABC News - Transcript: Obama and Clinton Debate, April 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/Story?id=4670271&page=2
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[Obama] is named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge founded by Bill Ayers
(article typo has Ayers instead of Obama)

In late 1993, Bill Ayers, now an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, organized a team to put together a grant proposal to secure nearly $50 million from the Annenberg Challenge. The money was to be used by Ayers and co. to bolster the radical Local School Councils reform project that Ayers and Obama had championed back in 1988 through the ABCs.

The grant application was successful and in early 1995 Barack Obama was named chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers was named co-chair of the Challenge’s operative and strategic body, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative. Ayers and Obama work together for the next five years on raising an additional $60 million in matching money from local foundations and corporations and using the money to intervene in the governance of the Chicago public schools.

The Challenge through a multi-million dollar Leadership Development Initiative intervened in the School Council elections in the middle of what was known as the Chicago School Wars. At the same time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was pushing, successfully, to gut the power of the Councils.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/12/the-obama-ayers-top-ten-highlights-of-the-20-year-obama-ayers-connection/
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"The Small Schools Workshop was founded in 1991 at the University of Illinois at Chicago to provide support for teachers who were trying to create new smaller learning environments. Its director is Michael Klonsky, a former professor of education at UIC."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Schools_Workshop
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Some background on Bill Ayers' SDS comrade, Michael Klonsky
(Chicago Annenberg Challenge-related)

"One of Bill Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s comrades in the late 60s Students for a Democratic Society was Mike Klonsky. When Dohrn and Ayers moved in one direction toward the violent tactics of the Weather Underground, Klonsky, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, dropped the pro-Russian communist politics of his parents and became a committed Maoist. As leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977 [not to be confused with Communist Party USA. CPML no longer exists, CPUSA formed decades earlier and is still around-ETL], he travelled to Beijing and was toasted by the senior Beijing leadership.

When the crazy left of the 70s died in the 80s, Klonsky went to graduate school in education in Florida and then moved to Chicago.

While driving a cab there he [Michael Klonsky] was recruited by his old friend Bill Ayers to head up a new project called the Small Schools Workshop in 1991. It’s offices were in the Department of Education building at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus where Ayers taught.

In 1995 the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge headed by Ayers and Obama gave the Workshop a grant of $175,000.

The Annenberg Challenge also had its office space in the same building as Ayers Department and the Workshop, rent free courtesy of the University.

In 2008 Klonsky ran a blog on the official Obama campaign website on education policy and “social justice” teaching. When discussion of the Klonsky blog emerged in the blogosphere, it was promptly shut down by the campaign and all of the posts made by Klonsky were removed from the site."

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/12/the-obama-ayers-top-ten-highlights-of-the-20-year-obama-ayers-connection/
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In 1977, the October League was reorganized as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [again, not Communist Party USA (CPUSA) -ETL] and former SDS activist Michael Klonsky became party chairman. Also in 1977, Klonsky traveled to China and the CPML was recognized by the Chinese Communist Party as its official sister party in America.

(snip)

In January 1981, Michael Klonsky resigned as party chairman, and the CPML disbanded that same year.

The previous Red Encyclopedia description of the CPML was incorrectly combined with that of the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist).

http://reds.linefeed.org/past.html
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From Investor's Business Daily (IBD), August 27, 2008:

"Ayers, now a tenured distinguished professor of education at UIC, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.

One of Ayer's descriptions for a course called 'Improving Learning Environments' says prospective K-12 teachers need to 'be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and ... be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation.

The Annenberg papers are quite extensive — 132 boxes containing 947 file folders with 70 linear feet of material. They undoubtedly contain more surprises regarding Obama's relationship with Ayers, one of many relationships Obama has sought to hide.'..."

Article: Annenberg Papers: Putting On Ayers?
http://www.ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=304729375940845
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Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA [Maoist]
Revolution #63, October 1, 2006

Interview with Bill Ayers:
"On Progressive Education, Critical Thinking and the Cowardice of Some in Dangerous Times"
http://rwor.org/a/063/ayers-en.html

Are you also aware that Ayers and 0bama were at school within a quarter mile of each other in New York from 1982-84, and had mutual friends?

All of this info (except the part about Klonsky living near Obama and Ayers) has been on my FR Home page for months...

"Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review."
http://obama.senate.gov/about/
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Bill Ayers' education:
1987 - Ed.D, Columbia University, Curriculum & Instruction
1987 - M.Ed, Teachers College, Columbia University, Early Childhood Education
1984 - M.Ed, Bank Street College, Early Childhood Education
1968 - B.A., University of Michigan, American Studies
http://education.uic.edu/directory/faculty_info.cfm?netid=bayers
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Bank Street College
Where We Are and How to Get Here:

Bank Street College is located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at 610 West 112th Street, between Broadway and Riverside Drive.

Bank Street College is located in a bustling family and university neighborhood four blocks from Columbia University
http://www.bankstreet.edu/aboutbsc/visiting.html
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Obama and the case of the missing 'thesis'
July 24, 2008
By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer

excerpt:

The hunt for Obama’s senior “thesis” began with a throwaway line in a newspaper article last October. The New York Times story, on Obama’s early New York years, mentioned in passing that the presidential contender had majored in political science at Columbia and had spent his time “writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.”

Journalists began hounding Columbia University for copies of the musty document. Conservative bloggers began wondering if the young Obama had written a no-nukes screed that he might come to regret. And David Bossie, the former congressional investigator and “right-wing hit man,” as one newspaper described him, took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University’s newspaper and the Chicago Tribune in March searching for the term paper.

Bossie came up dry, but said the effort was well worth it:

“A thesis entitled Soviet Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations),” he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News.

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/24/1219454.aspx
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Here is the passage from the New York Times that the above article refers to:

"He barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament. He dismisses in one sentence his first community organizing job — work he went on to do in Chicago — though a former supervisor remembers him as 'a star performer.'"

Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say
By JANNY SCOTT, October 30, 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html?ex=1351396800&en=631bf83f428647f9&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

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