For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president. - Ann Coulter

In the book mentioned above, political scientist Larry Bartels looks at personal income growth at various points in the distribution, and finds that under Republican administrations, growth is strongest at the 80th percentile and above; under Democrats, it’s pretty equal across the distribution. Bartels, by the way, says he undertook his research as a totally nonpartisan, objective political scientist of a quantitative bent, and had absolutely no preconception about where his research would take him.

, "It was into my father's image .. that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230) - Obama, Dreams From My Father

A first hint comes from authors E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and David William Cohen in their book The Risks of Knowledge [something people here cringe from like vampires from running water -B] (Ohio U. Press, 2004). On page 182 of their book they describe how Barack Obama's father, a Harvard trained economist, attacked the economic proposals of pro-Western 'third way" leader Tom Mboya from the socialist left, siding with communist-allied leader Oginga Odinga, in a paper Barack Obama's father wrote for the East Africa Journal. As Odhiambo and Cohen write, "The debates [over economic policy] pitted .. Mboya against .. Oginga Odinga [father of current Obama protege Raila Odinga] and radical economists Dharam Ghai and Barrack Obama [Sr -B], who critiqued the document for being neither African nor socialist enough."

The author is given as "Barak H. Obama" and his paper is titled "Problems Facing Our Socialism", published July, 1965 in the East African Journal, pp. 26-33.

Obama stakes out the following positions in his attacks on the white paper produced by Mboya's Ministry of Economic Planning and Development:

1. Obama advocated the communal ownership of land and the forced confiscation of privately controlled land, as part of a forced "development plan", an important element of his attack on the government's advocacy of private ownership, land titles, and property registration. (p. 29)

2. Obama advocated the nationalization of "European" and "Asian" owned enterprises, including hotels, with the control of these operations handed over to the "indigenous" black population. (pp. 32 -33)

3. Obama advocated dramatically increasing taxation on "the rich" even up to the 100% level, arguing that, "there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay" (p. 30) and that, "Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." (p. 31)

4. Obama contrasts the ill-defined and weak-tea notion of "African Socialism" negatively with the well-defined ideology of "scientific socialism", i.e. communism. Obama views "African Socialism" pioneers like Nkrumah, Nyerere, and Toure as having diverted only "a little" from the capitalist system. (p. 26)

5. Obama advocates an "active" rather than a "passive" program to achieve a classless society through the removal of economic disparities between black Africans and Asian and Europeans. (p. 28) "While we welcome the idea of a prevention [of class problems], we should try to cure what has slipped in .. we .. need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now .. so long as we maintain free enterprise one cannot deny that some will accumulate more than others .. " (pp. 29-30)

6. Obama advocates price controls on hotels and the tourist industry, so that the middle class and not only the rich can afford to come to Kenya as tourists. (p. 33)

7. Obama advocates government owned and operated "model farms" as a means of teaching modern farming techniques to farmers. (p. 33)

8. Obama strongly supports the governments assertion of a "non-aligned" status in the contest between Western nations and communist nations aligned with the Soviet Union and China. (p. 26)

So what does all this tell us about Barack Obama, the father, and how does it help us fill in the gaps and decipher Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father? We know from Obama's memoir that his father is an "uncompromising" man whose ideals and principles gets him in trouble with the "big man" who ran Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, leading to a dramatic scene in which Kenyatta personally confronts Obama the father and in one fell swoop destroys not only his government career but ultimately his life.

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," he said Wednesday. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded."

At UC Berkeley, freshmen averaged 60 percent on the test, while seniors scored 55 percent. Stanford's numbers were slightly higher, with freshman averaging 62 percent, and seniors averaging 63 percent.

The study rated UC Berkeley second from last in a ranking it created that assigns a "learning rank" to schools based on students' scores. Berkeley was one of 16 universities, many of them among the most prestigious, that earned a "negative learning" rank because freshmen scored higher than seniors. UC Berkeley earned a negative 5.6, followed only by Johns Hopkins University, with a negative 7.3.

Nationally, seniors averaged 53 percent

on the test, while freshman averaged 52 percent.

The nonpartisan group that contracted the study, the Delaware- based Intercollegiate Studies Institute, said the results indicate that colleges aren't doing enough to teach their students about civics and the basic principles on which America was founded. The country faces a "crisis in citizenship" unless colleges rededicate themselves to instruction in the core principles, the group said.

"We were flabbergasted" by the results, said Josiah Bunting, who chairs the institute's National Civic Literacy Board. The study looked at campuses along the entire spectrum, he said, from the most elite -- such as Harvard and Princeton -- to liberal arts colleges and small religious schools.

"Almost all of these universities talk in their catalogs about a mission of educating people who will be citizens and citizen leaders," Bunting said. "That really was what prompted the study."

The institute contracted with the Department of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut to conduct the three-year study, which officials said is the largest scientifically valid survey ever conducted of student learning in history at colleges and universities.

Among the findings:

-53 percent of seniors could not identify the correct century when the first American colony was established at Jamestown.

-More than 75 percent of seniors could not identify that the purpose of the Monroe Doctrine was to prevent foreign expansion into the Western Hemisphere.

-Only 45 percent of seniors identified the Baath party as the main source of Saddam Hussein's political support.

Among other questions, the WSU form asks professors to evaluate whether a student exhibits an understanding of the complexities of race, power, gender, class, sexual orientation and privilege in American society.

Four times Swan's teachers failed him on this question. He was threatened with termination from the teacher-training program in August after teachers said they feared he could not withhold his opinions in a classroom. He was ordered to a training session with the Office of the Vice President for Equity and Diversity.

Swan described it as a "grilling session" that did not go well.

Melynda Huskey, who works in that office, declined to comment on Swan's case.

"We do quite a bit of diversity education," Huskey said.

Swan was also told to sign an agreement to respect community norms and appreciate diversity. He refused, and WSU withdrew it after receiving complaints from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which argued that it was an unconstitutional intrusion on Swan's freedom. - Seattle Times

It is called dispositions theory, and it was set forth five years ago by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE): Future teachers should be judged by their "knowledge, skills, and dispositions."
What are "dispositions"? NCATE's prose made clear that they are the beliefs and attitudes that guide a teacher toward a moral stance. That sounds harmless enough, but it opened a door to reject teaching candidates on the basis of thoughts and beliefs. In 2002, NCATE said that an education school may require a commitment to social justice. William Damon, a professor of education at Stanford, wrote last month that education schools "have been given unbounded power over what candidates may think and do, what they may believe and value."

NCATE vehemently denies that it is imposing groupthink, but the ed schools, essentially a liberal monoculture, use dispositions theory to require support for diversity and a culturally left agenda, including opposition to what the schools sometimes call "institutional racism, classism and heterosexism."

Predictably, some students concluded that thought control would make classroom dissent dangerous. A few students rebelled when a teacher at Brooklyn College School of Education showed Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" in class and dismissed "white English" as "the language of oppressors." Five students filed written complaints and received no formal reply from the college. One was told to leave the school and take an equivalent course at a community college. Two of the complaining students were then accused of plagiarism and marked down one letter grade. The two were refused permission to bring a witness, a tape recorder, or a lawyer to meet with a dean to discuss the matter.

K.C. Johnson, a history professor at the school who defended the dissenting students, became a target himself. After writing an article in Inside Higher Ed attacking dispositions theory as a form of mind control, Johnson faced a possible investigation by a faculty Integrity Committee.

The Council on Social Work Education, the national accreditor of social work education programs, says candidates must fight "oppression," and sees American society as pervaded by the "global interconnections of oppression." Now aspiring social workers must commit themselves, usually in writing, to a culturally left agenda, often including diversity programs, state-sponsored redistribution of income, and a readiness to combat heterosexism, ableism, and classism.

How would you know if people using fake names had cast votes in states without strict ID laws?" says GOP Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita, who this year won a major Supreme Court case upholding his state's photo identification law. "It's almost impossible to detect and once the fraudulent voter leaves the precinct or casts an absentee ballot, that vote is thrown in with other secret ballots there's no way to trace it."

Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistle-blower who worked for both it and its Project Vote registration affiliate from 2005 until early this year, agrees. "It's ludicrous to say that fake registrations can't become fraudulent votes," she told me. "I assure you that if you can get them on the rolls you can get them to vote, especially using absentee ballots." MonCrief, a 29-year old University of Alabama graduate who wanted to become part of the civil rights movement, worked as a strategic consultant for ACORN as well as a development associate with Project Vote and sat in on meetings with the national staffs of both groups. She has given me documents that back up many of her statements, including one that indicates that the goal of ACORN's New Mexico affiliate was that only 40 percent of its submitted registrations had to be valid.

MonCrief also told me that some ACORN affiliates had a conscious strategy of flooding voter registration offices with suspect last-minute forms in part to create confusion and chaos that would make it more likely suspect voters would be allowed to cast ballots by overworked officials.
...
There are already documented examples of fraudulent registrations being converted into fraudulent votes in Ohio, where ACORN and other groups were active. Darrell Nash, an ACORN registration worker, submitted an illegal form for himself and then cast a paper ballot during the state's "early voting" period.

Franklin County prosecutor Ron O'Brien also cracked down in the case of 13 out-of-state registrants who came to Ohio to register voters in Columbus for the group Vote From Home. The group all lived out of the same rented 1,175-square-foot house in Ohio, registered to vote and then most of them either cast early voting ballots or submitted applications for absentee ballots before leaving the state. They have agreed to have all of their ballots canceled in exchange for the prosecutor's decision not to file charges. - John Fund at Politico