Breaking News via WaPo: Stimulus Bill Clears Procedural Hurdle in Senate : “Senate votes to move forward on a compromise version of the bill crafted last week to attract a handful of GOP votes. Even if the Senate approves the measure in a subsequent vote, it has to be reconciled with a bill passed earlier by the House.” (Yeah, Nancy is really good at reconciling.)

SEE ALSO, via Bloomberg: “U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailout Programs (Update1)”: ” The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.”

(This makes my head hurt.)

What country is that you’re president of, Barack? “An America”?

Thanks to a smart, but little-noticed article done by NPR, we know that that is NOT true. The only oversight of money given to states will occur when it is TOO LATE. As the NPR article below notes:

The bill does make it possible for lawmakers and the public to track the money — but only after it’s spent.

A hell of a lot of good that will do! Why? Because, even though Obama brags that his bill doesn’t have “a single earmark in it,” that’s precisely the problem. YES! Earmarks can be, and often are, a GOOD thing, because they pre-determine HOW the money will be spent with members of Congress conferring with their state’s local leaders for which projects are most needed.

I don’t know about you and your situation, but I trust my Congressman — a true public servant with extensive experience and a great position on the all-important Appropriations Committee — to do the right thing when he seeks an “earmark” for our area. And I trust my Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

I’ve never heard a word of complaint — ever — by anyone who lives in this area about the projects that bring this area jobs, money, and opportunities, as well as the kinds of projects that yield long-term benefits to all citizens.

All three (my congressman and the two senators) go over the area’s major needs with our county commissioners, elected city officials and local leaders, and also look longterm at which projects will yield the “most bang for the buck.” Right now, through their earmarks, they’re replacing four dangerous bridges, building a new transit center that greatly improves the look and tourist attractions of the downtown area, and building a vocational training center. ALL PORK IS NOT BAD. Because if it’s done right, it helps the communities that need it the most.

OF NOTE in the article below: “NPR quotes Rep. David Obey: “House Appropriations Chairman on Stimulus Waste: ‘So What’… ”

From NPR:

When congressional leaders began to assemble the mammoth economic stimulus bill, top Democrats and the Obama administration decided that there would be no earmarks: no “special projects,” no pork-barrel spending. In so doing, they gave up some control over how the money is spent, leaving the decision to public servants around the country.

“Someone has to decide how money gets spent. It’s either going to be Congress or the executive branch or states or municipalities,” says Fred Wertheimer of the congressional watchdog group Democracy 21.

Lawmakers had good reasons for stripping earmarks from the bill, Wertheimer says, because “they are simply going to become huge targets for attacking the credibility of the package, and they may very well end up as abusive earmarks.” [BUT IS THAT TARGETING THE RIGHT PLACE FOR OUR ANGER???]

It was a wise political decision, he says. But pulling earmarks out of the bill changes the balance of power in the government. If members of Congress aren’t writing into the bill how the money will be spent, then someone else must make those decisions — or, in this case, a lot of people.

“Because there is so much money here, and in so many different forms, there is no single pathway for the money to go out to states and localities,” says Sarah Binder of the Brookings Institution.

‘This Is An Emergency’

When this bill passes, a Niagara Falls of money will flow out of Washington and into the accounts of state highway commissioners, governors and legislatures, local school boards, county executives — even mayors, Binder says.

“It raises a whole host of questions about how efficiently money can be spent, how effectively it will be spent, how quickly money can be spent, just because there’s no set process here for determining how money will get out the door to create jobs or, as the president said, to save jobs,” she says.

U.S. Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, helped write the bill and says he doesn’t like being asked about earmarks.

“We simply made a decision, which took about three seconds, not to have earmarks in the bill,” he says. “And with all due respect, that’s the least important question facing us on putting together this package.”

Leaving out the earmarks does mean Congress will have less control over how the money is spent. But, Obey says, “So what? This is an emergency. We’ve got to simply find a way to get this done as fast as possible and as well as possible, and that’s what we’re doing.”

That doesn’t mean Congress will be responsible if the money is spent badly, he says.

“The person who spends the money badly will be responsible. We are simply trying to build as many protections in as possible,” Obey says. “We have more oversight built into this package than any package in the history of man. If money is spent badly, we want to know about it so we can hold accountable the people who made that choice. And guess what? Regardless of what we do, there will be some stupid decisions made.”

How To Avoid Disappointment?

As it stands now, says David Walker, a former U.S. comptroller general, the bill appears to have no mechanism for directing spending. It’s left up to those state and local officials, who may or may not have the ideas or the means to spend it appropriately. And that will lead to “a series of disappointments that it’s too late to do anything about,” Walker says.

The bill does make it possible for lawmakers and the public to track the money — but only after it’s spent. And that, he says, will lead to bad surprises.

Take, for example, the giant bank bailout known as TARP. That spending has gone all wrong, Walker says. Though the inspector general and the Government Accountability Office are keeping track of the billions spent there, “they’re basically reporting on what didn’t happen,” he says.

“Well, it’s a little bit late,” he says. “And so the question is, what are you going to do on a prospective basis? I mean, you can’t change history. What are you going to do on a prospective basis to minimize the possibility of being disappointed again?”

ALSO:

I was browsing through CNN’s videos and, lo and behold, ran across this video. This is fascinating: Men are experiencing 7.6% unemployment, but women are hit by 6.2% unemployment.

But I wonder about those stats. Far more women tend to need to work part-time jobs, and I bet the loss of those jobs isn’t reflected in these stats.

What say you?

The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette.

The other day a friend of mine confided that in the weeks leading up to the election, the Obamas’ apparent joy as a couple had made her just miserable. Their marriage looked so much happier than hers. Their life seemed so perfect. “I was at a place where I was tempted daily to throttle my husband,” she said. “This coincided with Michelle saying the most beautiful things about Barack. Each time I heard her speak about him I got tears in my eyes — because I felt so far away from that kind of bliss in my own life and perhaps even more, because I was so moved by her expressions of devotion to him. And unlike previous presidential couples, they are our age, have children the same age and (just imagine the stress of daily life on the campaign) by all accounts should have been fighting even more than we were.” … [emphases mine]

DAMN! I forgot to warn you to grab a bucket. Hope you made it to a barf bag in time! But wait. There’s more, and it’s even WORSE. Like this much worse: “Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president.” …

[...]

Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me.

There was some daydreaming too, much of it a collective fantasy about the still-hot Obama marriage. “Barack and Michelle Obama look like they have sex. They look like they like having sex,” a Los Angeles woman wrote to me, summing up the comments of many. “Often. With each other. These days when the sexless marriage is such a big celebrity in America (and when first couples are icons of rigid propriety), that’s one interesting mental drama.”

[...]

One woman wrote that when she couldn’t get to sleep at night, she “lay in bed and thought about the Obama girls in their rooms at the White House. I thought about Marian Robinson up on the third floor. And about Barack and Michelle, a couple who clearly have a ‘thing’ for each other, spooning together in bed. It helped me relax.”

I understood perfectly where these cozy dreams of easy familiarity came from. It was that sense so many people share of having a very immediate connection to Barack Obama, whether they’re black or biracial, or children of single parents or self-made strivers; or they’re lawyers or community organizers or Ivy League graduates or smokers or basketball players or Blackberry users or parents or married or Democrats. A lot of people share the fantasy that having the Obamas over for “dinner and a game of Scrabble,” as one daydreamer put it to me, is something that really could just about happen. …

And these poor people have “Obama anxiety” and WISH they had lived HIS life, and given themselves SO unselfishly to the betterment of mankind! Why hadn’t THEY been community organizers like he? Why, why, why, why, why????? Why hadn’t they sacrificed like he did?

Why didn’t they make sordid deals on pensions to benefit their crooked cronies like Tony Rezko? Why hadn’t their wives used their position on the historic preservation board to find and grab a mansion and then used Rezko’s money to enable them to buy it, no matter that they knew that Rezko was already being investigated and followed by the Feds everywhere?

Why hadn’t they tipped off their rich buddies like Cullen and Allison Davis so they could rip off millions and millions from taxpayers and let Mssrs. Davis do NOTHING about the appalling conditions in the former public housing, and allow the gentrification of such properties, even though the original intent was to preserve low-income housing?

Why hadn’t they given a stirring speech to terrified workers at the Maytag plant in Illinois, promising those workers their jobs would be saved and taking their hard-earned money as campaign contributions, and then going to visit the patriarch of the billionaire Crown family, with controlling stock in Maytag, and never once mentioning to patriarch Lester Crown the plight of those workers, while sucking up all the campaign contributions he could from Lester Crown as well as every member of the Crown family and all of their extremely wealthy friends and allies? (Oh yes, all those jobs went to Mexico, but the Crowns said that Obama never asked them about saving those jobs, according to Chicago newspapers.)

Watch this infuriated union leader instead of indulging your sex fantasies, you boobs:

– From “Machinists Union Tells It Like It Is” (about Obama)

Why, oh why?

Oops. Did I just ruin the sex fantasy for you? I’m so sorry. Not.

A teaspoon of knowledge about who this man REALLY is would sober these people up plenty fast, and they’d no longer be plagued by their insanely goofy obsessions with him and his supposed fantastic sex life. Good god almighty. I just shake my head.

That stimulus package should include counseling and psychiatric help for all of these still-delusional Obamabots living in their unreal Obamatopia.

:::::

For those stout enough to take it, the full “article” is here: “Sometimes a President Is Just a President.”

Listen to the video in its entirety because Matthews describes further how VERY near he was to where that bomb went off. And Ayers (of course, this was not discussed today) is a free man solely because his attorneys managed to prove the FBI improperly conducted wiretaps. (I have MUCH MORE TO SAY about this below, and ask you to read along and then share YOUR reactions and add your own knowledge and your own impressions of what occurred, shamefully, on MSNBC.)

I can only imagine what Concerned Mother would have to say about this travesty.

It is unconscionable to me that we and the MSM constantly RAGE about O.J. Simpson, who murdered two people, but not reject Barack Obama, a presidential candidate, now president-elect, who has associated freely and over a long time with a man who could have killed dozens and dozens of people.

On his remarkable radio show a few weeks ago, Nocturnal Warrior made a brilliant point about PEBO’s selection of numerous former Clinton White House and cabinet members. Warrior said that PEBO has to select such people because he has almost no FRIENDS or LONGTIME ASSOCIATES to appoint to any serious jobs in his administration. This is a situation that has NEVER occurred in the history of the presidency of the United States. Heretofore, every U.S. president has had a rich collection of friends, associates, and allies from whom he could select many qualified for high-ranking administration positions. But not Barack Obama. You faithful readers of No Quarter know of many of Obama’s real longtime associates: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Allison and Cullen Davis, Penny Pritzker, Bernardine Dohrn, and on and on, only a very, very few of them suited for any respectable position at any level in an administration. (I’ve clicked several Categories to provide you with a list.) And now, this week, we learn more about other Obama longtime associates like Rod Bagojevich and his wife.

William Ayers’ Crimes, and Additional Perspective History

The SOLE reason no one died is because Ayers et al. were piss-poor bomb makers. What is the sentence range these days for an attempt to commit murder? And don’t forget all the other bombs that nearly killed many others. Including the judge, his wife, and his children — while they slept — simply because that judge was doing his job: Handling the trial of a Black Panther. I’m not generally in favor of the death penalty, but Ayers’ and the Weather Underground’s attempts, repeatedly, to kill as many people as possible in the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations, and a judge’s home are the works of people so dangerous that those people should never be freed, and may be eligible to be charged with a capital offense.

Ayers has famously said, “Free as a bird, guilty as hell, ain’t America great.” (From Larry Johnson’s must-read article, “A Statement by a Retired FBI Agent Re William Ayers.”)

Dear readers, please understand this: All that, to Matthews, is just some history. It has some import to Matthews, given that he might have been blown up himself, but apparently not much since the conversation flows easily and reasonably amicably, and Matthews, at the end of the interview, gladly flogs Ayers’ book. THEN, after this interview, Matthews has his panel on. Matthews asks Joan Walsh, Salon’s editor, why Ayers — who appeared today to be “confessional” in his tone — didn’t do that during the campaign. Ms. Walsh LAUGHS with a SMIRK on her face, and says, “I think he wanted to stay out of it entirely, and not dignify what the McCain campaign and others were doing.”

Thank you, Ms. Walsh. We now know who the real criminals are. Shame on you, John McCain. Shame on you, Sarah Palin.

Ms. Walsh, please share your opinions with John Murtagh. Well, of course. That’s unfair. You don’t know who John Murtagh is.

Uppity Woman can tell you, in her story, “When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home.”

If I may, I will contrast the actions of William Ayers and the rest of the sociopathic members of the Weather Underground to the actions of a man who — unless you’re my age and you closely followed anti-war activities during the Vietnam War — you’ve probably NEVER heard of, and will not hear of in the MSM.

After all, he didn’t make bombs. He didn’t befriend a future president and excite the easily excitable rightwing. He simply did the hard work of truly changing history and he paid the price that true, albeit boring, heroes do, in anonymity.

His name is David Harris.

He was the resident counselor in the boys’ dormitory across the street from my girls’ dorm. Many of us sat at his feet as he modestly told us his stories about traveling to the South in summers past to try to help black people get the right to vote. He also shared with us the music he’d learned about in the South — the blues. He told us about Muddy Waters and more. We were entranced. With him, with his stories and the very REAL danger he was in during those summers when white racists wanted to kill him and every white college kid who dared to fight for blacks’ right to vote.

He ran for student body president and I worked on his campaign. He ran on the sole condition that, if elected, he would not serve. He won in a landslide. And did not serve.

Then his draft number came up. (My memory is vague these days, but I believe he tried all the normal routes available back then, such as conscientious objector status, and so on. All of those routes failed.)

So he went to prison. Leavenworth. About seven years ago, I did a search on him, curious what his life had been like. I discovered that he had written a book about his time in Leavenworth, along with his then-wife Joan Baez. I bought the book, and read it. It was a heart-wrenching account. I had no idea that being an inmate in Leavenworth was such a horrific, maddening, insane experience.

It is a simple story, really.

He refused to fight for a war he did not believe was right.

The U.S. government tried him and sentenced him to prison.

He served roughly three years, as I recall.

You may disagree with his decision, but he decided to take the punishment like a man.

He had a father who, as I remember it, was an attorney in Fresno, California. His father surely had some means, but not enough to prevent his son from going to prison.

Bill Ayers had a father who was Chairman of Commonwealth Edison and a mover/shaker in Chicago politics, the arts and education. His father had the means to hire a cadre of attorneys who successfully prevented his son from spending a single day in prison.

David Harris did not build bombs.

He tried to help blacks in the South get to vote, at great risk to his own life.

He helped educate and watched over younger students attending the university, which was often a tedious task, listening to those 18-year-olds’ angst and fear and uncertainty and their various problems with and anxieties about their classes.

He helped the students with the difficult reading for the required freshman class, The History of Western Civilization, because he had read all of those works, including all of Plato, Socrates, and more, and he could — and did — explain those works to those anxious students. He spoke with them patiently and kindly and always very softly.

He was a hulk of a man with broad thick shoulders and a large angular head and a blond mustache but he was, as they say, a gentle giant.

He did not teach the younger students to build bombs or burn down buildings.

He taught the students about giving black people the right to vote and about the blues and about philosophy and about literature and about political thinking and about peaceful protest and about Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

He marched and sang folk songs with his wife, who bore their son.

What a dull man.

Doubtless, Chris Matthews will never invite David Harris for a feature interview.

If only he’d built bombs and then buddied up with a future president, he’d be a sought-after guest.

At least he has an entry in Wikipedia.

:::::::::::

Via Google News results:

Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ – NewsBusters

Chris Matthews invited on Bill Ayers on Wednesday night’s “Hardball,” and actually confronted him about his bombing of Capitol Hill during his days as a member of the ’60s terrorist group Weather Underground, as the former Capitol Hill police officer emotionally observed: “I was a Capitol policeman at the time, so I was one of the guys that could have been killed obviously at the time you put that, your guys put that bomb in there. So I have a little personal interest. It wasn’t just vandalism. To me it was life-threatening to the guys I worked with. And there were some pretty good guys working there.”

However Matthews, who paradoxically may not even be alive to conduct this interview today if the Weather Underground’s bombs were more devastating, devoted most of the interview tossing softballs Ayers’ way, as the two often agreed with each other on Barack Obama and Iraq policy as the “Hardball” host pointed out they only really differed on how to spread their points of view: “Well, Mr. Ayers, with all due respect, you agitate your way, I agitate my way.

Matthews, who back in October dismissed Sarah Palin’s mention of Ayers, as “the politics of distraction,” began the interview by setting up Ayers to play down any association he had with Obama: …

READ ALL: Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ — NewsBusters

AND READ MORE of NoQuarter’s treasure trove of materials on the bombings conducted by William Ayers.

If you are surprised by this appointment consideration, please know that I am not. And if you don’t know who Penny Pritzker is, you can count on me to refresh your memory.

Penny was Barack Obama’s national campaign finance chair and now she would like to become Secretary of Commerce. Well I suppose we should all be grateful that she hasn’t been tapped as Secretary of Treasury, considering she owes the Federal Government nearly a half billion dollars in restitution for her seized Superior Bank in Illinois.

Yes, my friends, Penny Pritzker, the Mother of subprime lenders, former owner of the seized Superior Bank is on Barack Obama’s short list for Secretary of Commerce.

I am sure all those customers she screwed are thrilled. In fact one of them had quite a bit to say about Barack Obama and his relationship with Prizker right here on this radio show after ole Penny’s bank went under and left her with a large part of her life’s savings flushed down the proverbial drain. (Note: If Play doesn’t work, click on MP3 Stream link, you don’t want to miss this woman’s story)

I can assure you this woman wasn’t psychic when she expressed concern that Pritzker would become a member of an Obama cabinet. She just happened to understand the concept of “Show me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are“.

You might say that Penny was a Pioneer of sorts. After all, her Superior Bank folded like a plastic door in a cheap banquet room years before the rest of the dominoes fell.

You might even say that the Superior Bank was a boilerplate for what’s happening today on Wall Street. She avoided the rush, so to speak. Her bank failed in 2001. I discussed this here on April 4, 2008. So did plenty of other bloggers, including RBO. Of course, all of this was dutifully ignored by those bastions of integrity, MSNBC and CNN.

For those of you who need a refresher course, here are some clips from that non-fiction story:

The Pritzkers are one of the nation’s wealthiest families and heirs to the fortune created by the Hyatt hotels. Yes, Penny is a billionaire. So basically, Penny could squash me like a bug right now for writing this.

Among their other endeavors, the Pritzkers were the owners of Superior Bank in Hinsdale, Illinois when it was seized.

Yes, I did say seized.

Penny Pritzker, Barack Obama’s great Chicago (of course!) friend was a pioneer you might say! She was a failed subprime lender who set the tone all the way back to 2001. She did it before it was even in style.

Here’s a little press release from the Office of Thrift Supervision back in 2001:

OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent

WASHINGTON – The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) closed Superior Bank FSB, Hinsdale, Ill., today and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver.

The FDIC transferred the insured deposits and substantially all the assets of Superior Bank into a newly chartered, full-service mutual savings bank, known as Superior Federal, FSB, which will open for business on Monday morning. All depositors of Superior Bank automatically become depositors of Superior Federal, and will have immediate access to their insured funds. All 18 of Superior Bank’s Chicago metropolitan area offices will open for business Monday and will continue to offer full banking services, including online banking. Superior Bank’s loan production and servicing operations will also continue to operate normally.

OTS used its authority under the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991 to close Superior Bank when it found that the bank remained critically undercapitalized — that its tangible equity capital was less than two percent of its total assets. The bank failed to implement a capital restoration plan that it submitted to OTS on May 24 this year.

Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale in the secondary market. OTS found that the bank also suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision.

Superior became critically undercapitalized largely due to incorrect accounting treatment and aggressive assumptions for valuing residual assets. The bank also experienced significant losses during 2000 from its automobile lending program.

OTS has determined that Superior Bank is insolvent, having incurred losses that have depleted all or substantially all of its capital. OTS also determined that Superior Bank was no longer able to transact business in a safe and sound manner.

OTS notified the bank of its serious concerns in July 2000.

The bank was purchased by two families in 1988 — the Pritzker family of Chicago, owner of Hyatt Hotels and other interests, and the Dworman family of New York, with interests in real estate and financial services activities — and was operated through a complex network of holding companies.

In light of these findings, OTS determined that closure and the appointment of FDIC as receiver were necessary to protect the interests of the bank’s insured depositors.

As of March 31, 2001, the failed bank had total assets of $1.9 billion and total deposits of $1.5 billion. FDIC insures depositors’ accounts up to the statutory limit of $100,000.

Superior is the only bank that OTS has closed in 2001, and only the fourth OTS-regulated institution closed in the past five years.

The FDIC has established a toll free telephone number for customers of Superior. That number is 1-800-331-6306, and will be available until midnight tonight and then from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily thereafter.

At the time of this seizure, it was determined that Penny Pritzker and her family owed $460,000,000 to the Federal Government. Yes, that’s right folks. Nearly a half a billion dollars. Gee, i wonder if that’s all paid back yet, don’t you?

Back in September, 2008, I discussed Penny and her siezed subprime lending institution yet again and so did RBO. I felt she deserved another go-around considering she certainly appeared to be a prime forerunner of today’s Wall Street Meltdown–and this didn’t seem to bother Barack Obama one bit:

You see, while Barack Obama is faking outrage over all the bankruptcies and bailouts, he doesn’t mention that a number of his top ten contributors are from Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman and the JP Morgan Chase. He also fails to mention that one of the first subprime lenders to stick it to borrowers and have her bank seized is a woman named Penny Pritzker, who just happens to be Barack Obama’s campaign Finance Chair (as confirmed on April 3, 2008) and a potential Secretary of the Treasury in an Obama administration.

Power and Control blogger has this to say:

This is a long and complicated story about how Obama backers were behind the mortgage industry meltdown. It hast to start some where, so lets start with a well known Chicago name Penny Pritzker. It starts with a bank failure.

And now, Penny is being considered as Secretary of Commerce. Kind of makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it? Don’t you always have a warm feeling when you meet one of Barack Obama’s close friends?

But don’t worry. Penny is going to fix herself and her friends us up really well. After all, look how well she has looked out for the little people in the past.

I guess the main stream media didn’t think this Petty little Penny Pritzker Problem (say that three times fast) was important enough to look into back when some of us was being sooooooooo trivial about it.

Change You Simply Cannot Believe.

Additional links on this bilking of innocent people:
NY Times, December, 2001
FDIC Failed Bank Information – Superior Bank
OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent
OTS Announces Resolution of Charges Against Auditor of Closed Superior Bank FSB

Additional Uppity Coverage of this marvelous “choice” for Secretary of Commerce:

Barack Obama’s Finance Chairwoman and the Seized Superior Bank (April 4, 2008)

Obama’s Finance Chair – Failed Bank Owner Penny Pritzker and Wall Street Today (September 14, 2008

RBO: Penny Pritzker’s Problem (September 16, 2008)

“Ms. Jarrett’s role will be threefold, as is her title: White House Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.

A longstanding member of Barack Obama’s tiny core of top advisers, she will continue providing him with counsel on a wide-ranging set of issues, she said Friday evening. Second, she will serve as the White House’s point person for business with state and local officials. Additionally, she will supervise the Office of Public Liaison, a relatively quiet office which she hopes to turn into a more active channel for government-citizen collaboration.” (Read all. Italics mine.)

When you’ve done as much opposition research on Obama as has this blog, it is amazing what can be found right HERE about a woman about whom most American are saying, “Who’s she?” — at the very same moment that all of you veteran NoQuarter readers are saying, “Oh yeah. Her. It figures.”

Here, in chronological order, are snippets from many of our stories that refer to Valerie Jarrett. Even with our handy administrative-section search engine, this took a while, but it’s worth it:

(1) From the great investigative story by City Nell, a true must-read, “How to Buy a Mansion You Can’t Afford,” February 4, 2008 (edited brilliantly by Truthteller) — which, besides pointing out Jarrett’s significant role in the trajectory of Michelle’s career path, also explains how Michelle Obama became aware of the availability of the historic mansion:

… In 1996, she left the Public Allies to help create a student volunteer program at The University of Chicago. By the time of this interview, she was the Executive Director of Community Affairs for The University of Chicago Hospitals. This is how Michelle portrays her change of career:

She was devastated when her father died from MS complications. “That’s when I started analyzing my life, sitting in a firm,” she recalls, adding that in that same year she also lost one of her best friends from college to cancer. She soon left the firm to pursue a much lower-paying path in the public sector.

The fact is Michelle was actively recruited for City Hall by a close friend, Valerie Jarrett, who was Mayor Daley’s Deputy Chief of Staff at that time. Valerie later became the Finance Chair of Obama’s 2004 US Senate campaign and then First Treasurer of Barack’s political action committee, Hopefund.

It helps to have friends at City Hall. Among other positions, Michelle was appointed twice to sit on the board of the Commission of Chicago Landmarks for two consecutive terms. Michelle maintained this board seat from 1998 to March 2005, although normally a member only serves one 4 year term. …

(2) From NoQuarter’s story (formerly known as nasuS), “Obama’s 2006 Earmarks & the Crown Family,” March 13, 2008 (aided, as always, by Truthteller’s considerable knowledge of all things Chicago and by Andy, a reader who’s sent me great tips for a long time):

Lynn Sweet, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, has more on Michelle Obama and Obama’s other earmarks:

Obama sought money for the University of Chicago Hospitals. Wife Michelle works for the University of Chicago Hospitals, appointed in spring 2005 as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She is now on leave from the job to campaign for her husband. Top campaign adviser and friend Valerie Jarrett is the Chair of the University of Chicago Medical Center Board and also Chair of the Executive Committee of that board. She has also been named Vice-Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees. Obama taught at the U. of Chicago law school and the Obama’s two daughters attend school there. [bold mine]

Here’s an FYI digression: My March 13th story begins with the significance of the Crown family’s money to Obama’s rise — Larry Johnson has correctly tagged the billionaire Crown and Pritzker families as of the highest influence to both Barack Obama and his aide-de-camp Rahm Emanuel — and a cautionary tale for those KoolAid dipsomaniacs:

Do you remember the Crown family? Do you remember the Crown patriarch who sits on the board of Maytag? Do you recall that Barack Obama, as a U.S. Senate candidate, met with Maytag workers, asked for their donations and promised them he’d help save their jobs, and that he then went to the Crown family and took their large donations, but never said a word to Crown about saving the jobs of the Maytag workers? …

(3) From Larry Johnson’s story, “Let’s Help Barack Fight the ‘Smears’,” June 12, 2008, which answered his critics taunting him about the “whitey tape”:

Now, are you ready for the shocker? Look at the next paragraph of [Time magazine reporter Karen Tumulty's] piece:

When the Obama campaign got wind of the rumor in April, Michelle’s close friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett asked Michelle if there could be anything to it; the candidate’s wife dismissed it out of hand.

I did not hear about the tape until MAY. REPEAT. I DID NOT HEAR ABOUT THE TAPE UNTIL MAY. Yet, the Obama campaign knew about the tape in April. Got it? And I am the one responsible for the so called rumor? …

(4) From Un coup de des’s story, “Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron,” June 27, 2008, a stunning and sickening story of how Obama abetted his greedy friends in making millions from taxpayers by privatizing public housing and letting it go to ruin or driving out the poor. You will see that Valerie Jarrett had a DIRECT ROLE and MADE MILLIONS from taxpayers’ monies while making the inhabitants of public housing criminally miserable. If you’ve never read this story, you simply must do so. If only the MSM had picked up this courageous investigative report by the Boston Globe and given it the “play” it deserved, Barack Obama would likely not be president-elect. That is how devastating this story is.

It is stomach-churning that Valerie Garrett had ANY role in this cruel, corrupt, and calamitously consumptive plundering of public monies.

First, a brief introduction from the No Quarter story is in order:

This is the first of a series of articles to be written on a lengthy exposé published in the Boston Globe entitled “Grim Proving Ground for Obama’s Housing Policy.” The 27 JUN 2008 investigative report is required reading for all No Quarter users. …

Now, here is first of the bizarre, baffling and bold sections that describe some of Valerie Jarrett’s plundering and political moves:

Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.

One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations.

Similar to Rezko, Cecil Butler is a developer who profited from the privatization of low income, public housing in Chicago during the 1990s.   Butler is also not coincidentally a major supporter of Barack Obama whose low income tenements were ultimately seized by the government for multiple building code violations.

The Boston Globe provides a description and a brief history of Butler’s Lawndale Restoration.

[...]

And yet more:

Who helped Cecil Butler secure government funds for Woodlawn Restoration?  Barack Obama, of course: the same Barack Obama who wrote letters on behalf of Rezko’s slum properties the same year residents of Rezko’s tenements were complaining of lack of heat and sanitation services.   For the Executive Vice President of Habitat Co., the company who helped Butler manage his deteriorating warren of slums, was Valerie Jarrett, another Obama contributor who develops low income housing and serves as a top advisor to the Obama for President campaign.  The Boston Globe explains how Obama exploited his position as state Senator to assist Jarrett and Cecil Butler.  I quote:

Obama translated that belief into legislative action as a state senator. In 2001, Obama and a Republican colleague, William Peterson, sponsored a successful bill that increased state subsidies for private developers. The law let developers designated by the state raise up to $26 million a year by selling tax credits to Illinois residents. For each $1 in credits purchased, the buyer was allowed to decrease his taxable income by 50 cents. …

This No Quarter story ends thusly:

 A disturbing pattern emerges, and it can be summarized as follows:

• Obama secured funds for developers who desired to earn profits off of low income housing during the privitization scheme of the Chicago Housing Authority that occurred during Barack Obama’s tenure as a state Senator.  Those developers include Tony Rezko, Valerie Jarrett and Cecil Butler.
• These public-private partnerships failed, leaving many in squalor.
• Barack Obama remained silent, but he accepted contributions from Rezko, Jarrett, Butler and others.
• Rezko is not an isolated case.  Obama also colluded with the likes of Cecil Butler, whose negligence inspired African-American residents of the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side to organize support for radical Republican Alan Keyes during Obama’s 2004 Senate bid.
• Obama’s desire to privatize public housing has resulted in a series of failed projects that have left the indigent in squalor.
• But Obama accepted the political contributions of these unscrupulous developers nonetheless.

Flineo created a video entitled “Obama’s Forgotten People,” and I publish it again, as there is a new group of low income housing residents on the West Side of Chicago Obama we can add to the group on the South Side Obama abandoned in order to climb the political and social ladder.

[...]

Nothing, in my opinion, is more deplorable than a career politician who exploited African-Americans in low income housing for political and personal gain.  And Obama did it again and again in inner city Chicago.  Now he has manipulated African-Americans across the country to view his candidacy as the empowerment of the very people Obama ignored in order to line the pockets of his slumlord friends and contributors.  Progressives and ostensible Democrats may forget, but those of us who are concerned with social justice will continue to serve as the true muckrakers this election cycle. 

 The edifices reproduced in this essay are buildings managed by Cecil Butler.  The restoration project that followed in the wake of Cecil Butler’s mismanagement of Lawndale Restoration is described in this document.

There are so many more stories to share with you, but I’m weary at the moment. You can find so many more by simply searching our site.

These stories about the public housing always tear me up. Let’s end with Flineo’s great video:

Recently, a friend asked for information on now convicted Tony Rezko and Barack Obama. Here’s what I sent her, from more stories on the Obamas’ mansion to Obama’s entanglements in with Chicago slumlords to Rezko’s trial, conducted by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s very able team:

First, I sent her a link along with some notes about Truthteller’s October 7th story:

“CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen

– Obama’s history with Rezko is lengthy (Rezko contacted him when Obama was still at Harvard Law School — I believe, although it’s a hunch, that they met when Obama was in Chicago before he went to Harvard). 

Their connections are political, business, and personal. Obama’s law firm represented Rezko’s interests, Obama pushed state legislation that helped Rezko, etc. The Woods Fund, along with its board members Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, was involved with Rezko and gave him financial grants.

In Obama’s own district, Rezko controlled former public housing and let it go to ruin. NoQuarter has numerous fact-checked stories on this + Flineo’s great videos offer rich fodder that can be used in TV/Web advertising.  Examples from Flineo’s channel:

THIS is an INVALUABLE video. Flineo included video footage of Carol Marin, a noted Chicago NBC reporter, saying that Rezko got over $100 million in taxpayer monies for his schemes IN Obama’s own district.  Ms. Marin shows the actual conditions of those properties.

Flineo then adds a still image of a map in which he highlights, one by one, how many of Rezko’s foreclosed, closed down properties are IN Obama’s own state senate district.  (That map comes from one of the Chicago newspapers — I can find the link if need be.)

Here are more links to some of our key stories and a radio show we did on how Obama used public housing privatization in Chicago to benefit his rich allies and political benefactors.

The Boston Globe did a great investigative piece on Obama’s links to the housing privatization schemes — but none of the rest of the MSM picked up their great work.  Our own Un Coup De Des wrote it up brilliantly in two parts:

     (a) Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron;

     (b) Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous; and

     (c) I wrote a story about a little boy, with video and photos, who was killed this summer — it was all over the Chicago newspapers and TV stations– because another of Obama’s political godfathers/benefactors failed to maintain his privatized housing property in a safe manner. That was Cullen Davis, the son of Alison Davis who gave Obama his first job at a law firm that handled Rezko’s housing schemes: “The Blood Money of Barack Obama’s Money Men.”

See also: Larry Johnson’s more recent story on the ties among Obama, ACORN, and Obama’s slumlord buddies, Allison and Cullen Davis (father and son): “Barack Worked For ACORN, Promises to Do So Again.”

Related:  How the Obamas got that mansion.  I posted several links to stories about the mansion, including “How to Buy a Mansion You Can’t Afford,” which details how Michelle Obama used her position as a member of a preservation board to find out about and get that mansion that had been labeled “historic.” 

::::: OPEN THREAD! :::::

No Quarter introduced readers to the Mutual Bank in Chicago after a Chicago Sun-Times columnist mentioned how a certain financial institution in Chicago would become the subject of a federal probe to be conducted by Fitzgerald’s prosecutors in relation to the conviction of Antoin “Tony” Rezko. Although I cautioned I did not have conclusive evidence when I argued Mutual Bank is most probably the financial institution in question, it now appears I may have been correct.

For according to a Washington Times exclusive printed today, a Real Estate and Commercial Credit Analyst of Mutual Bank has assumed whistleblower status and filed complaint against his former employer.

The subject of his complaint is the Mutual Bank and its potentially fraudulent reappraisal of the lot on which Obama’s home sits.

Obama, we recall, was only able to purchase the mansion he could not afford in June 2005 as a result of Rita Rezko’s ability to secure a mortgage for the lot on which the home sits from Mutual Bank.

And yes, Obama is involved in this complaint, for his decision to purchase a 10 foot strip of the lot on which his home sits from Rita Rezko in January 2006 was, according to the complaint, the reason why these potentially fraudulent reappraisals of the Rita Rezko lot were drafted.

I quote the Washington Times:

In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth J. Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document.

Mr. Connor, a real estate and commercial credit analyst at the Mutual Bank Corp. in Chicago, also noted in the complaint that the bank received a grand jury subpoena in October 2006 requiring it to produce information concerning Mrs. Rezko’s purchase, including the bank’s files on the property.

Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko’s account and the mortgage Rita Rezko received from Mutual for the lot on which Obama’s home sits were the subjects of a grand jury subpoena in 2006. I recommend you read my essay on Rita Rezko, the Obama land deal and Mutual Bank for an explication of why the mortgage she received from Chicago machine banker “Uncle” Amrish Mahajan of Mutual would have raised the eyebrows of federal prosecutors.

The Washington Post continues:

The complaint also said that the grand jury wanted information on Mrs. Rezko’s checking account and loan file and that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) had audited the Rezko file – although Mr. Connor’s lower reappraisal had been replaced with a higher amount.

“Connor’s internal whistle-blowing activity at Mutual Bank implicates Mutual Bank and the potentially guilty officers thereof to prosecution under federal and Illinois statutes,” said the complaint, filed by attorney Glenn R. Gaffney.

The complaint said Mutual Bank officials could be guilty of making false statements, willfully overvaluing property, bank fraud, witness retaliation, willful violation of a lawful subpoena, FDIC violations, and state banking regulations…

According to the complaint, Mr. Connor reviewed the appraisal of the Rezko property by another firm, Adams Appraisal, which had set the value at $625,000. Mr. Connor’s complaint said that he told his bosses in a report that the property had been overvalued by at least $125,000 and that a “reasonable and fair evaluation” should have been no greater than $500,000.

Why would Mutual Bank desire to inflate the value of the Rezko property on which the Obama home sits? Why would Mutual Bank risk obstructing justice? A paragraph in the Washington Times exclusive answers these questions. I quote them again:

The complaint said the Rezko loan was approved by Mutual Bank President and CEO Amrish Mahajan and others so that Mrs. Rezko could buy a 9,090-square-foot vacant parcel of real estate. It said that in January 2006, Mrs. Rezko and Mr. Obama, along with his wife Michelle, signed an agreement to sell a 10-foot strip of the property to the Obamas. At that point, according to the complaint, Mr. Connor’s firm asked him to conduct the reappraisal.

Connor, in other words, was fired for noting that the value of the property had been inflated.

For if Mutual adhered to Connor’s appraisal, Rita Rezko would have received less money from Obama for the ten foot strip of land next to his home he purchased from the convicted slum landlord’s wife.

And Mahajan, the CEO of Mutual, had an interest in ensuring Rezko would receive more money from Obama, for Mahajan is deeply imbricated in the Chicago machine that used Obama to funnel government revenue into the privatization of public housing scheme from which Obama’s friends profited.

Now wonder why Mutual removed Connor’s appraisal from the Rita Rezko file.

Mahajan, the Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko and the Obama land deal are now the subjects of a complaint filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County, and Obama’s financial dealings with the Mutual Bank and with Rita and Antoin “Tony” Rezko are the subjects of news articles that explore Chicago corruption and questionable real estate transactions.

I guess the deal really was “boneheaded.”

No Quarter asked readers to focus on the land deal and on Mutual when the Chicago Sun-Times mentioned that a financial institution is the subject of federal prosecutors’ interest, for Obama’s decision to purchase land from Rita Rezko catalyzed all the press on his questionable land deal with convicted slumlord Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Now we know that transaction was the subject of a federal subpoena in 2006, and now we know a complaint has been filed against Mutual for intimidating employees and attempting to increase the value of the Obama lot most probably in order to ensure Rita Rezko would receive enough money to repay the $500,000 loan she received from Mahajan and the Mutual Bank even though she only earns $35,000 per annum at her government job.

Much more is to be learned about this land deal. But now that it is the subject of a complaint and a federal subpoena filed in 2006, I imagine we will learn that Obama chose Rezko to tour the mansion and purchase the lot on which it sits in order to ensure that he could later repay Rezko for the land he could not afford.

Why else did Mahajan, one of Rezko’s bankers who also sat on the Chicago Plan Commission of Daley with Valerie Jarrett and Allison Davis, manipulate the value on the lot when Obama was ready to repay the Rezkos for the favor?

Must money always be kept within a small network of corrupt Chicago machine cogs?

I imagine we will read more about Obama and his financial dealings with Rita Rezko and Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank before votes are cast in November. It was a “boneheaded” deal indeed, Senator Obama.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• About the Financial Institution Mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times: Obama, Tony Rezko, Amrish Mahajan, the Kenwood Mansion & Rita Rezko
• Rezko, Giannoulias, Obama – Dominoes?
• CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen
• More Than Just a Boneheaded Mistake
• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
• Obama’s Gangster Mentality
• Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Recently Unsealed Documents Confirm Obama Heavily Embroiled in Rezko Case
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slum Landlord Patron
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN

Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with naked lies about his supposed connection to ACORN.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

Before showing you that this is not a true statement, let’s hear from Barack’s own mouth his promise–I REPEAT, HIS PROMISE–to let ACORN help shape his administration’s agenda even before he is inaugurated.

In light of Barack’s early association with ACORN, this promise makes sense. To explore whether or no Illinois Project Vote was “independent” I did a search of corporate records. Well, lookee here.

The trail is a bit convoluted but very revealing.

First, PROJECT VOTE is a trademarked name and is registered at the address: 1024 ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE, NEW ORLEANS, LA 70117-8402.

Gee, who else shared that address? Remember the almost $800,000 that Barack’s campaign gave initially to Citizen Services Inc., but later insisted should have been listed as ACORN? Yep. The same address.

Barack’s Illinois Project Vote was incorporated as follows:

Filing Number: 55191247
Name: PROJECT VOTE FUND
Name Type: LEGAL
Business Type: NON-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION
Status: REVOKED
Foreign State of Incorporation: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Place Incorporated: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Date Incorporated: 08/16/1988
Anniversary Month: AUGUST
Terms: PERPETUAL
Additional Information: NOT REGULATED BY ILLINOIS COMMERCE COMMISSION
Purpose: CHARITABLE OR BENEVOLENT

Registered Agent
Name: DEMPSEY, MARY A
Title: REGISTERED AGENT
Registered Agent Address 54 W HUBBARD ST STE 400
CHICAGO, IL 60610-4669
As of Date: 08/16/1988

A subsequent search on the District of Columbia indicates the following:

Filing Number: 852582
Name: PROJECT VOTE FUND
Business Type: DOMESTIC BUSINESS
Status: REVOKED
Place Incorporated: DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Date Incorporated: 07/15/1985

Registered Agent
Name: GLASMAN, FERNANDO B
Title: REGISTERED AGENT
Registered Agent Address 1424 16TH ST NW STE 101
WASHINGTON, DC 20036-2211

I then did a further search on the Chicago address–54 W. Hubbard Street, Suite 400. Guess who else had an office at that address but on the Second floor? Cullen J. Davis (Suite 205).

So what?

Well, guess who gave Barack his first job as a lawyer in Chicago? Cullen’s dad, Allison Davis. Want to know more about Cullen, check out Susan UnPC’s piece from earlier this year on Cullen Davis.

In some quarters Cullen Davis would be considered a slumlord. According to the Chicago Tribune report on the death of a child at a housing complex owned by Davis’ company, UPA, we learn:

UPA is run by Cullen Davis. His father, Allison, also has been an official with the firm, according to state records. Cullen Davis also declined to comment because of the pending lawsuit.

HUD inspectors reported that the conditions of the gates worsened over the last two years, records show. In 2006, the problem was judged to be of midlevel severity, with a rating of 2 on a scale of 1 to 3. The level was raised to 3 in two subsequent inspections, in April and December of last year.

Under HUD’s inspection system, housing authorities are required to immediately fix problems regarded as pressing health and safety concerns, such as exposed wiring and blocked fire exits. Inspectors found many such violations on their last visit to the Cabrini-Green Rowhouses and gave the project a score of 30 points out of a possible total of 100—a “very bad score,” Hanson said.

The condition of the gates, however, was not marked as life-threatening and thus did not require immediate repair. Hanson said HUD’s computer software, in use for about 10 years, does not allow problems with gates or fences to be designated as life-threatening.

Even though it was not required to fix the gates immediately, the CHA should have made sure they were repaired, said Eleny Ladias, director of technical services for HUD in Chicago. “It’s up to the housing authority. They’re required to follow up with those type of repairs.”

CHA officials said non-emergency items needing repair usually are “addressed by the property manager.” They declined to comment on whether the broken gates were ever fixed.

UPA got the contract to manage the rowhouses where Curtis Cooper lived at the end of 2005, taking over from a resident-run management group. Residents have been critical of the firm’s work, and some said the gates have long been in bad shape. “The gates were raggedy as hell,” said Sherri Montgomery, a lifelong resident of the rowhouses.

After the accident, UPA posted signs warning children not to play on or near the gates. “It’s too damn late,” said Clayton Wade, Curtis Cooper’s father. “The baby’s dead.”

So, let me get this straight:

Obama is working for an organization that is part of the ACORN umbrella and shares an office building with one Cullen Davis who, subsequently, with Obama’s help becomes a successful slumlord.

Yep, that is change I want to believe in.

**********Truthteller asks bloggers and reporters to direct their attention to Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey.**********

Mike Robinson’s AP article entitled “Obama Fundraiser, Convicted of Fraud, Spills Beans,” corroborates what we at No Quarter have been writing for weeks: Antoin “Tony” Rezko is cooperating with federal prosecutors interested in Barack Obama. While the national media’s attention to this topic is long overdue, I am not prepared to state that it is too little, too late. I am, however, disappointed.

Also disappointing but somewhat predictable is the blogosphere’s bungled reception of Mike Robinson’s article. Of course those who have embraced Obama will dismiss the story as so much yellow journalism. One blogger claims that prosecutors are interested in Blagojevich and not Obama. But looming in the blind spot of that blogger’s necessarily tendentious gaze is Rezko’s 9 JUN 2008 letter to Judge Amy St. Eve and the reference to Obama as “Individual D” in the superseding indictment and the proffer of evidence filed by Fitzgerald and his prosecutors during the Rezko trial. Obama’s name can be printed again and again on the surface of the legal documents filed during the proceedings of the Rezko trial, but these writers with all their “naked” insight will clothe the verifiable record with their blindness. Knowledge production, it seems, has been lifted from its evidentiary supports when Democrats write about Barack Obama and Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

And yes, those Democrats include some ostensible Hillary Clinton Democrats. Seizing upon the following quotation in a Chicago Sun-Times column, one blogger believes the AP story heralds the end of the political careers of Alexi Giannoulias and Barack Obama:

Sneed hears rumbles political fund-raiser/fixer Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his “dealings” with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.

Stay tuned.

While Rezko was a customer of Alexi Giannoulias’s Broadway Bank, where he amassed a debt of $450,000 after writing bad checks at Las Vegas casinos, and while Giannoulias did write loans for Rezko, I do not believe one can aver with the confidence of the blogger I cite above that federal prosecutors are now focusing on Giannoulias, even if Giannoulias was tied to Rezko by his opponent during his 2006 bid for the office of Illinois state Treasurer. Allow me to be clear: Obama bundler, mobster banker and Obama protégé Giannoulias is, to be sure, embroiled in the Rezko scandal and in other aspects of Chicago politics any political observer would find unsavory, but he is not in my opinion the topic of the conservation occurring between Rezko, Rezko’s attorney and Fitzgerald’s team of prosecutors. I do admit he is grist for the mill of impetuous bloggers who desire web traffic and a controversial headline or two, however. Because I tend to rely on evidence and not on hearsay, I believe we should focus our attention on Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey, not on Giannoulias and the Broadway Bank, if we are to assign names to the financial institution about which Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times has heard “rumblings.” Although Mahajan is not known to readers of No Quarter and to the national media, I imagine they will desire more information on the unscrupulous banker once they read the information I unpack below the fold. And yes, Obama is involved, deeply involved.

My interest in Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey was picqued by this list of contributors in Rezko’s bundling network provided by the Chicago Sun-Times last March. View the second page of the document, and notice the following entry:

The data available in the Sun-Times spreadsheet is corroborated by the following data, which is democratically available at the Federal Election Commission’s website:

MAHAJAN, AMRISH
CHICAGO, IL 60607
MUTUAL BANK

OBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
12/20/2003 500.00 24020030170
04/14/2004 1000.00 24020461757

Not only was Mahajan a member of Rezko’s bundling network; his bank, the Mutual Bank of Harvey, granted Rita Rezko the $500,000 mortgage she needed in order to purchase the lot on which the Obama mansion in Chicago sits. As many of you may recall, the Obamas could not have purchased the mansion they could not afford unless transactions for the mansion and the lot closed on the same day. Obama needed to locate someone who would buy the lot, and he approached Rezko, the convicted slumlord with whom Obama toured the property before they mutually agreed to the following arrangement:

The home and lot sales closed on June 15, 2005. A land trust controlled by the Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million, and the Obamas secured a $1.32 million mortgage from Northern Trust to complete that purchase. That same day, Rezko’s wife, Rita Rezko, bought the side lot for $625,000. A $37,000- a-year Cook County employee, she secured a $500,000 mortgage from Mutual Bank of Harvey.

The structure of this transaction begs the following question: What bank would lend a government employee who earns $37,000 per annum a $500,000 mortgage? What bank would assume such a risk?

The Mutual Bank of Harvey, of course, for the Mutual Bank of Harvey’s President is a man who is deeply connected to the Chicago machine that backed Barack Obama. Indeed, Amrish Mahajan was one of Mayor Daley’s first political appointments in 1989, when he was named to a seat on Chicago’s Plan Commission, where he would be joined by Obama’s former boss and Rezko’s business partner Allison Davis and by Valerie Jarrett, Daley’s Chief of Staff who chaired the Commission from 1991-1995. Mahajan, in other words, worked with those who devised and profited from Daley’s failed public housing experiment in Chicago, a public housing policy Obama helped fund as state Senator and US Senator.

Rezko, according to the Boston Globe, was one of the major beneficiaries of Obama’s legislative advocacy for funding of Daley’s public housing experiment. Other major beneficiaries are Jarrett and Allison Davis. Mahajan was also a beneficiary, for his bank had made $3.4 million dollars in loans to Tony Rezko’s slum landlord business since 2002. A banker for one of the slumlords who benefitted from the Daley housing program Obama helped bankroll, Mahajan was returning a favor when he wrote a $500,000 mortgage in 2005 for the wife of one of his clients. Although Tony’s financial problems were mounting in 2005, and although Rita earned only $35,000 per annum, Mahajan underwrote the mortgage. Favors must be reciprocated, I guess, especially when one can satisfy two parties at once: the person with whom one has a complicated relationship in real estate and the politician who helped finance that complicated relationship as state Senator and US Senator.

I doubt federal investigators are interested in the Mahajans solely for their involvement in the property deal involving Obama, Mahajan and the Rezkos. The Mahajans, I believe, are the foci of their probe for many reasons.

• Anita Mahajan, the wife of Amrish, has been involved with questionable real estate deals that are the subject of federal probes with Governor Blagojevich’s wife, Patricia
• Anita Mahajan exploited lucrative no bid contracts with the Department of Children and Family Services to steal $2.1 million from Illinois taxpayers; she was charged and released on a $250,000 bond in March 2007
• “Uncle Amrish” has raised more than a half million for Blagojevich and approximately $50,000 for Mayor Daley, whose father helped launch Mahajan’s banking career
• “Uncle Amrish” also helped Obama purchase a house he could not afford

The real estate transaction involving Rita Rezko, the Obamas and Mutual Bank of Harvey is just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the Mutual Bank of Harvey seems to be at the center of all the corruption in Chicago. To quote former Donald Perillo, Chicago insurance mogul and son of the lawyer for Al Capone, in the Chicago Tribune article I cite above:

Donald Parrillo said he isn’t surprised to see Mahajan mix it up with politics and business. “He got that attitude from the Parrillo family,” the former alderman said. “He wanted to get in the game.”

And Mahajan certainly is in the game. The banker of the Chicago machine, he is also the man who wrote the mortgage for Rita Rezko that facilitated Obama’s purchase the mansion he could not afford. This is why I believe prosecutors are interested in Harvey Mutual Bank. Not only did Rezko receive loans from this institution; this bank is heavily involved in problematic real estate dealings involving Blagojevich and Obama. And if I may quote Rezko in the 9 JUN letter he wrote to Judge Amy St. Eve:

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru , or Winter.”

Rezko is now talking, and prosecutors are presently interested in a politically connected financial institution. I bet Obama now regrets paying Rita Rezko $104,500 for the strip of the land in the lot on which his house sits in January 2006. Acquired with the assistance of a questionable $500,000 mortgage from Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank of Harvey, this lot and Obama’s desire to expand his yard by bit was the catalyst for all the investigative reports into Obama’s deep ties to Rezko. By the way, Rita’s lot is only accessible through the front gate of Obama’s home; it is not a separate property, and it was never intended to be a separate property.

“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor,” Obama says of the real estate transactions with Rezko. I wonder if now he also believes it was a mistake for him to serve as the legislator who represented and bankrolled Richard Daley, Amrish Mahajan, Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis and the Chicago Plan Commission. But at least he and Michelle have a house, a house the Mutual Bank of Harvey, the politically connected bank that wrote loans for Rezko, helped them procure in 2005. Too bad that house will be the end of Barack Obama.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• Rezko, Giannoulias, Obama – Dominoes?
• CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen
• More Than Just a Boneheaded Mistake
• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
• Obama’s Gangster Mentality
• Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Recently Unsealed Documents Confirm Obama Heavily Embroiled in Rezko Case
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slum Landlord Patron
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

In mid-June, Truthteller and I did an hour-long radio show on the highly disturbing story of Rezko and Obama’s long relationships, and the impoverished people of Chicago who suffered because Obama was more interested in making big deals for his rich benefactors than in truly helping the poor get beter housing. Listen to the archive of our show, just as timely today as it was in June. It’s also vital to read these two articles on Obama’s entanglements with these corrupt and unconscionably cruel men: “The Blood Money of Barack Obama’s Money Men” and the Boston Globe’s “Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy.”

Also in June, in “The Epistolary Rezko,” Truthteller undertook the daunting task of compiling ALL of the posts at No Quarter — and there have been dozens of them! — on Tony Rezko and Obama’s other questionable associations with various characters in the Chicago Machine:

No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Join Truthteller and SusanUnPC tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET at No Quarter Radio’s “Opposition Research” debut.

We will be taking your calls.  Dial in to 347-677-0792.

Check out these stories here and here during or after the program. Read more about Curtis Cooper’s death in “The Blood Money of Barack Obama’s Money Men.” And read the Boston Globe’s “Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy.”

For example, the overriding theme of the piece is Obama’s unbridled ambition. Early during his brief, three year tenure as a community organizer–whatever THAT job entailed—Obama openly discussed his long-term and very, very large political ambitions with even his newest acquaintances.

After connecting up with “king makers” like his employer, Allison Davis, and Annenberg Challenge associate, William Ayers, Obama found an opening when the Illinois state Senator from his neighborhood, Alice Palmer, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Ironically, the seat Palmer sought was open due to recently disclosed past corruption on the part of the person that had previously held it and she was beaten in the Democratic primary to fill the seat by (of all people) Jesse Jackson’s son.

When Palmer subsequently sought to retain her Illinois state Senate seat, she was shutout by the Obama forces. A great deal of the funding for Obama’s run came from political bag men like Tony Rezko.

But once Obama was elected to the Illinois senate and began to serve in Springfield, he became bored. Two years later Obama challenged another black incumbent (the former Black Panther—Bobby Rush) for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Obama was soundly defeated in this race. But he immediately began to work to have his state Senate district redrawn so that the could represent elements of both Chicago’s Southside and areas that would connect him to big money contributors from the city’s Gold Coast further north. Even in defeat, Obama was planning his next big initiative—a run for a U.S. Senate seat.

But Obama wasn’t in the U.S. Senate for even two years before he announced his decision to run for president. America’s only hope if Obama wins the presidency is that the victory will launch a run on his part for the office of United Nations Secretary-General within just a few months of his taking the oath of office as president.

During his third year at Harvard Law, Obama was offered a job by a Chicago real estate developer named Tony Rezko. Obama turned down this opportunity in order to become an attorney with the Davis, Miner and Barnhill law firm.

It was probably no coincidence that one of this firm’s biggest clients was Tony Rezko. The firm’s senior partner, Allison Davis, was also a power broker behind the rise of Harold Washington to the mayor’s seat in the city of Chicago—again, probably no coincidence as far as Obama was concerned.

Allison Davis subsequently left his law firm in order to go into the real estate development business full-time. He became a 51% owner of DV Urban Realty Partners along with Robert Vanecko who owned the remaining 49% of the firm. Vanecko is Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s nephew. Two of Allison Davis’ sons, Jared and Cullen, work with their father in the real estate business.

Davis and his associates have received more than $100 million in taxpayer subsidies to build and rehab apartments and houses in Chicago. They have also been paid over $4 million dollars in development fees. As Tim Novak, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter, noted in a November 7, 2007 article for his paper, “Davis has gotten deal after deal from the mayor, helping to make him one of the Chicago’s top developers.”

In 1993, the same year he was hired by Davis’ law firm, Obama began serving on the board of Woods Fund, a Chicago charity foundation. After Allison Davis left his law firm, he went to the foundation for money and Obama voted to invest $1 million of the organization’s assets in a Davis real estate partnership.

Ties such as those described above run rampant in the career of Barack Obama from 1993 to the present. Obama has a long history of working with Allison Davis, Tony Rezko, Mayor Daley and Illinois’ Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, to obtain government funding for housing development in Chicago. Davis, Rezko, Daley and others have, in return, help fund Obama’s rise to political prominence. It has been classic, Chicago machine politics with the requirement that people “pay to play.”

Without the funding from political Godfathers like Tony Rezko, Obama’s career in politics would never have gotten off the ground. But without the aid of corrupt government officials, slumlords like Tony Rezko would never have made the money to contribute to politicians such Obama, Daley and Blagojevich in the first place.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s Federal Indictment of Tony Rezko

The U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, has made quite a name for himself in recent years. He has successfully prosecuted Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and former Illinois Republican governor, George Ryan, within the past year. Fitzgerald also convicted several former members of Mayor Daley’s administration for “pervasive fraud” in city hiring practices. This spring he successfully concluded a trial against Tony Rezko, convicting him on corruption charges.

In Fitzgerald’s indictment of Rezko, he lists eight persons that he refers to as “Co-Schemers.” Virtually all of these people have been major contributors to the political campaigns of Barack Obama, Rod Blagojevich and Richard Daley.

Additionally, Fitzgerald’s indictment makes specific references to Blagojevich and Obama. The governor is referred to as “Public Official A” and the senator is called a “political candidate.”

The fact that Obama, Blagojevich and Daley are all mixed up together in the Rezko affair is not surprising. Favored politicians of both parties in Illinois are often joined at the hip when it comes to political fundraising. For example, a recent analysis done by the Chicago Tribune revealed that Obama has taken in more than $1.5 million dollars for his various campaigns from over seven hundred people who have also contributed to Mayor Daley’s candidacies.

Fitzgerald’s case against Rezko involved two state regulatory boards. One controls the Teachers Pension System (TPS) and the other, the Health Facilities Planning Board, reviews all proposals for construction projects that involve medical facilities in Illinois.

After Rod Blagojevich was elected governor of Illinois, the “Co-Schemers” stacked the TPS board so that favored investment firms were allowed to invest parts of the retirement fund’s $30 billion in assets. The “Co-Schemers” then demanded kick-backs and worked to funnel money into the political organizations of Blagojevich and Obama.

Next the “Co-Schemers” worked to reduce the Health Facilities Planning Board from fifteen members to nine members. Subsequently, they proceeded to stack the board with a bloc of five members that would guarantee them a majority. Three doctors, Imad Amanaseer, Michel Malek and Fortunee Massuda, were named new members in order to secure the necessary majority votes. All three became large contributors to the various campaigns of Barack Obama from this point forward.

On April 21, 2004 the Health Facilities Planning Board approved the building of a new hospital in Crystal Lake, Illinois even though state analysts had said the new facility was not needed. The builder of the hospital, Jacob Kiferbaum, was to have paid bribes to those who made the construction of the hospital possible. The hospital was never built because Fitzgerald’s investigators blew the case wide open and even secured a guilty plea from Kiferbaum who is now cooperating with the Feds. Throughout much of this time, Barack Obama was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services and was copied in on e-mails and other correspondence regarding these matters.

The Trial of Tony Rezko

At the recently concluded trial of Tony Rezko, the star witness for the prosecution was a Chicago business man named Stuart Levine. This individual sat on the board that controls the TPS and the Health Facilities Planning Board. He testified that Tom Rosenberg’s investment firm, Capri Capital Advisors, was to have received approval to invest a total of $320 million of TPS assets in exchange for a $500,000 kickback to Levine and $1.5 million in political contributions to Governor Blagojevich. Rosenberg was also a producer of Hollywood films and was so close to Allison Davis on a personal level that he had Davis make a cameo appearance in one of his movies.

Obama also has strong ties to investment companies that seek to do business with the state of Illinois. Once the Democrats took over the state legislature in 2003, Obama was assigned to an Illinois senate committee that began looking into public retirement plan matters. Four firms with close relationships with Obama were subsequently awarded hundreds of millions of new dollars to invest on behalf of these plans. Executives of these firms helped raise $300,000 for Obama’s U.S. senate seat race in 2004 and even more money for his presidential campaign.

The Daley-Obama Machine

Mayor Richard Daley’s office hired Michelle Obama as an assistant to his chief of staff, Valerie Jarrett, in 1991. Daley later appointed Jarrett chairperson of the Office of Planning and Development where Michelle became her assistant.

Today Jarrett is the CEO at Habitat, a real estate development and management firm. It manages the housing program for the Chicago Housing Authority. Jarrett was also a member of Obama’s U.S. Senate Finance Committee in 2004 along with Tony Rezko, Rita Rezko and Allison Davis. Jarrett currently serves as an advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign.

CBS2 reports (via NoQuarterUSA channel):

CBS2 Chicago also reports:

Curtis’ aunt Lisa Springfield said, “It just crushed him all up, his whole face.”

According to witnesses, five or six men rushed to the boy to try to pry the heavy fence off of him. An hour later he was pronounced dead at Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Cullen Davis, the son of Obama’s first boss and major benefactor Allison Davis, is a beneficiary of Obama’s prominent effort to privatize the management of public housing in Chicago. As Un coup de des wrote here yesterday in “Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron,” the privatization of this housing — while highly profitable for investors like Cullen Davis, Allison Davis, and the now-convicted Tony Rezko — has left residents with chronic plumbing failures that led to sewage throughout units and backing up into kitchen sinks, “collapsed roofs and fire damage,” rampant rodent infestation, vacant units, and the displacement of thousands of low-income residents because the buildings are either uninhabitable or have been destroyed in order to “gentrify” neighborhoods.

Furious neighbors reacted last night, reports the Chicago Tribune:

A 3-year-old boy was crushed to death Friday evening by a large, rusted steel gate at the Cabrini-Green housing complex, prompting a crowd to gather and hurl accusations of mismanagement at property managers.

“How many accidents happen over here because of failed inspections,” screamed Willie J.R. Fleming, a resident and a director with the Coalition to Protect Public Housing. “There’s no accountability, there’s no oversight of this.”

Barack Obama and Mayor Daley backed the privatization schemes and personally interceded to ensure that THEIR cronies made money off the privatization. Here’s how DEEPLY INVOLVED Barack Obama is in these schemes that contributed to little Curtis Cooper’s death, via the Boston Globe’s “Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy“:

• “As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers.”
• “As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies.”
• “And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.”

An outrageous example of the privatization profiteers is Tony Rezko. Reports the Boston Globe’s superb investigative report (a must-read in full):

Antoin “Tony” Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama’s early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko’s company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama’s district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable.

Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.

You’ll note that on his Web site describing his business, Obama donor Cullen Davis, the owner of the property at which little Curtis Cooper died, touts that his company offers “visionary and strategic leadership to Urban Property Advisors (UPA) plus a number of companies and ventures impacting change in urban environments.”

Apparently, Mr. Davis’s “vision” doesn’t include close inspection of old, rusting heavy iron gates. From CBS2 Chicago:

As for Regional Property Advisers, the firm which has been inspecting this CHA property for the past two years, it contended that due diligence was exercised.

Spokesman Ronald O’Neil said, “We visually check the property on a regular basis and I can tell you that in this particular instance, there’s a gate that has a chain on it and it has been chained up and it did not fall over.”

That’s of small comfort for Curtis’ family. They expressed skepticism over that explanation.

“They didn’t do anything to that one. I guess they thought because it wouldn’t move. The gate wouldn’t move, so I guess it was rusting out, that’s why it wouldn’t move. Then all of a sudden, he touched it and the whole dang gate fell on him,” Springfield said.

:::::::

For more on the powerful who have managed to privatize and profit from these low-income housing projects, read:

• Un coup de des’s “Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron,” and
• the Boston Globe’s “Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy“

Note: Un coup de des plans a series of reports on this privatization scheme that enriched Barack Obama’s allies and benefactors but left Chicago’s poor in disgusting, uninhabitable or dangerous housing.