Posted by
meg on Wednesday, April 09, 2008 7:57:35 PM
What do William Ayers, former Weather Underground, and Rashid Khalidi, the professor at Columbia University who arranged the Ahmedinejad visit and has direct ties to the PLO, and Barack Obama have in common? According to well placed sources, Barak Obama and William Ayers directed money to Rashid Khalidi, the Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi has long been at the center of controversy for his anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian statements. In 2005, Khalidi was barred from participating in a teacher training program in the New York City public school system for his extremist statements.
Here are the connections per my source.
Allison Davis, who hired Obama into his small, Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill, in 1993, left the firm in late 1999 or early 2000 and became a housing developer. Davis then went into business with Tony Rezko, who he met when Rezko was a client of the firm. Rezko is presently under indictment for demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. In October 2006, Rezko was indicted for extortion of businesses seeking to do business with the Illinois Teachers Retirement System Board and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. He was also charged with wire fraud for staging false transactions of his pizza stores in order to secure $10 million in loans from GE Capital. Rezko is a fundraiser for Obama.
Obama has been identified as one of the politicians cited in the indictment as receiving political contributions from Rezko out of the kickback funds. Tony Rezko hosted fundraising events for Obama in his home and was on Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign finance committee which mobilized $14 million for him. Obama has already returned $85,000 that Rezko and family had personally donated to him.
Connections continued:
While a state senator in early 2000, Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based foundation focused on making grants to increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities. The chairman of the Woods Fund board in 2000 was Howard Stanback, who, like Obama, also had connections to Davis. Davis submitted a grant request to the Woods Foundation for a $1 million investment in his development partnership, Neighborhood Rejuvenation LP that would be used to build low-income senior housing. By policy, a board member is supposed to recuse themselves from decisions where they have a business or personal relationship. Obama, however, did not. In fact, Obama voted to approve Davis’ grant request. Stanback, on the other hand, abstained from voting. The housing project, which also received a $5.7 million loan from the city, added almost $70,000 in political campaigns, including his presidential bid. Rezko gave Obama his first two political contributions in 1995, $1,000 each from two of his companies. In 1998, State Senator Obama wrote letters to city and state officials urging them to fund a Davis-Rezko housing project.
The fundraisers continue:
Another significant fundraiser for Obama is William Ayers, who sat on the board of the Woods fund with Obama and is also a professor at the University of Chicago. Bill Ayers, along with his wife Bernadine Dohrn, was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical extremist group that conducted a series of direct actions against the US government throughout the early to mid-1970s. Ayers and Dohrn went underground in 1970 after others in the group accidentally exploded a bomb in a Greenwich Village townhouse, which killed three of them including Ayers’ girlfriend at the time. During the period Ayers and Dohrn were in hiding, the Weather Underground participated in the bombings of the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and a State Department building. In 1981 Ayers and Dohrn turned themselves in, but all charges were dropped as a result of the government legal misconduct. In his 2001 memoir, Ayers wrote, “I don’t regret setting the bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers and Dohrn held at least one fundraiser for Barack Obama in their home in Chicago.
During Obama’s last year on the board of The Woods Fund (2002), he participated in awarding grants, including a $70,000, two-year grant to the Arab American Action Network, a Chicago-based group founded by Rashid and Mona Khalidi. Like Ayers and Rezko, Rashid Khalidi also held a fundraising event in his home for Obama. From 1972-83, Khalidi was the director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, FAFA. His wife worked there as well. When the Khalidis left Chicago for Columbia University where Rashid had been given the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies, their leave-taking party included testimonials from Bill Ayers and Barack Obama.
The above narrative contains the facts as collected and assembled by well-placed sources. Questions remain: What other fund raising connections does Obama have? How many times can you look the other way in church and with fund raising situations with more than questionable people?