Chicago Daily Observer

“I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading them or driving them out of it.”

What hate-mongering politician would be so politically incorrect as to suggest that things like higher minimum wages and more government handouts don’t actually help the poor? I’ll identify the culprit at the end of this column, but for now, I’m more interested in figuring out why that statement sounds so controversial.

Poverty is one of the few national issues that, at least on the surface, unites us all. It’s not a political condition; it’s a human one. After all, when’s the last time you’ve heard a politician campaign on a pro-poverty platform?

But although the problem may unite us, the solutions don’t. And perhaps nothing illustrates that better than what’s been happening in Detroit, Michigan, and Buffalo, New York.

Reviewing a Washington Post column about the relationship between Bill Ayers and Sen. Obama, the Post somehow missed the Annenberg Challenge. $100 Milllion Budget, 5 years of collaboration, board meetings etc, but the Post only notes the "facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund".

How can a major newspaper ignore the $100 Million elephant in the room to concentrate on a $200 contribution?

Perhaps the Post could use a trip to the Library at 801 S. Morgan to do some research, if the Librarian would unlock the archives.

More at the Washington Post using below link

A few years ago, executives at the prestigious University of Chicago Medical Center were concerned that an increasing number of patients were arriving at their emergency room with what the executives considered to be non-urgent complaints. The visits were costly to the hospital, and many of the patients, coming from the surrounding South Side neighborhood, were poor and uninsured.

Michelle Obama, an executive at the medical center, launched an innovative program to steer the patients to existing neighborhood clinics to deal with their health needs.

That effort, in time, inspired a broader program the hospital now calls its Urban Health Initiative. To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

In protest of Chicago’s failing school system, Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) is staging a field trip of sorts. He’s urging kids from his legislative district to skip the first day of school, board buses, travel to Winnetka, and attempt to enroll in New Trier High School.

One can understand why Meeks would want better educational options for Chicago kids. But on his way to Winnetka, the senator might want to take a look out the window where there are already many Chicago public schools—charter schools—that are performing on par with top-notch suburban and downstate schools. One such school, Chicago International Charter School, graduates its students 86 percent of the time—comparing quite favorably with public schools Downstate and suburban Chicago, which have an average graduation rate of 84 percent. Overall, charter public schools in Chicago graduate 77 percent of their students, compared with a citywide average of 51 percent.

Why aren’t ... Read More...

Joe Biden, Tim Kaine, or Evan Bayh?

Oh, you silly country rubes. There is not an audacious name in that bunch.

On Saturday, Barack Obama will return to the initial scene of his crimes against humanity with his vice presidential choice in tow.

That choice?

Does the phrase, “We’re putting the band back together,” mean anything to you, Chicago?

That’s right, Obama’s choice will be a friend to lobbyists big and small, the master of economic disaster, a man of few usually unintelligible words, and the man at whose ample teet Obama suckled for his seven vanilla years in the Illinois State Senate—I am of course talking about retiring State Senate President Emil Jones.

Barack Obama’s record as leader of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) has come under scrutiny by, among others Steve Diamond, Tom Maguire, Stanley Kurtz and our own Tom Lifson . The CAC was a group formed in 1995 by former Weather Underground terrorist and current educational radical theorist Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, then an attorney at a politically connected law firm-Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

Barack Obama was the founding chairman of the board and led the organization for 4 years. During his tenure, the CAC received $50 million dollars from the Annenberg Foundation and tens of millions of matching funds from local private and public dollars. This money was supposed to be spent improving the schools of Chicago. However, studies from the CAC itself, and confirmed by an analysis from the well-regarded Thomas B. Fordham Institute, show that the effort directed by Barack Obama led ... Read More...