Obama: Old Politics Dressed Up In A Shiny New Suit

Senator Obama has made great hay out of the fact that he is the “New Politics.” A man determined to cut ties to lobbyists and change the way we do business in Washington. Does the expression “liar liar, pants on fire” ring a bell for anyone?

David Freddoso, who will be Nocturnal Warrior’s* guest tonight, reports from Denver in his article, Investing In Obama, Government Favors for Chicago Benefactors:

When state Senator Barack Obama cosponsored legislation creating and increasing subsidies for low-income housing developers in Illinois, and wrote letters to get $14 million specifically for two of them (one was Tony Rezko), his official acts benefited several friends and donors in that industry. A similar thing happened when Obama earmarked $200,000 for Jesse Jackson’s investment fund in Chicago and $225,000 for Father Michael Pfleger’s neighborhood ministry.

Those are just a few among dozens of examples of how, when Senator Obama governs, his friends do well. Such arrangements give the lie to Obama’s self-projected image as a reformer who wants to change government and restore America’s faith in politics. But they do not make him especially awful — such arrangements are typical among politicians in both parties. Earmarks and narrowly crafted bills go one way, campaign contributions go the other. Old friends who deliver votes are rewarded with taxpayers’ money. The “right” former staffers get the six-figure lobbying jobs, and the “right” companies get the contracts.

Read the rest ->
That’s Washington, and it’s definitely Chicago, the city being celebrated tonight at the Democratic convention as various Windy City speakers take the stage. It is the “old politics” that Obama consistently denounces, and which he has consistently practiced throughout his career.

It gets better:

Michelle Obama, [Monday’s] big speaker, received a large payday in 2005 from the University of Chicago Medical Center — a promotion with a $200,000 annual raise. It came just after her husband became a U.S. senator. The following year, Senator Obama inserted a $1 million earmark for the hospital. Given that money is fungible, taxpayers are underwriting Mrs. Obama’s raise through 2010, thanks to her husband’s earmark (she is currently on leave from that job).

When the Chicago Tribune asked about this appearance of impropriety, Senator Obama remarked that he should have given the earmark to another senator instead of handling it himself. “When it comes to earmarks, because of those concerns, it’s probably something that should have been passed on to [Illinois senior Senator] Dick Durbin,” he said.

So the “new politics” way to deal with the appearance of impropriety is to hide it — in this case by having someone else insert your earmark for you.

Sorry, folks. I have a big problem voting for a man with a pitifully meager legislative record asking the American people to trust him to be Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and leader of the free world, in the midst of an economic crisis at home and two wars abroad. And I really can’t vote for him when his entire campaign is built on a lie.

He says he will change the way business is done in Washington. Really? How are we supposed to trust him when all evidence points to the fact that he does not practice what he preaches. And he never stops preaching. No matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

It is almost as if he is daring someone in the press, or the DNC elite, to call him on it. But so far, so good. Senator Obama must look in the mirror every morning and have a good, long laugh that he is so successful at pulling the wool over people’s eyes.

More evidence of Obama’s shenanigans follows, although this likewise got pitifully little press attention:

Robert Blackwell Jr., a Chicago entrepreneur and CEO of two corporations, is a major Obama donor and fundraiser. He contributed $14,000 to Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign and $4,600 to his presidential run this year. He has even given $2,100 to Obama’s 2010 Senate reelection account. Blackwell has also committed to raise between $100,000 and $200,000 for Obama’s presidential run. The employees at his two companies — Electronic Knowledge Interchange and Killerspin — have contributed at least $18,000 to Obama’s campaigns. They had good reasons to give.
…
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that he had been neglecting his private law practice and needed to get back to it. But legal work was also hard to come by. The law firm’s senior partner, Judson Miner, would say of that time that “it was a very dry period here.”

Obama was short of work and short of cash, but Robert Blackwell Jr. came to his rescue. EKI hired him in March 2001 and paid him $8,000 per month in legal retainers, for a total of $112,000. Obama and his staff then helped Blackwell’s other company, a ping-pong apparel company called Killerspin, get $320,000 in state grants. It began in 2002, months after Obama had received his last legal payment from Blackwell. Obama wrote a letter requesting a $50,000 tourism grant for Killerspin for its annual promotional ping-pong tournament.

Blackwell got only a $20,000 grant that year, but he did much better in 2003 and 2004. Dan Shomon, Obama’s longtime aide, helped Killerspin get $300,000 more in taxpayer-funded grants in those two years. The Times reports that Shomon was working part-time for Obama and part-time for Blackwell when he obtained the grants, which is an irregular arrangement all on its own. (Shomon today works as a lobbyist for the University of Chicago.)

The Times reported that Obama, in his required legal financial disclosures for 2001 and 2002, buried this six-figure financial conflict of interest with respect to Blackwell’s companies amid a list of hundreds of other clients represented by his entire law firm. He did not mention in his ethics paperwork that EKI was his largest source of income in 2001 — nor was he required to. Illinois’s legislative ethics laws are extremely weak.

Freddoso goes on to say that the ever industrious David Axelrod defended Obama by stating:

“Any implication that Sen. Obama would risk an ethical breach in order to secure a small grant for a ping-pong tournament is nuts.”… The real question is: Would it be “nuts” for a modestly paid public official with personal financial difficulties to risk an ethical breach if there was $112,000 involved?

Last Friday’s Washington Post offered more information on Blackwell, a former partner in his father’s consulting firm, Blackwell Consulting. The brief Post piece, “Contracts Went to Longtime Donor,” mentions that the firm won contracts totaling nearly $650,000 from the University of Chicago Medical Center. It happened because of a minority-owned business outreach program started by the newly promoted Michelle Obama. The elder Blackwell says that without that program, “[t]hey might not have ever thought to include Blackwell Consulting.” It also didn’t hurt that the younger Blackwell had been underwriting Obama’s political and personal life.

I see.

So connecting the dots here – investing in Obama is a very lucrative decision indeed.

I am confused as to how his supporters can continue to tout him as the great new hope when he is an example of ‘old politics’ at its best – or its worst – depending on your perspective.

After reneging on his policy promises re FISA, NAFTA, women’s rights, offshore oil drilling, payroll taxes, Iraq and so much more, he has now chosen Senator Joe Biden as a running mate – not exactly a progressive’s dream. Not exactly a wise choice either. Not exactly going to unite the party, is he? All this is addition to Obama’s shocking lack of experience or understanding of this country’s many serious problems.

Unfortunately, these news bites on his political ‘favors’ feel like many other unsavory elements of Senator Obama’s expedient cover-his-behind political career and campaign – if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it didn’t really happen.

Did it?

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Be sure to tune in:

On NQR tonight 8/26/2008, 9 pm EST Tuesday,
The Nocturnal Warrior: Special Convention Coverage
In the hour leading up to Hillary’s speech at the convention, the Nocturnal Warrior will be interviewing David Freddoso, author of “The Case Against Barack Obama.”

Then be sure to tune in again at 11 pm as DCMediaGirl and the Warrior team up to discuss Hillary’s speech.
Call-in Number: (347) 677-0792