Campaign-Promises.com

By: Mike Allen

October 27, 2008 10:10 AM EST Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is returning to his promise of “a new politics” as he delivers what his campaign calls his “Closing Argument Speech On The Change We Need” in Canton, Ohio, at lunchtime on Monday.

‚ÄúIn one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope,” he says.

With a comfortable lead in state and national polls, Obama is kicking off the final full week of his grueling two-year campaign by shelving the slam and poke of the daily grind for a reminder of the reasons he initially captured the imagination of national Democrats as a promising young unknown.

“In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need,” he says in prepared remarks. “[A]s I’ve said from the day we began this journey all those months ago, the change we need isn’t just about new programs and policies. It’s about a new politics – a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts; one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another.”

Obama says that part of the reason that “the economic crisis occurred is because we have been living through an era of profound irresponsibility.”

“[W]hat we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone,” he said “What has also been lost is the idea that in this American story, each of us has a role to play. Each of us has a responsibility to work hard and look after ourselves and our families, and each of us has a responsibility to our fellow citizens. That’s what’s been lost these last eight years – our sense of common purpose; of higher purpose. And that’s what we need to restore right now.”

Here are excerpts of the speech, released Monday morning by the campaign:

In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street.

In one week, you can choose policies that invest in our middle-class, create new jobs, and grow this economy from the bottom-up so that everyone has a chance to succeed; from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor; from the factory owner to the men and women who work on its floor.

In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.

In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need.

….

At a moment like this, the last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess. They haven’t worked, and it’s time for change. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States.

Now, Senator McCain has served this country honorably. And he can point to a few moments over the past eight years where he has broken from George Bush – on torture, for example. He deserves credit for that. But when it comes to the economy – when it comes to the central issue of this election – the plain truth is that John McCain has stood with this President every step of the way. Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed. Voting for the Bush budgets that spent us into debt. Calling for less regulation twenty-one times just this year. Those are the facts.

And now, after twenty-one months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he’d do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy. Senator McCain says that we can’t spend the next four years waiting for our luck to change, but you understand that the biggest gamble we can take is embracing the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the last eight years.

It’s not change when John McCain wants to give a $700,000 tax cut to the average Fortune 500 CEO. It’s not change when he wants to give $200 billion to the biggest corporations or $4 billion to the oil companies or $300 billion to the same Wall Street banks that got us into this mess. It’s not change when he comes up with a tax plan that doesn’t give a penny of relief to more than 100 million middle-class Americans. That’s not change.

…

The question in this election is not “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” We know the answer to that. The real question is, “Will this country be better off four years from now?”

…

Understand, if we want get through this crisis, we need to get beyond the old ideological debates and divides between left and right. We don’t need bigger government or smaller government. We need a better government – a more competent government – a government that upholds the values we hold in common as Americans.

…

So the choice in this election isn’t between tax cuts and no tax cuts. It’s about whether you believe we should only reward wealth, or whether we should also reward the work and workers who create it. I will give a tax break to 95% of Americans who work every day and get taxes taken out of their paychecks every week. I’ll eliminate income taxes for seniors making under $50,000 and give homeowners and working parents more of a break. And I’ll help pay for this by asking the folks who are making more than $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rate they were paying in the 1990s. No matter what Senator McCain may claim, here are the facts – if you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime – not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing. Because the last thing we should do in this economy is raise taxes on the middle-class.

…

But as I’ve said from the day we began this journey all those months ago, the change we need isn’t just about new programs and policies. It’s about a new politics – a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts; one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another.

Part of the reason this economic crisis occurred is because we have been living through an era of profound irresponsibility. On Wall Street, easy money and an ethic of “what’s good for me is good enough” blinded greedy executives to the danger in the decisions they were making. On Main Street, lenders tricked people into buying homes they couldn’t afford. Some folks knew they couldn’t afford those houses and bought them anyway. In Washington, politicians spent money they didn’t have and allowed lobbyists to set the agenda. They scored political points instead of solving our problems, and even after the greatest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, all we were asked to do by our President was to go out and shop.

That is why what we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone. What has also been lost is the idea that in this American story, each of us has a role to play. Each of us has a responsibility to work hard and look after ourselves and our families, and each of us has a responsibility to our fellow citizens. That’s what’s been lost these last eight years – our sense of common purpose; of higher purpose. And that’s what we need to restore right now.

Popularity: 19% [?]

The Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund of Chicago funded numerous controversial groups while Barack Obama served on their boards between 1995 and 2002, an analysis of their tax returns shows.

In 2001, when Obama was a part-time director of The Woods Fund of Chicago, it gave $75,000 to ACORN, the voter registration group now under investigation for voter fraud in 12 states.

The Woods Fund also gave $6,000 to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attended. The reason for the donation to the church is unclear — it is simply listed as “for special purposes” in the group’s IRS tax form.

It gave a further $60,000 to the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, which was founded and run by Bernardine Dohrn, the wife of domestic terrorist William Ayers and, with her husband, a former member of the 1960s radical group the Weather Underground.

Other controversial donations that year included $50,000 to the Small Schools Network — which was founded by Ayers and run by Michael Klonsky, a friend of Ayers’ and the former chairman of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), an offshoot of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society — and $40,000 to the Arab American Action Network, which critics have accused of being anti-Semitic.

The Woods Fund did not respond to questions about the funding.

When Obama co-chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which calls itself “a public-private partnership improving education for 1.5 million urban and rural public school students,” it gave to some of the same groups — partnering with ACORN to manage funding for schools and giving over $1 million to the Small Schools Network.

It also gave nearly $1 million to a group called the South Shore African Village Collaborative, whose goals, according to Annenberg’s archived Web site, are “to develop more collegial relationships between teachers and principals. Professional development topics include school leadership, team building, parent and community involvement, developing thematic units, instructional strategies, strategic planning, and distance learning and teleconferencing.”

But the group mentions other goals in its grant application to the Annenberg Challenge:

“Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us,” one page of the application reads.

Click here to see the application.

Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, found the collaborative’s original application when going through Annenberg’s archives.

Asked to comment, Yvonne Williams-Kinnison, executive director of the collaborative’s parent group, the Coalition for Improved Education in South Shore said, “I don’t want to put more fuel on the fire. You can call us back after the election…. I don’t want to compromise the position.”

Late Afrocentrist scholars Jacob Carruthers and Asa Hilliard were both invited to give SSAVC teachers a training session, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge noted in a report, adding that the “consciousness raising session … received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey session.”

But Carruthers has been a controversial figure because of inflammatory statements he made in writing.

“The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy,” Carruthers wrote in his 1999 book, “Intellectual Warfare.” “Some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.”

In the book, he compared the process of blacks assimilating into American culture with rape.

“We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist,” Carruthers said.

Hilliard has come under fire for advocating what many consider an extreme Afrocentric curriculum.

He selected the articles for the “African-American Baseline Essays” published in 1987 and first used in the Portland, Ore., school district. The essays have been criticized for claiming, among other things, that ancient Egyptians were the first to discover manned flight and the theory of evolution.

An Obama spokesman called investigation of these ties “pathetic.”

“This is another pathetic attempt by FOX News to distract voters from the economic challenges facing this nation by patching together tenuous links to smear Barack Obama,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

“The Annenberg Challenge was a bipartisan organization dedicated to improving the performance of students and teachers in Chicago Public Schools that was funded by a Republican philanthropist who was friends with President Reagan and launched by Republican Gov. Jim Edgar.”

But Kurtz says those founders of the Annenberg Challenge would not have known the details about to whom their Chicago office — one of 18 around the country — was giving money.

“If you read Ayers’ proposal to Annenberg, it doesn’t sound radical. But if you actually read Ayers’ education writings, they are very radical indeed,” Kurtz said. “Ayers, like so many other savvy professors, knows enough not to state his actual views frankly when applying for money. But you can find the truth in his writings.”

The controversial donations make up only a small portion of the overall amount doled out by the Annenberg and Woods funds. The Woods Fund gave over $3.5 million to 115 different groups in 2001, and the Annenberg Chellenge dispensed nearly $11 million to 63 groups at its height in 1999.

Most of the groups are mainstream and well respected, ranging from the Jazz Institute of Chicago to the Successful Schools Project.

But Kurtz says that this should not obscure what he describes as controversial donations.

“If John McCain had given to white supremacist groups and people said, ‘Hey, the majority of funding didn’t go to supremacist groups’ — that wouldn’t even cut the ice,” Kurtz said.

“I feel certain [Obama] knew about these radical groups,” Kurtz said. “We know that he read the applications because he made statements about the quality of proposals.”

Popularity: 17% [?]

WASHINGTON — Federal agents have broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 88 black people in a Tennessee murder spree, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Monday.

In court records unsealed Monday, federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads. Agents said the skinheads didn’t identify the school by name.

Jim Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office for the ATF, said the two men planned to shoot 88 black people and decapitate another 14. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.

The men also sought to go on a national killing spree, with Sen. Obama as its final target, Mr. Cavanaugh told the Associated Press.

“They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama,” Mr. Cavanaugh said. “They didn’t believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying.”

An Obama spokeswoman traveling with the senator in Pennsylvania had no immediate comment.

The men, Daniel Cowart, 20 years old, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman 18, of West Helena, Ark., were being held without bond. Agents seized a rifle, a sawed-off shotgun and three pistols from the men when they were arrested. Authorities alleged the two men were preparing to break into a gun shop to steal more.

Attorney Joe Byrd, who has been hired to represent Mr. Cowart, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.

Messrs. Cowart and Schlesselman are charged with possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms from a federally licensed gun dealer, and threatening a candidate for president.

The investigation is continuing, and more charges are possible, Mr. Cavanaugh said.

Popularity: 19% [?]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted of seven corruption charges Monday in a trial that tainted the 40-year Senate career of Alaska’s political patriarch.

The verdict, coming just days before Election Day, adds further uncertainty to a closely watched Senate race. Democrats hope to seize the once reliably Republican seat as part of their bid for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Stevens, 84, was convicted of all seven charges he faced of lying about free home renovations and other gifts he received from a wealthy oil contractor. Jurors began deliberating Wednesday at noon.

Stevens faces up to five years in prison on each count when he is sentenced Jan. 26, but under federal sentencing guidelines, he is likely to receive much less prison time, if any.

The monthlong trial revealed that employees for oil services company VECO Corp. transformed the senator’s modest mountain cabin into a modern, two-story home with wraparound porches, a sauna and a wine cellar. Stevens never paid for VECO’s work.

The Senate’s longest-serving Republican, Stevens said he had no idea he was getting freebies. He said he paid $160,000 for the project and said he believed that covered everything.

Stevens asked for an unusually speedy trial, hoping he’d be exonerated in time to return to Alaska and win re-election. He kept his campaign going and gave no indication that he had a contingency plan in case of conviction.

Despite being a convicted felon, he is not required to drop out of the race or resign from the Senate. If he wins re-election, he can continue to hold his seat because there is no rule barring felons from serving in Congress. The Senate could vote to expel Stevens on a two-thirds vote.

“Put this down: That will never happen — ever, OK?” Stevens said in the weeks leading up to his trial. “I am not stepping down. I’m going to run through and I’m going to win this election.

Democrats, who are hoping to capture a filibuster-proof Senate majority, have jumped at the chance to seize the once reliably Republican seat. They have invested heavily in the race, running television advertisements starring fictional FBI agents and featuring excerpts from wiretaps.

Stevens’ conviction hinged on the testimony of Bill Allen, the senator’s longtime drinking and fishing buddy. Allen, the founder of VECO, testified that he never billed his friend for the work on the house and that Stevens knew he was getting a deal.

Stevens spent three days on the witness stand, vehemently denying that allegation. He said his wife, Catherine, paid every bill they received.

Living in Washington, thousands of miles away, made it impossible to monitor the project every day. Stevens relied on Allen to oversee the renovations, he said, and his friend deceived him by not forwarding all the bills.

Stevens is a legendary figure in Alaska, where he has wielded political influence since before statehood. His knack for steering billions of dollars in federal money to his home state has drawn praise from his constituents and consternation from budget hawks.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Democrat’s camp tries to fend off attacks on readiness

By Michael Abramowitz
The Washington Post
6:56 PM CDT, October 25, 2008

Popularity: 18% [?]

RENO, Nev. – Scrambling to win the West, Democrat Barack Obama mocked John McCain on Saturday for aggressively trying to distance himself from President Bush. McCain touted his Western ties and warned that Obama is a tax-and-spend threat to the nation.

Popularity: 20% [?]