by Eve­lyn Pringle
Scoop.co.nz

The most trusted lead­ers of the Demo­c­ra­tic party, such as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, ought to be ashamed of them­selves for sup­port­ing Barack Obama. With use of the inter­net, a fifth grader could con­nect the dots to show a pic­ture of a guy who was picked up in col­lege and car­ried up the polit­i­cal lad­der by a cor­rupt gang of influ­ence peddlers.

John McCain is just drool­ing wait­ing for Obama to become the nom­i­nee so that he can come out with the trail of dirt that the Demo­c­ra­tic party is too afraid to reveal this late in the in the game. If nom­i­nated, Obama will not sur­vive a month when faced with the Repub­li­can attack machine.

If he becomes the nom­i­nee, the web of cor­rup­tion lead­ing to Obama’s rise to power that this inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist was able to untan­gle in less than three weeks, will be front page news right up until elec­tion day, hand­ing the Repub­li­cans their only chance in hell of win­ning the White House.

Instead of the lead­ers of the Demo­c­ra­tic party doing their home­work, a small group of inves­tiga­tive reporters in Chicago will be cred­ited with expos­ing the cor­rupt back­bone of Obama polit­i­cal career and the main­stream media need only fol­low their lead if the Democ­rats hold him out to be a viable candidate.

The list of reporters deserv­ing of credit for doing the inves­tiga­tive work that should have been done by the lead­ers of the Demo­c­ra­tic party before they got behind Obama, includes, but is not lim­ited to, Chicago Sun-Times reporters, Tim Novak, Dave McK­in­ney, Fran Spiel­man, Chris Fusco, Natasha Korecki, Steve Warm­bir and Lynn Sweet. Chicago Tri­bune reporters espe­cially deserv­ing of credit include Jeff Coen, Bob Secter, John Chase, Vir­ginia Groark, Rick Pear­son, David Jack­son, John McCormick, Mickey Cioka­jlo, Rudolph Bush and Dan Mihalopoulos.

This arti­cle is the first in a series that will give the details of Obama’s rise to fame.

As for the most rec­og­nized alle­ga­tion against Obama, that 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 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.

Tony Rezko was Obama 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.

Now the story is that he may have talked to Rezko daily at times dur­ing cam­paigns but some­times he went for a whole month with­out talk­ing to him. “I have to say we’re talk­ing over the course of 10 years,” Obama said, “there might have been spurts where I talked to him daily.”

But then he added: “There might have been stretches over a month where I wouldn’t have talked to him at all.”

This story is a far cry from the pic­ture Obama gave to the pub­lic of him and Rezko meet­ing once or twice a year, and he never did respond to the alle­ga­tion by the Times reporter that an FBI mole “saw you com­ing and going from Rezko’s office a lot.“

With­out Rezko’s fundrais­ing, Obama would not have been elected to the Illi­nois sen­ate, or the US Sen­ate, and he would not have sold the books he wrote about him­self because like the Wiz­ard of Oz, Obama is nobody special.

Even with Rezko’s mas­sive fund rais­ing, Obama could not beat for­mer Black Pan­ther, Bobby Rush, in his 2000 bid for a seat in Con­gress. And the only rea­son he won the US Sen­ate race was because his viable oppo­nents had to drop out due to the pub­lic air­ing of per­sonal scan­dals. Beat­ing Alan Keyes is hardly a vic­tory to brag about.

The media needs to quit group­ing all the Obama back­ers under the name Antoin “Tony” Resko because the list of con­trib­u­tors to his polit­i­cal cam­paigns includes the names of many indi­vid­u­als and enti­ties with their own agendas.

The trail of cor­rup­tion involv­ing the peo­ple rais­ing money for Obama’s polit­i­cal career stretches from the city of Chicago to the Illi­nois toll­way to the O’Hare air­port all the way over to Iraq. And tes­ti­mony in Rezko’s cor­rup­tion trial reveals that an equal num­ber of Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­can crooks ben­e­fited from all the mon­ey­mak­ing schemes.

Rezko is not a Demo­c­rat; he’s an equal oppor­tu­nity prof­i­teer. He sup­ported Pres­i­dent George Bush and attended a Christ­mas party at the White House in Decem­ber 2003, at the same time that he was a top fundraiser for Obama’s US Sen­ate campaign.

Rezko co-hosted a $3.8 mil­lion Chicago fundraiser for Bush in 2003, and on Decem­ber 9, 2003, he donated $4,000 to Bush, as a “self-employed busi­ness­man,” and gave another $2,000 on Decem­ber 19, 2003, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Politics.

Prior to back­ing Rod Blago­je­vich for gov­er­nor of Illi­nois, Rezko threw his money behind Repub­li­can can­di­dates for gov­er­nor, includ­ing George Ryan, who was con­victed of dol­ing out leases and con­tracts to cronies and sen­tenced to prison for more than 6 years.

Rezko then switched horses and chose Blago­je­vich in 2002 and Obama has sup­ported Blago­je­vich, even when his admin­is­tra­tion was embroiled in cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tions.
Recent tes­ti­mony in the Rezko trial by his co-conspirator, Chicago busi­ness­man, Stu­art Levine, explained that Rezko had plans for Blago­je­vich to be Pres­i­den­tial, not Obama. How­ever, any­body fol­low­ing the trial knows that Blago­je­vich is more likely to be headed to the “Big House” rather than occu­py­ing the White House.

Obama’s enter­ing into real estate deals with Rezko, while it was pub­lic knowl­edge that he was under inves­ti­ga­tion for fun­nel­ing ille­gal con­tri­bu­tions to Illi­nois politi­cians, was not a “bone­headed” move, it was moti­vated by pure greed. While know­ing that he would get caught up in a major scan­dal, Obama went ahead with the deal because he and his wife wanted that man­sion, with four fire­places, six bath­rooms, and a wine cel­lar, period.

On March 16, 2008, the Boston Globe added an inter­est­ing twist to the story when report­ing that Donna Schwan, of Metro­Pro Realty, which listed the man­sion and lot next door for the own­ers, “said it is her rec­ol­lec­tion that the Oba­mas may not have made the high­est bid, and that other bid­ders may have matched Rezko’s bid,” but the will­ing­ness of both buy­ers to close in June 2005, “was decisive.”

Which log­i­cally means had Rezko not been will­ing to buy the lot in June, the deal was off.

Accord­ing to an arti­cle by Edward McClel­land in the Feb­ru­ary 1, 2008 Salon Mag­a­zine, when asked who approached her about the house, Donna Schwan told Salon, “I hon­estly don’t remem­ber. Tony Rezko lived across the street, so he’d been inter­ested in the lot.”

Any claim that Obama was unaware of the inves­ti­ga­tions
into the cor­rupt deal­ings of Rezko with Illi­nois politi­cians in June 2005 is ridicu­lous. On Feb­ru­ary 15, 2005, the Chicago Tri­bune reported:

“Gov. Rod Blago­je­vich long has vowed to purge the Illi­nois toll­way of crony­ism, yet two of his clos­est friends and polit­i­cal advis­ers have links to food ven­dors awarded lucra­tive con­tracts to oper­ate inside the toll road’s sleek new oases, gov­ern­ment records show.”

“The Sub­way sand­wich shops and Panda Express Asian restau­rants now being installed in the tollway’s seven revamped rest stops are con­trolled by firms with strong ties to the food-service empire of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Blago­je­vich con­fi­dant who has seeded the governor’s cab­i­net with for­mer busi­ness underlings.”

Christo­pher Kelly, Blagojevich’s chief fundraiser, “who also rec­om­mended the tollway’s exec­u­tive direc­tor for his job, is an investor in at least one Rezko-controlled food firm,” the Tri­bune wrote. On March 16, 2005, the Tri­bune reported that:

“City offi­cials alleged Tues­day that a minor­ity con­trac­tor at O’Hare Inter­na­tional Air­port acted as a front for a firm run by Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a top adviser and fundraiser for Gov. Rod Blagojevich....

“Rezko, a mem­ber of Blagojevich’s kitchen cab­i­net of advis­ers, has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks fol­low­ing ques­tions about his links to oper­a­tors of new toll­way oasis fran­chises. The revamp of the oases is a show­case project for the Blago­je­vich administration.”

On May 15, 2005, the Sun-Times reported that the accu­sa­tions by his father-in-law that Blago­je­vich doled out jobs for cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions had “resulted in dozens of grand jury sub­poe­nas being sent to the governor’s office, his unpaid advis­ers, agency direc­tors and his top fund-raisers”.
Among those sub­poe­naed for doc­u­ments, sources told the Times, were “Blagojevich’s biggest money men, Christo­pher Kelly and Antoin “Tony” Rezko.”

On May 20, 2005, less than a month before Obama bought the man­sion, the Tri­bune reported that Resko, “has had a busi­ness rela­tion­ship with First Lady Patti Blago­je­vich for eight years, the governor’s office acknowl­edged Thurs­day.“
Six month before Obama bought the strip of land from Rezko’s “wife” to enlarge his yard, on August 28, 2005, Natasha Korecki reported in the Sun-Times that, “there’s so much cor­rup­tion to inves­ti­gate in the Chicago area, the FBI is adding manpower.”

Robert Grant, FBI Spe­cial Agent in Charge, told the Times that he had reor­ga­nized the bureau to add a third pub­lic cor­rup­tion squad, giv­ing Chicago the largest cor­rup­tion unit in the coun­try, even big­ger than those in New York and Los Angeles.

“It is the sec­ond time in two years the FBI in Chicago has expanded its pub­lic cor­rup­tion force,” Korecki noted.

On Novem­ber 6, 2006, the Times asked Obama why he did not reveal the land deal with Rezko before it was reported by the Tri­bune stat­ing: “Why did you not pub­licly dis­close the trans­ac­tion after Rezko got indicted?”

“At the time, it didn’t strike me as rel­e­vant,” Obama answered. It seems like a lot of events were not rel­e­vant a cou­ple months before he announced his can­di­dacy for president.

In the Novem­ber 2007, Chicago Mag­a­zine, James Mer­riner described a “fash­ion show” that took place in the first week in Novem­ber 2006, to ben­e­fit St Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal, which he said, “attracted lit­tle if any media cov­er­age, which may have been exactly as its orga­niz­ers and spon­sors had hoped.”

“The invi­ta­tion to the affair,” he wrote, “offered a ver­i­ta­ble guide­book to polit­i­cal influ­ence in Illi­nois, much of it cen­tered on one St. Jude bene­fac­tor, Antoin “Tony” Rezko.”

“Just three weeks ear­lier,” Mer­riner pointed out, “Rezko had been indicted on charges of extort­ing kick­backs from busi­nesses seek­ing con­tracts from the Blago­je­vich administration.”

The “fash­ion show” was chaired by Rita Rezko, co-chaired by the Governor’s wife, Patti Blago­je­vich, and Michelle Obama was a spe­cial guest that day, accord­ing to Merriner.

Two weeks after the “fash­ion show,” on Novem­ber 17, 2006, the Sun-Times reported that Blagojevich’s wife Patti got nearly $50,000 from a real estate deal in late 2002 involv­ing Rezko.

In terms of dol­lar amounts of cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions directly from Rezko in Illi­nois, the top four earn­ers were, the now deceased Pres­i­dent of the Cook County Board, John Stroger, Blago­je­vich, Chicago Mayor, Richard Daley, and Obama — in that order.

Rezko was the head of Stroger’s cam­paign finance com­mit­tee at the same time that he served on Obama US Sen­ate finance committee.

When it came time for Stroger’s reelec­tion cam­paign, in the midst of the erupt­ing Rezko scan­dals in the media, on April 8, 2005, the Tri­bune reported that Stroger “has selected belea­guered busi­ness­man and polit­i­cal power­bro­ker Antoin “Tony” Rezko as one of the hon­orary chairs of his cam­paign fundraiser next month.“
Stroger appointed Rezko’s wife Rita to the Cook County Employee Appeals Board, which hears cases filed by fired or dis­ci­plined work­ers, at a part-time salary of $37,000 a year.

Accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed in the Rezko cor­rup­tion case, this was Rita’s sole income when she sup­pos­edly came up with a $125,000 down pay­ment and secured a $500,000 mort­gage to buy the $625,00 lot next to Obama. Less than a year after Obama bought his strip of land, Rita sold the rest of the lot to attor­ney Michael Sreenan, and made a profit of more than $50,000.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, 2007, the Sun-Times pointed out that Obama’s “new neigh­bor, Michael Sreenan,” had con­tributed $5,000 to Obama’s cam­paigns. Less than a year after buy­ing the lot, Sreenan put it up for sale for $1.5 mil­lion in Octo­ber 2007.

Of course John Stroger will not be answer­ing any ques­tions about cor­rup­tion, or any other mat­ter, because he died on Jan­u­ary 18, 2008. His for­mer chief of staff and god­son, Orlando Jones, will not be talk­ing either because he was found dead of self-inflicted gun wounds in Sep­tem­ber 2007, “just as a cor­rup­tion inquiry tar­get­ing him was heat­ing up,” accord­ing to a Sep­tem­ber 7, 2007 report by CBS News chan­nel 2 Chicago.
“Jones left his posi­tion in county gov­ern­ment to cre­ate a lob­by­ing firm in asso­ci­a­tion with Tony Rezko, who has been indicted on fraud charges,” CBS reported.

Cook County Com­mis­sioner Tony Peraica told CBS that Orlando Jones’ death raised many ques­tions about the Cook County president’s office. “Some of these mat­ters Jones was involved in that are cur­rently being inves­ti­gated by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office are reach­ing to the high­est level of county gov­ern­ment,” Peraica said.

Obama endorsed John Stroger’s son, Todd Stroger, in his bid for Cook County Board Pres­i­dent after his father died. Todd was in the news as recently as March 24, 2008, when the Sun-Times pub­lished a front-page arti­cle report­ing that his cousin Donna Dun­nings, the county’s new chief finan­cial offi­cer, was receiv­ing a 12% pay increase.

Dun­nings’ salary will be the largest increase of any county employee, with the aver­age increase being around 5%. She will make nearly $160,000 with the pay increase, or roughly $5,000 more than her pre­de­ces­sor made at the job, accord­ing to the Times.

Mayor Daley endorsed Obama imme­di­ately after he announced he was run­ning for pres­i­dent and in return, Obama endorsed Daley’s reelec­tion for Mayor right smack in the mid­dle of major fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in the Daley Administration.

Obama’s ties to the cor­rupt Daley machine began when he was dat­ing his wife Michelle and she brought him into the fold. Valerie Jar­rett, the deputy chief of staff to Mayor Daley, hired Michelle as her assis­tant in 1991. Daley made Jar­rett the chair­man of the Chicago Depart­ment of Plan­ning and Devel­op­ment and Michelle worked as her assis­tant in that Depart­ment dur­ing 1992–93.

From there Michelle moved up the polit­i­cal tiers to the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago and ultim
ately got an overnight pay raise from about $121,000 to close to $317,000, after Obama became a US Sen­a­tor, as a vice pres­i­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago.

Susan Sher, was cor­po­ra­tion coun­sel in the Daley Admin­is­tra­tion when Michelle was hired back in the early 1990s, and Sher is now Michelle’s boss at the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, accord­ing to the April 22, 2007 Chicago Tribune.

Shortly after Obama entered the US Sen­ate, Michelle was also handed a posi­tion on the board of Tree­House Foods. Wal-Mart is the largest cus­tomer of Tree­House Foods. Fac­tor­ing in stock options and other pay­ments, the value of her com­pen­sa­tion pack­age for serv­ing on the board in 2006 was $101,083, accord­ing to the Tri­bune report.
On May 14, 2007, dur­ing a meet­ing with the AFL-CIO in New Jer­sey, Obama was asked about Wal-Mart and he said: “I won’t shop there.” Michelle resigned from the board of Tree­House eight days after hus­band said he would not shop at Wal-Mart, CBS News reported on May 27, 2007.

When it came time for Obama’s US Sen­ate cam­paign, Valerie Jar­rett became the cam­paign finance chair­man and worked hand and hand with fel­low finance com­mit­tee mem­bers, Rita and Tony Rezko, and his for­mer boss at the law firm, Alli­son Davis, in fundrais­ing endeav­ors. The com­mit­tee raised more than $14 mil­lion, accord­ing to Fed­eral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion records, Tim Novak reported in the Sun-Times on April 23, 2007.

Jar­rett is now the CEO of Habi­tat Co, a real estate devel­op­ment and man­age­ment firm which man­ages the hous­ing pro­gram for the Chicago Hous­ing Author­ity, the entity man­dated to admin­is­ter pub­lic hous­ing, and she serves as an unpaid advi­sor to Obama’s Pres­i­den­tial campaign.

Mayor Daley’s brother Bill also became an Obama advi­sor. Mayor Daley’s chief image defender, David Axel­rod, is a top strate­gist for Obama’s cam­paign and he was also the media con­sul­tant for Obama’s US Sen­ate campaign.

On April 1, 2007, Dick Simp­son, a for­mer Chicago alder­man who is now chair­man of the polit­i­cal sci­ence depart­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois at Chicago, told Ben Wallace-Wells in the New York Times: “David Axelrod’s mostly been vis­i­ble in Chicago in the last decade as Daley’s pub­lic rela­tions strate­gist and the guy who goes on tele­vi­sion to defend Daley from charges of corruption”.

The scan­dals involv­ing the Daley admin­is­tra­tion have no begin­ning and no end. In Jan­u­ary 2004, the Sun-Times pub­lished a three-part series expos­ing wide­spread cor­rup­tion in the Hired Truck Pro­gram and revealed that some com­pa­nies were being paid for doing lit­tle or no work and that some had mob con­nec­tions or were tied to city employees.

On Jan­u­ary 25, 2005, the Asso­ci­ated Press reported that truck­ing com­pany man­ager, John Can­natello, the 16th per­son charged in the scan­dal, was charged with get­ting $6.6 mil­lion in city haul­ing work “by giv­ing cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions and cash to offi­cials and falsely claim­ing his firm was eli­gi­ble for jobs set aside for women-owned businesses.”

Accord­ing to the arti­cle, city offi­cials said the Hired Truck pro­gram, “which at its height doled out $38 mil­lion worth of work in one year to con­trac­tors with­out bids, was designed to save tax­pay­ers money by out­sourc­ing haul­ing jobs that oth­er­wise would require the city to buy trucks and insurance.”

On June 6, 2006, the Sun-Times reported that the brother-in-law of Cook County Com­mis­sioner, John Daley, was sen­tenced to 18 months in prison “for tak­ing about $5,400 in bribes to steer city busi­ness to a Hired Truck company.”

Of course John Daley is another brother of Mayor Daley.

On Jan­u­ary 6, 2006, the New York Times ran the head­line, “Cor­rup­tion Scan­dal Loos­en­ing Mayor Daley’s Grip on Chicago,” and reported that a “wide-ranging fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tion into what pros­e­cu­tors describe as “per­va­sive fraud” in hir­ing and con­tracts at City Hall has led to 30 indict­ments, includ­ing two senior admin­is­tra­tors close to the mayor, and a dozen cabinet-level resignations. ”

The Tri­bune broke the hir­ing scan­dal on April 29, 2005, after fed­eral agents car­ried out an all-night raid of Daley’s patron­age office at City Hall and less than three months later, Robert Sorich, the patron­age chief in the Office of Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Affairs, and three for­mer city offi­cials, were arrested and charged with fraud to rig city hir­ing for 12 years.
Dur­ing the crim­i­nal trial, pros­e­cu­tors pro­duced a list of more than 5,700 polit­i­cally con­nected job appli­cants, and Patri­cia Mol­loy, a long­time sec­re­tary in Mayor Daley’s office, tes­ti­fied that aides kept track of appli­cants and their polit­i­cal spon­sors dur­ing much of Daley’s time in office, accord­ing to a July 7, 2006 report by Rudolph Bush and Dan Mihalopou­los in the Tribune.

City offi­cials tes­ti­fied that they “were heav­ily involved in pol­i­tics and directed city work­ers and aspir­ing pub­lic employ­ees to knock on doors and work the phones for polit­i­cal can­di­dates endorsed by the mayor,” the July 7, 2006 Tri­bune report noted.

“Wit­nesses who mar­shaled pro-Daley polit­i­cal groups tes­ti­fied that they took cam­paign orders from top Daley aides,” the Tri­bune wrote, “and later got jobs and pro­mo­tions from the mayor’s office for loyal and effec­tive polit­i­cal work­ers.“
Sorich and three oth­ers were con­victed on July 5, 2006, of car­ry­ing out what pros­e­cu­tors described as fraud in hir­ing, “com­plete with sham inter­views, rigged test scores and color-coded charts to track polit­i­cal spon­sors,” accord­ing to the July 6, 2006 Sun-Times.

Chicago attor­ney, Michael Shak­man, whose fed­eral law­suit against the city led to anti-patronage decrees, told the Tri­bune on July 7, 2006, that Daley was to blame for the polit­i­cal hir­ing sys­tem. “You have to lay the respon­si­bil­ity squarely at the feet of Mayor Daley,” he said. “These [defen­dants] are his peo­ple, who never would have thought of doing this with­out his approval.”

At the sen­tenc­ing hear­ing in Novem­ber 2006, US Dis­trict Judge David Coar told Sorich: “If I thought that by sen­tenc­ing you I could stop this type of hir­ing cor­rup­tion in the city of Chicago, I would throw this build­ing at you…. But it won’t,” the Tri­bune reported on Novem­ber 21, 2006.

Obama is a polit­i­cal psy­chopath. He exhibits no shame, no mat­ter where his money comes from. On Sep­tem­ber 5, 2007, the New York Post reported that, “Alexi Gian­nou­lias, who became Illi­nois state trea­surer last year after Obama vouched for him, has pledged to raise $100,000 for the senator’s Oval Office bid.”

“Gian­nou­lias is so tainted by reputed mob links,” the Post noted, “that sev­eral top Illi­nois Dems, includ­ing the state’s speaker of the House and party chair­man, refused to endorse him even after he won the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion with Obama’s help.”

If the Demo­c­ra­tic party places Obama on the bal­lot against John McCain, Demo­c­ra­tic vot­ers will have no choice in this elec­tion. Once the whole truth becomes pub­lic, and it will the minute he becomes the nom­i­nee, no hon­est Amer­i­can could sup­port send­ing Obama and his cor­rupt gang of cronies to the White House.