A few nice no money down real estate strategies images I found:
2015 – Vancouver – Chinatown Under Siege – 2 of 2
Image by Ted’s photos – For Me & You
This lot on Gore Avenue at Pender Street will be the next condo to go up in Vancouver’s Chinatown. It is on the east edge of the community.
The vultures are circling. To date most of the new development is around the perimeter but already 3 developments are eating at the heart of the community.
THE HERITAGE BATTLE FOR CHINATOWN
Historic Vancouver neighbourhood is being redeveloped, raising fears it will lose its character.
By JOHN MACKIE, VANCOUVER SUN November 15, 2014
The marketing line for the Keefer Block condo development in Chinatown is “Heritage Meets Modern.”
But just how much heritage will be left after a wave of modern developments washes over the historic district is a matter of debate.
A new proposal for the 700-block of Main Street would demolish the last three buildings from Hogan’s Alley, a once-notorious back lane that was the longtime home of Vancouver’s black community.
Another condo development at 231 Pender would replace a funky, Chinese-themed garage that is listed on Canada’s Register of Historic Places. Angelo Tosi’s family has owned their building at 624 Main since 1930. It may date back to 1895, and looks it — the fixtures and shelving are as old as the hills.
But Tosi is 82, and will probably sell when the price is right. He doesn’t expect his store to survive.
“It’ll be gobbled up by the monstrous buildings,” said Tosi. “And then they’ll take it all, and it’s finished. They won’t keep the heritage on the bottom, they’ll put down whatever they want.”
His fatalistic attitude reflects the changes in Chinatown, which is undergoing a development boom after zoning changes by the City of Vancouver.
The protected “historic” area of Chinatown is now Pender Street, while much of Main, Georgia and Keefer can now be redeveloped, with heights of up to 90 feet (nine storeys). A few sites can go even higher.
Two towers are going up at Keefer and Main — the nine-storey, 81-unit Keefer Block, and the 17-storey, 156-unit 188 Keefer. Up the street at 137 Keefer, a development permit application has just gone in for a new nine-storey “multi-family building.”
None of them has stirred up much controversy. But a recent public meeting about a 12-storey, 137-unit condo to be built on an empty lot at Keefer and Columbia got people riled up.
“There was a lot of angry people that night,” said Henry Yu, a UBC history professor who feels a “vision plan” the Chinatown community worked on with the city for several years is being ignored.
“The vision plan gets passed, (but it has) no teeth,” said Yu. “Actually (there is) no policy, it’s a wish list of ‘Oh, we’d like seniors housing, we’d like to do this, we’d like to do that.’
“Almost immediately, the two (highrise) buildings in the 600-, 700-block Main go up, and they’re just basically Yaletown condos. Not even Yaletown — Yaletown has more character.
“These are straight out of the glass tower (model), no (historic) character, obliterating everything in terms of tying it to the kind of streetscape of Chinatown. You’re going to split the historic two or three blocks of Chinatown with a Main Street corridor of these glass towers.”
Yu says Chinatown has historically been small buildings on 25-foot lots, which makes for a jumble of small stores that gives it a unique look and character. But the new developments are much wider, and just don’t look like Chinatown.
“The two 600-, 700-block buildings have a rain shield that’s an awning, a glass awning that runs the whole block,” said Yu. “That’s the design guideline for the city as a whole, but it was nothing to do with Chinatown, (which is) narrow frontages, changing awnings.
“We said that (to the city planners), we raised it and raised it, but the planners just shoved it down our throat.”
Kevin McNaney is Vancouver’s assistant director of planning. He said the city changed the zoning in parts of Chinatown to help revitalize the neighbourhood, which has been struggling.
“We have been taking a look across Chinatown,” said McNaney. “What we’re finding is that rents are dropping, and vacancies are rising. And that’s a big part of the strategy of adding more people to revitalize Chinatown.
“There are only 900 people currently living in Chinatown, many of them seniors. It’s just not the population base needed to support businesses, so a lot of the businesses are going under. Along Pender Street you see a lot of vacancies right now.
“So at the heart of this plan is to bring more people to revitalize Chinatown, and also use that development to support heritage projects, affordable housing projects and cultural projects.”
Henry Yu disagrees. “The idea that you need density in Chinatown itself, that you need your own captive customer base, is moronic,” he said.
“Where else in the city would you make that argument, that nobody can walk more than two blocks, that no one is going to come in here from somewhere else?
“They will. People go to the International Summer Market in Richmond in an empty gravel field. Ten thousand people at night come from everywhere in the Lower Mainland, because there’s something worth going to.
“The problem isn’t that you need a captive audience that has no other choice but to shop in Chinatown — that’s just stupid, there’s plenty of people in Strathcona. The problem is, is there something worth coming to (in Chinatown)? And that has to do with the character, what the mix is, what kind of commercial.”
Ironically, all the new construction comes just as Chinatown seems to be undergoing a bit of a renaissance. Several new businesses have popped up in old buildings, attracted by the area’s character and cheap rents.
The très-hip El Kartel fashion boutique recently moved into a 6,000 sq. ft space at 104 East Pender that used to house Cathay Importers. It’s on the main floor of the four-storey Chinese Benevolent Association Building, which was built in 1909.
Across the street at 147 East Pender is Livestock, a runner and apparel store that is so cool it doesn’t even have a sign. “We were in Gastown at the corner of Cordova and Abbott, (and) just felt a change was needed,” said store manager Chadley Abalos.
“We found the opportunity in Chinatown, so we decided to move here. We feel it’s one of the new spots that are booming. You see a lot of new businesses — restaurants, clothing stores, furniture. We see the potential in it growing.”
Russell Baker owns Bombast, a chic furniture store at 27 East Pender. But he is not new to the neighbourhood — Bombast has been there for 10 years.
“I think (Chinatown is) one of the most interesting parts of the city,” he said.
“It’s still got some variety, some texture, architecturally, socially, economically. A lot of what’s happened to the downtown peninsula (in recent years) constitutes erasure. This is one of the places that still sort of feels like … it feels more urban than some parts of downtown. I would say downtown is a vertical suburb.
“If you like cities, Chinatown feels like one. That’s why we’re here.”
Baker said he expected Chinatown to happen a lot sooner than it did. Retailers that do well there still tend to be destinations, rather than stores that rely on heavy street traffic. “The buzz is that Chinatown is happening, but it’s really strategic, what’s happening,” he said. “Fortune Sound Club, that’s a niche market that’s destination. That’s the kind of thing that works down here. We’re destination, Bao Bei (restaurant) is destination.”
The new businesses make for an interesting mix with the old ones. The 200 block East Georgia Street is hopping with hipster bars (the Pacific Hotel, Mamie Taylor’s) and art galleries (Access Gallery, 221A, Centre A). But it also retains classic Chinatown shops like the Fresh Egg Mart and Hang Loong Herbal Products.
The question is whether the small businesses will be displaced as the area gentrifies. Real estate values have soared — Soltera paid .5 million for the northwest corner of Keefer and Main in 2011, Beedie Holdings paid .2 million for two parcels of land at Columbia and Keefer in 2013.
That seems like a lot for a site that’s two blocks from the troubled Downtown Eastside, but Houtan Rafii of the Beedie Group said that’s what land costs in Vancouver.
“It is a significant, substantial amount of money, but compared to most every area in Vancouver, it’s not dissimilar, whether you’re in Gastown, downtown, Concord-Pacific, even on the boundaries of Strathcona or on Hastings close to Clark or Commercial,” said Rafii. “It’s not an obscene amount of money, it’s market.”
Rafii said the Beedie Group met with local groups for a year about its development, and was surprised at the reaction it got at the public meeting, which was held because Beedie is looking to rezone the site to add an additional three storeys.
Yu doesn’t have a problem with the Beedie proposal per se, but feels it’s on a key site in Chinatown, and should be developed accordingly.
“It’s not the building’s fault,” said Yu.
“People are going ‘What’s wrong with this glass tower, it’s working everywhere else, and Chinese people love buying this stuff if it’s UBC.’
“That’s not the point. There’s plenty of room around the city to build glass towers (that are) 40 storeys, 50 storeys, whatever. Why do they need to be in this spot?
“This one is right in the heart (of Chinatown). Across the street is the Sun Yat-sen (garden), the Chinese Cultural Centre. On the same street is the (Chinese workers) monument. Next door is the back alley of Pender.”
Yu said a recent study found there will be a need for 3,300 income-assisted senior housing beds in the Lower Mainland over the next 15 years. He said the Columbia and Keefer site would be perfect for a seniors project.
“There’s a particular kind of resonance to the idea this is a traditional place where a lot of Chinese seniors can retire to,” he said.
“There is a five-year waiting list for the Simon K.Y. Lee Success long-term care home, so there’s huge demand, huge need, this is a place where they want to go. (Building a seniors home) would actually would help revitalize (Chinatown), because seniors bring sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters into a community.
“That’s the Chinatown vision plan, that’s what’s in there, that’s what those discussions were about. And yet what we’ve got is 137 luxury condo units for hip youngsters. That’s the Beedie proposal, and that’s what the last two towers (on Main) were. It’s not just insulting, it’s the thwarting of the very promise (of the vision plan).”
Wu would like to see a moratorium on new developments in Chinatown “until design guidelines are actually built to create a zone that respects the (area’s special) character.”
Retired city planner Nathan Edelson agrees. Which is significant, because he worked on the Chinatown vision plan for over a decade.
“My suggestion is that there should be a moratorium on the rezonings, for sure, until they can get an assessment of what the current new development is,” said Edelson. “To what degree are they contributing to, or harming Chinatown, the historic character of Chinatown? And it’s not an obvious answer.”
jmackie@vancouversun.com
Read more: www.vancouversun.com/business/Battle+Chinatown/10384991/s…
1970′s inventions that changed our way of life
Image by brizzle born and bred
Technology, Fashion and Toys played an increasingly important part in people’s lives in the 70s.
Ceefax: 1974
Launched in 1974, Ceefax went live with 30 pages and was the first teletext service in the world. Started as an experiment for the deaf, Ceefax developed into an instant news, sports and information service for millions of armchair surfers.
Colour Television Sets
Introduced on BBC 2 for Wimbledon coverage on July 1, 1967. The launch of the BBC 2 "full" color service took place on December 2, 1967. Some British TV programs, however, had been produced in color even before the introduction of color television in 1967, for the purpose of sales to American, Canadian, and Filipino networks. BBC 1 and ITV started color transmissions November 15, 1969.
The first colour sets became available in Britain in 1967, when BBC2 started broadcasting in colour. (Note BBC1 and ITV didn’t go colour until 1969.)
A typical 22" colour set would have cost £300 in 1967, or around £3000 in today’s money – equivalent to a top of the line 50+ inch LCD or LED HDTV set.
Britain’s oldest colour telly ‘still going strong’ 42 years on, says 69-year-old owner
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328760/Britains-oldest-…
Home Music Centre
The ultimate piece of kit that most people wanted in the mid 70s was a "Music Centre". This was a record player, cassette tape recorder and radio combined. Dynatron made one of the first, the HFC38 Stereo/Audio Cassette System, launched in 1972. This was a high priced luxury item at the time.
Dial Telephone
The 746 telephone was the British GPO’s main telephone for the 1970s. It was the phone most people had in the 70s and it is phone you will remember from that decade.
In the 70s, the home telephone was still a luxury in the UK. The General Post Office (GPO) had a monopoly on telephone services and anyone who wanted a phone needed to rent one from the GPO.
Although still a state run monopoly, the telephone service was more modern in the 70s. The old fashioned lettered exchanges disappeared in the late 60s and the new phones were equipped for the strangely termed ‘all figure numbering’. Customers had a choice of three phones: the 746, the smaller 776 Compact Telephone and the modern looking Trimphone.
The 746 telephone was an upgraded version of the 706 phone or ‘Modern Telephone’ that the GPO introduced to customers in the early 60s.
It introduced a few practical improvements. Firstly there was a clear plastic dial showing only numbers. The case had an integral carry handle and the phone came in a more modern plastic. It was also lighter and had improved circuitry.
Electronic Calculator
The first pocket calculators came onto the market towards the end of 1970. In the early 70s they were an expensive status symbol. By the middle of the decade, people used them to add up the weekly shopping at the supermarket. As pocket calculators moved from executive’s briefcases to school children’s satchels, there was controversy over whether children could still do sums.
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments developed the integrated circuit technology that made the pocket calculator possible in the sixties. TI’s first prototype hand held calculator, the Cal Tech, demonstrated the potential of the new device. However, as with the transistor radio, Japanese firms quickly exploited the technology. The first portable, as opposed to pocket sized, calculator was the Sharp QT-8B. A year later pocket sized models were available from Bowmar (USA), Sharp, Busicom (Japan) and Sanyo.
Very quickly a host of manufacturers entered into the growing pocket calculator market. Texas Instruments launched their own model, the TI-2500 Datamath, in 1972.
Electronic games
Electronic games, such as MB Simon and Adman Grandstand, went on sale in the UK in the second half of the 70s. This was the time when people got their first taste of the digital lifestyle we enjoy today. A few years earlier, the first calculators and LED digital watches were marketed. Now manufacturers too adopted the same circuitry for play, and the age of electronic games began.
This revolution was reflected in the small screen when ITV’s George and Mildred’s neighbours bought a Grandstand game for Christmas. There were also concerns that TV audiences would drop, with more people using their TVs to play video games instead. Granada TV’s report "Who’ll be watching Coronation Street in 1984?" expressed concerns their advertising revenue might be at risk.
The grand daddy of all the computer games was the Magnavox Odyssey, which was launched in 1972. It introduced the public to a familiar, but primitive, electronic bat and ball game. Magnavox Odyssey was quite sophisticated; it offered range of different games, some of which required props. However, it was more of US than an UK phenomenon.
Electronic chess games also appeared in the mid seventies, but the game that first captured the public’s imagination in the UK was the Adman Grandstand.
Freezers
In the 70s, freezer ownership increased dramatically. Freezers and frozen food were available in the 60s, but sales of freezers took off in the 70s. In 1970 around 100,000 were sold, which was three times as many as in 1967. By 1974, one in ten households had a freezer.
Food processors
A food processor added a choice of blades and attachments to a standard blender. The Magimix from the 70s was the first UK example.
Microwave ovens
The microwave oven was invented by Percy Spencer in the late 40s. Initially, microwave ovens were only used by catering establishments. Oxford University physicist, Professor Nicholas Kurti gave a dramatic demonstration of microwave cooking with his reverse baked Alaska, or frozen Florida, which had ice cream on the outside and hot filling on the inside. He first demonstrated this dessert in 1969, showing how microwaves easily passed through ice, causing little heat, but the filling made from brandy and marmalade absorbed them and heated up more quickly.
Microwave ovens were not available in Britain until the end of the 70s, even then they did not catch on that quickly. The first ‘Which’ report on microwave ovens was written in 1979. There were concerns about what would happen if the microwaves escaped and confusion over whether the ovens were radioactive. For most people though, they were simply too expensive.
By 1979, there were a variety of microwaves on the market, priced between 150 and 400. [500 to 1400 in today’s money]. Models with a separate convection heating element were even more expensive. Both traditional oven makers, Creda and Belling and electronics giants Philips, Hitachi, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba, made microwave ovens in the 70s.
For most people in the UK the microwave revolution did not begin until well into the 80s. Jimmy Tarbuck’s advertisements for Sharp microwaves helped promote microwave cooking in the UK in the early 80s.
Teasmaid
As part of our renewed appreciation of all things 70s, the teasmade is back in fashion. After years in the naff cupboard, John and Norma Major owned one, it is now hip to own a teasmade.
The teasmade was a luxury item in the 70s household. Although primitive devices for automatically making tea were available since Victorian times and leading manufacturer Goblin made teasmades since the thirties, they were never considered essentials.
Most teasmades (sometimes incorrectly spelled ‘teasmaid’) comprised a teapot, kettle and clock. To prepare the teasmade ready for use tea, or teabags, fashionable in the 70s, were added to the pot and water into the kettle and then the alarm was set for the time you wanted to wake up to enjoy your freshly made pot of tea. About ten minutes before the alarm went off, the kettle boiled the water, which bubbled through a spout into the teapot. If you forgot to put the spout into the teapot some 70s models poured boiling water on to whatever the teasmade was stood on. Once the tea was brewed, the alarm sounded to wake you up, if the mechanism had not already woken you.
In 1971 there were only three manufacturers of teamade: Goblin, Ecko and Russell Hobbs. The Goblin model shown here cost £27.18 (£265 in today’s money). It is no wonder that the teasmade was a luxury.
Tea bags
Tea bags were new in the 70s. Well not exactly new, they had been used in the USA since the 20s. Tetley had tried introducing them to the UK twice, once in the 30s and again in the 50s, but they were seen as a bit of a joke. In the 70s though, sales of tea bags took off. It’s hard to explain why, they were more expensive and rarely used in the way originally intended – to remove the tea from the pot once it was brewed. It may have been something to do with convenience. We could throw our tea strainers away. Now tea bags are almost universal – so they must have been a good idea after all!
Continental quilts
Until the 70s, most people in the UK made up beds with sheets and blankets. In the early 70s the bedroom revolution was the continental quilt or duvet. Names such as "Slumberland Fjord" and "Banlite Continental" left no doubt as to the origin. Mostly they were filled with down or duck feathers. Synthetic fillings were more common in Europe, but became available in the UK. People quickly took to them as they were more convenient.
Flares and platform soles
Two trends defined the 70s in a fashion sense: flared trousers and platform soles. Flares were derived from the hippy fashion for loon pants of the late 60s. They were worn by men and women. The flare was from the knee and reached exaggerated proportions in the middle years of the 70s. The trousers were often hipsters, sitting on the hips rather than the waist, and tight fitting.
The combination of flares and denim made flared jeans the fashion phenomenon of the decade.
Platform soles were mainly worn by women and more fashionable men. There were health warnings about damage that could be caused to the back in later life, but the fashion did not last long enough for that to have an effect. There was an element of thirties retro in the style of some of the shoes, which echoed the thirties’ love of two-tone or co-respondent black and cream or brown and cream colours. Bright colours also gave the shoes more of a space age look.
Raleigh Chopper
The Raleigh Chopper brought the style of Easy Rider to the backstreets of Britain in the 70s. It took the UK youth bike market by storm and probably saved Raleigh from financial disaster. The Chopper was a distinctly different bike for young people and was a first choice Christmas present. However, the Chopper attracted criticism for some aspects of its safety. The Chopper became distinctly unfashionable in the 80s, when BMX became the latest craze.
Klackers
Klackers comprised two acrylic balls, often brightly coloured, on a string with a small handle in the middle. It was a playground craze that swept Britain and America in the early 70s. The idea was to move the handle up and down to make the balls click together. The really skilled could make the Klackers meet at the top and bottom of a circle; it required practice. They made a noise when they clacked together, hence the name.
Klackers were also marketed as Ker-knockers, Clackers and Klickies.
Whilst children loved the Klackers, or Ker-knock-ers, parents and teachers were concerned about the safety aspects. They could cause bruised hands and arms and the balls could shatter into dangerously sharp shards of plastic. Some schools banned them from the playground. Like most crazes, Klackers disappeared as quickly as they appeared.
Invicta Mastermind game
The Invicta Mastermind game was a huge seller in the 70s. In spite of the name, it had no connection with the Mastermind television programme originally hosted by Magnus Magnussen, although many people bought the game thinking it did.
The game was invented by Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert, Mordecai Meirowitz. He initially found it difficult to get a manufacturer to take on his idea, but eventually managed to persuade small UK games maker, Invicta to make it.
The game went on sale in the early 70s and was a huge success. The box depicting a bearded man and woman in Asian dress carried an air of mysteriousness about it, suggesting supreme intelligence was needed to play the game.
Indeed Mastermind was taken seriously by the academic world. In 1977, Donald Knuth, the American computer scientist responsible for some learned texts in the world of computing, published a formula that guaranteed a correct guess in five goes.
Mastermind was also recognised by the toy industry. In 1973 Invtica was awarded ‘Game of the Year’ for Mastermind. Look out for pre-1973 versions that do not have the ‘Game of the Year’ award on the box.
Fondue set
Fondue originated in Switzerland and the classic fondue is always made with Swiss cheeses: Emmenthal and Gruyère. The word ‘fondue’ is derived from the French word, ‘fondre’, which means to blend.
By 1960, Marguerite Patten claimed the fondue was becoming popular. Her ‘Cookery in Colour’ featured fondue recipes with a decidedly English twist: ‘Cheddar Fondue’ and ‘Tomato Fondue’, as well as the classic ‘Gruyère’.
It was in the seventies that fondue parties really took off in the UK. Originally a reminder of a Swiss dish tried on a skiing holiday, fondue parties soon became the up-to-the minute thing to do; but by the 80s, it was decidedly naff.
Fondue sets are available again as everything 70s is fun once more. For real authenticity, source the genuine article from the 70s on eBay. Look for bright orange fondue pots and forks with teak handles.
Soda syphon
The retro style soda syphon (or soda siphon), once a symbol of kitsch and bad taste, is now the height of retro cool. The Sparklets Soda Syphon was a hit at 70s parties. However, its roots go back to the era of the Boer War.
The Sparklets Soda Syphon was originally used as a way of bringing sparkling or aerated water to hot climates at the far reaches of the British Empire. Invented in the 1890s, Sparklets bulbs were used during the Boer War.
Before the introduction of Sparklets bulbs, carbonated, or aerated water, as the Victorians preferred to call it, was a luxury product. It was expensive to make, and there was no way to do it yourself. The invention of the Sparklets bulb popularised it as soda water. The original device was called a ‘Prana’ Sparklet Syphon, and the Company stressed that it was as easy for a housemaid in Bayswater as for an orderly in South Africa to use the device.
Sparklets Streamline, with hammered finish 1940s
In 1920 Sparklets Ltd was acquired by BOC, the British Oxygen Company. By the 1960s Sparklets specialised in diecast products for the domestic industry. Naturally the Sparklets Soda Syphons were a big part of the business, but Sparklets also made diecast parts for washing machines, hairdryers and vacuum cleaners, as well as for cars.
The Sparklets bulb method may not have changed much since the days of the Boer War, but the style of the syphon moved with the times. Three basic types were around in the 60s and 70s.
Cigarettes
Player’s No6 and Embassy. However, they were joined by mild versions: Embassy Extra Mild and Player’s No6 Extra Mild. The rise of the mild cigarette was a 70s’ phenomenon. Benson and Hedges Silk Cut, pictured bottom middle, started this trend.
Which? Magazine named Silk Cut as the mildest UK cigarette in 1972. Although, the Which report was intended to convince people to stop smoking, it gave an enormous boost to Silk Cut sales. (In fact there is no evidence to suggest mild cigarettes are any better for you.).
The other big trend ran in the opposite direction. King size cigarettes were increasingly popular. John Player Special, with its distinctive black packaging, was a rival for Benson and Hedges.
King size cigarettes also went down market and were available in the cheaper brands. Both Player’s No6 and Embassy had king size versions. You could buy cigarettes in a bewildering number of different sizes: international, king size, regular, intermediate, mini and sub-mini. Collectors of cigarette packets from the 70s should look out for different sizes in all the popular brands, for example, Silk Cut, Silk Cut King Size, Silk Cut No1, Silk Cut No5, Silk Cut No3, as well as Silk Cut Extra Mild.
At the same time competition from US cigarette manufacturers started in earnest in the 70s. The famous Marlboro brand with is cowboy print advertising campaign started to take sales away from the home grown brands.
Smoking in the 1970s
Cigarettes were a big part of life in the 70s. People smoked them in large numbers. They also started to kick the habit in large numbers too. To give up or not, and to inhale or not, were big topics of conversation.
In 1969, Embassy Filter (right) was the most popular brand. It had been introduced in 1962 and took a staggering 24% of the cigarette market in 1968. By 1971 though, it was knocked off the top spot by Players No 6. In 1972 these brands (below) made up 94% of all cigarettes sold (in order of tar content, lowest first):
Silk Cut (filter)
Consulate Menthol (filter)
Cadets (filter)
Piccadilly De Luxe (filter)
Cambridge (filter)
Embassy Gold (filter)
Embassy Regal (filter)
Sovereign (filter)
Sterling (filter)
Player’s No 6 Virginia (filter)
Park Drive (filter)
Kensitas (filter)
Embassy (filter)
Gold Leaf Virginia (filter)
Player No 6 (plain)
Player’s Weights (plain)
Albany (filter)
Woodbine (plain)
Player’s No 10 Virginia (filter)
Guards Tipped (filter)
Benson & Hedges King Size (filter)
Senior Service (plain)
Player’s Navy Cut (plain)
Park Drive (plain)
Rothman’s King Size (filter)
The majority of the most popular brands are filter tipped. At the time people wanted to believe that the filter would protect them. Medical research showed otherwise, even as early as the 60s. Also worth noting is that Rothman’s advertised their cigarettes as for "…when you know what doing are doing" – a bit ironic considering the tar content!
In 1970, 55% of men and 44% of women smoked cigarettes. The percentage smoking cigarettes had fallen from the peak of 65% in 1948 and the risks of smoking on health were beginning to slowly sink in. In spite of research by the late Professor Sir Richard Doll published in 1951, which linked smoking with lung cancer, cigarette smoking was so much a part of life that the habit died hard. Even as late as 1973 the Guinness Book of Records described nicotine as an "anodyne to civilisation".
In 1971, cigarette manufacturers agreed to put a mild health warning on the packets (left) – "WARNING by HM Government SMOKING CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH". I say "mild" because Professor Sir Richard Doll’s research showed that of 1,357 men with lung cancer, 99.5% were smokers. Or as "Which" chillingly put it – you had as much chance of dying before you were 44 if you smoked, as a serviceman had of being killed in the Second World War. Most people were still playing Russian Roulette and hoping that the chamber was empty.
"Which" never published a report comparing one cigarette brand with another. They acted in the best interest of consumers and recommended only that people should give up. There were conflicting stories circulating concerning the safety of other forms of smoking, such as pipe or cigar smoking: "Was it safer than cigarettes?", "Was it safe if you didn’t inhale?" and "Was it worth waiting for a safe cigarette?". "Which" did not sit on the fence and told members as directly as possible that the only safe course of action was to give up.
The 70s was the decade when people did finally accept the risks of smoking and the proportion of the population who smoked fell quite significantly. Those leading the way were the professional middle classes. The anti-smoking group, ASH, was founded in 1970 and took a lead in alerting the public to the dangers of smoking. The proportion of men and women smoking cigarettes dropped gradually during the 70s. By 1980, 42% of men and 37% of women smoked. (Today’s figures are 27% and 25% respectively).
LED watch
LED digital watch
Retro style LED watches are now selling on the internet, reviving the original digital watches from the early 70s. The first LED watch was marketed in the US by watchmaker, Hamilton, under the brand name ‘Pulsar’ in the Fall of 1971. It was originally a high priced gadget; by the end of the decade LED watches were almost throw away items and the more familiar LCD display was gaining ground.
Toys
The Space Hopper, the Raleigh Chopper and Mattel’s model cars with Hot Wheels made their debut in the 60s, but in the 70s achieved their highest popularity.
The Chopper was revised with safety improvements to become the Mark 2 in 1972. Mattel did not have their own way for long with Hot Wheels. British rival Matchbox had already introduced Superfast Wheels in 1969 and converted their whole range to them in the early 70s.
Sindy continued to be a popular toy for girls and won Toy of the Year in 1970. That accolade also went to another doll in 1971, Katie KopyKat; Katie copied everything you wrote.
Another 70s’ craze that had its origins in the 60s was Klackers, or Clackers: two acrylic balls that were made to click together. Experts could make them clack at the bottom and top in a circular movement, but safety concerns saw their early demise.
The Mastermind TV programme hosted by Magnús Magnússon had huge audiences in the 70s. However, the Mastermind Board Game made by Invicta in 1973 had no connection with the Mastermind TV show. It was all about breaking a secret code.
Lego was as popular as ever. It scooped Toy of the Year in 1974 and 1975. Other toys with their origins in the 50s and earlier were discovered by new generations of children.
The football game Subbuteo gained plastic figures in 1967 and in the 70s was available in up to fifty different team strips. There were spin-off cricket and snooker games too.
Scalextric was improved with new cars in the 70s and was as popular as ever. More traditional toys such as Hornby trains and Meccano continued to find a market.
The big change in play in the 70s though was the advent of electronic games. The 70s gave us digital watches and pocket calculators and by the middle of the decade electronic toys and games as well. One of the first to capture the imagination of the UK public was Adman Grandstand, which could play a variety of sports, including a version of the Pong arcade game. The brightly coloured MB Simon game was also a big seller in 1978.
Star Wars was in the cinema in 1977 and a host of Star Wars inspired merchandise followed. Never before had the movie makers cashed in so much on the toy market, it was a portent for the new decade.
Furniture
Furniture from the seventies was bigger and chunkier than furniture from the 60s. Teak was still the favourite wood throughout the decade, although pine was getting an increasingly strong middle class following. Autumn colours were in vogue: browns, beiges and oatmeal. Striped upholstery fabric was popular.
The seventies had its share of fads. Chrome plated tubular steel furniture had a brief period of being the latest thing. Towards the end of the decade, cane and rattan furniture started to gain a small following. Both this and pine were much bigger in the following two decades.
The seventies was still a decade when modern was the favourite look. There was little attempt to recreate the past, although in a decade of contradictions, reproduction furniture had a growing niche following.
Green Shield Stamps
Green Shield Stamps were almost everywhere in the Britain of the 60s and 70s. If you bought your groceries at certain shops the retailer gave you stamps to stick in a book. Once you had collected enough you exchanged the books for gifts. Most people can remember Green Shield Stamps, but there were other schemes. Does anyone remember Blue Star, Gift Coupon, Happy Clubs, Thrift Stamp, Uneedus Bonus, Universal Sales Promotions or Yellow Stamps?
Drink
In the later 70s, lager began to take hold. You can still get seventies favourites such as Skol, Carling Black Label (they paid a consultant millions of pounds to recommend that the ‘Black Label’ was dropped some time in the 90s), Carlsberg and Tennant’s Pilsner, though whether it is the same, who could say? Light ale was a popular alternative to lager at the time.
Keg bitter was definitely the drink of the early seventies. "Classics" such as Watneys Red Barrel (or Watney’s Red as they tended to call it then), Double Diamond, Courage Tavern and Worthington ‘E’ are well out of production.
Britain’s best selling cars from the 70s
British automotive fashions changed. As women replaced mini skirts with midis and maxis, and men chucked out the Don Draper look in favour of flares and wide ties, cars changed just as significantly, on the outside at least.
Car makers ditched the chrome grills, the wood and leather interiors of the 60s and embraced American coke bottle styling, plastic fascias and matt black grills.
The UK’s top four manufacturers all introduced new models leading up to and around 1970. The first of the new wave was the Ford Escort, launched in late 1967. It was a small car with neat American influenced body styling. Ford also launched the ground breaking Capri in 1969, which brought sports car styling to the average motorist. In 1970 there was a rash of new models: the Morris Marina; a completely restyled Vauxhall Viva; and the all new Hillman Avenger, remember those L shaped tail lights? In 1971 Ford launched the car that was to represent the 1970s, the Cortina Mk III.
Ford won the sales war and the Cortina was the best selling car of the decade, with the Escort in second place. BL made a series of mistakes, the worst of which was to replace their best selling Austin/Morris 1100/1300 range with the blob shaped Allegro. It eventually needed the State to intervene and save the company from bankruptcy.
The 70s also saw a greater proportion of foreign cars on the road. However, none of them made it into the top ten. The best selling foreign import was the Datsun Sunny, which was only the 19th best selling car of the decade.
These are the top ten best selling UK cars of the 70s.
Ford Cortina Mk3, 1972
Ford’s stylists had their fingers firmly on the pulse of the 70s’ car market. They replaced the neatly minimalist Cortina Mk II, driven by Michael Caine in Get Carter, with the glamorous Mk III in 1970.
If there was a car that summed up the mood of the early 70s perfectly it was the Cortina Mk III. The classic American inspired coke bottle styling was combined with plenty of chrome trim. The new Cortina was bigger and better than the outgoing Mk II.
Ford’s graduated model range offered a huge choice of trim, style and engine size. You could choose from from L (basic), XL (more luxury), GT (sporty), GXL (luxurious) to the ultimate Cortina, the 2000E. Even the L looked stylish, but the upmarket GXL offered acres of simulated wood trim, glorious velour seats and a chrome trimmed black vinyl roof.
Ford Cortina Mk V, 1979
In 1976 Ford replaced the Cortina Mk III with the Mk IV. The glam rock era had faded by 1976 and Ford stylists gave the market something more sober, although the parent company’s policy of sharing as much as possible between the UK Cortina and the German Ford Taunus may have also influenced the more prosaic styling.
The final facelift for the Cortina came in 1979. Ford sharpened up the style of the Mk IV with the similar looking Mk V, which nevertheless changed almost every body panel. The Cortina disappeared entirely in 1982 to make way for the Sierra, dubbed the ‘jelly mould’ car at the time.
Ford Escord Mk2, 1979
Ford also sold over one million Escorts in the 1970s. The Escort was introduced late in 1967 as a replacement for the popular Ford Anglia. Remember that backward sloping rear roofline?
The Escort continued the Anglia theme of a stylish body combined with basic, but reliable, mechanicals. However, Ford went one stage further with the Escort, as with the Cortina, they offered a range of basic saloons and some sporty and luxury models as well.
Style was all important to Ford’s selling strategy and in 1975 they gave the Escort a new squared off body and models near the top of the range had square headlamps too. By 1979 you could choose from 1100, 1300, 1600, 1800 and 2000cc models. In 1980 the Escort was upgraded to a the Mk III for the new decade.
Mini Clubman
Although Alex Issigonis’ masterpiece the Mini was eleven years old by 1970, it was still one of Britain’s best selling cars. BL chose to drop the Austin and Morris labels and the car was now just called the ‘Mini’.
In the1970s there was a basic range comprising a Mini 850 and a Mini 1000, with 850cc and 1000cc engines. BL offered a more upmarket version, the Clubman, with a squared off nose. There was an estate version with fake wood panels on the outside and a sports 1275 GT version.
Laurence Moss, the estate agent husband of man-eating Beverly in "Abigail’s Party" drove a Mini, getting a new one every year. He claimed the design did alter, in reality BL made very few changes to the design throughout the 70s. By the end of the decade part of the charm of the car was that it had not changed.
The Mini continued in production for another two decades before being replaced by the new Mini in 2000.
Morris Marina TC, 1972
BL’s executives originally planned the Marina as a replacement for the aging Morris Minor and a serious competitor for the Escort. Learning the lessons of the past they wanted to give it plenty of style and hired ex-Ford stylist, Roy Haynes.
Haynes wanted the two door version to appeal to the under thirty age group. He wanted the interior styling to be exotic and wild.
Somehow BL ended up producing a much bigger car than intended, even though it shared some of its mechanical heritage with the venerable Morris Minor. In reality the Marina sold considerably less well than expected. It achieved a creditable fourth position in sales in the 70s, but was not capable of rescuing BL from its financial troubles. Read more about the Morris Marina.
Vauxhall Firenza, 1971
Vauxhall was like Ford, a British car maker with an American parent – General Motors. Like Ford they followed the same approach: a basic rugged car with an up to the minute body. The Viva had been around since 1963 and had already had one facelift. In 1970 Vauxhall revised it again.
The new Viva, called the HC, was still a small car and in the Escort class, nevertheless it looked wide, low and stylish. Like Ford, Vauxhall offered a range of engines and options. At the top of the range was the sporty Firenza SL.
The Viva really was a car for the 70s. It starred in 1999 in the 1970s’ revival comedy, ‘The Grimleys’ as Shane Titley’s car. Vauxhall dropped it in 1979.
Austin 1300GT, 1971
The Austin/Morris 1100/1300 range was a top selling car in the 1960s. BL found it hard to find a replacement for it. So hard in fact that they failed to do so until 1973. So because of its continued strong sales in the first years of the 70s, the 1100/1300 finds itself at number six.
For the 70s there were some detail improvements and some great 70s’ colours including purple and bright orange. Just like its cousins from the 60s, the 1100s and 1300s were spacious, reliable and mechanically simple.
If you fancied something a little sportier, there was the Austin 1300GT which was a tuned up version of the basic car with a black vinyl roof. BL replaced this best seller with the Allegro in 1973.
Austin Allegro
Where Ford got 70s’ style right with the Cortina, BL got it wrong with the Allegro.
Launched in 1973, the Allegro was styled by internal stylist, Harris Mann. It certainly looked 70s. However, where the Cortina emphasised size and width, the Allegro was rounded and dumpy. There was a bizarre selection of different style front grilles complemented with rounded rectangular headlamps matched inside the car with a rounded square steering wheel, called a Quartic.
Vanden Plas 1500 (Allegro)
A range of engines sizes from 1100 to 1750cc, a rather stylish small estate and a posh Vanden Plas version with real wood facia, leather seats and picnic tables failed to impress buyers. Surprisingly BL failed to provide a hatchback version even though the Allegro shape suited it, and they had been making the hatchback Maxi since 1969.
The Allegro was not a great hit with the public. Whilst the 1100/1300 range was chalking up annual sales of 100,000+ units every year, the Allegro failed to achieve more than 65,000. This styling misjudgment certainly contributed to BL’s collapse in 1975.
There was an unfortunate side effect to the 70s’ style lettering on the boot: to some ‘Austin Allegro’ looked like ‘Rustin Allegro’. The Austin All-aggro was another name for it.
When Austin-Rover dropped the Allegro range in 1982 to make room for the Maestro there were few sad faces.
Ford Capri 2000GT, 1972
Ford advertised the Capri as the car you have always promised yourself. The Capri offered the motoring public something entirely new. It was almost a sports car, with a comfortable four-seater saloon cabin, gorgeous fastback styling and a price tag that the man in the street could afford.
Launched in 1969, the Capri sold well throughout the 70s. Like the Cortina, Ford offered a huge range of engines and trim levels. Like the Cortina, there were several styling revisions, but the basic look and personality remained the same.
At the top of the Capri range was the 3000E, which offered outstanding performance with a top speed of 122mph and 0-60mph in eight seconds. The brochure cooed about such refinements as reclining seats, an electric clock and push button radio. The prestige motoring experience was completed by a a steering wheel and gear knob covered in simulated leather.
Hillman Avenger 1300DL, 1975
Rootes Group (Hillman, Singer, Sunbeam, Humber) launched the Hillman Avenger in 1970. It was a completely new car. The Avenger was mechanically unexciting, but offered a stylish new body with black grill with coke bottle styling and a sloping rear end.
The black grill was made from plastic. The Avenger also had some very distinctive L shaped rear a lamp clusters.
The Avenger was smaller than Rootes Group’s Hillman Hunter and competed with the Escort and Viva. It sold steadily throughout the 1970s. There was a facelift in 1976 and it later became the Chrysler Avenger as the American parent began to assert itself more strongly.
Austin Maxi, 1972
The Austin Maxi could have been a world beater. It was one of the first hatch back cars, and it was one of the first mass-market cars to have a five-speed gear box. Partly designed by Alec Issigonis, it was spacious and handled well. However, the Maxi never lived up to expectations.
The original design, launched in 1969, was very plain looking and not liked by the public. The gearbox was awful and the 1500cc engine was not powerful enough for the car.
The Maxi had a major facelift in 1971. There was a new grill, a more attractive wood finish fascia and a new 1750cc engine. In this form it enjoyed modest sales throughout most of the 70s. People loved the practicality of the hatchback and with the seats folded down it was big enough to transport a double mattress and perfectly capable of carrying garden waste to the tip or a tent or two on holiday.
1970s major household expenses
1. Transport
The average household weekly spend on transport in 2007 was £62. That includes everything from bus tickets to buying cars and petrol. In 1971, that £62 would have been just £6. That would barely cover a tube ticket today.
2. Recreation and culture
In 2007, we spent an average of £57 per week on things like holidays, cinema trips, sports activities and gambling. At 1971 prices, that would cost around £6 again – probably about the price of a large bucket of popcorn today.
3. Housing, fuel and power
£52 per week in 2007, £5 per week in 1971. Obviously that includes expenses like mortgage payments, rent and energy bills. Oh how times have changed.
4. Food and drink
In 2007, we spent £54 per week (I must admit I find that hard to believe, looking at my own till receipts, but still). Thirty-eight years ago that would have cost a mere fiver. Oh and over two thirds of the money we spend on food goes to the big supermarkets – so much for the nation of shopkeepers.
5. Restaurants and hotels
Weekly cost in 2007? £37. In 1971 that would have cost about £4, but then I doubt we would have used them as much in those days anyway.
6. Clothing and footwear
Despite our collective obsession with labels and fashion, we only spent £22 per week on clothes in 2007. Imagine how svelte we would all look if that still only set us back £2. Then again, we’d probably have to be clad head to toe in denim, so maybe £22 is a price worth paying.
7. Communication
Presumably this means telephones, mobiles, broadband and the like. Well, we spent an average of £12 a week on this kind of thing in 2007, which is equivalent to £1 in 1971 (OK, OK so we didn’t have mobiles and broadband back then, but that’s not really the point)
8. Everything else
This includes things like education and health, insurance and whatever else we spend our money on. Anyway, in 2007, these miscellaneous items cost a whopping £128 per week. In 1971, you’d have got the lot for £13. So in 2007, the total average household spend per week was a little under £460. Ouch. If we were to enter some kind of weird price time-warp that would come down to a total of about £46 per week.
Meanwhile, the latest research shows that the average household income in 2006 was about £650. Given the perilous state of our savings, you have to wonder where the extra £210 per week went (We only spent £460 of it remember).
Whichever way you look at it though, that time warp is looking rather appealing. We’ve already got the strikes and the recession, so to earn £650 a week and spend only £46 of it would make it all worthwhile.
It’s never going to happen of course, but it’s a nice dream.
1970s: Fewer cars but more smokers
*In 1971, UK residents made 6.7 million holiday trips abroad.
*In 1970/71, there were 621,000 students in the UK in higher education.
*In 1974, 26 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women in Great Britain who smoked regularly were classed as heavy smokers.
*In 1970, life expectancy at birth for males in the UK was 68.7 years and for females was 75.0 years.
*In 1970, there were 340,000 first marriages in England and Wales.
*In 1970, nearly half (48 per cent) of all households in Great Britain did not have regular use of a car.
*In 1971, the average household size in Great Britain was 2.9 people per household, with one-person households accounting for 18 per cent of all households.
*In 1971, the proportion of babies born to women aged under 25 in England and Wales was 47 per cent (369,600 live births).
*In 1970, food and non-alcoholic drinks was the largest category of expenditure, accounting for 21 per cent of UK total domestic household expenditure.
Life expectancy is perhaps the most notable single change. In 1970, when Edward Heath had just become Prime Minister and The Beatles were breaking up, for men it was 68.7 years and for women it was 75 years; 40 years on, these figures have shifted substantially. Male life expectancy is now 77.8 years, and for women it is 81.9 years. Doubtless the fall in heavy smoking has played a part in that. In 1974, 24 per cent of men and 13 per cent of women in Britain who smoked regularly were classed as heavy smokers, whereas in 2008 the figures were 7 per cent of men and only one in 20 women.
1971 vs 2011: what you get for your money
Mars bar: 1971: 2p 2011: 60p
First class stamp: 1971: 3p 2011: 44p
Pint of milk: 1971: 6p 2011: 49p
Loaf of bread: 1971: 9½p 2011: £1.10
Pint of bitter: 1971: 11p 2011: £3.05
Bunch of bananas: 1971: 18p 2011: 65p
Packet of cigarettes: 1971: 27p 2011: £7
Gallon of petrol: 1971: 33p 2011: £6
Ticket to Wembley Cup Final: 1971: £2 2011: £115
OBAMAS MARXIST ADMINISTRATION ON DISPLAY FOR ALL TO SEE
Image by SS&SS
Ship of Fools: Obama’s Intimates and Advisors
By Mac Fuller
The following thumbnails describe a very small sampling of the locust horde of Leftist bureaucrats President Barack Hussein Obama has deliberately chosen to help him grasp the helm of America’s ship of state, strip it from the American people, and steer it hard to port.
The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that we are in terrible danger of sinking.
In these thumbnails, three dominant themes of the Obama Administration emerge – fanatically uncompromising anti-capitalism, dangerous and blatant anti-Semitism, and the societal inculcation of dogmatic Leftist, Socialist "faith" through indoctrination of American school children beginning with the earliest ages – a practice instituted by Lenin in Communist Russia and now pounding its way into the American academic mainstream through the prolific efforts and influence of self-proclaimed Communist, Obama friend, and likely "autobiography" ghost writer, William Ayers, as well as Obama appointees like Charles Freeman and Kevin Jennings.
Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.
____________________________________________________________
A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama’s morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust"
1. Valerie Jarrett
2. Patrick Gaspard
3. Eric Holder
4. Cecelia Muñoz
5. Samantha Power(s)
6. Charles Freeman
7. Scott Gration
8. Rahm Emmanuel
9. Ezekiel Emmanuel
10. Cass Sunstein
11. Van Jones
12. Carol Browner
13. John Holdren
14. Kevin Jennings
15. Chai Feldblum
16. William Ayers
—————————————————————————
1. Valerie Jarrett — Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Ms. Jarrett, a product of two decades in rough-and-tumble "Chicago way" politics, and a 17-year friend of the Obama’s, is described as "the other side of Barack Obama’s brain." Born in Iran, Jarrett, who speaks Persian, moved to the United States as a child. A product of an elite, private, New England boarding school, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.
Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Her step-father, Vernon Jarrett was associated with Frank Marshall Davis, the youthful Barack Obama’s mentor from age 10 until college – a Chicago Communist Party (USA) member who moved to Hawaii from Chicago. Frank Marshal Davis is now immortalized in President Barack Hussein Obama’s "autobiography" as "Uncle Frank" — conveniently with no mention of his last name nor who he was.
According to the Washington Post, Ms. Jarrett was for many years both Michelle and Barack Obama’s "tutor." Virtually every mainstream media outlet has not only done an over-the-top puff piece on Valerie Jarrett (as they repeatedly have with Mr. Obama and his wife), but all agree that neither the President not Mrs. Obama makes a move without first consulting Ms. Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett was personally responsible for bringing self-described Communist Van Jones into the White House as President Obama’s environmental "Green Czar." [1]
2. Patrick Gaspard — White House Political Director (this is the position Karl Rove held in the Bush Administration). Prior to coming on board as President Obama’s right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU – the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN – the community organizing front which Barack Obama worked for as a trainer, represented as a lawyer, helped as a politician, and funneled money to as a presidential candidate.
The President Obama is as much a product of ACORN as it is of him. He worked closely with the "community organizing" group for many years, represented them in court, and was a member of the board of Chicago’s Woods Fund at the time it funneled 0,000 to an ACORN affiliate. Mr. Obama praised the organization extravagantly both during and after his election, and his campaign "donated" over 0,000 to an offshoot group controlled by ACORN (Citizens Services, Inc.) – to "get out the vote."
Gaspard worked directly for now-ACORN chief Bertha Lewis as her political director for the main ACORN office which is located in New York. ACORN is mired in long-standing as well as new and growing allegations of fraud, voter-registration fraud, corruption, and massive embezzlement of funds – ACORN operative organizations have received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.
ACORN pledged ,000,000 for voter registration drives in the 2008 election cycle.
In 2004, Patrick Gaspard served as National Field Director for America Coming Together (ACT), a group which was later fined 5,000 in civil penalties by the federal government. ACT hired felons – some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary – to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in Missouri and at least two other swing states, and also employed felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio. [2]
3. Eric Holder — Attorney General of the United States. A handpicked Obama/Jarrett selection, who earlier this year referred to the United States as "a nation of cowards" on race relations, Mr. Holder is a shiningly despicable example of everything wrong when politics and personal ambition dictate the parameters of American justice.
Prior to grasping the brass ring of the department where he’d toiled during the Clinton Administration, Mr. Holder was responsible for these widely-reported miscarriages of justice: (1) He streamlined the Clinton Administration’s pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich by steering Rich’s representatives to a former White House counsel, then helped lobby the President to pardon Rich ("an unrepentant fugitive wanted on extensive fraud, racketeering, and trading-with-the-enemy charges"). Holder did so for personal gain, later admitting he hoped this would help him become Attorney General in a Gore administration. Mr. Holder concealed the pardon negotiations from other prosecuting and investigative agencies to prevent their opposition. Mr. Rich’s wife was a generous donor to both President Clinton’s library as well as his legal-defense fund.
(2) "In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton’s commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons – of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse – were issued in the months after al-Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. embassy bombings…. The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife’s impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York’s substantial Puerto Rican vote."
(3) Holder was also instrumental in the "stealth pardons" of two Weather Underground terrorists, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans (both closely associated with President Obama’s terrorist friends, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn). Rosenberg and Evans had been serving decades-long sentences for bombings targeting American government facilities. Again Holder helped circumvent the pardon process and evade objections from prosecutors regarding the terrorists’ jail terms.
Just this summer, now-Attorney General Holder dismissed prosecution of an obvious case (it was filmed) of voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panthers, while also instigating prosecutorial investigations into CIA interrogation techniques of terrorist combatants. Attorney General Holder is a strong advocate for the release of the Islamofascist enemy combatants currently held at Guantanamo Bay. [3]
4. Cecelia Muñoz — White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Prior to being summoned to the White House by President Obama, Ms. Muñoz was Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza. La Raza (literally, "The Race") is the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in America, and is committed not merely to a socialist agenda, but, essentially, the return of California, if not larger portions of the American West, to Hispanics. It lobbies heavily for completely open borders with Mexico, as well as amnesty for all illegal aliens. In order to carry out this agenda, the U.S. federal government awarded over .2 million in grants to the organization in 2005 alone.
La Raza is intimately involved with the "the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West." Aztlan’s goal is the formation of a Chicano state. The closing two sentences of Atzlan’s motto are: La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada": "For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing." Which ought to be as chilling as the idea of the U.S. government funding these people.
President Obama’s recent appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has also long been deeply involved with La Raza – a fact which all Democrat Senators ignored during her confirmation hearing.
5. Samantha Power — Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council. Ms. Power, a professor of public policy at Harvard [who is married to President Obama’s Leftist fringe academic Cass Sunstein, the Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs] was only seemingly thrown under the Obama campaign bus for referring to Hillary Clinton as "a monster" during the 2008 Democrat primary. In 2009 President Obama, tapped her to occupy her senior White House foreign policy position.
Ms. Power, a "fierce critic of Israel,… was indisputably Barack Obama’s closest foreign policy adviser during the campaign. They go back years." Ms. Power is a notorious acolyte of appeasement-challenged, Neville-Chamberlain-clone Zbigniew Brzezinski (former President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser) who recently stated that the U.S. should shoot down any Israeli planes which, out of self-preservation, might fly through Iraqi air space to destroy Iran’s developing nuclear facilities. Ms. Power agrees with the Charles-Freeman-published Walt-Mearsheimer-essay school of thought that America is run and being destroyed by a cabal of Jews. Power promotes the policies of disgraced anti-Semitic, Israeliphobic, pro-PLO, pro-Syria, Obama adviser Robert Malley who advocated not merely talking with Hamas, but funding the terrorist organization because he feels their policies and governance mirror that of Israel. The Obama Administration cut visible ties with Malley shortly after the election.
Power, who stridently criticized the invasion and "occupation" of Iraq, repeatedly calling for the removal of American forces from that nation, curiously advocates that America send armed military forces, "a mammoth protection force" and an "external intervention", to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. While giving the PLO, Fatah, Hamas and other obviously terrorist Arab state organizations a pass, Ms. Power views Israel, the only democratic and non-totalitarian, nation in the Middle East, as guilty of war crimes. She favors slashing, if not eliminating, United States aid to Israel – which is surrounded by several hundred million Muslims who daily pray for its total annihilation – and, apparently, giving the money to the Palestinians instead.
Ms. Power, and virtually all of her truth-through-force ilk ignore the fact that on the day Israel gained independence it was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab neighbors who erroneously believed they could destroy the nascent country in a matter of hours. "Palestinians" (there is no such country, nor has there been since Biblical times) who now form the "Palestinian problem" were not forced to leave Israel but instead chose to do so because Israel became a Jewish state. Hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Arabs remained and now form a large core group of Israeli citizenry. The approximately 750,000 "Palestinians" who left, now number approximately 4,000,000. They constitute a "problem" because of all the Arab countries only Jordan has allowed them to become a part of its society. The other Arab countries bordering Israel keep the "Palestinians" in enormous desert internment camps. And they have done so to their Arab brethren for 60 years. Ms. Power and her comrades exquisitely fail to note that Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and relocate to the newly-formed Israeli state.
Like her pro-Arab "realist" co-religionists Charles Freeman, Robert Malley, Zbigniew Brzezinsk, billionaire George Soros (an influential Obama supporter), and others of their stripe, Powers opposes the "Israel lobby." She, as they, adamantly rejects the participation of American supporters of Israel, including Christians, in foreign policy discussions of the Middle East.
For all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s public visibility, it may not be much of a conjecture that her job has been outsourced to the alpha female who once referred to Mrs. Clinton as a "monster." [5]
6. Charles Freeman — Nominated, but not confirmed, as Chairman of the (United States) National Intelligence Council – which is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates for the president and his advisors. Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé of long service in both the State and Defense Departments, however, his "distinctive political views and affiliations" include: troubling financial ties to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia who funds the Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council) which Mr. Freeman heads; organizational support for professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt’s lengthy, controversial, and essentially anti-Jewish essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; his stated viewpoint that "the primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation"; praise for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as the only "democratically-elected" government in the Middle East; and, bizarrely, unabashedly siding with the Chinese government over the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 – Mr. Freeman criticized the Chinese government for being "overly cautious."
Once Leftist liberal, New York Senator Chuck Schumer spoke against Freeman’s nomination, the gentleman withdrew – but not without "blaming his own disgrace on a Jewish conspiracy."
During his Congressional investigation, Mr. Freeman was charged with "[p]romoting public schools textbooks which the independent Textbook League describe ‘a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. …[with] three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the…Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council)…; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools." [6]
7. Scott Gration — President Obama’s Special Envoy to the Sudan. His diplomatic policy is, quite literally the following:
"We’ve got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration who was appointed in March, "Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."
As even that bastion of liberal blather the Washington Post noted, "U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of Obama’s special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, who is pushing toward normalized relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted on war-crimes charges."
While President Obama’s handpicked "Special Envoy" was tempting genocidal Muslim radicals with "cookies" and "gold stars," marauding bands of guerrillas in the Sudan crucified seven Christians. [7]
8. Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel — White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Emanuel is the notorious hardball political player from Chicago’s North Side which he represented in Congress prior to his current incarnation as President Obama’s political henchman and myrmidon. The ironically named Mr. Emanuel ("God with us") is "relentlessly partisan," thereby quite succinctly putting the lie to Mr. Obama’s campaign claim to "post-partisanship."
Nicknamed "Rhambo," President Obama’s Chief of Staff – the highest ranking office of the Executive Branch of the President of the United States – is well-know for the following accomplishments:
(1) a casual conversation style addictively laced with the most outrageous profanities and gutter language at any and all times;
(2) sending a 2½ foot-long dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest with whom he was angry;
(3) threatening then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just prior to a joint appearance with then-President Bill Clinton: "This is important. Don’t f— it up.";
(4) at dinner the night after Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, "Rhambo" ranted about a long list of people who were the subject of his ire. As he shouted each "enemy’s" name, Mr. Emanuel punctuated his rage by forcefully stabbing the dinner table and screaming, "Dead!"
Outside of murdering a Congressional page, it is relatively difficult to improve upon these glowing characteristics of mental stability and leadership. [8]
Rahm Emanuel is Ezekiel Emanuel, "Dr. Death’s," brother.
9. Ezekiel Emanuel — President Obama’s Special Advisor for Health Policy to the Office of Management and Budget. Nicknamed in the press "Dr. Death" after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey pointed out Dr. Emanuel’s "healthcare" role assisting the White House in the preparation and administration of federal budget recommendations for guiding healthcare and healthcare initiatives, Dr. Emanuel (again, application of the absurdly ironic name, "God with us") is a "bioethicist." He is also hailed as President Obama’s "Rationer-in-Chief." Generally, Emanuel’s idea of healthcare rationing is to greatly restrict many treatments, medicines, and procedures to anyone over 40 and more particularly to anyone over 65. Dr. Emanuel feels similarly about the newly born until they have attained several years of age at which time he begins to view them in Malthusian terms of potential communitarian utility.
As Lt. Governor McCaughey noted, "In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient’s needs." This is the man who was personally tapped to guide ObamaCare health initiatives – not only by President Obama and his Chief of Staff… but also by "the other side of Barack’s brain," Valerie Jarrett.
Mr. Emanuel is yet another in a tedious yet frighteningly long line of unqueried, unquestioned, and unvetted Obama advisors and "czars" about whom nothing can be known until pulled from beneath labyrinths of liberal camouflage by interested citizens, conservative Internet bloggers, and the staffs of conservative talk shows. Mainstream media long ago forfeited its credibility as well as its societal role as the fourth estate.
Dr. Emanuel is a member of the President’s Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (curiously enough authorized under the dazzling rushed-through and unread by a single Congressman, American Recovery and Investment Act… "the Stimulus Bill") which, if allowed, will make decisions about the validity, "relative strengths and weakness of various medical interventions" as well as give clinicians…information to make decisions that will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system. Not improve medical care much less your medical care, but the "system." It’s called "rationing," and it will very likely result in unnecessary and preventable early deaths. On a very large scale.
One final point. Due to the ambiguity of the relevant language in the Stimulus Bill as well as in the various ObamaCare "reform" proposals, there will not only be great latitude for interpretation of various laws’ meaning, but these interpretations will require being instituted, oversight, and, of course, regulation. The necessity of regulation allows President Obama’s Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein carte blanche to regulate whatever he likes.
Mr. Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff, and former North Side Chicago Congressman (5th District of Illinois) Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel. [9]
10. Cass Sunstein — Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs. He is a Harvard Law School professor and newly-minted husband of President Obama’s Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council, the Israel-phobic Samantha Power (one of several husband-wife teams in the Obama White House). Mr. Sunstein’s belief structure could understandably be called "Leftist kook" or "fringe" if not downright lunatic. Herewith:
In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein called for banning all hunting in the United States. All. Everywhere.
He actually put in writing, in his 2004 book, Animals that, "Animals should be permitted to bring [law] suit, with human beings as their representatives…."
"[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture."
Mr. Sunstein, who openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism, wrote, "The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)…"
"[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."
Were Mr. Sunstein to succeed as President Obama’s head regulator of all things American, what might happen to those millions of hunting rifles and shotguns he doesn’t want gathering dust in your cabinet?
Mr. Sunstein is a reputed "1st Amendment scholar." Having attended law school myself and actually practiced law for a quarter century rather than retreat to the head-swelling-brain-shrinking environs of academia, I can assure you that if he is, America is in very deep trouble. President Obama has made clear his White House Masterregulator is intended to regulate virtually every aspect of American’s lives – including the environment, healthcare, finance, and the economy – regardless of your feelings about such matters much less your freedom and liberty. Sunstein has argued in his prolific literary works (one bookstore tour de force was a whopping 84 pages) that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing. He went on to assert: [10]
A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government… Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom’s name.
As WorldNetDaily noted:
"It’s hard to imagine President Obama nominating a more dangerous candidate for regulatory czar than Cass Sunstein….Not only is Sunstein an animal-rights radical, but he also seems to have a serious problem with our First Amendment rights. Sunstein has advocated everything from regulating the content of personal e-mail communications, to forcing nonprofit groups to publish information on their websites that is counter to their beliefs and mission…. If it were up to Obama and Sunstein, everything we read online – right down to our personal e-mail communications – would have to be inspected and approved by the federal government."
11. Van Jones — President Obama’s former White House Environmental Adviser ("Green Jobs Czar"). Mr. Jones remains a self-defined Communist community organizer from the San Francisco Bay area (Oakland, California). He is also an Whites-hating racist with a criminal arrest record, as well as a "9/11 Truther" true believer. The 9/11 Truther organizations proselytize that former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney either planned or knew about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks conducted by 19 Islamofascist members of Al-Qaeda who, aside from slamming a passenger jetliner into the Pentagon, did the same in New York City totally destroying the Twin Towers and killing almost 3,000 Americans.
When Mr. Jones, an ardent racist and Communist, was hired into the White House by "the other half of Barack’s brain," Ms. Valerie Jarrett, she expressed overflowing praise in the press and in video-taped interviews for Mr. Jones and his work, noting that "we have been watching him for a long time. [11]
12. Carol M. Browner — Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Ms. Browner is a Socialist sycophant of Al Gore’s conclusion that the earth is going to evaporate tomorrow. A former EPA director, Ms. Browner is married to Leftist lobbyist Thomas Downey and remains an ardent Socialist activist. She is one of 14 leaders of Socialist International’s, "Commission for a Sustainable World Society," which calls for "global governance."
As Van Jones was an admitted Communist, Ms. Browner is an admitted and very active Socialist. What more really need be said about her with reference to President Obama who has been fully informed of her moral relativity and anti-Americanism for years since she has hardly kept it secret from either her associates, the public, nor the press. [12]
13. John Holdren — Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other than Mr. Holdren’s well known and oft repeated morally relativistic denial of American exceptionalism, one and only one thing need to be said here about President Obama’s "Science" Czar – he is Barack Obama’s twin on the matter of abortion and has advocated compulsory abortion. Here it is again: President Obama searched for, reached out, and chose as his chief "science advisor" a plasma physicist who advocates compulsory abortion.
As John Griffing wrote of Holdren in "Enough is Enough," for American Thinker:
…for a true outrage, consider new Czar of Science, John P. Holdren, who, in a stunning display of unabashed evil, has actively advocated "compulsory abortion":
There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated…It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.
If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, consider his words, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons." Let that sink in: an American official supports forced abortion and the death of "grown persons." We know what that looks like. It has been official policy for years in Communist China.
President Obama quite literally has the single worst record of any elected official on the question of abortion. While in the Illinois legislature he single-handedly prevented that state’s Born Alive Infant Protection Act from leaving his committee much less being made into law. As a result, for three more years until legislator Obama became U. S. Senator Obama, Illinois hospitals and doctors were permitted to allow otherwise healthy infants who survived an abortion to receive no medical attention whatsoever until they died. They were simply, and quite literally, "shelved." The evidence of Mr. Obama’s actions and callous disregard for the lives of infants is overwhelming. [13]
14. Kevin Jennings — President Obama’s Safe Schools Czar. Jennings is a former schoolteacher who has very successfully advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, unashamedly and vituperatively expressed his utter contempt for religion, and detailed an incident in which he did not report to authorities his knowledge that an underage student told him he was having sex with older men – Jennings instead counseled the boy to "use a condom. " In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, [Jennings] founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education…."
In the past, Mr. Jennings has praised Harry Hay, the frequent and vocal defender of NAMBLA – the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.
His organization, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has successfully prodded some schools into making October the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Month, as well as established November 28th as "Transgender Day of Remembrance."
None of this belongs in any school anywhere, any time, and the fact that the Obama Administration chooses to support such people with such goals and then put them in positions of great authority and power should make even the most dyed-in-the-wool middle-class liberal Democrats cringe at the depth of either their negligence, uncaring, or stupidity regarding the real Barack Hussein Obama.
And I bet all the teachers in America didn’t know this – according to Mr. Jennings (at a New York University "Education Policy Breakfast):
"… you cannot be an effective teacher if you are not aware of how [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] biases can influence how you interact with your students. Pure and simple."
To which Mr. Jennings added,
"It should be impossible to graduate from NYU or any other school of education without coursework – required coursework – that address issues of [LGBT] bias in the classroom and how it might influence your teaching. [It] should be a graduation requirement."
In 1999, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreward for an elementary education instruction book, Queering Elementary Education, the description of which states that it examines "five broadly-defined areas in elementary education: foundational issues; social and sexual development; curriculum; the family; and gay/lesbian educators and their allies. It seeks to provide scholarly insights, pedagogical strategies, and curricular resources for use in schools. At the core of the book is the belief that public school educators have the responsibility to affirm sexual diversity…" In elementary school?
It is Jennings himself, Obama’s "Safe-School Czar," who coined the term "safe school" as a euphemism for "pro-homosexual" school. Children’s physical safety had nothing and has even less to do now with Mr. Jennings educational background, "expertise," or agenda. "Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect… defining ‘safe schools’ narrowly in terms of ‘safe for homosexuality’," says Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
"Safe school" is hardly the only word commandeered by Jennings and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to support propagandizing his model "safe school" into mainstream elementary education. Others include, and parents should be alert to "seemingly innocuous terms as ‘safe school,’ ‘anti-bullying,’ ‘safe space,’ ‘hate-free, ‘tolerance,’ ‘respect differences,’ ‘be an ally,’ ‘no name calling day,’ ‘be who you are,’ ‘free to be fully me,’ ‘day of silence,’ and so forth. If these terms are present [in school instructional materials], they are [probably] defined by Jennings, not Webster, and the accompanying curricular material will probably be objectionable. Jennings’ jargon and the mythical bullying epidemic even showed-up in the recent Presidential address to school children."
The Obama Administration was certainly aware of these facts long before the President and Ms. Jarrett selected Mr. Jennings, just as they selected Van Jones, and all the other members of the Obama Administration discussed here.
This is the type of colossal lack of judgment the President of The United States has not merely chosen to surround himself with, but in fact personally displays every day.
Feeling any "safer" about your kids? [14]
15. Chai Feldblum – Obama nominee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who signed a manifest seeking, inter alia, to legalize polygamy ("to protect households in which there is more than one conjugal partner"). See, online petition entitled Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships. Feldblum is an outspoken homosexual rights activist and Georgetown University law professor. She is "co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at [a] UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change ‘the American workplace and revolutionize social mores. This is a war that needs to be fought,” Feldblum asserted, "’and it’s not a war overseas where we are killing people in the name of liberating them." [15]
16. William Ayers — Obama friend, neighbor, fellow board member, "respected" national educator, virulently anti-American, and dramatically unrepentant radical terrorist bomber. Mr. Ayers famously stated:
"I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ Communist…Maybe I’m the last Communist who is willing to admit it…. The ethics of Communism still appeal to me."
Perhaps Mr. Ayers most notable statement was made to the New York Times in a story released on September 11, 2001:
"I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough,"
It has gradually come to light that Mr. Ayers, far from the casual acquaintance President Obama made him out to be during the 2008 election, is quite likely the real author of Mr. Obama’s "autobiography," Dreams of My Father. [16]
Mr. Ayers approach to education is as authoritarian as is his approach to society as a whole – otherwise he would not have planted terrorist bombs in an effort to compel his personal beliefs upon the rest of society. As Sol Stern of City Journal wrote:
Ayers’s influence on what is taught in the nation’s public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation’s largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.
….
Ayers’s politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America’s future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students. [17]
The Ayers-Obama Socialist-conversion mission carried out with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s 0,000,000 was a total failure, producing zero results in student learning, but succeeded in massive transfers of wealth to Leftist, Socialist, and even the Communist causes of long-time Ayers ally, Mike Klonsky, a former S.D. S. leader, college professor and Director of the Small Schools Workshop. However, neither Mr. Ayers nor President Obama have given up on their radical Leftist agenda. [18]
Ayers is married to unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bernadine Dohrn who was once jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members’ robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed. Like her husband, she remains involved and influential in school programs.
For Mr. Ayers, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Chu, and President Obama’s Secretary of Education, yet another Chicagoan, Arne Duncan – and far too many others in the Obama Administration – education is solely about pursuing then mandating the radicalization of children through indoctrination in Leftist policies, "social justice" curricula, and Socialism itself in public schools.
____________________________________________________________
The Obama Administration is currently making thousands of federal bureaucratic appointments.
Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.