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Subject:
Obama Took Rezko Money Even When Heat Was Off
Softwar
10/13/2008 1:29:04 PM
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Obama Benefited From Shady Rezko Deals
According to his first book, "Dreams from My Father," published in 1996, Sen. Barack Obama claims that he was a champion of the little people.
"In my legal practice, I work mostly with churches and community groups, men and women who quietly build grocery stores and health clinics in the inner city, and housing for the poor," Obama wrote in the book.
Yet, in the brutal winter of 1996, Obama all but ignored the little people in his district living without heat in their apartments. The landlord of the 31-unit apartment Englewood building turned off their heat in December 1996.
For five brutal winter weeks the tenants there had no heat, sitting in the cold from Dec. 27, 1996, until early February 1997, when the city of Chicago sued to turn the heat on. The case was settled later that month with a $100 fine.
However, as his fellow neighbors sat freezing in the Chicago winter, Obama accepted a political donation from the Englewood owners.
The Englewood owners claimed they did not have the money to turn the heat back on. The very same owners who claimed they did not have money gave cash to Obama.
The owners, Tony Rezko and his partner Dan Mahru managed to come up with $1,000 for Obama to help his political campaign fund even as they refused to turn on the heat for the people that Obama represented.
Of course, the help Obama gave to his landlord friend Rezko did not stop in 1997. In 1998, Obama wrote several letters, lobbying the state and city governments to award a company owned by Rezko, New Kenwood LLC, and a lucrative contract to run more housing for the poor.
"I am writing in support of the New Kenwood LLC's proposal to build a ninety-seven unit apartment building at 48th and Cottage Grove for senior citizens," Obama wrote in two letters dated Oct. 28, 1998.
"This project will provide much needed housing for Fourth Ward citizens," noted Obama in his personal letters.
At the time Obama wrote the letters, he was also a lawyer with Miner Barnhill & Galland, a law firm formerly headed by one of Rezko's partners in New Kenwood. The firm's clients also included several other companies owned by Rezko.
In the end, Obama and his firm helped Rezko obtain more than $43 million in government funding. The building in Englewood was one of the 30 Rezko took over in a series of troubled deals largely financed by taxpayers.
Every project ran into financial problems, falling into disrepair and supplying sporadic services. More than half went into foreclosure.
For example, according the Chicago Sun-Times, 17 of the buildings were riddled with code violations, including a lack of heat. All 17 ended up in foreclosure. Six buildings are currently boarded up and unoccupied except for squatters and drug dealers. We, the people, have been stuck with millions in unpaid loans including federal, state and city taxpayers.
Meanwhile, Obama continued to take campaign donations from Rezko even as his low-income housing empire fell apart, leaving many African-American families to live in horrifying conditions and the taxpayer with millions in bad debt to clean up.
The first deal Rezko struck collapsed in just 6.5 years, when the state sued for foreclosure. The state foreclosure suit came because Rezko had stopped making monthly mortgage payments in March 2001 on a state loan to help turn an old nursing home into low-income apartments in Obama's state Senate district.
Rezko also managed to donate money to Obama despite not being able to make payments on the low-income housing projects. Obama spent eight years serving in the Illinois Senate and continued to work for the same law firm. Through his intricate web of partnerships, Rezko remained a client of the firm, according to ethics statements Obama filed while a state senator.
Was Obama aware of what was happening in his own district?
"Senator Obama does not remember having conversations with Tony Rezko about properties that he owned," stated Obama?s campaign staff to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Obama took over $250,000 from Rezko, even after denying the exact figures for months. According to Obama's campaign, he took money but never talked business. Current records show that Obama has only returned part of that money.
According to FEC records, from 2002 to 2004 Obama took in thousands of dollars in donations from Rezko. Obama also took in $10,000 from Rezko's partner in the slumlord business Daniel Mahru.
Obama managed to appoint Rezko to serve on his U.S. Senate campaign finance committee. The committee raised more than $14 million, according to Federal Election Commission records, helping to send Obama to Washington in 2004.
Much has been made of the joint real estate deal that Rezko and Obama entered into that gave the senator a million dollar mansion. Even this deal was linked to shady financing with Rezko trying to hide his assets from debtors by placing the real estate deal in his wife's name before selling out part of his property to a very cooperative Obama.
Today, Tony Rezko sits in jail. He was convicted in June of scheming to use his clout with the administration of Democrat Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich to squeeze $7 million in kickbacks out of a contractor and seven money-management firms seeking to do business with the state. Rezko is reportedly singing like a bird to prosecutors in order to shorten his stay behind bars.
Clearly, the freshman senator has some explaining to do about Rezko. What Rezko has to say about Obama may not make it to the press ? at least not right now ? but may make it to a grand jury.
Still, it says much about a person when his neighbors are freezing in a Chicago winter and he does nothing. It says even more when he takes money from the same man who cut off the heat.
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