[Rhodes22-list] Community Organization and Lowe's response

[Bill Effros]

Thanks, Brad,

It's so much easier to your homework when you study with a friend.

Bill Effros



Brad Haslett wrote:
> Bill,
>
> Yup!  You got it about right.  Attached is an article on the plight of
> Obama's projects. Obama has closer ties to Iraq and Iraqi's with money
> than the press has been willing to investigate. One would think that
> they would at least be looking into this weeks claim from an Iraqi
> government official that he requested they "chill" US troop movements
> until after the election (a clear violation of the Logan Act).  But
> no, the MSM is in the tank so deep with "The One" that they'll have to
> just jump in the sewer before it's over with to hold everyone.
>
> I wasted yesterday watching the market and doing research.  Keep an
> eye on the world for me today, I'm going to try and be a productive
> citizen.
>
> Brad
>
> --------------------------
>
> Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy
> The candidate endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build
> low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many
> projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair.
>
> By Binyamin Appelbaum, Globe Staff  |  June 27, 2008
>
> CHICAGO - The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense
> neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state
> senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for
> people who can't afford to live anywhere else.
>
> But it's not safe to live here.
>
> About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by
> unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice
> scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs
> up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the
> condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad
> the buildings now face demolition.
>
> Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader
> failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and
> manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as
> the best replacement for public housing.
>
> 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.
>
> But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago
> that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies -
> including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so
> completely that they were no longer habitable.
>
> Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and
> managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those
> people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's
> constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding
> neighborhoods were blighted.
>
> Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did
> not notice their plight. The development straddles the boundary of
> Obama's state Senate district. Many of the tenants have been his
> constituents for more than a decade.
>
> "No one should have to live like this, and no one did anything about
> it," said Cynthia Ashley, who has lived at Grove Parc since 1994.
>
> Obama's campaign, in a written response to Globe questions, affirmed
> the candidate's support of public-private partnerships as an
> alternative to public housing, saying that Obama has "consistently
> fought to make livable, affordable housing in mixed-income
> neighborhoods available to all."
>
> The campaign did not respond to questions about whether Obama was
> aware of the problems with buildings in his district during his time
> as a state senator, nor did it comment on the roles played by people
> connected to the senator.
>
> Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:
>
> Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and
> a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of
> Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this
> winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago
> that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city
> inspectors found widespread problems.
>
> Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama's US Senate campaign and
> a former lead partner at Obama's former law firm. Davis, a developer,
> was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used government
> subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including
> a North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic
> plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several
> apartments.
>
> 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.
>
> One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale
> Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was
> seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than
> 1,800 code violations.
>
> Butler and Davis did not respond to messages. Rezko is in prison; his
> lawyer did not respond to inquiries.
>
> Jarrett, a powerful figure in the Chicago development community,
> agreed to be interviewed but declined to answer questions about Grove
> Parc, citing what she called a continuing duty to Habitat's former
> business partners. She did, however, defend Obama's position that
> public-private partnerships are superior to public housing.
>
> "Government is just not as good at owning and managing as the private
> sector because the incentives are not there," said Jarrett, whose
> company manages more than 23,000 apartments. "I would argue that
> someone living in a poor neighborhood that isn't 100 percent public
> housing is by definition better off."
>
> In the middle of the 20th century, Chicago built some of the nation's
> largest public housing developments, culminating in Robert Taylor
> Homes: 4,415 apartments in 28 high-rise buildings stretching for 2
> miles along an interstate highway.
>
> By the late 1980s, however, Robert Taylor Homes and the rest of the
> Chicago developments had become American bywords for urban misery. The
> roughly 30 developments operated for poor families by the Chicago
> Housing Authority were plagued by crime and mired in poverty.
>
> In Stateway Gardens, a large complex just north of Robert Taylor, a
> study of 1990 census data found the per-capita annual income was
> $1,650. And the projects were falling apart after decades of epic,
> sometimes criminal, mismanagement.
>
> Similar problems plagued public housing in other cities, leading the
> federal government to greatly increase funding to address the
> problems. Many cities, including Boston, mostly used that money to
> rehabilitate their projects, maintaining public control.
>
> Chicago chose a more dramatic approach. Under Mayor Richard M. Daley,
> who was elected in 1989, the city launched a massive plan to let
> private companies tear down the projects and build mixed-income
> communities on the same land.
>
> The city also hired private companies to manage the remaining public
> housing. And it subsidized private companies to create and manage new
> affordable housing, some of which was used to accommodate tenants
> displaced from public housing.
>
> Chicago's plans drew critics from the start. They asked why the
> government should pay developers to perform a basic public service -
> one successfully performed by governments in other cities. And they
> noted that privately managed projects had a history of deteriorating
> because guaranteed government rent subsidies left companies with
> little incentive to spend money on maintenance.
>
> Most of all, they alleged that Chicago was interested primarily in
> redeveloping projects close to the Loop, the downtown area that was
> seeing a surge of private development activity, shunting poor families
> to neighborhoods farther from the city center. Only about one in three
> residents was able to return to the redeveloped projects.
>
> "They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are
> profiting from this displacement," said Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of
> Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that seeks
> to help tenants stay in the same neighborhoods.
>
> "The same exact people who ran these places into the ground," the
> private companies paid to build and manage the city's affordable
> housing, "now are profiting by redeveloping them."
>
> Barack Obama was among the many Chicago residents who shared Daley's
> conviction that private companies would make better landlords than the
> Chicago Housing Authority.
>
> He had seen the failure of the public projects in the mid-1980s as a
> community organizer at Altgeld Gardens, a large public housing complex
> on the far South Side.
>
> He once told the Chicago Tribune that he had briefly considered
> becoming a developer of affordable housing. But after graduating from
> Harvard Law School in 1991, he turned down a job with Tony Rezko's
> development company, Rezmar, choosing instead to work at the civil
> rights law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, then led by Allison
> Davis.
>
> The firm represented a number of nonprofit companies that were
> partnering with private developers to build affordable housing with
> government subsidies.
>
> Obama sometimes worked on their cases. In at least one instance, he
> represented the nonprofit company that owned Grove Parc, Woodlawn
> Preservation and Investment Corp., when it was sued by the city for
> failing to adequately heat one of its apartment complexes.
>
> Shortly after becoming a state senator in 1997, Obama told the Chicago
> Daily Law Bulletin that his experience working with the development
> industry had reinforced his belief in subsidizing private developers
> of affordable housing.
>
> "That's an example of a smart policy," the paper quoted Obama as
> saying. "The developers were thinking in market terms and operating
> under the rules of the marketplace; but at the same time, we had
> government supporting and subsidizing those efforts."
>
> Obama translated that belief into legislative action as a state
> senator. In 2001, Obama and a Republican colleague, William Peterson,
> sponsored a successful bill that increased state subsidies for private
> developers. The law let developers designated by the state raise up to
> $26 million a year by selling tax credits to Illinois residents. For
> each $1 in credits purchased, the buyer was allowed to decrease his
> taxable income by 50 cents.
>
> Obama also cosponsored the original version of a bill creating an
> annual fund to subsidize rents for extremely low-income tenants,
> although it did not pass until 2005, after he had left the state
> Senate.
>
> "He was very passionate about the issues," said Julie Dworkin of the
> Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, who worked with Obama on
> affordable housing issues. "He was someone we could go to and count on
> him to be there."
>
> The developers gave Obama their financial support. Jarrett, Davis, and
> Rezko all served on Obama's campaign finance committee when he won a
> seat in the US Senate in 2004.
>
> Obama has continued to support increased subsidies as a presidential
> candidate, calling for the creation of an Affordable Housing Trust
> Fund, which could distribute an estimated $500 million a year to
> developers. The money would be siphoned from the profits of two
> mortgage companies created and supervised by the federal government,
> Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
>
> "I will restore the federal government's commitment to low-income
> housing," Obama wrote last September in a letter to the Granite State
> Organizing Project, an umbrella group for several dozen New Hampshire
> religious, community, and political organizations. He added, "Our
> nation's low-income families are facing an affordable housing crisis,
> and it is our responsibility to ensure this crisis does not get worse
> by ineffective replacement of existing public-housing units."
>
> One of the earliest public-private partnerships of the type supported
> by Daley and Obama took place in the Woodlawn neighborhood, a
> checkerboard of battered apartment buildings and vacant lots just
> south of the University of Chicago.
>
> Grove Parc Plaza opened there in 1990 as a redevelopment of an older
> housing complex. The buildings had a new owner and a major renovation
> funded by the federal government. Even the name Grove Parc Plaza was
> new.
>
> The owner, a local nonprofit company called Woodlawn Preservation and
> Investment Corp., was led by two of the neighborhood's most powerful
> ministers, Arthur Brazier and Leon Finney. Obama had relationships
> with both men. In 1999, he donated $500 of his campaign funds to
> another of their community groups, The Woodlawn Organization.
>
> Woodlawn Preservation hired a private management firm, William
> Moorehead and Associates, to oversee the complex. In 2001, the company
> lost that contract and a contract to manage several public housing
> projects for allegedly failing to do its job. The company's head,
> William Moorehead, was subsequently convicted of embezzling almost $1
> million in management fees.
>
> Woodlawn Preservation hired a new property manager, Habitat Co. At the
> time, the company was headed by its founder, Daniel Levin, also a
> major contributor to Obama's campaigns. Valerie Jarrett was executive
> vice president.
>
> Residents say the complex deteriorated under Moorehead's management
> and continued to decline after Habitat took over. A maintenance worker
> at the complex says money often wasn't even available for steel wool
> to plug rat holes. But as late as 2003, a routine federal inspection
> still gave conditions at Grove Parc a score of 82 on a 100-point
> scale.
>
> When inspectors returned in 2005, they found conditions were
> significantly worse. Inspectors gave the complex a score of 56 and
> warned that improvements were necessary. They returned the following
> year and found things had reached a new low. Grove Parc got a score of
> 11 and a final warning. Three months later, inspectors found there had
> been insufficient improvements and moved to seize the complex from
> Woodlawn Preservation.
>
> After negotiations with tenants, the government agreed to allow a new
> company, Preservation of Affordable Housing, a Boston-based firm, to
> replace Habitat as the manager of Grove Parc. The company is
> negotiating to buy the development, which would then be demolished and
> replaced with new housing.
>
> Officials at Woodlawn Preservation say the government didn't give them
> enough money to properly maintain Grove Parc. Habitat's Jarrett
> declined to comment on Grove Parc in particular but said it is hard to
> manage something you don't own.
>
> But other Chicago developers and housing activists say federal
> subsidies can be adequate if managed properly. They say Grove Parc
> stands apart for how badly it fell into disrepair.
>
> Preservation of Affordable Housing has assumed responsibility for
> numerous subsidized complexes across the country.
>
> "Grove Parc is quite an exception to what we've normally done because
> it's in such bad shape," said the nonprofit's chief executive, Amy
> Anthony. "These complexes are often tired, they're always denser than
> today's philosophy, but they're not usually anywhere near as
> deteriorated."
>
> Similar problems also plagued the next generation of affordable
> housing de velopment in Obama's district, created as part of the Daley
> administration's efforts to subsidize smaller apartment buildings
> scattered throughout neighborhoods.
>
> One of the largest recipients of the subsidies was Rezmar Corp.,
> founded in 1989 by Tony Rezko, who ran a company that sold snacks at
> city beaches, and Daniel Mahru, who ran a company that sold ice to
> Rezko. Neither man had development experience.
>
> Over the next nine years, Rezmar used more than $87 million in
> government grants, loans, and tax credits to renovate about 1,000
> apartments in 30 Chicago buildings. Companies run by the partners also
> managed many of the buildings, collecting government rent subsidies.
>
> Rezmar collected millions in development fees but fell behind on
> mortgage payments almost immediately. On its first project, the city
> government agreed to reduce the company's monthly payments from almost
> $3,000 to less than $500.
>
> By the time Obama entered the state Senate in 1997, the buildings were
> beginning to deteriorate. In January 1997, the city sued Rezmar for
> failing to provide adequate heat in a South Side building in the
> middle of an unusually cold winter. It was one of more than two dozen
> housing-complaint suits filed by the city against Rezmar for
> violations at its properties.
>
> People who lived in some of the Rezmar buildings say trash was not
> picked up and maintenance problems were ignored. Roofs leaked, windows
> whistled, insects moved in.
>
> "In the winter I can feel the cold air coming through the walls and
> the sockets," said Anthony Frizzell, 57, who has lived for almost two
> decades in a Rezmar building on South Greenwood Avenue. "They didn't
> insulate it or nothing."
>
> Sharee Jones, who lives in another former Rezko building one block
> away, said her apartment was rat-infested for years.
>
> "You could hear them under the floor and in the walls, and they didn't
> do nothing about it," Jones said.
>
> By the time Rezmar asked Chicago's city government for a loan on its
> final subsidized development, in 1998, the city's housing commissioner
> was describing the company in a memo as being in "bad shape." The
> Daley administration still made the $3.1 million loan.
>
> Shortly thereafter, Rezmar switched from subsidized housing to
> high-end development, fueled by the money it had made in subsidized
> work. Rezko's companies also stopped managing the subsidized
> complexes.
>
> "Affordable housing run by private companies just doesn't work,"
> Mahru, who no longer works with Rezko, said in an interview with the
> Globe. "It's difficult, if not impossible, for a private company to
> maintain affordable housing for low-income tenants."
>
> Responsibility for several buildings fell to the Chicago Equity Fund,
> which had purchased government tax credits from Rezmar to help finance
> the projects. After Rezko walked away, the fund was obliged to
> maintain the buildings as affordable housing. If it did not, it would
> have to repay the government for the tax credits.
>
> The fund found the buildings in terrible condition. In a 2001 plea to
> the state to temporarily suspend payments on its mortgages, a fund
> executive wrote that heating problems, lapsed maintenance, and
> uncollected rent made the buildings almost impossible to manage.
>
> Most of the buildings have since been foreclosed upon, forcing the
> tenants to find new housing.
>
> All the while, Tony Rezko was forging a close friendship with Barack
> Obama. When Obama opened his campaign for state Senate in 1995,
> Rezko's companies gave Obama $2,000 on the first day of fund-raising.
> Save for a $500 contribution from another lawyer, Obama didn't raise
> another penny for six weeks. Rezko had essentially seeded the start of
> Obama's political career.
>
> As Obama ascended, Rezko became one of his largest fund-raisers. And
> in 2005, Rezko and his wife helped the Obamas purchase the house where
> they now live.
>
> Eleven of Rezmar's buildings were located in the district represented
> by Obama, containing 258 apartments. The building without heat in
> January 1997, the month Obama entered the state Senate, was in his
> district. So was Jones's building with rats in the walls and
> Frizzell's building that lacked insulation. And a redistricting after
> the 2000 Census added another 350 Rezmar apartments to the area
> represented by Obama.
>
> But Obama has contended that he knew nothing about any problems in
> Rezmar's buildings.
>
> After Rezko's assistance in Obama's home purchase became a campaign
> issue, at a time when the developer was awaiting trial in an unrelated
> bribery case, Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times that the deterioration
> of Rezmar's buildings never came to his attention. He said he would
> have distanced himself from Rezko if he had known.
>
> Other local politicians say they knew of the problems.
>
> "I started getting complaints from police officers about particular
> properties that turned out to be Rezko properties," said Toni
> Preckwinkle, a Chicago alderman.
>
> She had previously received campaign contributions from Rezmar and
> said she had regarded the company as a model, one of the city's best
> affordable housing developers.
>
> But in the early 2000s, she called Rezko to ask for an explanation for
> the declining conditions. He told her Rezmar was "getting out of the
> business," she said - walking away from its responsibility for
> managing the developments.
>
> "I didn't see him nor have anything to do with him after that," she said.
>
> Preckwinkle, who will be an Obama delegate at the Democratic National
> Convention, said she would not answer any questions about Obama's role
> in her district, nor his relationship with Rezko.
>
> Allison Davis, Obama's former law firm boss, dabbled in development
> for years while he worked primarily as a lawyer. He participated in
> the development of Grove Parc Plaza. And in 1996, Davis left his law
> firm to pursue a full-time career as an affordable housing developer,
> fueled by the subsidies from the Daley administration and aided, on
> occasion, by Obama himself.
>
> Over roughly the past decade, Davis's companies have received more
> than $100 million in subsidies to renovate and build more than 1,500
> apartments in Chicago, according to a Chicago Sun-Times tally. In
> several cases, Davis partnered with Tony Rezko. In 1998 the two men
> created a limited partnership to build an apartment building for
> seniors on Chicago's South Side. Obama wrote letters on state Senate
> stationery supporting city and state loans for the project.
>
> In 2000 Davis asked the nonprofit Woods Fund of Chicago for a $1
> million investment in a new development partnership, Neighborhood
> Rejuvenation Partners. Obama, a member of the board, voted in favor,
> helping Davis secure the investment.
>
> The following year, Davis assembled another partnership to create New
> Evergreen/Sedgwick, a $10.7 million renovation of five walk-up
> buildings in a gentrifying neighborhood. The project, a model of
> small-scale, mixed-income development, was subsidized by almost $6
> million in state loans and federal tax credits.
>
> Conditions deteriorated quickly. Chronic plumbing failures consumed
> the project's financial reserves while leaving undrained sewage in
> some of the apartments. In October, after repeated complaints from
> building residents, the city government sued the owners, and a judge
> imposed a $5,500 fine.
>
> New Evergreen/Sedgwick is managed by a company run by Cullen Davis,
> Allison Davis's son and also a contributor to Obama's campaigns.
> Cullen Davis said the problems were rooted in the way New
> Evergreen/Sedgwick was financed. Like most new projects, it is owned
> by a company created to own one building. That company determined how
> much to spend on renovations, how much to set aside for maintenance -
> and how much to keep as profit. When the maintenance funds ran out,
> there was no other source of money.
>
> "All these deals are set up as islands," Cullen Davis acknowledged. In
> this case, "The margin of error at Sedgwick was a little too close to
> begin with."
>
> Chicago's struggles with the deterioration of its subsidized private
> developments seemed to reach a new height in 2006, when the federal
> government foreclosed on Lawndale Restoration, the city's largest
> subsidized-housing complex. City inspectors found more than 1,800 code
> violations, including roof leaks, exposed wiring, and pools of sewage.
>
> Lawndale Restoration was a collection of more than 1,200 apartments in
> 97 buildings spread across 300 blocks of west Chicago. It was owned by
> a company controlled by Cecil Butler, a former civil rights activist
> who came to be reviled as a slumlord by a younger generation of
> activists.
>
> Lawndale Restoration was created in the early 1980s, when the federal
> government helped Butler take control of a group of old buildings,
> including lending $22 million to his company to redevelop the
> buildings and agreeing to subsidize tenant rents. In 1995, Butler's
> company got a $51 million loan from the state to fund additional
> renovations at Lawndale Restoration. In 2000 Butler's company brought
> in Habitat Co. to help manage the complex.
>
> Nonetheless, the buildings deteriorated badly. The problems came to
> public attention in a dramatic way in 2004, after a sport utility
> vehicle driven by a suburban woman trying to buy drugs struck one of
> the buildings, causing it to collapse. City inspectors arrived in the
> ensuing glare, finding a long list of code violations, leading city
> officials to urge the federal government to seize the complex.
>
> In the midst of the uproar, a small group of Lawndale residents
> gathered to rally against the Democratic candidate for the US Senate,
> Barack Obama.
>
> Obama's Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, trailed badly in the polls
> and was not seen as a serious challenger. But the organizers had a
> simple message: Cecil Butler had donated $3,000 to Obama's campaign.
> Habitat had close ties to Obama. And Obama had remained silent about
> Lawndale's plight.
>
> Paul Johnson, who helped to organize the protest, said Obama must have
> known about the problems.
>
> "How didn't he know?" said Johnson. "Of course he knew. He just didn't care."
>
> Butler did not return messages but in the past has said the government
> did not give him enough money to maintain the project. Habitat
> emphasized in a statement that its role at Lawndale was restricted to
> tasks that included financial oversight and management.
>
> In 2006, following the foreclosure, the federal government sold the
> buildings to the city for $10. The city has since parceled out the
> buildings among two dozen developers, who are rebuilding Lawndale for
> the fourth time with yet another round of government loans and
> subsidies.
>
> Even as Lawndale Restoration and Rezmar's buildings were foreclosed
> upon, and Grove Parc and other subsidized developments fell deeper
> into disrepair, Obama has remained a steadfast supporter of
> subsidizing private development.
>
> And although he has distanced himself from Rezko, Obama has remained
> close to others in the development community. Jarrett participates in
> the campaign's senior staff meetings. And Obama chose another close
> friend, Martin Nesbitt, as his campaign treasurer. Nesbitt is chairman
> of the Chicago Housing Authority, one of the key overseers of the
> shift toward private management and development.
>
> "Throughout his career in public service, Barack Obama has advocated
> for the development of mixed-income housing and public-private
> partnerships to create affordable housing as an alternative to
> publicly subsidized, concentrated, low-income housing," the Obama
> campaign said in a statement provided to the Globe.
>
> As a result, some people in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods are torn
> between a natural inclination to support Obama and a concern about his
> relationships with the developers they hold responsible for Chicago's
> affordable housing failures. Some housing advocates worry that Obama
> has not learned from those failures.
>
> "I'm not against Barack Obama," said Willie J.R. Fleming, an organizer
> with the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and a former public
> housing resident. "What I am against is some of the people around
> him."
>
> Jamie Kalven, a longtime Chicago housing activist, put it this way: "I
> hope there is not much predictive value in his history and in his
> involvement with that community."
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 9:17 AM, Bill Effros <bill at effros.com> wrote:
>   
>> Ed,
>>
>> It's so hard to explain when no one is paying attention.
>>
>> I'm glad you are.
>>
>> I look forward to seeing what Obama had to say in the O'Reilly interview
>> -- thanks for bringing it up.
>>
>> Obama was hired from Harvard by a politically connected "public
>> interest" law firm headed by the whitest black guy you ever saw, and
>> funded by the Chicago Arab-American community which recruited him.
>>
>> The law firm, working with the Daley machine, took over a "black"
>> district of Chicago by running Obama against black candidates with roots
>> in the community.  They lost the first time they tried, but then knocked
>> all the community leaders off the ballot, leaving only Obama in the race
>> for State Senator -- the method by which Obama was elected has since
>> been declared unconstitutional.
>>
>> The law firm made most of its money securing government projects for
>> members of the Arab-American community.
>>
>> Obama's boss, the white faced black guy, then left the law firm to go
>> into partnership with the Arabs as the "minority ownership" component.
>> (Brad -- Please note -- this is how it is done!)
>>
>> Somewhere around $40 million changed hands for projects in Obama's
>> district.  No one can now say where that money went.  It did not go back
>> into the community.  The map I sent shows the location of the projects
>> funded--all went into bankruptcy, along with many other projects not in
>> Obama's district.  All are now 100% owned by an off-shore Arab holding
>> company financed by Oil-For-Food receipts stolen from the government of
>> Iraq.
>>
>> Obama got a house out of the deal -- financed by the same Arab holding
>> company.
>>
>> All of the participants in the deal are currently under Federal
>> Investigation, including Barack Obama.  80 or 90 of them have already
>> been found guilty, or have pled guilty, and have agreed to testify
>> against the Kingpins.  One of the major players, a Syrian-born
>> naturalized American Citizen named "Rezko" is reported to be negotiating
>> a deal implicating Obama and Illinois Governor Blagojevich.  Rezko was
>> found guilty of 16 charges in a largely unrelated case in which Obama
>> and Blagojevich were implicated, but not central.  Rezko has been
>> indicted in another case to which it is widely assumed Obama and
>> Blagojevich will soon be added.
>>
>> Rezko is due to be sentenced 6 days before the Presidential Election.
>>
>> I am anxious to see Obama's comments minimizing his involvement in this
>> scheme.  There were only 12 lawyers in his law firm, and all are under
>> investigation.
>>
>> The crimes for which I believe Obama will be charged, automatically call
>> for impeachment, according to the constitution.
>>
>> Catholic Joe Biden, if elected VP, would be just an indictment away from
>> the Presidency.  To get the Catholic vote, without which the Democrats
>> can't win, Biden will have to oppose abortion much more strongly than he
>> has opposed it in the past.
>>
>> Way to Go NARAL!
>>
>> Bill Effros
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Tootle wrote:
>>     
>>> Bill:
>>>
>>> You will have to take time and explain what you are trying to demonstrate
>>> in:
>>>
>>> http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attachments/20080916/ecf58f28/attachment.jpg
>>>
>>> Keep in mind that the illustrations will have be specific and not guilt by
>>> association.
>>>
>>> I understand where you are going, but obviously Obama acolytes do not
>>> comprehend what this is all about.
>>>
>>> I would add that I have seen many parts of Bill O'Reily's interview with
>>> Obama.  Not intentionally, but because I watch TV while eating dinner.
>>>
>>> Obama came across good.  And for those who believe in revivals and
>>> evangelists, Obama was persuasive.
>>>
>>> One aspect of the interview was about those associations you question.
>>> Obama answered those questions so as minimalize their relevance.  However,
>>> for some of us, what he had said speaking publically as recently as one year
>>> ago was consistent with the problems you derive from those associations.
>>>
>>> Bill, since you are a member of the northeast media, see if you can explain
>>> the meaning of those associations and their relevance to Obama.
>>>
>>> Maybe our liberal attorney from New Jersey can address the question?
>>>
>>> Ed K
>>> Greenville, SC, USA
>>> addendum: Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same
>>> thing over and over again and always expecting different results."
>>>
>>>
>>> Rob Lowe wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> I really have no idea what this is showing.  Without some supporting
>>>> explanation, it's just a made up map. - rob
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org
>>>> [mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org] On Behalf Of Bill Effros
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 12:33 PM
>>>> To: R22 List
>>>> Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Community Organization
>>>>
>>>> Brad,
>>>>
>>>> I think you underestimate Obama's community organizing accomplishments.
>>>>
>>>> The attached map shows projects sponsored by Barack Obama in his
>>>> district.
>>>>
>>>> Bill Effros
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -------------- next part --------------
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>>>> http://www.rhodes22.org/pipermail/rhodes22-list/attachments/20080916/ecf
>>>> 58f28/attachment.jpg
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>>>>
>>>>         
>>>       
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