The Daley show

On the other side of the jump, you can find the most important piece to appear in these pages during this election season. It originally appeared on a Friday night -- which means that readership was not high. (Stats indicate that most of you read blogs at work. Naughty, naughty!)

Before we get to that, a question: When and why did the left stop considering the Daley machine toxic?

For Democrats outside Illinois, the Daley phenomenon used to be The Thing We Prefer Not To Talk About. We would clamber aboard the highest of our high horses as we denounced Republican corruption, only to be shamed into silence whenever a conservative brought up the dreaded House of D.

In 2000, Al Gore tapped William Daley, brother of Mayor Richard, to act as his campaign chairman. The progressive contingent argued that the dreaded D connection gave Gore an incurable case of political cooties. Only Nader remained uninfected. Here's a Jeff Cohen piece from that year:

In June, Gore made it even more clear that he takes them [the anti-globalization left] and their votes for granted, by choosing as his campaign chairman William Daley, the White House's top lobbyist for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the China trade deal. (Daley, incidentally, is the son of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the Humphrey-backer and conservative Democrat whose mishandling of the convention contributed to Humphrey's 1968 defeat.)

And here's Cohen just a year ago, eager to demonstrate that he still considers Gore to be "D"-contaminated:

And I remember a presidential candidate in 2000 emptied of progressive principles by Beltway consultants so afraid of the American people and democracy that they believe a Democrat must win largely through stealth. A candidate who chose as his campaign chair William Daley, the NAFTA campaign czar despised by labor unions.

These are but two examples.

But now, this same William Daley is a key leader within the Obama campaign. And that, as Hatlo used to say, is diffo.

(To be fair, Cohen has not declared his current preference. He seems to dislike both Clinton and Obama -- an honorable position, in my book -- although he has indicated that he hates Hillary more.)

As we shall see below the fold, Obama is a creature of the Daley/Blagojevich/Rezko machine. So is his wife, a former Daley aide rewarded with a high-paying do-nothing job. So was Michelle's father. Obama supported the Mayor against black progressives competing for the job, even after the folks in Cook County learned of plans to impose an 11 percent sales tax to pay for all the thievery.

And progressives suddenly have no problem with any of this!

Also worth noting: When this piece was first published, progs said "Nothing new here. This sort of corruption is inevitable." But when I wrote about Brent Wilkes and Randy Cunningham, the same lefties became enthused. At root, the scam was the same: A pol gives undeserved city/state/federal contracts to a businessman who kicks back enough cash to keep the pol fat, happy and in office. So why was I praised for writing about Bad Boy Brent, yet damned for writing about Fat Tony?

(Note: This time around, I'm not including the prefatory words about the gas tax. For the latest on that score, go here (Krugman demands a retraction!) and here (it worked before!).

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
When Obama and his wife worked for the Daley/Rezko/Davis/Blagojevich political machine, the gang ripped off taxpayers incessantly.

(All the quotes and facts below can be found in the "Indictment" series highlighted in the upper left-hand column.)

Illinois citizens are sick of paying the cost of corruption. A September 26, 2007 News Release by Steve Stanek of the Heartland Institute carried the headline: “Proposed Tax Hike Would Give Chicago Nation’s Highest Sales Tax Burden”

“Chicagoans would face an 11 percent sales tax rate, highest in the nation, if Cook County officials go through with a plan to more than triple the county’s portion of the area’s sales tax,” Stanek wrote.

Steal a dollar; repay a dime at the gas pump.

An October 14, 2007 Sun-Times report by Tim Novak and Fran Spielman noted that,

“When Mayor Daley asked Chicagoans to cough up $293 million more next year to finance the cost of city government, there's one tax he failed to mention: The Corruption, Waste and Mismanagement Tax.”

“It's almost impossible to calculate the cost of the Hired Truck, city hiring, minority contracting and police corruption scandals,” they wrote. “More than 1,400 people have staked claims to the $12 million fund created to compensate victims of the city's rigged hiring system.”

Incidentally, Buzzflash's Mark Karlin, of Chicago, recently gave a verbal blowjob to the outlandishly corrupt Daley. I would never be so cynical as to suggest that Daley money has helped to pay Karlin's bills. I would simply note that Karlin doesn't beg as often as he used to.

A March 8, 2008 report by Stanek in Budget $ Tax News on a Cook County Board Meeting in late December 2008 reported that:

“Complaints from thousands of angry taxpayers and infighting among county commissioners have held off nearly $890 million of proposed tax and fee hikes in Cook County, Illinois.”

Michelle Obama worked as an assistant to Daley. She was rewarded with a do-nothing job -- paying over $300,000 a year -- for a crooked "non-profit" hospital that overcharged the poor.

If you want to understand Barack Obama's role in the Daley/Rezko machine, you may want to rent The Departed. In Martin Scorcese's instant classic, a criminal mastermind based on Boston's infamous Whitey Bulger spots a promising young man, buys him some groceries and comic books, and soon grooms him to become the underworld's "man inside" the Boston police department.

Although Obama was not recruited at so tender an age -- Rezko spotted him during his Harvard years -- the same principle applies. Obama went to work directly for a 12-man law firm run by a close Rezko crony named Allison Davis.

As for the most recognized allegation against Obama, that [he] helped slumlords operate in Chicago, while accepting their campaign contributions, its true. Obama was a member of the political machine that helped a whole gang of slumlords funnel local, state and federal tax dollars, over the backs of poor people in need of affordable housing, to line their own pockets and fund the campaigns of politicians in positions to recommend and award contracts.

The Daley machine handed out the contracts for these taxpayer-supported unheated slum apartments to people who lacked any experience in construction or property management.

Davis and his partners, which include his sons Jared and Cullen, have received more than $100 million in taxpayer subsidies to build and rehab apartments and homes over the past 10 years and have made at least $4 million in development fees, according to the Times.

The Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland law firm, where Obama worked for nearly a decade, served as a hub for a slew of slumlord deals, many that benefited the firm's founder, Allison Davis, and Obama's claims that he knew nothing about the inner workings of this small firm, represent an insult to the intelligence of the American public.

In fact, Obama knew full well what was planned:

On June 13, 2007, the Sun-Times reported that as a state senator, "Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting his political patron Tony Rezko's successful bid to get more than $14 million from taxpayers to build apartments for senior citizens."

"Davis has gotten deal after deal from the mayor, helping to make Davis one of the city's top developers," Tim Novak noted in the November 7, 2007 Sun-Times.

In a debate, Obama claimed that his association with Rezko amounted to no more than five hours worth of legal work. An FBI informant later revealed that the two men met frequently and spoke on a near daily basis.

Tony Rezko was Obama's political Godfather. Obama received his first contributions of $2,000, to launch his political career as a state senator on July 31, 1995, from Rezko. Obama started out saying that Rezko only raised $50,000 or $60,000 for his political career but after a year of lying his way through the primaries, the latest total he gave to the Sun-Times and Tribune during interviews on March 14, 2008, adds up to $250,000.

For a year, he also minimized his relationship with Rezko by telling the media that he only had dinner or lunch with Rezko one or twice a year. But when confronted by Sun-Times reporters during the March 14 interview, with the allegation that an FBI mole saw him coming and going to Rezko’s office often and that three sources said he talked to Rezko on the phone daily, Obama changed his tune.

And let there be no doubt, Obama is a member of this corrupt gang. On January 22, 2007 ABC News in Chicago announced that Senator Obama “is supporting Mayor Daley's re-election bid despite a series of City Hall corruption scandals.”

Mayor Daley endorsed Obama for president a few weeks ago and the mayor's brother Bill is now an Obama advisor, the report noted.

“So in the spirit of political payback, Obama is endorsing Daley for re-election over two African American challengers despite a series of City Hall corruption scandals that Obama called deeply troubling as recently as a few months ago.”

Obama has made no secret of the fact that he intends to create a "White House Office of Urban Policy" which will foist these shemes onto the entire nation. Remember the corruption that marked the Katrina clean-up? What Obama has in mind will dwarf those shennanigans.

It has come out at the trial that Rezko originally had tabbed Governor Blagojevich to carry their corruption scheme over to the national level. But Blagojevich's history is a little too obvious and inescapable. Thus, attention turned to Barack Obama.

In Illinois, favored politicians are joined at the hip when it comes to fundraising. For instance, from 1999 through 2006, an analysis by the Chicago Tribune shows Obama took in more than $1.5 million from some 700 people who also contributed to Mayor Daley during his political career.

A cursory review of Illinois campaign records shows Allison Davis and his family members giving close to $16,000 to Obama's presidential campaign. The Sun-Times reports that Davis has donated more than $400,000 to dozens of political campaigns, and the top beneficiaries include Mayor Daley, Blagojevich and Obama.

The primary victims of Rezko's tenement housing scheme were black. Similarly, most victims of hospital overcharging, as sanctioned by Michelle Obama, are blacks.

If North Carolina's black citizens knew just how well the Obamas have "served" the African American community, they might choose to stay home on election day.

Not since Lyndon Johnson has so corrupt a Democrat come this close to the presidency.

Added note: This just came in from the Rezko trial...

Ali Ata, onetime executive director of the Illinois Finance Authority, told how, at Rezko's demand, he would pull piles of cash from a safe for payoffs -- once to keep a lien from being slapped on Gov. Blagojevich's home, another time to pay the debt of an adviser to the governor.

Ata was the last major witness before the prosecution rests -- probably Monday. He testified that he bought his state job. Ata told jurors that, although Rezko wasn't a state employee, he had to report to Rezko while heading the finance agency, having to "take orders and listen," or "not show up to work the next day."

Let me repeat: Barack Obama was on the phone nearly every day with Tony Rezko.

Barack Obama lied about knowing the man until an FBI mole fingered Obama as a frequent visitor to Rezko's office.

Obama worked for Rezko's close business partner as they pilfered millions from Illinois taxpayers.

Rezko and his wife arranged for Obama to buy a mansion he could not have otherwise afforded. (Compare to the handling of the Blagojevich house lien above.)

And now an eyewitness says under oath that Rezko keeps huge amounts of money in a safe to pay off politicians!