Ayers' pet project funded by Obama 'stimulus' plan

Taxpayer money also channeled to school founded by top White House adviser's mom

President Obama's "stimulus" legislation helped to fund an education initiative associated with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, according to a recently released book.
"Red Army: The Radical Network that must be defeated to save America" contains new information about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's own radical ties while revealing how stimulus funds also went to a school founded by the mother of top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.
"Red Army" authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott dedicate two chapters to investigating Obama's education policies.
In one revelation, the book details how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA, provided $650 million to the Investing in Innovation Fund, or i3, as it is called. That year, Duncan announced his agency was accepting applications for i3 grants from educational nonprofits, individual school districts or groups of districts.
The winning i3 grantees included the Erikson Institute in Chicago, which requested just shy of $5 million for its project, "Achieving High Standards for Pre-K-Grade 3 Mathematics: A Whole Teacher Approach to Professional Development."
"Red Army: The Radical Network that must be defeated to save America" exposes the extremists behind Occupy Wall Street along with the radical socialist network that seized political power in Washington over decades, shaped Obama's presidential agenda and threatens the very future of the U.S.
One of the three faculty founders, and president of the institute from 1994 to 2001, is Barbara Taylor Bowman, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Development. Bowman is the mother of Valerie Jarrett.
In December 2009, Duncan honored Bowman at a luncheon. Bowman served as Duncan's consultant on early learning for the first six months after he was named secretary of education.
Others in Obama's orbit associated with the Erikson Institute include one of its former trustees and members of the executive committee – the late Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers. Dohrn, Bill Ayers' wife, also served on the Erikson board.
In his 1998 book "A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court," Ayers calls Bowman a "neighbor and a friend."
Obama had earlier connections to Erikson, Klein and Elliot found. The Erikson Institute was among the first 35 school partnerships awarded funds in December 1995 by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers was a founder of the Challenge; Obama was hired in 1995 as the group's first chairman.
Obama and Ayers worked on education together since at least 1988.
That year, in response to a Chicago summit that documented the poor quality of education in the city, Chicago United, a group founded by Ayers' father, formed a community advocacy coalition called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABC. Thomas Ayers was the chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison.
When he created his ABCs Coalition in June 1988, Thomas Ayers included Obama in the coalition, Klein and Elliott found. Obama at the time was director and lead organizer of the Developing Communities Project, or DCP, an institutionally based community organization on Chicago's Far South Side. Obama's first job in Chicago was his DCP position.
The contact for the ABCs Coalition, on which Obama served, was none other than Bill Ayers himself, who at the time was at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
More Ayers ties
"Red Army" further documents how Obama's DCP included on its board Bill Ayers' brother, John Ayers, also a key player in Chicago's school reform movement. John Ayers is now vice president and treasurer of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Archived papers from former Chicago mayor Harold Washington show that not only Ayers but also Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger – Obama religious advisers who were controversial during the 2008 presidential campaign for their inflammatory remarks – were on Obama's DCP youth counseling advisory committee.
Obama accused of deliberately overloading economy
"Red Army" exposes the radical socialist network that seized political power in Washington over decades, shaped Obama's presidential agenda and threatens the very future of the U.S.
The book documents how Obama and progressive Democrats are deliberately overloading the U.S. financial system, using socialist designs to remake the economy.
With nearly 1,500 endnotes, it documents how these radicals aim to remake the American financial system with massive government control.