NCP Force! - Barack Obama: Major Threat to Divorced Dads & Non-Custodial Parents

On Father's Day 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama, the Democratic Party's nominee, launched an attack against all divorced fathers and non-custodial parents by making Afro-American absent fathers the target of hatemongering speech at the Apostolic Church of God on Chicago's South Side.

In doing so, Obama borrowed a divisive campaign technique normally used by conservatives -- race baiting, fear peddling, the dissemination of hate -- to avoid speaking about real issues plaguing America. Thus this candidate, who has built his reputation on being an agent of "change", revealed himself to be nothing of the sort.

In fact, our two month investigation of Obama reveals him to be more of the same: a corporate owned and controlled politician, an opportunist whose image was created by Madison Avenue firms and has been mass-marketed to an unwitting American public desperate for political renewal in a time of trouble.

NCPForce! is now engaged in a campaign to educate American voters about this candidate because we believe that Barack Obama is not only dad for divorced dads and non-custodial parents, but for all Americans. In this special feature, we will examine Obama's past in Chicago politics where he was elected to office by forcefully removing the names of all opponents from the ballot, and how Obama stabbed friends and colleagues in the back to satisfy his thirsts for power.

We will also take a look at Obama's sudden shift to the conservative right after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee by voting for the FISA Domestic Spying Act (a bill authored by Vice President Dick Cheney) and his escalating talk of war in Iran. We will also expose Obama's more chilling policy statements, such as "national civilian military force" and his support for conscripted public service.

This special report will also take a look at Barack Obama's newly chosen running, Senator Joe Biden -- a politician who has been dubbed "Senator Mastercard" by some for his ties to major credit card corporations and banks based in his home state of Delaware. We'll also have a look at Obama's "The Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2007", a bill designed to step up child support enforcement while ignoring the inequalities of the family law system. The bills co-author and sponsor, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, will also come under our scrutiny.

Obama's Shady Political Past

To many Americans, Barack Obama has seemingly come out of nowhere (or out of heaven, as many of his fanatical supporters might have you believe). Upon his first appearance on the national stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, many news agencies and political commentators began calling him a future contender for the White House. They based this on his ability to speak rousingly before large audiences and apparently not much else, because at the time he was not even elected to the U.S.Senate; since then, few members of America's media have been willing to dig deeply into Obama's past, or to examine his credentials to hold the highest office in the land.

In July 2008, Obama's supporters went into an uproar when the New Yorker magazine published a cover lampooning Obama and his wife Michelle as terrorists. While a media circus raged around the cover art, the real meat of the magazine's July issue was barely talked about: an article called "The Political Scene: Making It" by Ryan Lizza.

The article describes how Obama arrived in Chicago as an graduate from Harvard Law School, on the move and looking to hustle his way into power. The author Lizza notes how Obama and his team "...likes to discuss his unusual childhood abandonment by his father, and his upbringing by a sometimes single mother and his grandparents in Indonesia and Hawaii, and the three years in the nineteen-eighties when he worked as a community organizer in Chicago" but "... leaves his life in Chicago from 1991 until his victorious Senate campaign..." in a murky gap. Lizza says that this is "... the period that formed him as a politician ..." and when the facts are known, it becomes clear why Obama would prefer to have this part of autobiography left in the dark.

According to the article, and other sources available on the internet, Obama's earliest supporters include the indicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko, who eventually helped purchase Obama's mansion in Chicago; Philip M. Klutznick, a Chicago shopping-mall tycoon and a part owner of the Bulls; and the wealthy Crown family of Chicago, which owns a controlling share of one of the largest war industry firms, General Dynamics. Strange bedfellows for a man who likes to portray himself as a man of the people, and a force of change.

In fact, by the time Obama ran for his first public office, "... he had ties to so many of the city’s élite factions that the local press described him as 'a well-connected attorney' ... ” (according to the New Yorker's Lizza). Throughout his career in Illinois politics, Obama traded favors with a number of his wealthy supporters. Even the clients of his wife Michelle's powerful law firm gained from Obama's position of influence. Articles on the blogspots No Quarter, the Real Barack Obama, and the Los Angeles Independent Media Center show how Obama used earmarks to help enrich himself and his supporters through a complex web of interconnected corporations and charitable boards.

Aside from his big money backers, Obama has a number of ugly, cutthroat character traits hidden in his past which run counter to his media polished image and his claims of integrity. In 1996, Obama won his state senate seat in Illinois by forcing all opponents off the ballot to run unopposed. According to the New Yorker: "... as fast as the threat to his campaign appeared, Obama stamped it out ... he unleashed his operators. With the help of (political allies), he was able to remove not just (his opponent's) name from the ballot but the name of every other opponent as well."

And Obama also threatened physical harm against his fellow lawmakers in the Illinois Senate. When Illinois state senator Ricky Hendon criticized Obama for blocking the funding of a child welfare bill, Obama flew at Hendon in a rage on the Senate floor and had to be removed. According to Hendon's account in the New Yorker: “... He said I embarrassed him on the Senate floor. That’s when he came over to my desk ... 'I’m going to kick your ass!' ... He said something like that.” Hendon's dangerous encounter with Obama will appear in forthcoming book, “Black Enough, White Enough: The Obama Dilemma.”

These facts give way to some very disturbing questions: why is Obama's past not being investigated by America's large media outlets? And why do so many news outlets continue to portray Obama as a populist underdog when it's clear he's been promoted by some of the wealthiest people in the country? Obama, who graduated from ivy league institutions like Columbia and Harvard Law School, claims that in his youth he was troubled wayward soul. But if this is so, just how did he come to attend these prestigious schools. Obviously, Obama is fudging with the facts to create for himself a beloved, Huckleberry Finn persona. The type of man America loves to elect. But the truth is that Obama has been searching for power his entire life and is willing to get into bed with powerful money interests.

Corporate Influence & Controversial Advisors

When Obama began his campaign for the Presidency, he ran on a platform of change saying that he would not accept the influence of lobbyists in his campaign. Many Americans took him at his word and threw their support behind him. But soon after winning his party's nomination, Obama exposed his true self.

According to an op-ed in the New York Times by David Brooks, Obama's funding from big money interests surpasses that of John McCain and his predecessors in the Democratic party. Law firms donated about $18 million to Obama, compared with about $5 million to John McCain. Wall Streets firms have given Obama about $8 million, compared with $4.5 for McCain. People who work in communications and electronics have given Obama about $10 million, compared with $2 million for McCain. Professors and other people who work in education have given Obama roughly $7 million, compared with $700,000 for McCain. Real estate and the health care industry have given Obama $12 million combined, compared with $7 million for McCain. Commercial bankers have given Obama $1.6 million, compared with $1.2 million for McCain. Hedge fund and private equity managers have given Obama about $1.6 million, compared with $850,000 for McCain. Top employees Goldman Sachs, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Lehman Brothers have supported Obama over McCain by more than a 3-to-1 ration.

Although Obama contends that his campaign is 90 percent funded by small donors, only about 45 percent of his money comes from donations of $200 or less. According to author David Brooks and OpenSecrets.org, a political watchdog group, the real core of his financial support is high-earning professionals with "huge fund-raising advantages among people who work in electronics, communications, law and the catch all category of finance, insurance and real estate". Brooks says that Obama's campaign is not so much a campaign to help average Americans as it is culture war between groups of wealth Americans: "Over the past several years, the highly educated coastal rich have been engaged in a little culture war with the inland corporate rich. This is a war over values, leadership styles and social networks".

Obama's campaign is even more disappointing for Americans seeking real change when his circle of advisors is placed under a microscope. The Institute for Public Accuracy has compiled a list of key members of Obama's so-called "Senior Working Group on Foreign Policy". A few of the names are:

Zbigniew Brzezinski - a political high-roller known as the Democrats' Henry Kissinger; a man with a finger in every pie, and most notably, the architect of our dangerous entanglement with Osama Bin Laden.
Mark Brzezinski - Zbigniew's son, an attorney and lobbyist at the law firm of McGuire Woods. On of the firm's specialties is white collar crime.
Madeleine Albright - former secretary of state and UN ambassador in the Clinton administration. Before 9/11, Albright fueled hatred against the United States in a interview with Lesley Stahl (CBS News, May 12, 1996) when she was asked: "We have heard that a half million children have died (in Iraq from the sanctions). I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." This interview was seen by millions of people in the Middle East and perhaps did more to boost the ranks of terrorists than the terrorists own recruiters. And now Obama wants to put her back in action.
William Perry - a Clinton era secretary of defense who promoted 'payoffs for layoffs' in the defense industry. Perry made it possible for American taxpayers to picked up the costs of moving equipment, dismantling factories, and providing golden parachutes for top executives in the defense industry. He also worked as a a paid consultant for a large construction form immediately before joining the Clinton administration. Perry also has ties to George Bush's Carlyle Group (a Saudi Arabia based oil form) and General Dynamics (a big supporter of Obama through the Crown family).
Susan Rice - assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, Rice has been a prominent foreign policy spokesperson for the Obama campaign. She supported the Iraq invasion and urged the government to to war.
Tim Roemer - a former Congressman and warhawk who supported the war in Iraq, which Obama supposedly opposes. He claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and urged invasion.

Obama's financial advisors are not much better. Journalist Naomi Klein compiled a list of the people now carving out Obama's domestic economic policies for an article in The Nation entitled, "Obama's Chicago Boys". They are:

Jason Furman - head of Obama's economic policy team. He is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." Furman is a disciple of Milton Friedman, a now discredited economist who preached "greed is good" at the Chicago School of Economics and was engaged in a lifelong battle to tear down Depression-era legislation to protect American workers.
Austan Goolsbee - a University of Chicago economist who made headlines when he told Canadian government officials that Obama was lying to American voters about his opposition to NAFTA. Read more about it here in the New York Times
Kenneth Griffin - CEO of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. He's so wealthy, he got married at Versailles and had the after-party at Marie Antoinette's vacation spot, where Cirque du Soleil staged a private performance. Griffin gave the maximum allowable donation to Obama, is something of a poster boy for an unbalanced economy and as such has been one of the staunchest opponents of closing the hedge-fund tax loophole. Despite sanctions prohibiting the sale of police equipment to China, his company has been pouring money into controversial China-based security companies that are putting the local population under unprecedented levels of surveillance.

Stealth Wealth

As Wall Street suffered one of its worst days ever this mid-September, Barack Obama launched attacks against his rival John McCain trying to brand him as a wealthy politician out of touch with regular Americans. Obama would have Americans believe that he is an agent of revolution from the bottom, that his mission in life is to level the playing field between wealthy elites and average workers.

But what Obama's handlers do not want the American people to know is that Obama is himself wealthy, operating in the highest circles of money and privilege.

Obama's humble American existence takes place in a 96-year-old Georgian revival mansion with “four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar,” purchased in 2005 for $1.65 million. This home-sweet-home was financed by Obama's former fundraiser, the convicted felon Tony Rezko. According to a February 2008 article in the Times (UK), there is also some speculation that British-Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi (one of Britain’s wealthiest men) also helped with purchase by arranging a $3.5 million dollar loan to Rezko a few weeks before the sale to Obama.

Whether or not this is true, Obama also received an unusual price break on his mansion, which was sold to him $300,000 below the asking price. Curiously, an empty adjacent lot was sold full price to the Rezkos, by the same owner, on the very same day. A portion of that lot now belongs to Barack Obama as a nice addition to his home. And to make sure that Obama is not bothered by any of the average Americans he loves so much, Tony Rezko also paid for the erection of a fence around his home.

Obama’s lifestyle is additionally enhanced by the earning of his wife, a wealthy attorney in her own right. Michelle Obama occupying a comfortable $316,962-a-year position as vice president at the University of Chicago Hospitals (a salary which doubled after her husband became a state senator). Handlers for the Obama campaign have been selling Michelle Obama to the American public as a scrappy, no-frills girl from a black working-class family in Chicago. In February 2008, the British newspaper The Daily Mail ran an article on Michelle Obama, revealing that she comes from a much more privileged background than she's willing to let on. In fact, her father - who we are told worked at a water plant - was also a Democratic party boss, earning 25% more than most high school teachers. The neighborhood in which she grew up was also an upper middle-class African-American enclave. And the newspaper's website even show pictures of Michelle's not-so-humble childhood home. Furthermore, Michelle Obama's financial status was good enough to secure financing for an education at Princeton University.

Despite her privileges, Michelle Obama wrote in a 1985 Princeton thesis: "My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'Blackness' than ever before," she wrote. "I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus, as if I don't really belong." A solution for this, she wrote, was to: "utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit (the black) community first and foremost". According to the Daily Mail, Michelle Obama today "owns an impressive collection of diamond jewelry, designer outfits and £400-a-pair Jimmy Choo shoes." Yet she is only proud of her country since her husband began running for office.

An interesting footnote to the story of Obama's wealth is that, for all his talk of family values and finger wagging at absent dads, Obama allows his 26-year-old half-brother to live a life of extreme poverty in the slums of Kenya.

According to an article in Vanity Fair Italy, George Hussein Onyango Obama lives in a 6 x 9 foot shack in the slums of Nairobi, subsisting on less than $12 dollars a year. Obama, for all his talk about family values, has only met the man twice. Obama refers to him in his autobiographywith just one passing paragraph, as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head".

Of their second meeting, George Obama says of the Presidential candidate: "It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger."

The Phantom Menace - Alarming Policy Issuess

Live Birth Abortion - Obama has voted four times as a state senator not to protect babies who are been born alive after an abortion procedure. In 2001, following an investigation of a Chicago-area hospital that left babies born alive to die without medical care, an infant protection bill in the Illinois senate was killed with the help of Barack Obama. In 2003, he opposed The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) both in the Illinois and Federal legislatures; this bill was meant to protect children who would otherwise be left to die by neglect after an unsuccessful abortion procedure. Obama has also out and lied about these votes, and claims he voted against the BAIPA bill because a Federal "neutrality clause" was not included. But Obama actually chaired a legislative committee that added that very "neutrality clause" to the very bill he voted against. See the article "Obama Lied About Vote Against Live-Birth Abortion Ban, Media Mum" in NewsBusters. While doing this, Obama has support brutal partial-birth abortions, and legislation which would limit a parent's right to approve abortions for pregnant minors.

A National Civilian Security Force - In July 2, 2008 speech in Colorado Spring, Barack Obama lit up the blogosphere by calling for “a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as our military". What he meant by this has not been made entirely clear, and neither Obama nor his campaign staff have been eager to elaborate. But the call for such a force is chillingly reminiscent of civilian conscript forces used by Adolf Hitler's Third Reich (read more at Infowars and watch a video excerpt at YouTube). The cost of such a force could run from $100 billion a year, to perhaps as much as $500 billion a year; Obama has not explained how he would pay for this.

Conscripted Youth Service - Obama has consistently made calls for student aid to be contingent upon "national service" in institutions such as "homeless shelters" and "veterans' hospitals". At an MTV/MySpace Forum, Obama said he would "make federal assistance to schools contingent to school districts establishing service programs, with a goal of 50 hours of service per year for middle school and high school students, and 100 hours of service per year for college students." Some writers have even speculated that Obama might even extend his design for youth service to the Universal National Service Act of 2007 (H.R. 393), authored by one of his Congressional supporters, Charles Rangel of New York. This bill proposes a requirement that all residents of the United States aged between 18 and 42 carry out national service, and be available for conscription during wartime. It allows no deferments after age 20. Even more alarming is that Barack Obama's campaign is being heavily influenced by Caroline Kennedy, who sits as a co-chair for the group Service Nation which is calling for a new "National Service Act" that will involve the government in transforming American society (read about it on the blogsite Volokh Conspiracy).

VEEP CREEP: Joe Biden, a.k.a. Senator Mastercard

During the Democratic nomination process, Barack Obama promised that his administration, if elected, would not be beholden to corporate interests and lobbyists. He also said that he would bring fresh ideas to Washington. So it's surprising, now that he's secured the nomination, to see that he's picked one of the biggest corporate stooges in the United States Senate and one of the most entrenched figures in the Washington establishment.

Senator Joe Biden of Delaware is perhaps best known for his plagiarism scandals. In 1987, during his first presidential race, Biden was discovered to have stolen a speech from British Labour party leader Neil Kinnock. It was later discovered that he had also plagiarized a law review article at Syracuse University. But Biden's penchant for lying and misrepresenting himself showed itself again when, on the campaign trail, a New Hampshire resident asked about his grades in law school. Biden answered that he had graduated in the "top half" of his class when he actually graduated 76th from 85. In fact, Biden was also a very poor student as an undergraduate. Biden also lied about attending school on a full scholarship and that he had received three degrees. In truth, Biden only received a half scholarship based on financial need (not excellence) and had only a dual major, as do many other college students. These revelations forced Biden to withdraw from the nomination race on September 23, 1987.

Since then, Biden has been working hard to stick it to the American people. In 2005, Biden threw his full support behind "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005", which made it harder for ordinary Americans to file for bankruptcy. He did this at the behest of credit card corporations which are almost entirely incorporated in his home state of Delaware an article entitled "Joe Biden: No Friend of the Working Man" is available on the Huffington Post.

Even worse, during the years Biden was supporting this legislation, his son Hunter Biden was receiving lucrative work from those very same credit card corporations. An article in the New York Times reports that Hunter Biden received a whopping $100,000 a year retainer for MBNA Bank and that he still works as a lobbyist in Washington for big banking concerns. So much for Obama's lobbyist free administration!

Obama's Federal Assault On Dads

The bill is co-authored with Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, and is being introduced into the House by In the U.S. House of Representatives, companion legislation is being introduced by Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL). The bill seeks stiffer enforcement against fathers unable or unwilling to pay court-ordered child support. It also seeks to expand big government by diverting more of America's tax dollars to child support collection agencies. And, apparently, it also aims to curb domestic violence and to make men better father's by big government decree.

There is absolutely nothing in this bill which places any responsibility on the mothers of broken families. Not one mention of enforcing visitation rights when mothers defy court orders. Not one mention of preventing move-aways or protecting the rights of fathers when their children have been taken out of state, or out of the country. Not one mention of the burden of responsibility on single mothers having children with three, four, or five different men. Not one mention of a woman's right to choose, or how this impacts upon a man's right to choose. Not one mention in the way of relief for fathers struggling for survival if the face of the heinous Bradley Amendment, which makes it nearly impossible for men to ever catch up with their debts (and stay out of debtor's prisons), no matter what the circumstances. Not one mention of fathers who lose jobs because because of enforcement actions, and are thereby thrown deeper into debt and face the loss of liberty. And not one mention of fathers like Wilbur Streett and Brian Armstrong whose lives were snuffed out by brutal enforcement actions.

PARTNERS IN CRIME: Sen. Evan Bayh, Rep. Danny Davis

A person is defined by the company he or she keeps, and this goes for Presidential candidates too. Let's have a look at Obama's co-sponsors on the The Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2007.

Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN)

When Obama needed co-author for this legislation, he reached out to a man who broke ethics rules by failing to report that he is an officer of a family charity in his name. That man is Senator Evan Bayh, who was briefly considered as a possible running mate for Obama.

In December 2007, C.R.E.W. published an article calling for more transparency into working relationship between Sen. Evan Bayh and his wife, Susan. According to the organization, Susan Bayh sits as a member of eight corporate boards and earned $1 million a year in recent years, and nearly $2 million in stock options.

Among the boards on which she's served are: Curtis Inc., a therapeutic-drug development company; Dendreon Corporation, a therapeutic-drug development company; Dyax Corp., a biopharmaceutical company; and Wellpoint Inc., a Blue Cross and Blue Shield company. Susan Bayh was also a director of Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc., from 2000 to 2004, and Esperion Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, from 2000 to 2003. From 1989 to 1994, she was an attorney in the pharmaceutical division of Eli Lilly and Company. All this while Bayh voted in the Senate on issues as sensitive as healthcare (read more at Democratic Underground).

"Evan Bayh has voted on a variety of health issues in support of the Medicare drug benefits, backed allowing drugs to be imported from Canada, and supported the rights of patients to sue HMOs for punitive damages. In 2003 the American Public Health Association gave him a 75 percent rating.

While the finance industry was a major contributor of campaign funds for Bayh, in terms of individual companies, Eli Lilly, where his wife had worked, was the second-largest contributor with $54,022 last year. All told, taking into account Bayh's senatorial campaigns and, before that, his campaigns for governor, Lilly (the largest pharmaceutical company in Indiana) has been his second largest contributor since 1999."

DANNY K. DAVIS (D-IL):

When Illinois Congressman Rep. Danny Davis is not showing his support for cop killers like Mumia Abu-Jamal and taking trips sponsored by terrorist groups like the Tamil Tigers, he's demonstrating his "family values" by sharing campaign funds with family members.

According to a report from C.R.E.W., Davis used campaign funds to pay his wife Vera Davis $14,829 for financial services in 2006. From 2001 to 2004, he listed his wife in financial statements as receiving salary from the campaign committee. In the 2002 election cycle, the campaign committee paid Ms. Davis $11,250 in salary and an additional $709 for reimbursements. In the 2004 election cycle, he paid his wife $16,150 in salary and an additional $1,036 for reimbursements.

The giving doesn't stop with his wife, however. Several other relatives also profited from Davis' campaign, including a B.L. Davis who was paid $3900 for fundraising consultation and the distribution of literature. And Wallace Davis, who earned $1,500 for catering services. Davis has refused to specify his exact relationship to the above-mentioned family members, this according to C.R.E.W.

And while Davis wants to get tough with dads, he appears to be the only sitting member of Congress to have signed the demand to release the convicted cop killer Wesley "Mumia Abu-Jamal" Cook. Mumia is now on death row for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Davis is also the 15th most prolific traveler in Congress. In 2005, he went on a trip to Sri Lanka, paid for by the Tamil Tigers -- a group that the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist organization for its use of suicide bombers and child soldiers.