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)

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! :::::

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.

If you made it through that video, I respect your capacity for the intolerable. Should someone call CPS? Geeezzz. Here is how the creator of that video, KathySawada, who has also created a Web site, “Sing For Change,” describes the experience:

Sing for Change chronicles a recent Sunday afternoon, when 22 children, ages 5-12, gathered to sing original songs in the belief that their singing would lift up our communities for the coming election. Light, hope, courage and love shine through these nonvoting children who believe that their very best contribution to the Obama campaign is to sing.

Do those children and their parents have any clue about “Obama’s forgotten people”?

• Ask the tenants of Dear Leader’s financier Tony Rezko, whose tenants froze for months during a Chicago winter because Rezko didn’t manage the properties Obama’s influence gave him the means to buy up.
• Ask the mother of the little boy who died because Dear Leader’s close financial ally, Cullen Davis, couldn’t bother to maintain the iron fencing on the former public housing, which fell and crushed the little boy to death. (Watch that video, you privileged children and parents.)
• Ask the union employees of Maytag to whom Dear Leader promised he’d work hard to keep their jobs in Illinois, but when Dear Leader took money from the billionaire scion of the Crown family and a major owner of Maytag, it so happens that Dear Leader never even mentioned those Maytag workers to the one man with the influence to affect those workers, all of whose jobs left the country.

What planet are the parents of those children living on? Certainly not anywhere near the reality of most Americans’ lives. But, silly me. All we need to do is sing, “Yes we can,” and all those troubles will magically go away. HERE’S THE VIDEO THAT THESE CHILDREN, AND THEIR PARENTS, SHOULD BE WATCHING:

Yes, that’s another video by the great Flineo.

It breaks my heart every time I watch it.

It would break the heart of any person not doped up on Hopium.

Next, more tripe from the YouTube page about the planet these Hopium-addicted goofball parents are living on — that has nothing to do with the real-life problems that Barack Obama has ignored or used to enrich his corrupt pals. It’s disgusting to read this tripe:

Sing for Change was a confluence of hard work, good will, and shared vision. Inspired by ideas raised at a grassroots Obama fundraiser, a music teacher, Kathy Sawada, and the children composed and rehearsed the songs in less than two weeks. Several musicians heard of the effort and volunteered to accompany the children. Parents and older siblings designed and provided the T-Shirts and the banner. There’s a first for everything, but rarely do so many firsts come together at once: for the children and their parents, this is their first performance, first video, first banner, and first involvement with grassroots work on a presidential campaign.

As Sunday approached, a neighbor volunteered a home. Production wizards got wind of the project and offered their help in recording it. The likes of Jeff Zucker, Holly Schiffer, Peter Rosenfeld, Darin Moran, Jean Martin, Andy Blumenthal, and Nick Phoenix rearranged schedules to participate. Holly Schiffer was able to get three High Definition cameras (Panasonic HVX250’s), and an AVID editing facility. When Jeff Zucker went to pick up the camera package, Ted Schilowitz happened to be there and offered a RED camera set up on a Steadi Cam.

What we accomplished in a few hours on a Sunday afternoon embodies the nature of the Obama campaign: its grassroots inspiration, its inclusiveness, its community building. People pitched in quickly for a cause that resonated with them. There were not many conditions: “Think this is a good idea? Want to help? Great. Sunday at 12:00.” At the heart of the project were 22 children and their music. The willingness of all involved to come together for them was a testament to our hope, unity, courage, joy and belief in the future represented by these children.

We are offering the video to everyone, the Obama campaign and all media with high hopes that we can all join together to Sing for Change.

Technical info: Running time = 3 minutes; Standard Definition and HD Broadcast quality

WE’RE GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD Music and lyrics by Lily Campbell, age 9

We’re gonna spread happiness
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em

We’re gonna change it
And rearrange it
We’re gonna change the world.

SING FOR CHANGE
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada

Now’s the moment, lift each voice to sing
Sing with all your heart!
For our children, for our families,
Nations all joined as one.
Sing for joy and sing abundant peace,
Courage, justice, hope!
Sing together, hold each precious hand,
Lifting each other up;
Sing for vision, sing for unity,
Lifting our hearts to Sing!

YES WE CAN
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada

Yes we can
Lift each other up
In peace, in love, in hope
Change! Change!

sing…vote

http://www.barackobama.com

http://www.singforchange.com/

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.