It was a big mistake for Obama to show up for a few closing words tonight. After Joe Biden's powerful rhetoric, Obama seemed like an inarticulate rube.
Given the task of defending Obama's background and experience, Biden did the best he could with what he had. It was cute to watch him portray Stanley Ann Dunham as a working mom raising two kids alone. Biden left out the part about Ann dumping young Barack with his grandparents while she went off around the world on a new-agey voyage of self-discovery.
I giggled when Biden talked about all the people Barack helped in Chicago. How about those people who froze in Tony Rezko's slum apartments? Obama did everything he could to make sure thathis patron, crime boss Tony Rezko, got those lucrative contracts -- and Fat Tony basically stole the money -- after giving Obi his cut and a new mansion.
Biden pretended that Obama had something to do with lowering taxes for the working class in Chicago. Bull-SHIT. The sales tax is the most regressive tax of all, and Chicago's sales taxes are as high as they come. There's talk of an 11% sales tax. Why? To pay for all the corruption -- corruption that Obama, Blagojevich and Daley aided and abetted.
Biden spoke well, but his portrait of Obama did not match reality.
7 comments:
Convicted felon Rezko is always mentioned (with good reason) for his connection with Obama but there are others with close ties
to BO who also greatly benefitted from those contracts to provide development and management of low-income housing. Allison Davis, his son, Cullen Davis, and Valerie Jarrett all made a good deal of money from the privatization of subsidized housing while failing to adequately provide up-to-code apartments for Chicago's poor.
Allison Davis, who is the son of the first AA professor at the University of Chicago, is a former partner of the law firm that hired Obama and is a major fundraiser for him. He left his law firm in 1996 to pursue a career as a developer of low-income housing and his companies have received $100 million in subsidies. Davis even partnered with Rezko a few times. The apartments that Davis' companies managed were cited for a number of problems, especially plumbing woes that caused sewage to back up into some of the apartments. Cullen Davis is the head of Urban Property Advisors which managed a subsidized complex where a three-year-old boy was crushed to death by a rusted iron gate that fell on top of him.
Valerie Jarrett, the daughter of an AA professor at the U of C, is a senior advisor to Obama's campaign. She is the CEO of Habitat Co. which had contracts to manage some of the low-income housing in Chicago, including Grove Parc Plaza and a larger complex that was seized by the federal government in 2006 because of widespread problems. Jarrett is the person who hired Michelle as an aide to Mayor Daley back when she was still Michelle Robinson but was engaged to BO.
There is also Cecil Butler, a contributor to Obama's campaigns. A 2004 Chicago Reader article notes that Butler was given a state-backed $51 million loan to renovate low-income housing. From 1997 through 2004, Butler received $84 million in rent for these units, primarily from government subsidies. By 2004, he and his companies had been sued by the city at least 50 times for not keeping the apartments in proper shape.
While in the Illinois Senate, Obama sponsored legislation favorable to privatized development and management of public housing. The problems with the subsidized housing developed, renovated, and managed by people close to Obama was known by at least 2004 when Obama ran for the U.S. Senate but was (and is) ignored for the most part by the media outside of Chicago and by the Obots. Obama wants to take the Chicago approach to low-income housing and do it on a national basis. Can we say "bamboozle"?
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/
http://www.chicagoreader.com/obama/041029/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-cha-gates-webaug23,0,1237274.story
old dem
Excellent points, old dem, and I've mentioned a few of them in the past. I speak of Rezko as a quick way of getting the point across, but Rezko was part of a larger chain.
If it's all right with you, I may republish what you've written here as part of a larger post.
I would be happy if you did. Thanks.
old dem
Did you not mean Biden "did NOT" in the last sentance or did I not get it?
I caught the end of the convention last night. It really felt like the end, forgetting the Invesco Field stuff. What a letdown, when Obama appeared. It was almost like people were leaving the building as he arrived. I didn't catch any cheering, maybe I missed it, but it seemed as though people were actually walking out on him.
I noticed those little white lies in Biden's speech, but I put it down to "the honeymoon period".
What else could he possibly say in that arena?
I have confidence in him, he won't cow-tow to Obama in the future - I'd bet on it. His presence on the ticket is one factor in this sorry debacle which convinced me to vote Democrat in November.
Thanks for the proofreading, guido.
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