|
|
|
year |
event |
Political
Jiu
Jitsu |
When he gets the chance to run for the
state senate in a district that included Hyde Park, the home of the
university and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side,
he jumps at it.
A longtime, widely-revered matron of the civil rights movement named
Alice Palmer, a
board member
of the US Peace Council, identified by the FBI as a front organization
of the Communist Party USA, had held the seat for a number of years, but she announced
that she wanted to run for Congress. So, Obama seized the
opportunity and proclaimed his intention to run for Alice's open seat.
Nine years before Palmer hand-picked Obama as her successor, her
organization, The Black Press Institute, contributed an article, "An
Afro-American Journalist on the USSR," to the Communist Party USA
newspaper the People's Daily World.
The article tells how Palmer attended the 27th Congress of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union and came away favorably impressed by the
Soviet system.
Well, Alice lost the congressional race and decided that she wanted to
hang onto that hard-won state senate seat. Most of the community
leaders tried to persuade Obama to withdraw and wait his turn; he was a
newcomer after all.
Instead Obama performed his first real act of political jujitsu.
He sent his aides to the courthouse to carefully examine all of Alice
Palmer's signatures to see if enough could be disallowed to knock her
off the ballot altogether. And indeed, some of Alice's signatures
were fake. The aides also found enough other fake signatures on
opponents' ballot initiatives to knock them off the ballot as well.
"They began the tedious process of
challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of
state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the
city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one
of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot."
Obama ran unopposed in the primary.
By the time Barack Obama walked handily into his state senate seat,
everyone there knew him as "the man who knocked off Alice Palmer."
Quite a feat indeed for the newcomer, the young whippersnapper with the
odd name. |
The
Book |
As part of Obama's first run for office, he releases his memoir/fable,
"Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," in which he acknowledges that he
used marijuana and cocaine as a high school and college student but rejected heroin. "Pot had helped, and
booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though," he
wrote.
On "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (12/5/2006) Obama was asked by Leno about taking drugs. Said Leno, "Remember, Senator, you are under oath.
Did you inhale?"
Replied Obama, "That was the point." In his book, Obama excuses
his drug use as "reflective of the struggles and confusion of a teenage
boy; teenage boys are frequently confused."
Even more incriminating than the fact that Obama inhaled and admits to "maybe a little blow," Obama is a cigarette smoker, actually, a chain smoker. |
The
Terrorists |
As part of her transition out of power, Alice Palmer introduced her
successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals
at the home of left-wing terrorists,
William Ayers
and Bernardine Dohrn -- long-time friends of the Obamas.
As noted by
David Horowitz:
On the morning of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, along with a million other readers of the New York Times
including many who would never be able to read the paper again, I opened
its pages to be confronted by a color photo showing a middle-aged couple
holding hands and affecting a defiant look at the camera. The
article was headlined in an irony that could not have been more
poignant, "No Regrets For A Love Of Explosives." The couple
pictured were Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, former leaders of the
1960s’ Weather Underground, America’s first terrorist cult. One of
their bombing targets, as it happened, was the Pentagon.
While Ayers and Dohrn, who, in July, 1969, traveled to Cuba and met with
representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments, may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists,
they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious -- and
unrepentant -- figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war
movement. These two domestic terrorists have written and spoken at
length about their pasts -- their bombings and robberies -- and today he
is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the
University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law
at Northwestern University.
William (Bill) Ayers
went underground with several comrades after their co-conspirators'
bomb
accidentally exploded on March 6, 1970, destroying a Greenwich
Village townhouse and killing three members of the
Weather Underground
(Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton, who was Ayers' girlfriend
at the time). He and his colleagues invented identities and
traveled continuously. They avoided the police and FBI, while
bombing high-profile government buildings including; the United States
Capitol, The Pentagon, and the Harry S. Truman Building housing the State
Department. Living underground, Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised
two children, Zayd and Malik, (Muslim names) before turning themselves
in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of what Ayers
described as "extreme governmental misconduct" during the long search
for the fugitives.
Dohrn served seven months in a NYC federal jail in 1983 for refusing to
testify before a grand jury investigating the Brinks robbery of 1981, in
which two policemen and a security guard were killed.
Dohrn worked in a baby boutique in 1979 where stolen customer ID's were
used to rent trucks used in the series of robberies culminating in the
1981 slaughter in which 9 kids lost their fathers, the youngest of which
was six-months.
Because of the criminal convictions Dohrn, who received a law degree
from the University of Chicago in 1967, was refused admission to the New
York bar.
Nonetheless, she was hired as a legal clerk by Sidley and Austin, a
major Chicago law firm, in their New York office in 1984. Howard
Trienens, then managing partner of the firm, recently told the Chicago
Tribune that he arranged the hiring of Dohrn as a favor to his fellow
Northwestern University trustee and classmate, Tom Ayers. Tom
Ayers' firm, Commonwealth Edison, has used Sidley as outside counsel for
many years. She later worked in their Chicago office when she and
Bill Ayers moved back to Chicago in 1987. She left Sidley in 1988.
The earliest known contact between Obama and Ayers was when the
couple hosted a "meet and
greet" for Obama at Ayers house in Hyde Park -– an upper middle class neighborhood
on Chicago’s south side, where Obama now lives as a neighbor of Louis
Farrakhan.
Update: In 1989, Obama was a summer intern at
Michelle Obama's law firm. One of Michelle's co-counsels was
Bernadine Dohrn. So the relationship between the Obamas and Ayers
has spanned twenty years
"I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill
Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the
senate and running for Congress," said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent
Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the
informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. "[Palmer]
identified [Obama] as her successor."
A Chicago-based
blogger named Maria Warren -- whose writing suggested she was to the
left of Obama -- recalled watching the candidate give a "standard,
innocuous little talk" in 1995, in the Ayers' living room when Obama was
running for the state Senate.
"They were launching him," Warren wrote, "introducing him to the Hyde
Park community as the best thing since sliced bread."
Ayers and Dohrn are simply the most visible of the far left supporters
who propelled Barack Obama’s early political career. The woman who
touted Obama at the Ayers meeting, Alice Palmer, was herself a far left
activist who was into community organizing like Obama.
Wondering whether the three may have crossed paths is not speculation.
It is a fact that in 1989, Bernadine Dohrn and Michelle Obama were
associates at the Chicago law firm of
Sidley & Austin, when Obama joined the firm as a summer intern.
Barack also was essentially an
employee of Bill Ayers for eight years, starting in 1995, the
year the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created to raise funds to help
reform the Chicago public schools. One of the architects of the
Challenge was none other than Professor Bill Ayers. Ayers co-wrote
the initial grant proposal and proudly lists himself on his own website
as the co-founder of the Challenge.
And who did William Ayers, co-creator of the Challenge, help select as
the new director of the board for this program? Why, Barack Obama,
of course. Obama was the first Chairman of the Board of the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
Obama served on the board for eight years until the Challenge ended in
2003. Bill Ayers was intimately involved in the Challenge over
this same time period, raising and spending at least $110 million in an
effort to bolster a "radical" (Ayers'
word) reform program in the Chicago Public Schools from 1994 to
2001.
In November 1997, Ayers and Obama participated in a panel at the
University of Chicago entitled "Should a child ever be called a 'super
predator?'" to debate "the merits of the juvenile justice system."
In April 2002, Ayers, Dohrn, and Obama, then an Illinois State Senator,
participated together at a conference entitled "Intellectuals: Who Needs
Them?" sponsored by The
Center for Public Intellectuals and the
University of Illinois-Chicago. Ayers and Obama were two of the
six members of the "Intellectuals in Times of Crisis" panel.
Here is the
agenda.
"I know they are friends,"
said Dr. Young of Obama and Ayers.
Ayers is the Board Chairman of the nonprofit Woods Fund of
Chicago and Obama was a
Board member. Obama was a director
of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the
Fund's website.
The Woods Fund focused on welfare reform, affordable housing, the
quality of public schools, race and class disparities in the juvenile
justice system, and tax policy as a tool in reducing poverty. The
Fund supported the concept of an expanding welfare state allocating
ever-increasing amounts of money to the public school system, and the
redistribution of wealth via taxes.
Obama always describes his relationship with Ayers as casual, but a
close, working relationship spanning eight years is hardly casual --
especially an employer-employee relationship.
Beyond that, it was Ayers who brought Obama to Chicago.
According to The Nation: "The Woods Fund, in many ways, is responsible
for helping start Obama as an organizer and shaping his political
identity. In 1985 the foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the
Developing Communities Project (aka the "DCP"), which hired Obama, at
24, as an organizer on Chicago's economically depressed South Side."
The Woods Fund was founded by the Woods family which owned the
Illinois-based Sahara Coal Company, a major supplier of coal from its
mines to major Illinois power companies. Commonwealth Edison, the giant
Chicago-based electric power company was headed by Thomas Ayers, father
of Bill Ayers. |
Annenberg
Challenge |
The cloak of media invisibility is slowly beginning to lift from
Barack Obama's most important administrative leadership experience,
helming an expensive
educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any
measurable academic gains, according to the project's own final report.
Add in the fact that former Weatherman and admitted terrorist William
Ayers (whom Obama described in the Philadelphia debate as merely a
"neighbor") was head of the operating arm of the Chicago Annenberg
Challenge (CAC), working with Obama on distributing scores of millions
of dollars to grantees in the wards of the city, and you have a topic
that the Obama campaign wishes to avoid at all costs.
The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman
of the board of the CAC represent his track record as reformer, as
someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the
audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the
time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public
schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a
small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.
This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing
hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children
trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering
lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.
The Final Technical Report of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project is
available. From its abstract:
Results suggest that among the schools it supported, the Challenge had
little impact on school improvement and student outcomes, with no
statistically significant differences between Annenberg and
non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain, classroom behavior,
student self-efficacy, and social competence. (It goes on to say
that certain "Breakthrough Schools" receiving special funding and
support did show some trends in improvement although it's not clear
whether that included improvement in student performance.)
Obama has occupied the executive chair two times in his life, one
directing the Law Review and the other chairing the CAC. There's
nothing to show for the first, since Obama wrote nothing, and the second
remains a mystery. All we really know is that $110 million
(including over $60 million in public funds) was spent on a project that
yielded no discernable result -- and how much of it might have been used
to grease the wheels of a political career? |
|
Socialism |
Obama is elected to the
Illinois State Senate as a
Democrat.
During his run,
Obama receives the endorsement of the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for the Illinois state senate
seat.
Later, the Chicago DSA newsletter reported that Obama, as a state
senator, showed up
to eulogize Saul Mendelson, one of the "champions" of "Chicago’s
democratic left" and a long-time socialist activist.
Obama is/was an associate of the Chicago branch of the DSA.
A close examination of Obama's
first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his
political career. The man now running for president on a message
of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by
leveling the playing field, but by clearing it. |
Million
Man
March |
Barack Obama, the uniter across party lines, across religions, across
racial divides, wasn’t always Mr. Sunshine. He had a
different view 12 years ago, when his campaign was more localized.
He was 34 years old: a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law
School -- bastions of power and wealth. He was the beneficiary of
the best education America had to offer. What were his feelings at
age 34? Resentment, hyper-partisan, and accusatory towards whites,
Republicans and the so-called Christian right.
As Barack Obama prepared to run for the state Senate he spoke up shortly
after the Million Man March lead by Louis Farrakhan -- or as Barack
Obama honorifically recently titled him, Minister Farrakhan, he said:
"These are mean, cruel times, exemplified by a 'lock ‘em up, take no
prisoners' mentality that dominates the Republican-led Congress.
Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black
nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the
mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn’t care less
about the profound problems African-Americans are facing."
"The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building
these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or
progressive forces have. But it’s always easier to organize around
intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also
have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family
values and moral responsibility."
Barack Obama has commented on the value of words to inspire, to bring
about change. What kind of change was he talking about in his mid
30’s when most of us had already given up the rebellion we flirted with,
and the resentments that beset us, in college? |
| Payback |
Obama
stopped working full-time for Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard once
he took office in 1997. He remained associated with the firm until
he was elected to the U.S. Senate nearly eight years later.
In some instances, Illinois state Sen. Obama took action that could have
benefited some of his firm's clients. In 1998, for instance, he
used state Senate stationery to urge that state and city officials
provide tax subsidies to help a partnership consisting of Davis and
Rezko develop low-income housing, the Chicago Sun-Times reported last
year.
In 2001, Obama was coauthor of a law that created a tax credit for
people who donate land, buildings or construction material to help
develop low-income housing.
Illinois state Rep. Jack D. Franks, a Democrat, lauded the bill, which
garnered near-unanimous support. But Franks said that while the
measure helped Obama's low-income constituents, it raises questions
because his law firm's clients could have benefited from it.
"Someone else should have carried this legislation," said Franks, who
has endorsed Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"I can't fault him for the idea. But he is wearing two hats.
He is a legislator, and he is serving as a private attorney whose client
interests benefited here. This goes to the judgment issue."
Obama strategist Axelrod scoffed at the notion that Obama should have
avoided such legislation.
He said that the beneficiaries were nonprofit corporations and people in
need of low-cost housing.
"The shortage of affordable housing is a major public-policy concern of
his and of the state," Axelrod said.
"His view of public policy is that you should use the tools of
government to deal with some of the crying social needs that we have." |
| Sensitivity |
Obama
introduces "Islamic Community Day" bill -- Synopsis of Bill as
introduced: Declares November 1, 1997 to be South Shore Islamic
Community Center Day. |
|
Obama
Loses |
Three years later, in September 1999, Obama was already
preparing his first national campaign.
He ran for U.S. Congress against veteran incumbent Bobby Rush, a
former co-founder of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.
Rush painted the largely unknown freshman lawmaker as an out-of-touch
elitist, and won the 2000 primary by more than 30 percentage points. |
Arab
American
Action
Network |
The directors of the Woods Fund, including Obama and Ayers, provided a $40,000 grant to the
Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.
The co-founder of the AAAN, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi,
was a
director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976
to 1982, while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled
by the State Department as a terror group. He also has held a
fundraiser for Obama.
Khalidi's wife, Mona,
serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN
for $35,000 in 2002.
The $40,000 grant from Obama's Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about
a fifth of the Arab group's reported grants for 2001, according to tax
filings
obtained by WND. The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also
constituted about one-fifth of AAAN's reported grants for that year.
Oh, and Obama
accepted a $200
contribution from his friend William Ayers. |
Halal
Food
Act |
In 2001, Obama
sponsors Illinois
Senate Bill 750
creating the "Halal Food Act," providing for inspections by the
Department of Agriculture to ensure that all food labeled Halal is
prepared according to Islamic law.
This act plays into
Islamization. Here's
how it works and why Halal food plays a role. |
On
Abortion |
As an Illinois state senator, Obama opposed a
bill to define as a "person" a fully born baby who survived an abortion.
In 2001, three bills were proposed to help babies who survived
induced labor abortions. One, like the federal Born Alive Infants
bill, simply said a living "homo sapiens" wholly emerged from his mother
should be treated as a "'person,' 'human being,' 'child' and
'individual.'"
On all three bills, Obama voted "present," effectively the same as a
"no." Defining "a pre-viable fetus" that survived an abortion as a
"person" or "child," he argued, "would essentially bar abortions,
because the Equal Protection Clause does not allow somebody to kill a
child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion
statute."
In 2002,
Obama voted "no" on the bill. |
| Blackwell |
After his unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts,
limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year.
Help
arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client -- a
longtime political supporter.
Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month
retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic
Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000
part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from
Blackwell’s firm that eventually totaled $112,000.
A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a
request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide
a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company,
Killerspin.
Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide
and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of
the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials
and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company
eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to
subsidize its tournaments. |
Opposes
Iraq |
On October,
2nd, 2002, Obama gives a speech at an antiwar rally in Chicago
opposing the invasion of Iraq, saying, "I am not opposed to all wars. I
am opposed to dumb wars." |
Gun
Control |
During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a
greater
role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on
gun control, the death penalty and abortion -- positions that appear at
odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his
presidential campaign.
The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s
detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a
state Senate seat.
Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to
the original questionnaire, his aides said he "never saw or approved"
the questionnaire.
They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who
"unintentionally mischaracterized his position."
But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually
interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago
nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama -- the day
after sitting for the interview -- filed an amended version of the
questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes
added to one answer. |
Grove
Parc
|
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.
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. (video)
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.
Obama -- judgment and experience -- you betcha! |
| Progressive |
Obama, who has no
military service record, has shown via his
political history in Illinois, that he is a nearly perfect
Progressive-Democrat.
While in the Illinois State Senate, Obama is named Chairman of the
Health and Human Services Committee. His distinguished works include
passing bill to assist children and adults who cannot afford health
insurance; increasing funding for AIDS prevention and care; a law
requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by
the death penalty; a law requiring insurance companies to cover routine
mammograms; legislation to curb racial profiling.
Obama supports homosexual marriage, racial preferences, banning all guns, flag-burning, socialized medicine and the absolute right to abortion, including partial-birth abortions. He voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive.
Obama is anti-war, voted against the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, against privatizing Social Security and opposes the death penalty, three strikes laws and school vouchers.
He has no military service record. He strongly supports the
decriminalization of marijuana.
Obama opposed the Defense of Marriage Act; would work to repeal
it in the U.S. Senate; would not vote for any legislation that would
restrict the ability of gays and lesbians to marry.
Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times in
Illinois. A similar bill passed the U.S. Senate 98-0. The Born Alive
bill would have prohibited a baby from being born alive but left to die according to the mother's wishes.
Obama opposed this bill not once, twice, or three times, but four times.
Obama took almost $90,000 in bundled contributions from the Council for
a Livable World. The council is a well-known anti-defense organization.
Obama puts rigid ideology before what's best for the people of Illinois,
and presumably he would do that as President as well. He has on several
occasions made public his opposition to the NAFTA trade agreement and
his belief that it must be negotiated. All the while thanks to NAFTA,
Illinois exports $1.3 billion in agricultural goods to Canada.
Obama refused to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would
have increased penalties for drug traffickers.
Obama voted against a bill that would have delivered the death penalty
to gang members who murder first responders.
Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to vote against a
bill that prohibited early release for sexual predators. |
| "Present" |
Controversial votes when Obama was a state senator were avoided by
voting "present" 107 times or claiming later that he erred by pressing the wrong
button and didn’t really mean to take that position.
Seen in the context of the "Great Game" the left plays with the American
people in trying to mask their liberalism for fear of rejection by the
voter, Obama, it turns out, is a master of "post partisan problem
solving" -– hiding his liberalism under an avalanche of platitudes and
feel-good bromides that have his supporters swooning and the media
eating out of his hand. |
| License |
Obama
opted to voluntarily assume inactive status as an attorney in 2008.
Some suggest that he did not renew his law license so as to avoid being
subject to possible discipline by the Attorney Registration and
Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) of the Supreme Court of Illinois.
The ARDC has investigatory powers in addition to registration
recordkeeping responsibilities. |
Vote
Rigging |
Obama should be indicted under 18 USC
1346 (the same code section under which Rezko was convicted) for his
actions on the boards legislation in 2003. Here, in detail is a
chronology of Obama's illegal activity.
The following comes from Evelyn Pringle's
opednews.com "Curtain Time" series.
"That part of the scheme will likely be detailed in future indictments,
probably starting with Blagojevich. Blagojevich signed the
Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act with an effective date of June
27, 2003. However, before he could sign the act, a bill had to be
passed by the Illinois House and Senate. As discussed fully in
Curtain Time Part II, Obama was the inside guy in the senate who pushed
through the legislation that resulted in the Act.
Obama was appointed chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services
Committee. The minute the bill was introduced, it was referred to
his committee for review. The sponsors of the bill also served on
this committee with Obama. Within a month, Chairman Obama sent
word to the full senate that the legislation should be passed.
On May 31, 2003, Senate Bill 1332 passed and specified that the "Board
shall be appointed by the Governor, with the advice and consent of the
Senate." The legislation reduced the number of members from 15 to
9, paving the way for the appointment of a five-bloc majority to rig the
votes.
The corrupt members appointed included three doctors who contributed to
Obama. Michel Malek gave Obama $10,000 on June 30, 2003 and
donated $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 25, 2003. Malek also gave
Obama another $500 in September 2003.
Fortunee Massuda donated $25,000 to Blagojevich on July 25, 2003, and
gave a total of $2,000 to Obama on different dates. After he was
appointed, Dr. Imad Almanaseer contributed a total of $3,000 to Obama.
Almanaseer did not give money to Blagojevich.
When the first pay-to-play scheme was put in play, and the application
for approval of a new hospital was submitted, the Department of Human
Services, along with four other Illinois agencies, sent recommendations
that the project should be approved even though experts said the
hospital was not needed.
During the trial, Rezko's attorney presented an email exchange to the
jury that hinted at Obama's role in setting up the scheme. The
exchange showed that Obama and seven other top Illinois politicians
consulted on the legislation passed in 2003 and were involved in
recommending the members for the board.
Matthew Pickering wrote the memo to Blagojevich's general counsel, Susan
Lichtenstein, on behalf of David Wilhelm, a former chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, who headed Blagojevich's 2002 campaign
for governor.
Pickering said he and Wilhelm had "worked closely" over six months with
state legislators. The memo recommended the appointees listed
above and stated, "our attached recommendations reflect that
involvement" with the political leaders.
The persons appointed to rig the votes, including those who contributed
to Blagojevich and Obama, are cooperating in exchange for immunity or
lighter prison sentences. |
Emil
Jones
Jr. |
In
late 2002, Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned
African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor,
became Illinois Senate Majority Leader, Emil Jones.
When
Obama was considering a run for the US Senate in 2003, he paid an
intriguing visit to Jones, the former Chicago sewers inspector, who had risen to
become one of the most influential African-American politicians in
Illinois.
"You have the power to elect a US senator," Obama told
Emil Jones.
Jones
looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked,
teasingly: "Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?"
According to Jones, Obama replied: "Me." It was his first,
audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters
of Springfield, the Illinois capital.
The
exchange also sealed an intimate personal and political relationship
that is likely to attract intense scrutiny amid the furor over Obama’s
links to some of Chicago’s most controversial political and religious
power brokers. Obama has often described Jones as a key political
mentor whose patronage was crucial to his early success in a state long
dominated by near-feudal party political machines. Jones, 71,
describes himself as Obama’s "godfather" and once said: "He feels like a
son to me."
At one point during Obama’s 2003 Senate campaign, Jones set out to woo
two African-American politicians miffed by Obama’s presumption and
ambition. One of them, Rickey "Hollywood" Hendon, a state senator,
had scoffed that Obama was so ambitious he would run for "king of the
world" if the position were vacant. When Jones secured the two
men’s support, Obama asked his mentor how he had pulled it off. "I
made them an offer," Jones said in mock-mafioso style. "And you
don’t want to know."
Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He
represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama's.
He became Obama's kingmaker.
Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called
his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the
city's most popular black call-in radio program.
I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as
follows:
"He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"
"Oh, you are? Who might that be?"
"Barack Obama."
Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of
legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more
seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.
"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments
over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator
Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and
videotaped confession legislation, yanked away by Jones and given to
Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure
any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.
"I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one
wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and
then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in
the record book."
During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats
soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law --
including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked
as inexperienced.
It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national
politics -- and he couldn't have done it without Jones.
Before Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was virtually unknown even
in his own state. Polls showed fewer than 20 percent of Illinois voters
had ever heard of Barack Obama.
Jones further helped raise Obama's profile by having him craft
legislation addressing the day-to-day tragedies that dominated local
news headlines.
For instance. Obama sponsored a bill banning the use of the diet
supplement Ephedra, which killed a Northwestern University football
player, and another one preventing the use of pepper spray or
pyrotechnics in nightclubs in the wake of the deaths of 21 people during
a stampede at a Chicago nightclub. Both stories had received
national attention and extensive local coverage.
Jones gave Obama the legislation because he believed in Obama's ability
to negotiate with Democrats and Republicans on divisive issues.
So how has Obama repaid Jones?
Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama
released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year
2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for
Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district.
Shortly after Jones became Senate president, he was asked his view on
pork-barrel spending. He said: "Some call it pork; I call it
steak." |
US
Senate
Run |
Obama
announced his bid for the U.S. Senate, where
he cruised to victory thanks to the self-destruction of his top
opponents in both the primary and general elections.
Obama joined a crowded field of seven candidates vying to fill an open
Senate seat being vacated by retiring two-term incumbent Peter
Fitzgerald. For months, he polled in the middle-of-the-pack behind
frontrunner and former securities trader Blair Hull, who spent $30
million of his own fortune on the primary.
But Hull's campaign imploded just weeks before the election when his
divorce files were unsealed, revealing an ex-wife's charges of verbal
and physical abuse.
Obama unleashed a barrage of television ads just before the election,
when the other candidates had largely depleted their war chests. He won
the nomination with 53 percent of the vote.
In the
general election for the U. S. Senate, Obama squared off against
another multimillionaire: Jack Ryan, who later dropped out of the race
after a judge ordered his divorce files unsealed. The documents
revealed that Ryan's ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, a former Miss Illinois
best known for her role as "Seven of Nine" on Star Trek: Voyager, accused
him of trying to coerce her to perform sex acts in public.
Obama spent several weeks facing no opponent as the Illinois Republican
Party exhausted a laundry list of replacement candidates that included
former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka. The GOP ended up recruiting
two-time failed presidential hopeful Alan Keyes from Maryland to fill
the slot.
Keyes's strategy to use bombastic rhetoric to attract headlines turned
off most voters. Most memorably, he said Jesus would not vote for
Obama and that homosexuals, including Vice President Dick Cheney's
daughter, participated in "selfish hedonism."
In the end, Obama won more than 70 percent of the vote in the most
lopsided Senate election in Illinois history and became the fifth
African-American to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. |
Fast
Track |
Obama has spent his entire political career
trying to win the next step up. Every three years, he has
aspired to a more powerful political position.
"He's been given a pass,"
says Harold Lucas, a community organizer in Chicago. "His
career has been such a meteoric rise that he has not had the time to set
a record."
Three years later, he'd be trying to win the most powerful political
position in the world. |
The
Speech |
Obama delivers his now-famous speech before the Democratic
National Convention. (transcript) |
A
Star
Is
Born |
On the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him
into the national spotlight, Barack Obama
told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an
"absolute obligation" to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a
success.
"The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said at a lunch
sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of
the session. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who
have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise
that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing
from a national security perspective."
Did he believe what he said that day? It's sure different than
what he now says in Spring 2008. |
Bill
Jacking |
He sure has an ability to "get
things done."
If you consider that every bill he
passed as a State Senator was passed his last year in office by a
Democrat-controlled legislature. Also, some of the more high
profile accomplishments he cites now like the racial profiling/videotape
confession legislation were bills where a lot of the legwork had been
done by other Democrats in the legislature years prior when it was
controlled by Republicans, but were given to Obama by his kingmaker,
Senate president Emil Jones, Jr. in order for him to make the "close"
(where he often did).
When asked about this by the Houston Press’
Todd Spivak, State Senator Rickey Hendon replied, "I don’t consider it
bill jacking. But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all
the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets
all the credit and the stats in the record book."
This isn’t to
suggest that Obama’s achievements in the state senate are totally
without merit, but instead to point out they weren’t all done by his
leaping tall buildings in a single bound. He had a lot of help
from Democrats. Consider this, too: if he wins, he will have a
solid Democrat Congress to work with, so the only "reaching out" he’d
have to do would be to the few moderate Republicans who have already
proven themselves all too eager to vote with liberal Democrats. |
Stacking
the
Board |
An e-mail message
made public in the fraud trial of Antoin Rezko, a businessman and political
contributor, brought attention to Obama’s role in discussions involving
a state health planning board that Mr. Rezko is accused of improperly
influencing.
The message indicated that Obama, and other top Illinois politicians,
consulted in 2003 on legislation to keep the board, which approved the
construction of health facilities, from expiring under sunset provisions
in state law.
The vaguely worded message also seemed to raise the possibility that Mr.
Obama, who at the time was chairman of the Illinois Senate’s health
committee, had been involved in recommending candidates for the board.
Mr. Rezko is accused of using his influence in state government to stack
the board with associates, including some who made political
contributions to Mr. Obama and other top Illinois politicians, and of
seeking a bribe on a hospital project.
Mr. Rezko is accused of using his influence in state government to stack
the board with associates, including some who made political
contributions to Mr. Obama and other top Illinois politicians, and of
seeking a bribe on a hospital project.
Mr. Pickering said he and Mr. Wilhelm had "worked closely" over six
months with several state legislators to extend the life of the health
facilities board. He then listed Democratic and Republican leaders in
the state House and Senate, including Mr. Obama.
Mr. Pickering’s message went on to suggest four candidates to serve on
the board, stating that "our attached recommendations reflect that
involvement" with the political leaders. |
Crime
and
Punishment |
Obama doesn't talk much about his views on crime and
punishment -- at least not in front of general audiences -- and for good
reason.
While his Web site says he's "a strong proponent of tougher measures to
fight crime,"
his record tells a different story.
As an Illinois state senator, for example, he acted more as a friend to
criminals than to cops, legislating among other things:
• Curbs on what he called a "broken" death penalty system.
• A measure to expunge some criminal records and give job grants to
ex-cons.
• Tougher handgun controls.
• A vote against making gang members eligible for the death penalty if
they kill someone to help their gang.
• Opposition to a bill requiring juveniles to be prosecuted as adults
for firing a gun at or near a school.
At the federal level, Obama would:
• Repeal "unfair" mandatory sentences for crack convictions.
• Provide drug counseling instead of jail time for some abusers.
• Rethink criminal penalties for pot.
• Ban profiling by federal law enforcement, even if it helps catch
violent criminals including terrorists.
• Strengthen hate-crime laws and beef up civil rights enforcement
against police chiefs who profile.
• Provide job training, drug rehab and counseling for ex-cons.
• "Re-enfranchise" felons denied the right to vote.
In addition, Obama, who once vowed to repeal the Patriot Act, still
talks about reforming it. He also once proposed banning executions
of inmates, arguing he was against capital punishment.
It's not clear where Obama stands on the issue now, but he does think
death row and the entire U.S. penal system are stacked against blacks.
While so far only alluding to racism as the culprit, his mentor Rev.
Jeremiah Wright minces no words in blaming "racist white America."
"The brothers are in prison" largely because of their skin color, he
claims.
And a racist white majority put them there, he believes, by "structuring
an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and
prisons."
In Wright's conspiracy, personal responsibility plays no role.
This is the same adviser who told Obama that there are "more black men
in prison than in college" -- a statement that Obama parroted until he
was told that it was false.
Unfortunately, Obama listens to his preacher and buys into his
conspiracy theories. "In our criminal justice system,
African-Americans and whites are arrested at very different rates,"
Obama recently complained. "It has to do with how we pursue racial
justice."
He vows to pursue it with gusto, unleashing civil rights cops on police
chiefs and district attorneys who dare to arrest and prosecute criminals
who happen to be of color.
In last Tuesday's speech explaining his ties to Wright, he reiterated
his desire to do more to enforce civil rights laws.
He cites the Jena Six case as an example of racial injustice. But
one of the thugs he defends as a victim of Louisiana racism recently was
arrested again for assault. The 6-6 Bryant Purvis allegedly choked
and slammed a classmate's head on a table after helping five other
blacks beat a white student within an inch of his life.
Would Obama go soft on such brutal crime in the name of racial equality?
No justice, no peace? Obama for now speaks only in code, saying
he'll fix "a criminal justice system that's broken." But how
exactly is it broken? And who would he appoint to help fix it?
Who will he pick as his attorney general? His top civil rights
cop? Is his pal Rep. John Conyers on the short list? Rep.
Keith Ellison?
What about federal judges? Will they be frustrated social workers
who go easy on criminals to "reintegrate" them into society?
More important, what kind of justices does Obama have in mind to replace
aging veterans on the high court, who decide the constitutionality of
capital punishment cases?
We shudder to think. |
|
More
Crime
and
Punishment |
His
political history in Illinois shows that Obama has proven himself to be a nearly perfect
Progressive-Democrat.
While in the Illinois State Senate, Obama is named Chairman of the
Health and Human Services Committee. His distinguished works include
passing bill to assist children and adults who cannot afford health
insurance; increasing funding for AIDS prevention and care; a law
requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by
the death penalty; a law requiring insurance companies to cover routine
mammograms; legislation to curb racial profiling.
Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times in
Illinois. The Born Alive
bill would have prohibited a baby from being born alive but left to die according to the mother's wishes.
Obama opposed this bill not once, twice, or three times, but four times.
Obama took almost $90,000 in bundled contributions from the Council for
a Livable World. The council is a well-known anti-defense organization.
Obama puts rigid ideology before what's best for the people of Illinois,
and presumably he would do that as President as well. He has on several
occasions made public his opposition to the NAFTA trade agreement and
his belief that it must be negotiated. All the while thanks to NAFTA,
Illinois exports $1.3 billion in agricultural goods to Canada.
Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to vote against a
bill that prohibited early release for sexual predators.
Obama voted to make a criminal out of a homeowner who was forced to use
a gun in his own defense in his own home.
Obama refused to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would
have increased penalties for drug traffickers.
Obama voted against making it a criminal offense for convicts on
probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.
Obama voted against a bill that would have delivered the death penalty
to gang members who murder first responders.
Obama’s record on anti-gang legislation is simple; because gang members
are more often people of color, they shouldn’t be singled out for
increased attention or special penalties by the law. |
No
Records |
There's no
paper trail on Obama.
The president of a prominent watchdog group said Wednesday that he
believes Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)
"intended to leave no paper trail" during his time in the Illinois
Senate.
In a statement, Tom Fitton noted that his group, Judicial Watch, has
sought access to Obama’s records as a state senator and questioned
whether the presidential candidate has been forthcoming with regard to
what happened to those documents.
The Illinois State Archives told Judicial Watch that they never received
any request from Senator Obama to archive any records in his possession.
Similarly, in 2007, Obama
said to Tim Russert that his records were "not kept."
MR. RUSSERT: You talked about Senator Clinton having records released
from the Clinton Library regarding her experience as first lady, and yet
when you were asked about, "What about eight years in the state senate
of Illinois," you said, "I don’t know." Where, where are the --
where are your records?
SEN. OBAMA: Tim, we did not keep those records. I...
MR. RUSSERT: Are they gone?
SEN. OBAMA: Well, let’s be clear. In the state senate, every
single piece of information, every document related to state government
was kept by the state of Illinois and has been disclosed and is
available and has been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by news
outlets in Illinois.* The, the stuff that I did not keep has to do
with, for example, my schedule. I didn’t have a schedule. I
was a state senator. I wasn’t intending to have the Barack Obama
State Senate Library. I didn’t have 50 or 500 people to, to help
me archive these issues. So...
MR. RUSSERT: But your meetings with lobbyists and so forth, there’s no
record of that?
SEN. OBAMA: I did not have a scheduler, but, as I said, every document
related to my interactions with government is available right now.
And, as I said, news outlets have already looked at them.
MR. RUSSERT: Is your schedule available anywhere? Are -- the records
exist?
SEN. OBAMA: I -- Tim, I kept my own schedule. I didn’t have a
scheduler.
I have no idea how Obama's statement that "every document related to
state government was kept by the state of Illinois and has been
disclosed and available" can be in line with the statement from the
Illinois State Archives. Is there some separate archive for state
legislators?
However, he said that "nobody knows where they are, if they exist at
all" and claimed that "Obama’s story keeps changing."
It could mean that Obama tried to hide his work, hoping to keep
political opponents from unearthing ammunition in future elections.
It could also mean that he didn’t do that much actual work, which would
match his wafer-thin record of accomplishments in three years as U. S.
Senator.
It’s the cost of running as a cipher, and of running on ambiguous
concepts of hope and change. Having what little records that
should exist come up missing doesn’t help build confidence in a
candidate’s credibility, either. |
The
Kingmaker |
The president of the Illinois Senate is sitting in his statehouse
office, talking in gravelly tones about political strategies and
counter-strategies. Out of nowhere, the theme from "The Godfather"
begins playing.
It turns out to be the ringtone on his cell phone -- an appropriate song
for the man who amounts to Barack Obama's political godfather.
Emil Jones Jr. helped Obama master the intricacies of the Legislature.
When Democrats took control of the state Senate, Jones, though he risked
offending colleagues who had toiled futilely on key issues under
Republican rule, tapped Obama to take the lead on high-profile
legislative initiatives that he now boasts about in his presidential
campaign.
Jones
appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of
legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more
seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.
During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats
soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law --
including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked
as inexperienced.
It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national
politics -- and he couldn't have done it without Jones. Before
Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was virtually unknown even in his
own state. Polls showed fewer than 20 percent of Illinois voters
had ever heard of Barack Obama.
And when Obama wanted a promotion to the U.S. Senate, Jones provided
critical support that gave the little-known legislator legitimacy,
keeping him from being instantly trampled by the front-runners.
"He's been indispensable to Barack's career. He wants to see a
black president before he gets called home," said fellow state Sen.
Rickey Hendon, a Democrat.
So how has Obama repaid Jones? Last June (2007), to prove his
commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive
list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised
more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of
millions for Jones's Senate district.
Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view
on pork-barrel spending. I'll never forget what he said: "Some
call it pork; I call it steak."
Background |
©
Copyright Beckwith 2008
All right reserved
|
