Obama’s HOME LOAN Update and Taxes, Teamsters, and “Courage”

1) The former Rezkowatch, now renamed The Real Barack Obama, has some additional information on the Obama home loan story. Citing an article at American Thinker by a pseudonymos former state employee, due to the trust arrangement on the property, it is not clear at all who paid the property taxes on the Obama house.

In addition, American Thinker had this to say about those reported taxes:

The Obama’s declared mortgage interest deductions on their tax returns of $32,418 for 2005, $60,449 for 2006, and $57,838 for 2007. But their Northern Trust loan at the terms stated would have generated interest payments of about $30,871 for 2005, $73,395 for 2006 and $72,368 for 2007. For 2005, there would have been additional interest payments for their Hyde Park Condo which they sold on April 29, 2005 so even the 2005 deducted amount is low. They have apparently not been able to deduct the excess.

It is of course possible that the Obamas were able to pay down their mortgage loan. His books were selling and Michelle had nearly tripled her income from the University of Chicago Hospital when her husband was elected a United States Senator. So the Obamas may have chosen to apply some of the windfall toward paying down the mortgage. It would have required about $240,000 in paydown for the reported mortgage interest to equal 5.625%.on the reduced principle.

Beyond the question of the mortgage payments, odd coincidences and connections surround the house purchase, beyond questions already raised by the handling of the mansion’s side yard, which was legally divided by the previous owner into a separate lot, and sold to Tony Rezko’s wife Rita Rezko at the same time the Obamas purchased the house adjoining the yard.

Stay tuned. This story will probably unwind further.

2) Today at realclearpolitics.com Kathleen Parker has an article titled “Courage Under Fire.” She briefly discusses the recent flap over comments about McCain’s POW status and his suitability to be a “war-time” president. Parker goes on to say:

McCain isn’t a hero because he was tortured. He’s a hero because he declined an offer by his captors to be released, refusing to leave his fellow Americans behind.

It may not take much effort to get shot down, but it must take a considerable act of will to consign oneself to more deprivation and torture. It must take a level of courage unknown to most to place concern for others above one’s own interest.
Surely self-sacrifice, courage and loyalty figure somewhere in the calculus for selecting a president.

Then Parker briefly describes Obama’s courage when faced with some uncomfortable circumstances:

A few months ago, when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright first came to national attention, Obama was nearly demure when he said: “I can no more disown (Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother.”

He may not have disowned his white grandmother, but Obama didn’t exactly paint a sympathetic — or loving — portrait of her either. He essentially threw her under the bus, saying that she had made racist remarks while he was growing up, a statement that served only to highlight Obama’s own remarkable transcendence.
After several weeks of balancing his professed love for Wright with the controversial statements of his chosen father figure and spiritual mentor, Obama eventually left his church of 20 years. But why then, after all those years, did Obama finally find the door?

What changed was the degree of his self-interest. As long as Wright was helping Obama burnish his bona fides within the African-American community, it didn’t matter that the minister’s rhetorical flights of fancy bordered on paranoid, racist delusion. Only when Wright became a potential obstacle to Obama’s ambition — by saying that Obama was simply behaving as a politician — did Obama show Wright the underside of that very busy bus.

3) And in case you didn’t know how very out of whack people’s expectations of this election are, Bloomberg.com has an article articulating the idea that even a failed Obama administration would be viewed around the world as better than a successful McCain administration. Apparently it’s all about symbolism. The argument, which you will NO DOUBT SEE AGAIN during Obama’s coming 7-country “world tour” is that by electing him, American will regain its moral reputation.

4) Powerline has an interesting post about Obama and the teamsters.

Wall Street Journal reporters Brody Mullins and Kris Maher reported in early May how Barack Obama won the Teamsters’ endorsement for president. In a meeting earlier this year, he privately “told the union that he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption[.]” Obama holds himself out as a new kind of politician who refuses to play the old games. The story should have blown Obama’s pretense up several times over, but it has generated next to no coverage.

The Teamsters, the union of song, legend and Jimmy Hoffa(s) I and II, have been under an injunction since 1989 to root out corruption and mafia ties to the union. As recently as 2002, the IRB had to permanently bar two of Hoffa’s buddies from the union for trying to strong-arm a Nevada local into hiring a mob-related labor broker who would then bring in non-union low-wage workers, thus damaging the local.

Powerline draws also from a New Republic piece back in May.

There are two reasons to be concerned about Obama’s actions here. The first is procedural. Obama’s promise to close down the IRB suggests a Bush-like contempt for the customary relationship between government and the judicial process. The president himself can’t shut down the IRB. He can only recommend to his attorney general that he recommend to the U.S. Attorney in New York that it be shut down. But in these kind of touchy matters, presidents usually defer to the judgment of their attorney generals. By coming close to promising a shutdown, Obama was putting politics above judicial procedure–which is just the kind of “Washington” behavior that he likes to criticize his opponents for doing.

The second reason for concern is more substantive. Labor leaders have made plausible arguments for shutting down the IRB, but a Chicago politician should be extremely wary of acceding to them. If there is continuing mob influence in the Teamsters, it is probably centered in the Chicago area. And in the last decade, the Teamsters in Chicago have shown little enthusiasm for rooting out corruption in their ranks. As a veteran Chicago politician surrounded by a veteran Chicago campaign staff, Obama had to have known this–and that makes his warm words to the Teamsters all the more disturbing.

TNR goes on to say:

All of this may be new information for people who don’t live in Chicago, but it can’t have been unknown to Obama and the Chicagoans who run his campaign. Stier’s resignation and the IRB investigation, and the charges of corruption and organized crime have been covered over the years by Chicago Tribune reporter Stephen Franklin and other local journalists. Yet the taint of corruption and of ties to organized crime seemed not to ruffle Obama and his campaign. According to the Journal report, the Obama campaign brokered the candidate’s promise to end the IRB with John Coli, the Chicago-area chairman of Joint Council 25, whom Stier identified in his report as one of the people responsible for shutting down his investigation. (Obama’s Federal Election Commission records also show a hefty contribution to his senatorial and presidential races from the same Richard Simon who hatched the Vegas scheme to undercut local union workers and who, according to Stier, has mob ties.)

Chicago politics. I wonder if there are any ties between this bunch and Tony Rezko? I wonder if there’s any thought that Fitzgerald (investigating Rezko, et al) could be gotten rid of in the same way the Teamsters tried to get rid of all their investigations?

5) And from the “now you know” file. The AP reports that more Americans would rather barbecue with Obama than with McCain. News you can use. I wonder if he knows the difference between tomato-based, mustard-based and vinegar-based barbecues?