Jeremy Caverley
21 July 2010
Obama Nation: Can the “Hope & Change” Promise Make A Positive Difference?
Have you ever wondered how Barack Hussein Obama became president? Being the first African American is a great accomplishment. He served three terms in the senate from 1992 to 2005 until he decided to run for the presidency. He graduated Columbia University and Harvard Law School and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. In 2000 he lost a bid for a seat in the House of Representatives. A debatable subject is his birth. Records show he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but others believe that Kenya is his real birth location. We do know that his mother Stanley Ann Dunham got remarried to Lolo Soetoro from Kenya after Barack Obama Sr. died. Obama Jr. from age six to ten went to schools such as Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School while living in Jakarta. Then in 1971 he moved to live with his grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham. From the fifth grade until his high school graduation in 1979 he attended Punahou School. This opened the doors for him to attend Occidental College. His first public speech was about disinvestment from South Africa due to the Apartheid. Then in 1981 he transferred to Columbia University in New York City. His major was political science with specialties in international relations. For a year he worked at the Business International Corporation and then the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Later, he moved back to Chicago and was hired as the director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP) from June 1985 to May 1988. This is a church-based organization with eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland. While there, he set up a job training program, college prep tutoring, and tenants’ rights in Altgeld Gardens. Plus, he worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation. While Obama was at Harvard Law School he was selected as the editor of the Harvard Law Review during his first year and president the second year. Each summer he went back to Chicago and worked as a summer associate for law firms Sidley Austin in 1898 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. He graduated with honors from Harvard in 1991 receiving a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude. Then he really made headlines as the first black president of the Harvard Law review which opened the doors to a publishing contract for a book on race relations. This in turn became his manuscript for a personal memoir called “Dreams from My Father.” Also in 1991, he took a two-year job as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School while working on his first book.
For the next twelve years, he was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and then a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004 at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law. Also during some of this time from April to October 1992, he directed Illinois’s Project Vote. They registered 150,000 of the 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state. Crain’s Chicago Business Obama in 1993 listed him as “40 under Forty” powers to be. Law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland hired him as an associate for three years in 1993 to 1996 and then counsel from 1996 to 2004. His law license became inactive in 2002. I have to stop here for a moment and ask this question: How can a man that loses his law license still remain in law? It is a question a lot of Americans are asking. Obama then served on the board of directors for the Woods Fund of Chicago and Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Now let’s look at his time while he was in the Senate.
Obama in 1996 succeeded State Senator Alice Palmer in the Illinois 13th District. He sponsored tax credits for low-income workers, welfare reform, and increased subsides for childcare. In 2001 he was the co-chairman of the bipartisan Join Committee on Administrative Rules. Then he was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998 and again in 2002. But in 2000 he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to Bobby Rush.
As chairman of the Illinois Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, he sponsored a monitor of racial profiling to require police to record the race of drivers they detained. Then during his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate he was active with police in enacting death penalty reforms. Obama’s March 2004 win in primary election into the U.S. Senate, made him popular. The Democratic Party was excited by his endeavors and this led to Obama reissuing his memoir, Dream from My Father. In the November 2004 general election, he won 70% of the vote.
When Obama was senator in 2005 he was the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly said he was a “loyal Democrat” from the findings of the analysis of all Senate votes in 2005-2007. He was ranked the “most liberal” senator from 2005 through 2007 by the National Journal. His approval in Illinois was 72% during the time of him holding the senate office. While as a senator, Obama accomplished much. Such as the cosponsored Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act and the two laws with his name: Lugar-Obama, it increased the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction for weapons, and the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, which created the USAspending.gov that showed federal spending.
Then Senator Obama teamed up with Thomas R. Carper, Tom Coburn, and John McCain to create the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008. He also voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. President Bush signed into law the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act, which was the first federal legislation to pass with Obama being the sponsor. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act were passed into law September 2007 when Obama worked with Senator Feingold to help corporate jet provision.
Two laws that he couldn’t get passed were the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, which would criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections. It makes me wonder how “ACORN, SEIU, Van Jones, and the other Czars”, have slipped through the cracks for so long. It’s because total power corrupts and the socialist institution known as the Democratic Party is getting worse in covering up their mistakes. The second bill that didn’t pass was the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007. After being in the war of Iraq for over ten years you would think we would be ahead, but we are still fighting a war that is needed, but not supported enough.
In 2008, his amendment to the Defense Authorization Act helped personality disorder military discharges. The Iran Sanctions Enabling Act didn’t pass due to fear of nuclear terrorism. The Senate amendment of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program brought protection to family members assisting soldiers with combat-related injuries.
Obama also held various Senate Committees for Foreign Relations, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs. Then he left the Environment and Public Works to work with Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. While as the Chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on European Affairs, he met with Mahmoud Abbas and gave a speech at the University of Nairobi condemning corruption of the Kenyan government. It was on November 13, 2008 he announced his resignation in the Senate to run for the office of the President.
The “Hope and Change” mentioned during Obama’s campaign for presidency brought many people together believing that the future would be bright and filled with great expectations. His ideas were ending the Iraq War, creating a better energy independence and universal health care. He also wanted Guantanamo Bay’s detention camp closed “as soon as practicable as and no later than” January 2010. He also promised to reduce the secrecy to presidential records and changed procedures with the Freedom of Information Act. Then to further change things he reversed Bush’s ban on federal funding to foreign establishment that allow abortions and the limited funding of embryonic stem cell research. Then he changed the interrogation techniques by requiring the use of the Army Field Manual. One of his executive orders was “Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel.” Followed by two Presidential Memoranda’s about energy independence and ended the Mexico City Policy which banned grants for abortions or counseling and he also signed the bill raising taxes to 62 cents a pack for cigarettes. His greatest accomplishment was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize October 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” But was his reward given to early? I believe so because he hasn’t been president long enough to make real change in foreign policy.
Obama’s policy changes started from the beginning. He made transparency more available with executive order 13233 being revoked and by using Whitehouse.gov and YouTube to show a weekly address. The only problem with this statement of transparency was that he failed to show debates over the health care reform on C-Span all the time. Then Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said “The Obama administration has now taken exactly the same position as the Bush administration… I don’t see how you can keep people from knowing who visits the White House and adhere to a policy of openness and transparency.” So on June 16, 2009 the lawsuit was made. Also on this same date, MSNBC said that the visitor logs since January 20th inauguration was denied. The White House had a rebuttal and on January 29, 2010 they began to release names of the visitor records only after visiting the White House. All names can be found online at the official White House website.
From the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the Cash for Clunkers, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, our country is being taken over by allowing small and large businesses to lose their power by the government’s hands. Then you have to take into effect people like Bill Ayers, Van Jones, being associates and Czars for the president having ties to communism and terrorism. The Weather Underground bombed the U.S. and made a declaration to destroy America as we see it today. They believe a totalarian government is the only way to go. As long as we continue this direction, America’s future will become a socialist’s wet dream.
With friends like these who needs enemies? Obama suggests in Dreams is revealing: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Frantz Franon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy.” Franz Franon advocated “revolutionary violence.” Next is Barbara Ransby, who was on the panel “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations” along with Obama and Bill Ayers. We all know that Bill Ayers is the founder of the Weather Underground. Ransby helped create the Black Radical Congress. Trevor Loudon said this in June 1998, “It seemed to us the idea of bringing together the varied sections of the Black radical tradition- Socialists and Communists, revolutionary nationalists, and radical Black feminists and womanists— was long overdue. We began talking with others about the idea and possibilities for such a gathering. . . . Those who gathered reflected a broad spectrum of the radical tradition. Participants came as individuals but represented connections to groups ranging from the New Afrikan People’s Organization, Black Workers for Justice, The Labor Party, The Communist Party, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, African American Agenda 2000, The Chicago Ida B. Wells Forum and the Committees of Correspondence.” So would it be to no surprise when Obama said, ”Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers” during his speech for the Call of Renewal Conference on June 28, 2006. I do agree with him that this is somewhat true, but what is his reasoning behind it? The answer to that becomes clear after looking at a few more of his associates. Take Saul Alinsky, who Obama never met but was influenced by his fundamental teachings. David Horowitz a “radical-turned conservative” states that Alinsky a “Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the dual political tactics of confrontation and infiltration that characterized the 1960’s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States.” It was a Alinsky follower by the name of Gregry Galluzzo who taught Obama “to embrace the organizing theories of Chicago radical Saul Alinksy, putting his pre-convictions on hold and conducting scores of interviews –‘one-on-ones’—with local residents and community leaders in an attempt to find areas in which their self-interests converged and could be harnessed to create power and to drive communal action.” This brought on what would later be known as the New Party.
The New Party was a creation from University of Wisconsin’s professor Joel Rogers and Sandy Pope. Rogers started the Apollo Alliance which later helped Obama’s 2009 Stimulus Bill Cap and Trade. The party had members from the Democratic Socialists for America (DSA) that worked with ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Their agenda was “that the social, economic, and political progress of the United States requires a democratic revolution in America—the return of power to the people. Democracy in America does not work today.” Each member was held accountable to the following principles: “The establishment, defense, and facilitation of worker, consumer, shareholder, and taxpayer rights to democratic self-organization. The creation of a sustainable economy based on the responsible and reverent use of our earth’s resources—taking no more than we need, replacing and reusing all that we can. A society in which we all take seriously our responsibilities as parents, workers, and citizens. The democratization of our banking and financial system—including popular election of those charged with public stewardship of our banking system, worker-owner control over their pension assets, community-controlled alternative financial institutions. A Bill of Rights for America’s Children, guaranteeing true equality of opportunity, providing equal education for all students, and achieving an adequate standard of health care, nutrition, housing, and safety. Community-control equitable funding of our schools, within which we seek true excellence in public education along with equal opportunity to achieve it. Full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal ‘social wage’ to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity. A progressive tax system based on the ability to pay. A reduction of national military spending to that necessary to the defense of the United States and an end to unilateral military interventions. Trade among nations consistent with mutual improvement in living standards, reduced cross-national inequalities, and sustainable development. In all aspects of our economy and social life, an absolute bar to discrimination based on race, gender, age, country of origin, and sexual orientation, and absolute security in reproductive rights, fundamental liberties, and privacy.” The New Zeal blog found the Spring 1996 newspaper New Party News stating, “New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate).” Obama said that, “these victories prove that small‘d’ democracy can work.”
Another New Party member, Manning Marable said, “Obama is not a Marxist or a socialist—he is a progressive liberal.” Now I have to again stop here and say what is the definition of a “progressive”? It is a reform against what is already established. But from what I have seen Obama is clearly not a liberal but a strong progressive liberal leaning towards socialism. But if I had to define him with one word it would be “socialist.” I could go on with Van Jones who was removed from his office after people showed the truth of his socialism and terrorist connections and other Czars that have shown progressive socialism history, but I will hold that off for another essay. Now that I have defined Obama, how could such a person win the presidency in 2012?
For Obama to win in 2012 he will have to make some drastic changes. The unemployment rate would have to drop below 8% and a cut in taxes should help accomplish this. Then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan would have to end or remove troops and just bomb it, then pull out. Next on the list would have to remove the Czars and risky people he has in office or associated with. Israel must been shown more support and the fight against Iran, North Korea should be delegated carefully. For those concerned with his origin of birth, he should release most of his records. I personally have a history in the military with a Top Secret clearance so I know his records are hidden to protect him from blackmail. Then the lack of transparency must be address by releasing more of the government records to public knowledge. Ron Paul is correct by wanting the Federal Reserve audited, so Obama must do this as well. Obama’s lack of integrity and responsibility towards admitting and taking ownership of the White House Presidency and quit blaming Bush, this should be followed up by a public apology to the American people.
The Lincoln style socialism of Obama can be turned around only if the free will of Barack Hussein Obama makes true change in his personal life. Time will tell from the elections of the Senate and House in November, to what he does in the next two years. From what I see and have heard, he seems to be a man of extremes so this balance must come if he is to ever remain in politics with a positive light. For when the truth is exposed it sets you free. I pray that Obama listens to the people.
Works Cited
Barack Obama, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
Obamas Hope and Change http://obamashopeandchange.com/
Presidency of Barack Obama http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Barack_Obama Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance Three Rivers Press, 1995
Barack Obama, Call to Renewal Conference, Soujourners, June 28, 2006,
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_obama_say_we_no_longer.html
Trevor Loudon, “Black Radicals for Obama,” RBO, October 12, 2008 http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2008/20/04/loudon-black-radicals-for-obama
Van Jones & Bill Ayers Have In Common http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/what-do-bill-ayers-and-van-jones-have-in-common-stormy-weather-of-course/
PlentyMag.com, “Coal and clear skies: Obama’s balancing act. An investigative report of presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s environmental philosophy,” Mother Nature Network, April 8, 2009: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/politics/stories/coal-and-clear-skies-obama's-balancing-act
“The New Party Principles,” ThirdWorldTraveler.com, undated, http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Political/NewParty_Principles.html
