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.