When I asked my wife who Valerie Jarrett was she immediately produced the October issue of Vogue, a magazine which in its own way covers events more deeply than the Washington Post. The first paragraph begins:
One day in the summer of 1991, when Valerie Jarrett was Chicago mayor Richard Daley’s deputy chief of staff, the woman who worked in the office next door to Jarrett handed her the resume of one Michelle La Vaughn Robinson. … On the cover letter, someone at City Hall had written something like THIS WOMAN IS NO LONGER INTERESTED IN BEING AT HER LAW FIRM. SHE WANTS TO BE IN GOVERNMENT AND GIVE BACK.
Michelle La Vaughn Robinson of course, is now Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett is now Barack Obama’s senior White House adviser. The Vogue article passingly mentions Jarrett’s career at the Habitat Company, which she joined after leaving City Hall in 1995 in breatheless terms. But the Boston Globe’s description of Jarrett’s stint at Habitat is far less flattering.
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. …
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.
The Vogue article continues, “Jarrett gets up between 4:30 and 5:00 A.M. and works out every morning before she heads to Habitat and starts her workday with a scheduled campaign phone call with Obama’s other top advisers, including David Alexrod and David Plouffe. ‘I trust her completely,’ Barack Obama has said. ‘She participates in every conversation we have in the campaign.’” The Globe article on Grove Parc continued:
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.
May she have better luck in the White House than in low-cost housing.
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33 Comments
1. cjm:obama is a small time hustler. the extent of his ambition is to guide contracts to cronies. he is just another dinkins/berry/patrick empty pants hustler. all the talk and tears about remaking America is just corn feed for the rubes. within a year he and the congrssional dems will be wrapped around each other like a python and a crocodile. both will suffer at the mid-term elections in 2010, and hopefully a replacement for the gop willbe in place by 2012.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:06 pm 2. JFSanders:The “spice” of socialism is strong, addicting, and subversive to the mind. It clouds the mind and blinds the eyes.
Witness the actions of people who are continually subjugated and exploited by socialistic governance. They vote for their pimp just as the whore gives up her hard earned money.
It will take a violent, slap to the mouth to wake these people from their stupor. Even then a considerable number will remain numb and lay there and take death in a cold embrace.
But for those that awaken the sheep dogs are there waiting for the call.
Jim
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:29 pm 3. trangbang68:What matters is saying they have a noble plan for low income housing, not actually providing such. I saw a demonstration fake homeless tent city at the University of Arizona this week. A few blocks away are deranged actual homeless people who wretched lives are no better for the sham.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:31 pm 4. sgi:The article also tells the story of how Valerie Jarrett met Barack Obama. Apparently before Michelle would accept the position that was offered to her, she insisted that Valerie Barrett meet her fiance, Barack Obama. As I recall, the article gave the impression that Barack wanted to “interview” Valerie.
After all, when you are as ambitious as Obama everyone must be useful to you.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:35 pm 5. Thrasymachus:All of this was well known, but it was simply ignored. I don’t think the sum of Obama’s ambition is to be a small time hustler, but that’s all he and his cronies know. It’s all the Democratic Party has known for decades- beyond all the idealistic talk it just steering the goodies to the right people.
The Carter analogy now seems more apt- Carter had his Georgia cronies, Obama has his Chicago cronies.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:35 pm 6. Voltimand:I had already heard something of Obama’s and Obama’s friends’ involvement in such public housing disasters. Those who don’t know Chicago can’t imagine the massive, Stonehenge-like monstrosity called Cabrini Green, which is the “flagship” of the kind of echt Chicago graft-and-corruption-business-as-usual that Obama was tied into.
All of which serves to amaze me once again for the upteenth time that Obama has managed to get to the presidency without someone blowing the whistle on him in such a way as to be taken seriously. Everything we know about this guy makes him out to be precisly the hustler “CJM” talks about (#1), though Obama was hardly “small time”: nothing is small time in Chicago corrupt politics. If it were there wouldn’t be so much money sucking people like Obama into it.
Slowly but surely, the public dossier on Obama is growing and accumulating. It is only a matter of time before the tipping point rounds the bend, and Obama and his apologists will no longer be able to hide the elephant in the living room.
Meanwhile, Obama is starting to stock his administration with the same people who brought us 9/11: the Clinton administration.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:38 pm 7. Charles:I worked at HUD’s downtown HQ in Washington DC for a short period as an IT contractor. The impression that I cam away with was that none of the trillions of bits information that agency generates is in any way useful or meaningful. It is much like the immense warehouses of information that east german stasi kept on people. It cost an immense amount to gather and collate. It gave the people in charge the illusion of control. that information was almost entirely rubbish. in reality things crumbled around them.
What can be said with confidence about HUD is that it provides dependable middle class salaries for its black bureaucrats.and because they are both black and bureaucrats–they are unassailable.
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:46 pm 8. sgi:HillBuzz:
http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/
Nov 15, 2008 - 9:49 pm 9. Lifeofthemind:If HUD did not exist what would be the impact on America? My recently deceased father was a real estate broker and a lifetime liberal Democrat. He spoke with great bitterness of the incredible venality and corruption of the gang from HARYOU-ACT that he had one brush with. The Great Society was a disaster. After 45 years of failure it is time to pull the plug.
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:29 pm 10. whiskey:Somewhat OT, Ace of Spades has two items. One, Obama is pushing the Arab Peace Plan for Israel, which includes unlimited Right of Return, withdrawal from Jerusalem and to pre-1967 borders. The other item is Obama’s re-affirmation for a “Civilian Security Force” just as well funded and well armed as the Military. A new SS force, this time working for the “One.”
Ugh.
Yes, Obama is incompetent. For Men, he will have to deliver. If he does not, he’ll lose them decisively. Women will stick with him (or to be accurate, Single Women who are most women now) as long as he remains First Rockstar.
Look at Vogue vs. Sports Illustrated. The one has nothing but how cool and hip featured people are, the other about what has been achieved (win-loss) and plans for further wins, or retooling after lots of losses. The Gender divide goes deep. In a 52-47 election, Obama has a thin margin. He has to produce right away, being First Rockstar is not enough, there is no other office to move up to, in order to escape responsibility for failure.
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:35 pm 11. wretchard:SGI,
The proper URL is this, with this specific prediction. I don’t endorse this view, but since Hillbuzz is predicting, let’s see how it works out.
Chicago real estate seems to figure in a lot of Obama’s stories. The Chicago Sun Times, for example, reports that Nadhmi Auchi, Saddam’s former bagman, was involved in the South Loop development.
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:43 pm 12. wretchard:Whiskey,
The plan does not include an unlimited Right of Return. What it does is grant Israel an exemption from an unlimited Right of Return in exchange for giving the Golan Heights to Syria, a divided Jerusalem and returning to its pre-1967 borders. The Times Online says:
Of course you could argue that Israel gets nothing except a bare recognition of its right to exist in exchange for giving its neighbors back all its strategic depth. But Obama characterizes it as an offer that Israel can’t refuse. Personally I think such concessions to the Arabs implicitly commit the West, specifically America, to defending Israel because it will be placed at such a strategic disadvantage that it might not be able to defend itself. In other words, Israel will consent to a dagger at its throat on the understanding that America will restrain the hand that wields the knife. This at a time when oil prices are falling and Obama committed to a fixed withdrawal, come what may in Iraq. Well it’s going to be interesting.
Nov 15, 2008 - 10:52 pm 13. Lifeofthemind:@Wretchard,
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:00 pm 14. Charles:Daley’s world extends no more than twenty miles from his house in Back of the Yards. He is like a hobbit who knows everything in his world and cares nothing about anything outside of it. Sending B. Obama or J. Jackson Jr. or any other troublesome politician to Springfield or Washington or the Moon would be all the same to him. He’d respond to stories of mass murder in the Middle East with one question, “How many votes in Chicago?” Otherwise it means as much to him as the winning candidate for world’s dullest headline, “Small earthquake in Peru, not many dead.”
The true number of criminal aliens is far higher than is revealed by criminal aliens in prisons. Most are simply waived through the courts.DHS Secretary Chertoff, has been quoted as warning that two million people in this country illegally have committed serious crimes. If you check the links you’ll notice that its McCain who cites Chertoff. See also here and here Here is more info from Judicial Watch.
Nov 15, 2008 - 11:58 pm 15. gumshoe:“Personally I think such concessions to the Arabs implicitly commit the West, specifically America, to defending Israel because it will be placed at such a strategic disadvantage that it might not be able to defend itself.
In other words, Israel will consent to a dagger at its throat on the understanding that America will restrain the hand that wields the knife.”
-Wretchard
and the restraining hand is Obama’s?
Nov 16, 2008 - 1:40 am 16. Beverly:Does this look like a “small-time hustler”? My dad says the Obaminable one wants to establish his own Brownshirts.
But bigger. Much, much bigger:
http://minx.cc/?post=278181
Bush never tried anything like this. If he had, the lefties would’ve assassinated him.
Nov 16, 2008 - 1:51 am 17. Zeno:> and the restraining hand is Obama’s?
Something tells me Obama will not save Israel when push comes to shove. He will just shrug shoulders or might even join the enemies with his own knife on the back.
“Et tu, Obama?”
Nov 16, 2008 - 1:58 am 18. buddy larsen:Careful, Israel –be very, very careful –
Nov 16, 2008 - 4:48 am 19. wretchard:Here are more details on that possible peace plan from the Jerusalem Post.
So in this version there is some “right of return”, although the earlier Times Online description there is mention of an “effective veto” to returns. If this is the ballpark area around which BHO is proposing a comprehensive Middle Eastern settlement, it will be very interesting to say the least.
Nov 16, 2008 - 4:55 am 20. ridgerunner:Chicago’s significance for me:
1) My mother’s grandfather was imprisoned during 1864-1865, freezing and starving at Camp Douglas just outside the city while Chicagoans reveled in the wealth the war had brought them. Camp Douglas had a death rate rivaling Andersonville despite the abundance of food in the region. See “To Die in Chicago” by George Levy.
2) Losing several thousand dollars when a Chicago financial institution holding my self-directed IRA stole $68 million from its account holders. The company, Intrust, was run by two typical Chicago hustlers, who are now incarcerated. The real story is that the State of Illinois failed to oversee Intrust during the 10 years while the theft occurred. The prosecutions were rife with corruption as well, one principal escaping justice because of family connections in State government.
3)Obama. The magnitude of this disaster is yet unknown, but it may rival that caused by the previous inexperienced Illinois politician who assumed the Presidency:
A. Lincoln. See “Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men” by Jeffrey Hummel for a discussion of how the War Between the States could have been avoided by a better man than Lincoln.
The prophets of ancient Israel were correct in proclaiming that corruption must lead to destruction.
Nov 16, 2008 - 6:11 am 21. Barry Meislin:Actually, the plan means war.
Though war is likely in the cards in any event.
The only question is, to what extent will Israel agree/be forced to emasculate herself before war breaks out.
That is, how much strategic depth will Israel give up “for peace.”
Nov 16, 2008 - 6:18 am 22. buddy larsen:Obama’s Plan will somehow have to drive Oslo down the memory hole. It IS still on this side of the memory hole, isn’t it?
Nov 16, 2008 - 7:47 am 23. Raoul Ortega:Not “brownshirts”. Blueshirts, with big “Yes! We Can!” badges which will be the standard answer to anyone who dares to question or stop their activities on behalf of The Big Zero.
Nov 16, 2008 - 8:05 am 24. talnik:Lifeofthemind on Mayor Daley: “He is like a hobbit…”; he even looks like one. The cops here call him “Shortshanks”.
Nov 16, 2008 - 8:37 am 25. Lorenz Gude:Yeah, I can’t see the Israelis going for that plan. I think Obama’s plan would strengthen Netinyahu’s chances – at least if I were an Israeli I’d be voting for him. I think Barry Meislin is right – war is pretty likely given that the Arabs probably think after Gaza and the 2006 war that Israel on the ropes. As a former Chicagoan the affordable housing stories sound familiar and it is hard to see anyone rising to the top of Chicago politics without some involvement in the general corruption. As a student of the media I find it droll indeed that papers like the Boston Globe are printing this stuff now. On the other hand as an expatriate who has seen real Marxists at work, Obama’s vision (strictly for rubes of not) is very American and not a totalitarian Marxist one any more than I think that the current president resembles Hitler or is a fascist.
Nov 16, 2008 - 8:41 am 26. sgi:Sorry Wretchard. Would you rather I didn’t link at all?
Nov 16, 2008 - 10:26 am 27. Wadeusaf:Well now, i suppose that explains the President elect’s position on Iraq to a tee, where one housing crony is wanted and the other cannot participate in any new scams lest he be jailed. Given that I doubt Hillary is going to become SoS, it would make more sense to annoint her as housing secretary just so the past ‘Oh’ wouldn’t have to face up to the present and future problems.
The arab peace plan in essence relies on the KSA to buy off, cough, ride herd, cough, enforce the peace. given the current set of players that is vaguely possible, given the current players likely successors it is not imaginable that such a peace can be translated to the Arab street without a solid commitment to Iraq and allegiance to a sovereign Lebanon.
There are plenty of housing needs in Lebanon and in Gaza, maybe the Chicago gang can move in there and share some of that democrat experience.
Nov 16, 2008 - 10:35 am 28. wretchard:SGI,
I’m very grateful for the link but it would have pointed to another article in a little while since it was pointed to the main site, not the actual specific article.
Nov 16, 2008 - 11:58 am 29. Das:Long time ago, 1450 thereabouts, existed a far-flug Western ally surrounded by hostile Islamic republics and demagogs. The pope and others tried to get the western powers interested in helping defend Byzantium but could not. Those western powers had other fish to fry. Couple years later the Turks poured in wiped out the Byzantines and Istanbunl was born. This morsel of apathy of the west led to about 300 more years of bloody, draining skirmishes with Islam. Israel is our present-day Byzantium only this time it is not apathy; you get the feeling the western intelligencia cannot wait to spin off Israel into the Islamic maw.
Nov 16, 2008 - 1:28 pm 30. dw:Marxism American style. SDS seems to be involved with obama at every point in his life starting at Occidential then Chicago, Columbia, ACORN. Castro, Chavez and putin must be proud of Ayers and Klonski and Soros.
Nov 16, 2008 - 1:41 pm 31. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:Grove Parc: Vision of things to come. My money says it will not be really noticed by the media in 2010, maybe not even 2012. Probably it will all be ascribed to Bush and Republican malfeasance. Never underestimate the power of the Big Lie. After all, Roosevelt was re-elected twice in the midst of the depression (and once again in the middle of the war) not on the strength of good results, but on good PR.
Nov 16, 2008 - 6:56 pm 32. Roderick Reilly:I keep saying that the Obama administration will be run very much like Washington, DC’s local government. The Valerie Jarretts will prove me correct. Chicago politics breeds the same mentality as local DC politics.
This will be the most corrupt administration in modern American history, and its corruption will be compounded by the fact that the federal government is bigger than it ever has been on a non-war footing.
Nov 17, 2008 - 10:37 am 33. buddy larsen:Das, great post –i’d like to add to it that Istanbul wasn’t born, it was painted in blood over the name of Constantinople, namesake of the first Christian king Constantine, capitol of Byzantium and the Eastern Empire, seat of the Christian Orthodox Church, the counterpart and equal of Rome, and home of the breathtaking, ethereal, otherworldly Christian cathedral Hagia Sophia.
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