Barack Obama has a long history of working with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and governors of Illinois, including the current Governor Rod Blagojevich, in doling government funding for housing development in Chicago. His history is hardly a model of success, except for the hundred of millions in profits made by the chosen few slumlords.
Less than a year ago, in the April 26, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times, Fran Spielman reported that Chicago aldermen were accusing the Daley administration "of being asleep at the switch while low-income housing projects developed by the now-indicted Tony Rezko collapsed into disrepair."
"The spigot of loans, grants and tax credits should have been cut off when the first of 30 taxpayer-supported Rezko buildings in Chicago fell into disrepair, the aldermen said," according to the report.
Instead, Spielman said, a "Sun-Times investigation showed that the city, state and federal governments kept the gravy train rolling -- to the tune of $100 million between 1989 and 1998."
The lending continued, the Times noted, even as the city repeatedly sued Rezko's development company, Rezmar, "for such basics as no heat."
"They were going after people for being slum landlords in one department and loaning them money in another," said Alderman Freddrenna Lyle.
Obama now wants to bring this dog and pony show to Washington. I can see it now. His former boss, Allison Davis, at the Davis, Miner & Barnhill law firm, that served as a hub for Rezko's thriving slumlord business for a decade before Davis quit and became partners with Rezko, will be appointed to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Davis and his partners, which include his sons Jared and Cullen, have received more than $100 million in taxpayer subsidies to build and rehab apartments and homes over the past 10 years and have made at least $4 million in development fees, according to the Times.
"Davis has gotten deal after deal from the mayor, helping to make Davis one of the city's top developers," Tim Novak noted in the November 7, 2007 Sun-Times.
There's already a plan in place to guarantee that the Chicago model of "community development" is carried out in the White House. In his "Plan to Fight Poverty in America," Obama says, "we should create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to develop affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods."
The Plan will create a "White House Office of Urban Policy" to develop a strategy for metropolitan America, and Obama will appoint a Director of Urban Policy who will report directly to him, as president, to "coordinate all federal urban programs," the Plan states.
Mayor Daley will probably be hired for this gig. The Plan explains that Obama will task his new Director "to work across federal agencies and with community and business leaders to identify and address the unique economic development barriers of every major metropolitan area in the country."
While climbing the political ladder, Obama held himself out to be a champion of rights for minority-owned businesses. According to an article on Black Enterprize.com, "it is Obama's strong record when it comes to supporting minority-owned businesses that has black business leaders working overtime to send the 42-year-old congressman to Washington."
However, an example of the Chicago version of a minority-owned business is DV Urban Realty Partners, where Allison Davis, who is an African American millionaire many times over, owns 51%, and Robert Vanecko, Mayor Daley's nephew, owns 49%.
On July 18, 2007, Obama discussed his plan to deal with urban poverty in a speech at the Town Hall Education Arts and Recreation Center in Washington and started out by tugging the heart strings by invoking the name of Bobby Kennedy and stated:
"It's been four decades since Bobby Kennedy crouched in a shack along the Mississippi Delta and looked into the wide, listless eyes of a hungry child. Again and again he tried to talk to this child, but each time his efforts were met with only a blank stare of desperation.
you have posted an inventory of half truths, outright lies and speculations that have evidently been loaded into your word processor with the same shovel you use to clean the stable and quite clearly for use with the same material.
This load of shit isn't even worthy of dissecting with corrections. I can, however, see how you have come to be a propagandist Clintonista.
by
John Sanchez Jr. (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 905 comments)
on Friday, April 4, 2008 at 4:22:13 PM
Tracing the trail of Iraqi born billionaire Nadhmi Auchi indicates Rezko's deals may include a money trail leading back to Saddam Hussein oil for food program.
A 2004 Pentagon report described Auchi, "who, behind the facade of legitimate business, served as Saddam Hussein's principal international financial manipulator and bag man." Auchi prospered in Saddam's regime collecting "commissions" on sale of weapons and other goods to Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s.
A recent Pentagon report accuses Auchi of "unlawful activities working closely with Iraqi intelligence operatives to ... arrange for significant theft from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program to smuggle weapons and dual-use technology into Iraq," and to "organize an elaborate scheme to take over and control the post-war cellular phone system in Iraq."
At Saddam's insistence a scheme orchestrated by Auchi appropriated billions of dollars from America through America's Oil for Food program into Auchi's bank account. These transactions passed through Banque Nationale de (BNP) from its 1995 inception until 2001 through Auchi's General Mediterranean Holdings Company (GMHC) which was the largest private shareholder in Paris. Auchi's General Mediterranean Holdings has connections in Iraq which lead right back to Tony Rezko.
Auchi's company helped finance a 250 megawatt power plant in the Kurdish town of Chamchamal, Iraq, teaming up with Rezko and Iraq's former Minister of Electricity, Aiham Alsamarrae. In December, 2006 Alsamarrae was accused of graft and is being charged in a $2 billion Iraqi reconstruction corruption case. Alsamarrae is a Chicago resident with dual US-Iraqi citizenship -an embarrassing connection for the war critic Obama. Alsamarrae is now living in his Chicago mansion.
Writing in Human Events, March 3, 2008, John Batchelor reports on an Alsammarae-Obama-Rezko connection: "...in April 2005, one month before Mr. Alsammarae left his post, his Ministry of Electricity signed a contract for $50 million with Companion Security to provide training to Iraqis to guard electrical plants by flying them to Illinois for classes.
"Companion Security was headed by a former Chicago policeman with a troubled history, Daniel T. Frawley, in partnership with Mr. Rezko and in association with Daniel Mahru, the lawyer for the original contract and Mr. Rezko's former business partner. In April 2006, Mr. Frawley entered negotiations with Governor Rod Blagojevich's staff to lease a military facility in Illinois to be a training camp. In August 2006, Mr. Frawley started negotiations with Mr. Obama's U.S. Senate staff to complete the contract....
"The timeline of Companion discussions in 2006 is important to note: April 2006 Frawley speaks to governor's office; August 2006 Frawley speaks to senator's office; October 2006 indictment of Rezko revealed; October 2006 Rezko arrested upon return from Syria; October 2006 Alsammarae convicted in Baghdad and makes his first escape attempt; December 2006 Alsammarae escapes from Baghdad. ..."(In 2004) Mr. Auchi traveled by private aircraft to Midway Airport in Chicago and then to a fete at the Four Season Hotel, where he met with his business partner in Chicago real estate, Mr. Rezko, as well as with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Also present that night, according to a fresh report by James Bone and Dominic Kennedy of the London Times, was State Senator Barack Obama, who had recently won the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat...."
The Obama Connection
Recently the London Times reported that Auchi had been a business partner of Rezko since 2003 and between April 2005 and 2007 loaned Rezko at least $18 million. On February 1 the London Times reports uncovering, "state documents in Illinois recording that Fintrade Services, a Panamanian company, lent money to (an) Obama fundraiser in May 2005. Fintrade's directors include Ibtisam Auchi, the name of Mr. Auchi's wife." "A company related to Mr. Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr. Obama's bagman Antoin 'Tony' Rezko on May, 23 2005. Mr. Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $3.5 million.
These Funds from Auchi's loan helped finance a complex series of transactions between Rezko and Democratic Presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama involving the 2005 purchase of Obama's Chicago mansion and Rezko's purchase of an adjoining landlocked parcel.Rezko claims he paid "full market price" and Obama apparently received a "discount" of several hundred thousand dollars for his parcel. Rezko then improved his parcel to benefit Obama.Instead of handing cash to Obama, Rezko handed Obama a preferential price for property.
This is the same form of "honest graft" and preferential treatment that sent former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner to jail over 30 years ago, see United States v. Isaacs, 493 F.2d 1124 (7th Cir. 1974).The Chicago Sun-Times recently reported that Mr. Rezko, around the same general period he was wheeling with Obama, also provided a preferential price for a property purchase by U. S. Representative Luis Gutierrez.
Instead of transferring cash to buy influence, Rezko was engaging in structured property transactions and preferential treatment of public officials to confer significant financial benefits on them, far above the legal limits of any legitimate political contribution permitted by federal law.
Rezko was a key early-money fund raiser in Obama's state Senate campaigns. and Rezko's relationship with Barack Obama goes back to at least 1990, when Obama's law firm did work relating to a Rezko housing development. Rezko as a major mob figure is not known for civic-mindedness or desire for good government.
At a March 3 news conference in San Antonio, Texas, Chicago-based reporters peppered Obama with some of the questions the national news corps has avoided for over a year. Obama claims he had already answered the questions in the Chicago media. He said: "These requests, I think, could just go on forever. At some point, what we need to try to do is respond to what's pertinent."
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote:"Reporters, however, had a different idea of what was pertinent, and the questions about Rezko, NAFTA and other unpleasant subjects continued to come. An aide called out 'last question,' and Obama made his move for the exit -- only for reporters to shout after him in protest. 'C'mon, guys,' he pleaded. 'I just answered, like, eight questions.'"Sources: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko,
