[Vision2020] An Obama Dilemma

[Andreas Schou]

> Just because they didn't murder anyone (except the Brinks job) doesn't
> mean their hands are clean and you conveniently forget that they
> declared war against the USA, resolving to overthrow the government.
> They were terrorists all the way. Their agenda was no different than
> the 9-11 terrorists.

Chris --

Our legal system punishes methods, not agendas. The particular crime
they were responsible for involved a great deal of loud, explosive
property damage; in other words, vandalism. Their methods intended to
produce terror. I'm not saying that they were not responsible for a
number of serious felonies; however, it insults both the memory of the
victims of 9/11 and any sense of proportionality to compare them to
the 9/11 hijackers.

Doesn't your church still believe that the 9/11 hijackers were agents of God?

>> Incidentally, I don't see that you've made any further defense of your
>> assertion that Liddy was a great patriot.
>
> Please show me where I defended Liddy or wrote that he was a great
> patriot. I gave HIS justification for his behavior and made no attempt
> to justify him.

This is exactly what I mean by 'disingenuous,' Dale. You cannot
preface an argument with "some would say" and then disclaim
responsibility for having made it. Incidentally, this is exactly your
problem with the 'natural born citizen' argument: disclaiming having
made it by third-personing it.

> I'm not inclined to use your experience as a board member as a
> standard to establish Ayers' purity. He was a terrorist and fugitive,
> and then all of a sudden Mr. "Kill Your Parents" wants to influence
> children's education. Do you really think he planned to play by the
> rules? Seriously, given your understanding who do you think appointed
> the board?
>
> "We have given careful thought to the issues you raise in your letter.
> We are working with Adele Simmons, Deborah Leff, and Pat Graham on
> issues of management and governance to ensure that Chicago's Annenberg
> Challenge =initiative is successful . . . . a five to seven person
> Board of Directors of highly respected Chicagoans is being assembled.
> Pat Graham, president of the Spencer Foundation, has agreed to serve
> and is willing to work with the Board."

The board was appointed by the people who claim they appointed the
board; the only person listed by name in the letter: Adele Simmons,
Debbie Leff, and Patricia Graham. Ayers used the "royal we" in
reference to the organization, a phrasing that would be syntactically
bizarre if he had been the only one working with Simmons, Leff, and
Graham. If he had been referring only to himself, English *does* have
a first-person singular pronoun.

If deliberately misread to imply that Ayers was involved directly in
the appointment of the board of directors, this makes him a fourth
member of the selection committee, not the person with the sole
responsibility for selecting Obama. Incidentally, this, itself would
be bizarre: board committees generally have an odd number of members
to establish clear majorities.

> "Graham, a prominent historian of education at Harvard, was President
> of the Spencer Foundation at that time.  Thus, it is possible that
> Ayers may have asked Simmons, Leff and Graham for ideas about board
> members. But it was Ayers' responsibility to make sure an appropriate
> board was, indeed, appointed.  That was not Graham's responsibility
> nor Leff's."

As I've pointed out (and below, you agree with) it is factually
incorrect that the appointment of a permanent board was Ayers'
responsibility.

>>
>>> Interestingly, I noticed that you ignored this salient point from Diamond:
>>>
>>> "In social science and law, written contemporaneous records are
>>> considered a more credible source than ex post recollections by only a
>>> small number of the individuals involved. I thought the same standards
>>> applied in journalism as well."

There's no ambiguity in the record. Diamond's purported 'proof' of
Ayers' involvement in the board appointment is weak sauce: a letter
written in his

>> "A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated
>> for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the
>> creator's family, shareholders of the organization, other designated
>> individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such
>> private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3)
>> organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or
>> individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a
>> personal and private interest in the activities of the organization."
>
> Right, Ayers is an upright citizen who was concerned about following
> the letter of the law. I'm a believer.

Ayers may not have been, but the Annenberg Foundation explicitly
requires that board members of grantee organizations not have
conflicts of interest. Any foundation that regularly disburses
multimillion-dollar grants attaches a tremendous number of strings to
those grants, including regular grant reports, grantor audits, and
bylaw additions.

A board beholden to a grantee agency, or the executive or officer of a
grantee agency, is the very definition of a conflict of interest.

-- ACS