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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45674)	9/10/2008 8:27:26 AM
From: TideGlider	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224748

Kathy Holthausen: Not like me... Forum Publishing Group September 10, 2008 Sen. John McCain recently had trouble answering an interviewer's question. He didn't know how many houses he and his wife owned. I didn't think this was so unusual. Many wealthy people who have real estate holdings might not know this answer at a given time. But Sen. Barack Obama used this incident to support a claim that McCain was out of step with ordinary Americans and had skewed ideas about wealth. He said, "If you're like me and you've got one house, you might have a different perspective." We are all well aware that many members of Congress are very wealthy people. Think Kennedy. Think Rockefeller. Most of them are millionaires many times over. Many have real estate holdings. Most of them live very differently than the rest of us and McCain is no different. However, Sen. Obama's attempt to paint his opponent as being out of step with the average American focuses the light of scrutiny back on himself. That one house of his is worth a couple of million. Hmm, that's not like me. And I got my house fair and square; no deals with convicted felons in the mix. But it doesn't end with the house. Sen. Obama is very much out of the ordinary in many ways. He has a long list of friends and business associates who seem to be far more out of step with average Americans. Like Tony Rezko, who helped the Obamas with the purchase of their mansion. He's associated with shady Chicago politics where Obama cut his political teeth. He's a convicted felon involved with bribes and kickbacks. There's Obama's mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who says AIDS was a plan by our government to kill blacks and that 9-11 was actually all our fault and the murders were just "America's chickens coming home to roost." There's Bill Ayers from the radical Weather Underground who started riots and set off bombs in government buildings. As recently as 2001 he told The New York Times that he didn't regret this. He just thought they hadn't set off enough bombs. And he posed for that famous picture desecrating our flag. Even Obama's Ivy-League-educated wife seems to have some trouble being proud of her own country. Aside from his acquaintances, there are Sen. Obama's own ideas and beliefs, many of which put him outside of the mainstream. He supports infanticide. He wants to systematically disarm our military. His answer to our energy woes is to inflate our tires, which he claims would "save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling." He views people from small towns as being bitter, racist and frustrated and clinging to their guns and religion. He believes the best way to increase revenue is to raise taxes and that the answer to every problem is to spend more. No, we both may have one house, but Sen. Obama isn't much like me at all. And one would think that in all those years at Columbia and Harvard that he might have heard the warning to people who live in glass houses. Freelance writer Kathy Holthausen can be reached at kah1761@bellsouth.net. sun-sentinel.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45674)	9/10/2008 8:30:22 AM
From: TideGlider	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224748

September 10, 2008 The Phantom Foursome: Obama, Rezko, Biden & Cari By Lee Cary "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) While the bloodhound reporters of the old big media busy themselves examining the circumstances surrounding the birth of a Down syndrome baby, hoping to make a career by digging up dirt on his mother, we're getting only bits and pieces of a much bigger story involving the Phantom Foursome. American Thinker writer Rosslyn Smith noted that "Biden and Obama have friends in common in the Daley Machine." She cited the links between Joe Biden and Joseph Cari, Jr., and between Cari and Antoin "Tony" Rezko. We already know about Rezko's real estate association with Barack Obama, which Obama characterized as "a bone-headed mistake." Meanwhile, Mayor Richard M. Daley says there's no "Daley Machine." My home town's humor about the nature of reality there goes back at least to Al Capone who printed his occupation on his business card as "Secondhand Furniture Dealer." Daley's brother and former Secretary of Commerce for Clinton, Bill Daley, is contemplating a run for Illinois Governor. But, hey, where's the machine in that? If you want to understand just how much of a family business politics is in Chicago, check out this political genealogy offered on a Chicago Tribune website. Anyway, Illinois leads the nation in sending former chief executives from the Governor's House to the Big House (Kerner, Walker, Ryan). And in Illinois, and particularly Chicago, the pols play fast-pitch, hardball politics. Just ask all the Chicago dead people who voted in the 1960 Presidential election. So, we have these links between the Democratic National Ticket and two convicted felons in Chicago (Joe Cari pled out in September 2007). The Chicago Sun Times links Biden and Cari this way: "When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari, Jr., who also served as Biden's Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president. "In 2005, Cari admitted to taking part in an $850,000 kickback scheme that prosecutors say was part of a larger political fund-raising operation for Gov. Blagojevich overseen by Rezko, and was convicted in June of wide-ranging corruption involving state deals." You can read Cari's plea agreement here. He awaits sentencing. Patrick J. Fitzpatrick, of Scooter Libby fame, was the tough prosecutor. In case you want to wade through it, here's the indictment against Cari, Stuart Levine and Steven Loren. Now it's hard to get a grip on what this was all about. It's a complex prosecution of a complex scheme. But we can get a glimpse of what happened by reading this excerpt from the February 2005 Superseding Indictment against Stuart Levine and Antoin "Tony" Rezko. "The Scheme To Defraud: 2. Beginning no later than in and about the spring of 2003 and continuing through at least in or about July 2004, in the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, and elsewhere, STUART LEVINE and ANTOIN REZKO, also known as "Tony Rezko," defendants herein, together with Joseph Cari, Steven Loren, Jacob Kiferbaum, Individual A, and others known and unknown to the Grand Jury, devised and intended to devise, and participated in, a scheme and artifice to defraud the beneficiaries of TRS [The Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois] and the people of the State of Illinois, of money, property, and the intangible right to LEVINE's honest services, by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and material omissions, and in furtherance thereof used the United States mails and other interstate carriers, and interstate and foreign wires, which scheme is further described below. "Overview of the Scheme: 3. It was part of the scheme that defendants REZKO and LEVINE, with the assistance of Cari, Loren, Kiferbaum, Individual A, Individual B, and others, fraudulently used and sought to use the position and influence of LEVINE and other members of the TRS Board of Trustees and the Planning Board to obtain financial benefits for REZKO, LEVINE, and their nominees and associates. In the course of the scheme, REZKO and LEVINE solicited and demanded millions of dollars in undisclosed kickbacks and payments, and received and directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual undisclosed kickbacks and payments, for the benefit of REZKO, LEVINE, and their nominees and associates, from investment firms seeking to do business with TRS, and from Kiferbaum." (pages 8-9 of 65 total pages) So they schemed to scam money belonging to school teachers. Honorable guys. At the time of Cari's indictment, Joe Biden said, "All I know is Joe Cari is a friend, and he's an honorable guy, but I don't know anything beyond that." Cari, though, is probably no longer a friend of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich who may be the next ex-Illinois state CEO to visit the Big House. According to the Chicago Tribune (April 16, 2008), "A veteran Democratic fundraiser (Cari) testified Tuesday that Gov. Rod Blagojevich once offered to give him his pick of contracts and state business in exchange for help building a nationwide political money machine as a prelude to a presidential run. "The governor said ‘that there were contracts, legal work, investment banking work and consulting work to be awarded to people who helped,' Joseph Cari recalled as he took the stand in the federal corruption trial of Blagojevich insider Antoin "Tony" Rezko. "The allegations by Cari, once a finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee, were the most explicit accusations of pay-to-play politics leveled against Blagojevich at a trial where he is not even the defendant." Not a good day for the Illinois governor. Hey, where's Nancy Pelosi and the "Culture of Corruption?" The associations and complexities of this Chicago Rubik's Cube should have reporters across the nation salivating to explore possible connections between the dots by challenging Biden's and Obama's use of The Sergeant Hans Schultz of Hogan's Heroes Defense - "I know nothing." Instead, they're focusing on a Down' syndrome baby boy and his mother. What do we make of that? I don't how they appear to the world, but to me they seem like little boys and girls playing on the sea-shore, diverting themselves in imagining they'll find something about Trig Palin and his mom that'll win them a Pulitzer, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before them. [Hat tip: Isaac Newton] _____________________ americanthinker.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (45674)	9/10/2008 8:35:49 AM
From: TideGlider	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224748

September 10, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Obama’s Days with Daley Reform . . . the Chicago way. By David Freddoso In 2003, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s son Patrick and nephew Robert Vanecko became original investors in Municipal Sewer Services, a sewer cleaning and inspection company which had bought out a bankrupt firm. The company quickly had the old firm’s contracts with the city of Chicago extended without competitive bidding, at a value of $3 million to the company. MSS did not disclose the Daley family members as investors in its official filings, as required by city ordinance, and it remains unclear how much money Daley’s family members made when they cashed out of the firm in late 2004. MSS would go on to acquire other city contracts and receive $7.9 million from Chicago before Tim Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times reported the conflict of interest late last year. The company was forced to walk away from a live contract and close its doors earlier this year. On Friday, that same sewer contract was awarded to another company on a non-“friends and family” basis. It was one more story of dirty Chicago politics that went unnoticed in the national media. This story of Patrick Daley feeding from the trough — or more properly, from the sewer — exemplifies the sweetheart deals that are typical of the political environment in which Senator Barack Obama rose. It rounds out the story of how each member of the family of Obama’s Illinois Senate mentor, Emil Jones, somehow manages to make big money from government salaries and contracts. It may evoke memories of the illegal pension-fund manipulation that landed Obama’s fundraiser, Tony Rezko, in federal prison — or of the millions in corporate welfare that Obama, as a state senator, showered upon Rezko and his other major donors in Chicago’s slum development business. But Friday’s story also serves as a reminder of what sort of governance Obama has willingly and knowingly backed with his good name. Despite his personal popularity, and the resulting capacity he had for political independence — despite having many opportunities to change Chicago in a positive way — Obama always chose to back a corrupt status quo. This amazingly unexplored part of Obama’s career falsifies the media image he has paid millions of dollars to project, as an agent of positive change. In January 2007, when Barack Obama endorsed Mayor Daley for re-election, City Hall was still reeling from two major corruption scandals and a handful of minor ones, which had resulted in indictments, convictions, and further investigations throughout 2005 and 2006. One of these was the Hired Truck Scandal. Chicago was paying $40 million annually to trucking companies for their services, but a reporter for the Sun-Times noticed that many of these hired trucks would stand idly for days on end. The subsequent news stories and federal investigation found that contracts went to companies owned by family members of top city officials and to those who were either paying bribes donating to politicians — most of them gave money to Daley’s campaign or to his political machine organizations. Five of the trucking firms let into the program, including its largest beneficiary, had bought their automobile insurance through the mayor’s brother, Cook County Commissioner John Daley. John Daley’s brother-in-law, John Briatta, was one of the small players found guilty of collecting bribes. The ringleader of the operation was Mayor Daley’s appointee as First Deputy Water Commissioner, Donald Tomczak, a chief in one of Daley’s most loyal ward organizations. Tomczak pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax fraud. Mark Gyrion, the mayor’s cousin, was also a top official in the city Water Department. He signed the papers to sell off a city dump truck for scrap to a dealer, who in turn sold it to Gyrion’s mother-in-law, who in turn made $1 million in the truck program, leasing the “scrap” truck back to the city. Angelo Torres was a former gang member who had been placing boots on cars for the city in 1996, but by 1998 he was running the entire Hired Truck Program. Torres’s career might have taken off because he was a member of the “Hispanic Democratic Organization,” a then-powerful part of Daley’s political machine (known in Chicago as the “Hispanic Daley Organization”). Torres, who also pleaded guilty to shaking down the trucking firms, cut his father-in-law’s truck company into the program. One of the more colorful bribe-takers in the Hired Truck Scandal was John “Quarters” Boyle. He earned his nickname in 1992 by embezzling $4 million in coins from Chicago-area toll booths — the Chicago version of “change we can believe in.” Fresh out of prison for that crime, Boyle joined and thrived in one of Daley’s political machine organizations, ironically named the “Coalition for Better Government.” Somehow, he was hired as a $33-an-hour engineer for Chicago’s Department of Transportation, from which position he and a colleague shook down the trucking contractors for $200,000. One would be hard-pressed to find any licit aspect within the mayor’s truck program. City workers were even stealing the asphalt that these trucks carried to city projects, bribing the contracted drivers to divert it to other sites. Think of that the next time you hit a pothole on the Dan Ryan Expressway. Even the scandals of 2005 offered an opportunity for new political favors. The Sun-Times reported that between early 2006 and mid-2007, Daley’s administration paid out $13 million in taxpayer funds to politically connected law firms in order to defend itself in the Hired Truck, City Hall patronage, and other corruption probes. Mayor Daley has not been charged with any crime. But if he knew nothing, it is rather amazing that his friends and family are stealing Chicago from under his nose, brick by brick. Barack Obama, Chicago’s reformer, was so shaken by all of this corruption that he called for Mayor Daley to step down immediately. Just kidding — he didn’t do anything like that. But in August 2005, at the very height of the scandals, Obama nearly said something mildly critical of the mayor. A Sun-Times reporter asked whether he would endorse Daley for re-election, and Obama replied, “What’s happened — some of the reports I’ve seen in your newspaper, I think, give me huge pause.” But Obama must have thought he’d been too harsh with that statement. Just one hour later, he called that reporter back, to “clarify” his comments: Obama said the mayor was “obviously going through a rough patch right now.” But he also said Chicago has “never looked better” and that “significant progress has been made on a variety of fronts.” The senator said then it was “way premature” to talk about endorsements because the mayor had not yet announced his candidacy. In January 2007, when Obama finally endorsed Daley for re-election, a reporter asked how his “concerns” from 2005 had figured into his endorsement. Again, Obama hedged: “There is no doubt that there remains progress to be made. . . . But ultimately you want to look at the whole record of this administration. . . . The city overall has moved in a positive direction.” Ryan Lizza, then of The New Republic, quoted an Obama ally who framed the situation in the most sympathetic light possible: That’s part of [Obama’s] political savvy. . . . He recognizes that Daley is a powerful man and to have him as an ally is important. While he was a state senator here and moving around in Chicago, he made sure to minimize the direct confrontational approach to people of influence and policymakers and civic leaders. These are the same people now who are very aggressively supporting his campaign. The idea is that deep down, Obama is a reformer — he’s just undercover for now. He can advance and then show his true colors later, after getting the critical support of Daley and Chicago’s crooked politicians. Here’s another way of putting it: If Barack Obama is a reformer, he may be the first one ever to become President of the United States without having done anything serious or difficult in the name of reform. — David Freddoso is a staff reporter for National Review Online and author of the newly released The Case Against Barack Obama. — article.nationalreview.com