The best prophet of the future is the past. ~ John Sherman
Phyllis Schlafly wrote a great article in Investors recently. It makes the point that the woes of America are not different from the woes the Obama machine visited upon Illinois. In basketball it’s called continuation.
Americans are beginning to wonder if Greece is the picture of the U.S.’ future. But we need look no further than the place where Obama and his team were trained in community organizing and bully tactics to redistribute the wealth: Illinois.
Illinois was the stomping ground for years for Obama, his top advisers Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, and his appointees such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. After they promoted themselves to Washington to run the country, other Obama associates who didn’t make the cut continued to run Illinois into the ground, as the Illinois unemployment rate jumped from less than 5% to nearly 11%.
Illinois is a fiscal disaster:
Under years of Democratic leadership, Illinois has refused to honor its obligations, cut spending or trim its shockingly large deficit, which at $12 billion per year approaches nearly half its budget. As a result, Illinois’ credit rating has been downgraded and it pays a massive amount in interest on its loans.
This fiscal trainwreck is traced back to 2003 in an Illinois comptroller report:
The fiscal outlook for Illinois is not optimistic. The state has failed to build up reserves or address the underlying structural problems of the state’s budget – in particular, the pension and Medicaid liabilities. At the same time as the economy appears to be slowing, the Governor has promised expansions in health care without a permanent revenue source to pay for them. This lack of reserves – and the Medicaid and pension payments “albatrosses” – will be a drag on the state when it faces an inevitable economic downturn, likely already underway.
This has been brewing for some time:
At the end of fiscal year 2003, even in spite of the short-term borrowing, Illinois was holding $874 million in bills, plus delaying income tax refund payments and holding bills at state agencies. The state’s GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) deficit reached an all-time high of $4.166 billion.
There is something significant in this data. Democrats took control of the Illinois Congress in 2003 and it’s gone to hell since then. Barack Obama was an Illinois state Senator for eight years and led Illinois into near oblivion. Then it was on to bigger things- bigger houses to bring down.
But before Obama helped ruined Illinois, he contributed to the ruin of 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.
It’s quite interesting to see who else was involved in Grove Parc: Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis and Tony Rezko.
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.
These people made fortunes from the Grove Parc type of investment and they returned the favor:
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.
And she had the Journolist to protect both her and Obama from more probing inquiries.
Obama presided over the decline of Grove Parc:
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.
Rezmar- as in Tony Rezko
But this is Chicago and the Chicago Way rules:
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.
So how did Grove Parc fare with that money?
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
~~~Most of the buildings have since been foreclosed upon, forcing the tenants to find new housing.
But Rezko knew a good thing:
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.
Obama turned into Sergeant Schultz even though
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.
Obama presided over other projects similar to Grove Parc and they too have gone to hell.
Now as President of the United States he does not waver from his past course:
The federal budget deficit, which hit a record $1.4 trillion last year, will exceed that figure this year and again in 2011, the White House predicted Friday, providing fresh ammunition to Republicans who are hammering President Obama for all the red ink as they campaign to regain control of Congress in November.
Barack Obama’s trail through politics resembles nothing so much as Sherman’s March to the Sea, leaving a path of debt and destruction in his wake. The Journolistas provided the umbrella under which Obama could hide from his past and from legitimate inquiry about his involvement here and with the likes of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers.
Obama has an agenda, and it is very different from what the country needs. The scary part is that he does not care about what the country needs. His agenda comes first, and history has shown us the results of his hubris.
This is the real legacy of Barack Obama.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.