CH 10: Obama Brings Chicago Politics To Washington

The following is a reprint from a Special Report published by the Washington Examiner dated September 20, 2012. A link to the Washington Examiner maybe found in our 'Links' Listings.

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program included $499 billion in federal spending, most of which was channeled through state and local governments. Eight of the 10 states getting the most contracts were heavily Democratic, with highly unionized state and local government workforces, according to stimulus award data at recovery.gov. Chicago has been called the home of "gangster government." How bad is it?

Consider the following facts about the city from which President Obama rose through the ranks of American public life, from community organizer and local lawyer to the Illinois state legislature to the U.S. Senate and finally the Oval Office:

-Chicago's 2.7 million residents make up only about 21 percent of the state of Illinois' population of nearly 13 million. Yet the city and its suburbs have accounted for 84 percent of the state's public corruption convictions in federal courts since 1976, according to a study released earlier this year by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

-Four of the state's previous seven governors went to jail on public corruption charges, as did a third of Chicago aldermen who served during the period.

- New York and California have higher totals for public corruption convictions, but Illinois leads the nation on a per capita basis.

Michael Barone, a Washington Examiner columnist and longtime co-editor of "The Almanac of American Politics," coined the term "gangster government" in May 2009 in reporting how Obama used the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies to aid the struggling United Auto Workers union.

Barone defined gangster government as using the powers of public office "to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored."

Obama was a little more direct during the 2010 congressional campaign, saying, according to the New York Times, "we're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us."

The GM and Chrysler bailouts favored the UAW, an unsecured creditor, over secured creditors in the financial community by putting the union ahead of the financiers in the bankruptcy line for reimbursement of losses under the Obama-sanctioned March 2009 bailout.

And, as Barone predicted in 2009, taking care of his friends was Obama's characteristic approach when dealing with domestic issues.

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program, for example, included $499 billion in federal spending, most of which was channeled through state and local governments.

Eight of the 10 states getting the most contracts are heavily Democratic, with highly unionized state and local government workforces, according to the latest available stimulus award data at recovery.gov.

California with $35 billion and New York with $17 billion topped the list of award recipients. Illinois was fourth with $12 billion, Pennsylvania sixth with $9.3 billion, Ohio seventh with $8.9 billion, Michigan eighth with $8.6 billion, Washington ninth with $8.2 billion and Massachusetts 10th with $7.7 billion.

Thus, more than a fifth of Obama's direct economic stimulus funds went to eight states to save the jobs of state and local employees, many of whom were members of three public employee unions, the National Education Association, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers.

Between them, the trio's political action committees and individuals associated with the unions gave $116,965 directly to Obama's 2008 campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org.

They also did independent expenditures on Obama's behalf totaling nearly $4.8 million, plus $3.9 million against his opponent, Sen. John McCain.

But it has been in Obama's "clean energy" loan program that gangster government has been repeatedly on display, most famously in the $573 million Solyndra bankruptcy debacle.

Solyndra's main investor was Oklahoma billionaire and Obama campaign bundler George Kaiser. Solyndra was the first but no means the most egregious energy loan deal that benefited Obama's friends.

While researching his blockbuster 2011 book "Throw Them All Out," Hoover Institution fellow and Stanford University professor Peter Schweizer and his researchers found 31 Obama bundlers and big donors whose firms received more than $16 billion in clean energy loans and grants.

The list of recipients unearthed by Schweizer includes such luminaries as former Vice President Gore, Silicon Valley venture capital king John Doerr, Sergey Brin, Dan Reicher and Larry Page of Google, Jim Rogers of Duke Energy, Tesla Motors' Elon Musk and CNN founder Ted Turner.

But one of the lesser-known names in the Solyndra scandal perhaps tells the story better than the celebrities. Cathy Zoi was a senior White House environmental adviser during the Clinton administration, then CEO of Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

Under Obama, she was appointed assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, a position that put her at the center of the approval process for green energy loans and grants.

Following the Solyndra debacle, Zoi left the government to work for George Soros as head of a new clean energy investment fund he started. Soros had gotten on board with Obama in 2004 by contributing more than $60,000 to his U.S. Senate race. Soros was then one of Obama's earliest and most generous financial backers in 2008.

After Obama won the White House, Schweizer notes, Soros "had regular private consultations and meetings with White House senior advisers while he was making investment decisions related to the stimulus program."

It's impossible to determine from compulsory financial disclosure documents how much profit, if any, resulted for Soros, but, as Schweizer points out, "Soros seemed to have a keen ability to anticipate what Washington was going to do and position himself to potentially profit handsomely from it."

It certainly didn't hurt that Soros had political operatives like Zoi in his pocket. As The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney wrote in February 2011, Zoi's tenure at the Energy Department "was rife with conflicts of interest."

Her husband's firm, environmental windowmaker Serious Materials, benefited from presidential and vice presidential visits to its factories and was "the first window company to pocket a stimulus tax credit -- worth $584,000 -- for investing in new equipment."

Soros was born in Hungary and made his first fortune in Europe's money markets, but it appears that he understands the way gangster government works in Washington in the age of Obama.

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CH 7: The myth of Obama as state Senate Reformer

The following is a reprint from a Special Report published by the Washington Examiner dated September 20, 2012. A link to the Washington Examiner maybe found in our 'Links' Listings.

Former Illinois state Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, a maverick Republican and reformer, said Obama never fought corruption, by Republicans or by Democrats: "He never wanted to upset the apple cart with the Chicago machine." Shortly after Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Prairie State Blue, a liberal blog, attributed his victory to the fact that Illinois' deeply entrenched government corruption had forced "political reformers" in the state legislature like Obama "to network outside the traditional political circles."

The claim illustrated Obama's success throughout his career at presenting himself as an outsider and reformer even as he became a skillful operator inside one of the nation's most corrupt political systems.

Earlier this year, a study by the Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs pointed to the convictions in recent years of four governors, two congressmen, a state treasurer, an attorney general and 11 state legislators.

"The two worst crime zones in Illinois are the governor's mansion in Springfield and the City Council Chambers in Chicago," said study author Dick Simpson.

It was into such an environment that Obama stepped when he was first elected in 1996 as an Illinois state senator.

Former Illinois Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, a maverick Republican and reformer, told The Washington Examiner that Obama never fought corruption, even when it was being done by Republicans.

"I've never seen him fight corruption. He never wanted to upset the apple cart with the Chicago machine," Fitzgerald said.

After serving with Obama for two years in the Illinois Senate, Fitzgerald defeated Sen. Carol Moseley Braun in 1998 and served one term in the U.S. Senate. His family has been in Illinois banking for several generations.

In Springfield, Fitzgerald was a leader of a reform-minded state legislative caucus known as the "Fab Five." The group's members were Republicans who had been elected in 1992. They fought the establishments in both major parties while seeking to increase openness and transparency in government.

Fab Fiver Steve Rauschenberger told the Examiner that he and his reformist colleagues were taken aback when Obama rejected the group's informal invitations to join them.

"When Barack first arrived, there was a lot of hope that maybe he was the intellectual bridge, the pragmatic Democrat from Chicago who was not part of the machine that we could perhaps talk to about broad-based consensus policies to change public policy that wasn't working," he said.

"He appeared to be interested for a good 90 days," Rauschenberger said. "In March or April of that year, though, he had made it pretty clear he wasn't interested in risk-taking or challenging institutions or challenging the Chicago machine's lock on a lot of the mechanics of government in Cook County in Chicago."

An Examiner review of Fab Five initiatives from 1995 to 2000 identified 22 proposals, including sweeping government procurement reforms like requiring open, competitive bidding for state contracts. Obama missed votes on several of the proposals, and those he supported were approved unanimously.
"He was nowhere to be found on reform," Fab Fiver Chris Lauzen told the Examiner. "I reached out to Barack. My wife and I took Barack and Michelle to dinner."

Lauzen said Obama "was not on the playing field. In my opinion, Barack Obama was a product and beneficiary of how politics are practiced in Illinois. It would be impossible to call him a reformer."

State Sen. Dave Syverson, another Fab Fiver, said, "I don't recall any cases when he was overtly standing up to the machine at all."

Some of Obama's reluctance about the Fab Five may have stemmed from his occasional golf outings and lunches with the state's top gambling lobbyist, Alfred G. Ronan.

Ronan was well-known in Illinois political circles for passing out cash contributions to supporters off the floor of the legislative chambers. Obama himself took $10,500 from Ronan and changed his position on a gambling bill afterward, according to the Los Angeles Times. Ronan told the Times that Obama always paid his own way on the outings.

There was also the regular Wednesday night poker game organized by Democratic state Sen. Terry Link. Obama and three other state Senate Democrats in Springfield were regular attendees, along with several lobbyists, Link said.

"It started out with five of us, then it escalated where there were a couple of lobbyists that were friends of us that we brought in," Link told the Examiner.

"Barack was not of the machine, but he was adjacent to it," said Cynthia Canary, former director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, the largest statewide reform organization.

Paul Green, director of the Institute for Politics at Chicago's Roosevelt University and a popular WGN radio host, noted David Axelrod, Obama's campaign strategist, originated from Mayor Richard M. Daley's camp.

"You see his main adviser, David Axelrod, who also was Daley's chief adviser and ran his campaigns. So it was very much that Obama's people were in the Daley camp."

A month after Daley's patronage chief was indicted for rigging city jobs and promotions, Axelrod defended patronage in a 2005 Chicago Tribune op-ed. He argued that to satisfy constituent needs, politicians are often forced to "use the influence they have to meet those needs, including sometimes the exchange of favors -- consideration for jobs being just one."

Fitzgerald said Obama never confronted Daley. "He never took on Mayor Daley, even when clearly city hall was out of bounds. He never fought corruption in Cook County government."

Canary said Obama's endorsement of Rod Blagojevich and other Daley allies worried her.

"Obama has made a number of endorsements, not just the Blagojevich one -- he gave a number for the Chicago City Council that were complete whack jobs. I have never understood it or why he felt he needed to it," she said.

Some have noted that Obama helped write a 1997 legislative gift ban. The bipartisan effort included 23 exemptions.

Green pointed out that the gift ban didn't stop corruption. "In 1998, George Ryan was governor; now he's in prison. After him, Rod Blagojevich went to prison, so clearly it didn't have any impact."

Next: Chapter: 8 Obama's state pension scheme

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CH 6: The Poor People Obama Left Behind

The following is a reprint from a Special Report published by the Washington Examiner dated September 20, 2012. A link to the Washington Examiner maybe found in our 'Links' Listings.

A man moves furniture at the Altgeld Gardens housing project Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, on Chicago's South Side. where Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., used to work as a community organizer. (AP Photo) Four years after Barack Obama's historic election as president, little seems to have changed for the African-American communities on Chicago's South Side.

The lack of change -- or the sense that these neighborhoods are getting worse -- is eroding the president's standing among African-Americans in his hometown.

In 2011, Chicago suffered the third-highest black jobless rate among the nation's major metropolitan areas, at 19 percent, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Chicago still lacks enough affordable housing. Not only did the city demolish 25,000 public housing units in the previous decade, it also experienced more than 80,000 foreclosures, mainly in low-income neighborhoods.

Chicago "black nationalist" Eddie Read contends Obama has never fought for the black community. "I would not honestly tag Obama as a fighter for black people, black agenda or black issues," Read told The Washington Examiner.

After Obama's election, Read said, "I hoped that it would change."

But four years later, as he looks around Chicago's neighborhoods, he said things haven't improved under Obama.

"I don't see where the quality of life or the quality has changed," he said, "except that it's worse."

Dr. Conrad Worrill is an African-American educator, activist and former radio talk show host on Chicago's African-American-oriented station WVON. He told the Examiner that Obama was an inspirational speaker who moved people. But in the end, he became just another Chicago politician.

"His rise in politics, his trajectory in politics has led him to make adjustments in his political decision-making. And that's the case with many politicians. So he's no different from many others in that regard. He's a politician," Worrill said.

Cheryl Johnson and her mother, Hazel, lived in the economically deprived Altgeld Gardens housing project when young Obama was a community organizer there. Her late mother also was an organizer at the housing complex and often welcomed Obama into her kitchen.

="He's everybody's president," Cheryl Johnson told the Examiner, saying she is proud she knows him. But has he made a difference? "We, as poor people, don't feel it and don't see it," she said. Read believes Obama's problem is that he does not understand the unique needs of Chicago blacks.

"Obama came through Chicago through Saul Alinsky organizing," he said. "The Alinsky piece seemed to have had an agenda about what it thought was in the best interest of black folks, from the white liberal perspective."

Obama instead allied himself with Chicago's MacArthur Foundation, local housing nonprofits and real estate developers. Valerie Jarrett and Allison Davis, Martin Nesbitt and Tony Rezko -- all Obama friends -- were at the epicenter of that powerful coalition.

Obama's low-income-housing campaign still resonates among Chicago's poor today. Deborah Taylor, a public housing tenant in the Kenwood section of Chicago, also told the Examiner things are as bad as ever for poor tenants.

"The residents at the end of the day still suffer here," she said. "A lot of times a lot of people start out idealistically thinking they are helping," Taylor said.

"I don't think any of them are in favor of the tenants," she said. "Everybody's in it for the money. It's all about profit now. So the residents lose, lose, lose."

D'Anna Carter, a neighborhood activist in Chicago's Woodlawn section, singled out the Habitat Co., which was run by Jarrett, now Obama's closest White House adviser.


They were never interested in poor people," she told the Examiner. "They would sell poor people a bill of goods," she said bitterly in an interview.

Wardell Lavender has been a Woodlawn resident since 1951. His was the first black family to move into the neighborhood. He also blames Habitat.

"Habitat was bad landlords at the time. They didn't care too much about the blacks," he told the Examiner.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the enticement to the poor to buy condos they could not afford caused widespread losses in Chicago.

Foreclosures fell hard on Chicago's poor residents. The Urban Institute reported in May 2009 that most were displaced or homeless, credit ratings were damaged and violence increased as empty units remained vacant.

Worrill said he still supports Obama but adds that the lack of progress in Chicago's black community is palpable.

"He has been supported, but the position he's in now, he's in a heck of a predicament."

Next: Chapte 7: The myth of Obama as state Senate reformer


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Running A Champaign Based On Lies

Barack Hussein Obama cannot run on his record. To do so would guarantee his defeat. Obama is desperate to keep the political discussion away from his performance as president, his abuse of power, and his flagrant trashing of the U.S. Constitution.

In an effort to hide his own record Obama has decided to attack Mitt Romney for being an evil, vicious, unscrupulous “CAPITALIST’. Mr. Romney is without a doubt a capitalist, but everything else is an absolute lie. This should not come as a surprise as everyone knows that Obama lies often and with more conviction than he tells the truth. Furthermore, Obama’s political bible, “Rules for Radicals” tells him to attack his ‘enemies’. That the attack need not be based on any truth; repeating the lie frequently will “make it the truth”.

Obama would have you believe that investment companies like Bain Capital, which Mr. Romney once headed, make their living buying companies, firing the employees and selling off the assets.

Companies like Bain Capital make profits by risking their own money in failing companies. It is very much like playing poker. A hand is dealt (a troubled company); the investor exams that hand (why is it in trouble & can I we fix it?); if he likes what he sees he plays the hand (buys the troubled company). The investors then infuse more money and make whatever changes are needed to restore the troubled company to good market value so that the once troubled company can be sold at a profit.

There are times when the investors loose the bet and cannot save the company. On those occasions the investors close the company and sell whatever assets they can to prevent additional loses. They never make “massive profits”, as Obama claims.

If there was money to be made by the sell assets, you can bet the original owners would have done so.

In most venture capital deals people do loose their jobs.

You cannot save a company as long expenses exceed income. In almost every business employees are the largest expense.

Some years back one the world’s major corporations found themselves losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

They hired a tough, no nonsense CEO with a track record of saving failing businesses. One of his first actions was to fire 20,000 employees. The newspapers and television attack him as heartless. However, a few short years latter the company had returned, better than before and had added many times over the number that had been fired.

Obama has focused on a single company wherer Bain Capital gambled and lost.  He attempts to hang that failure around Romney’s neck to prove how evil and heartless he is.

If Obama ever told the truth on this issue, you would know that Romney had left Bain Capital more than 2 years prior to this lone failure on the part of Bain Capital.

The facts are that if it were not for lies, Obama would have nothing to say. --WD


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Nero in the White House

The following was reprinted from the WorldNetDaily.com.    The old WatchDog is in full agreement and thinks that it should be required reading for every potential voter.

Emphasis was added by Me! -- WD

Nero in the White House
by Mychal Massie  (8/8, 2011)

Three significant historical events have been eclipsed by Obama: 1) Jimmy Carter will no longer be looked upon as the worst president in American history; 2) Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton will no longer be recognized as the greatest liars in presidential history; 3) Clinton's stain on Monica's dress, and what that did to the White House in general and the office of the president specifically, will forever pale in comparison to the stain and stench of Obama.

I need not spend much time on the failure of Obama as president. His tenure has been a failure on every measurable level. So much so, in fact, that some of the staunchest, most respected liberal Democrats and Democratic supporters have not only openly criticized him some even more harshly than this essayist but they have called for him to step down.

Richard Nixon's words "I am not a crook," punctuated with his involvement in Watergate, and Bill Clinton's finger-wagging as he told one of the most pathetic lies in presidential history, in the aftermath of Obama, will be viewed as mere prevarications.

Mr. Nixon and Clinton lied to save their backsides. Although, I would argue there are no plausible explanations for doing what they did, I could entertain arguments pursuant to understanding their rationales for lying. But in the case of Obama, he lies because he is a liar. He doesn't only lie to cover his misdeeds he lies to get his way. He lies to belittle others and to make himself look presentable at their expense. He lies about his faith, his associations, his mother, his father and his wife. He lies and bullies to keep his background secret. His lying is congenital and compounded by socio-psychological factors of his life.

Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader. He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequalled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood.

As the stock markets were crashing, taking with them the remaining life saving of untold tens of thousands, Obama was hosting his own birthday celebration, which was an event of Epicurean splendidness. The shamelessness of the event was that it was not a state dinner to welcome foreign dignitaries, nor was it to honor an American accomplishment it was to honor the Pharaoh, Barack Hussein Obama. The event's sole purpose was for the Pharaoh to have his loyal subjects swill wine, indulge in gluttony and behavior unfit to take place on the property of taxpayers, as they suffer. It was of a magnitude comparable to that of Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski's $2 million birthday extravaganza for its pure lack of respect for the people.

Permit me to digress momentarily. The U.S. Capitol and the White House were built with the intent of bringing awe and respect to America and her people. They were also built with the intent of being the greatest of equalizers. I can tell you, having personally been to both, there is a moment of awe and humility associated with being in the presence of the history of those buildings. They are to be honored and inscribed into our national psyche, not treated as a Saturday night house party at Chicago's Cabrini-Green.

The people of America own that home Obama and his wife continue to debase with their pan-ghetto behavior. It is clear that Obama and family view themselves as royalty, but they're not. They are employees of "we the people," who are suffering because of his failed policies. What message does this behavior send to those who today are suffering as never before?

What message does it send to all Americans who are struggling? Has anyone stopped to think what the stock market downturn forebodes for those 80 million baby boomers who will be retiring in the next period of years? Is there a snowball's chance in the Sahara that every news program on the air would applaud this behavior if it were George W. Bush? To that point, do you remember the media thrashing Bush took for having a barbecue at the White House?

Like Nero who was only slightly less debauchery's than Caligula with wine on his lips Obama treated "we the people" the way Caligula treated those over whom he lorded.

Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement while America's people go homeless, hungry and unemployed.





Mychal S. Massie is a syndicated op-ed columnist and former host of the top-rated talk show on the Rightalk Radio Network, "Straight Talk with Mychal Massie." He is a former self-employed business owner of 30-plus years. Mychal is a frequent inspirational / motivational speaker and a regularly featured guest on national and regional TV / talk-radio programs. The online version of his column is carried exclusively by WorldNetDaily.com and enjoys a loyal, supportive readership from around the world.

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