Friday, August 08, 2008

Obama: The Lost Years

Whenever I point out that Barack Obama hasn't done much in his 47 years, there's usually at least one left-leaning person who says something like, "Oh, because 47 is soooo young."

Well, no, 47 isn't all that young. It's just that Obama hasn't been terribly forthcoming about what he has accomplished in his life. Specifically, there's not much from Camp Obama about a particular 10-year period from 1995 to 2004. That's when Obama was a state senator for Illinois. Why is he so reluctant to talk about the only legislative experience he has?

Lone Star Times links to this Weekly Standard article which might explain why.

Prominent among those allies were two of Obama’s earliest and strongest political supporters, Hyde Park aldermen Toni Preckwinkle and Leslie Hairston. These two are known as fierce advocates of set-asides and key orchestrators of demonstrations and public-relations campaigns against businesses that question race-based contracting. When, in 2001, construction work was planned for South Lake Shore Drive, a major artery that connects Hyde Park to the rest of Chicago, Preckwinkle and Hairston seized the occasion to call for an extraordinary 70 percent minority quota on contracts for the project. They even demanded that, for the sake of race-based hiring, normal contractor eligibility requirements be waived. Then when work on South Lake Shore Drive was not awarded to minority contractors, a group consisting of Preckwinkle, Hairston, two neighboring aldermen, and numerous activists staged a surprise raid on the construction site, shutting it down and forcing the contractor to hire more blacks. A raid on a second construction site collapsed when several blacks were found already at work on the project. (The aldermen said these African-American laborers had been hired at the last minute to stymie their protest.)

Hmm. The story also discusses Obama's association with terrorists Bill Ayers and Barnardine Dohrn. But then it discusses Obama's legislative accomplishments, such as his support for killing babies that survive abortion. And there's more:
Also in 1998, according to the Hill, a Washington newspaper, Obama was one of only three Illinois state senators to vote against a proposal making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang. A year later, on a vote mandating adult prosecution for aggravated discharge of a firearm in or near a school, Obama voted “present,” and reiterated his opposition to adult trials for even serious juvenile offenders. In short, when it comes to the issue of crime, Obama is on the far left of the political spectrum and very much in synch with his active political allies Ayers and Dohrn.

There's more at the link, but it definitely explains why Obama doesn't discuss his life as an Illinois state senator.