Clinton v Obama - Hillary Most Qualified for the Job - Part 1

Evelyn Pringle March 5, 2008

This election cannot be based on personal likeability. It matters not whether Barack Obama is a better speaker than Hillary Clinton or visa versa. Now is not the time or place for a popularity contest - the stakes are too high.

This country is in the midst of the biggest downhill plunge of the past 50 years and we need a President with a team of advisors ready to move into the White House with the most experience in every area of policy making the minute Bush leaves.

As personable as he is, and despite his good intentions, the fact remains; Barack Obama does not have the qualifications or experience for the job he is seeking.

Most importantly, his foreign policy experience is totally lacking, and for obvious reasons, this factor alone disqualifies him for the presidency at this time.

John McCain is in lockstep with Bush on Iraq, even if it means staying there for 100 years. The fact that Barack is doing as well as he is has recently led to a nagging suspicion that the Republicans are somehow aiding his campaign behind the scenes, totally unbeknownst to Mr Obama, because they believe John McCain would have a better shot at beating him than Hillary.

The country is in a do or die position in both Iraq and Afghanistan and we’re running out of money and second chances. Our soldiers have stuck in the senseless war in Iraq for five years, longer than either of the world wars.

A new book entitled, “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” by Nobel laureate and former chief World Bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, reveals the outrageous cost of the Iraq war.

Of course, in response to the book, the White House sent out a spokesman with the usual worn out mantra about 9/11 stating:

“People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”

In a broadcast interview with Democracy Now on February 28, 2008, the authors said the Bush administration has repeatedly low-balled the cost of the war in Iraq and a second set of records were kept hidden from the American public.

According to Ms Bilmes, “right now we spend $12 billion a month in Iraq alone, $16 billion if you include Afghanistan.”

“Which doesn’t include the cost down the line,” she said, “if you include just the cost that we’ve already incurred for veterans and replenishing equipment and so forth, it’s double that.”

“It’s $25 billion a month,” she explained.

During the interview, Ms Bilmes described what she called “really outrageous situations” when trying to get information about the war. Even today, she said, “if you go to the official DOD website, what you will find is a number around 30,000 wounded, but that is only the wounded in combat.”

She explained that if the non-combat wounded in Iraq are counted, for example, soldiers who are injured when they’re driving vehicles at night, because it’s unsafe to drive during the day; or soldiers wounded when they are being transported from one place and another, who never would have been there otherwise, the number of wounded is more than double the number listed on the DOD website.

“We had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get access to that number,” she said.

Mr Stiglitz discussed how the government ripped off kids who were lured into joining the military with the signing bonuses and had to pay the money back if they were injured soon after going to Iraq. “They signed a contract to serve for three years,” he explained. “The fact that they get blown up after one month means they haven’t fulfilled their contract.”

He noted that in the election campaign, people are looking at two issues: the economy and the war. “I think there’s one big issue,” Mr Stiglitz said, “and that’s the war, because the war has been directly and indirectly having a very negative effect on the economy.”

He noted that there is not only an economic opportunity cost, but also a security opportunity cost and points out that while we were focusing on Iraq, “the problems in Afghanistan got worse, and the problem of security in Afghanistan is much worse than it was five years ago.”

During the interview, Amy Goodman asked Mr Stiglitz, “Who is profiting from this war?”

“Well, actually,” he replied, “there are two big gainers in this war and only two: the oil companies and the defense contractors.”

“One of the big pools of wealth are in the Middle East,” he noted, “the countries that are the oil exporters.”

“We are transferring hundreds of billions of dollars,” he said, “from American consumers, businesses, to the oil exporters.”

Specifically the most money is going to Saudia Arabia, Iran and Venezuela.

In an article in the February 23, 2008 Times Online, Mr Stiglitz and Ms Bilmes describe how government officials frequently talk about the lives of our soldiers as priceless. “But from a cost perspective,” they write, “these “priceless” lives show up on the Pentagon ledger simply as $500,000 - the amount paid out to survivors in death benefits and life insurance.”

“In areas such as health and safety regulation,” they point out, “the US Government values a life of a young man at the peak of his future earnings capacity in excess of $7 million - far greater than the amount that the military pays in death benefits.”

“Using this figure, the cost of the nearly 4,000 American troops killed in Iraq adds up to some $28 billion,” the stated.

In conclusion, the authors note that their book represents the cost only to the US and does not reflect the “enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.”

As of today, 18 former admirals, generals, and senior defense officials are supporting Hillary. In a conference call with reporters on March 2, 2008, Brigadier General John Watkins, Jr, stated:

“As I think about the challenges facing the nation and having been in uniform for almost thirty years, worked with a number of presidents to include the last four, I can’t think of a single person – those generals included – who is better qualified to walk into the Oval Office than Hillary Clinton.

“I don’t make that statement very lightly. She is more qualified, in my view, than her husband Bill was when he entered the office.”

General Wesley Clark said, “She has done her homework on national security and I know from my personal discussions with her and with many other friends that go in and brief her in her role in the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

“She knows the facts, she knows the details, plus she has the big picture,” he stated. “She is a strategic thinker but she has the building blocks of the strategy in her personal knowledge.”

“In this world that we face today,” says Admiral William Owens, “experience will be really at a premium, especially at the level of the Commander-in-Chief.” He explained that:

“There’s not time to learn. The phone rings and you have to be ready. You have to ready with intuition, with experience and with skills.”

He pointed out that, “this world will have the complexities that perhaps we’ve never before seen,” and “we need people with great judgment.”

Admiral Owens says he thinks Hillary “brings the best of talent, intuition and experience to handle these unknown threats in the future.”

According to Lieutenant General Frederick Vollrath, “we absolutely have to have a leader with the proven experience.”

“America, in the area of national defense, must be successful and Senator Clinton has that experience to create change, to understand the risk, and to get the job done,” he said.

On a personal note, Major General Paul Eaton said, “I have a Special Forces Captain son and a Sergeant Paratrooper both in Afghanistan and I find Senator Clinton the perfect choice to be their Commander-in-Chief and to display the loyalty to command our armed forces and to rebuild them after the conflicts in which we are engaged right now.”

Lieutenant General Claudia Kennnedy stated: “I think she’ll rebuild relationships with other countries that have been suffering for the last seven or eight years; those relationships have really been strained beyond anything I would have anticipated.”

The above testimonials provide enough evidence of her qualifications on military matters for this untrained military mind. Hillary, along with her top foreign policy advisor, former President Bill Clinton, offer the best hope for getting our soldiers out of the killing fields in Iraq in the shortest amount of time possible.

The former President is admired all over the world. He is a natural-born diplomat and we also need him to help repair the damage done to our relationships with world leaders.

As far as the economy, the country was in dire straights when the first President Clinton took office after the first Bush left and the economy was in great shape when the second Bush stepped in

Hillary’s experience gained during the first Clinton Administration is verifiable. The country went from a deficit of $290 billion in 1992, to an expected surplus of more than $250 billion for 2001. Eight years earlier, the Congressional Budget Office had projected a $513 billion deficit in 2001. In 2000, the surplus was the largest in US history at over $200 billion.

Economic growth averaged 4% per year, compared to an average 2.8% during the Reagan-Bush presidencies. Inflation was the lowest since the 1960s, averaging 2.5%.

More than 20 million jobs were created and American workers saw double-digit earning growth, and the bottom 20% had the largest increase at more than 16%. Unemployment dropped to the lowest level in 30 years, from close to 7% in 1993, to 4% in November 2000. The country’s poverty rates were the lowest in 30 years.

The homeownership rate topped 67% in the third quarter of 2000, the highest rate on record.

With all that said, on February 4, 2008, USA Today warned that the “next president will inherit a deficit of about $400 billion, and maybe more,” which means the second Clinton Administration will take office faced the same financial disaster as the first time around.

In fact, the country is now worse off then when the first Bush left. According to Department of Labor Statistics released on January 16, 2008, real weekly earnings increased only 0.9 percent nationally in 2007, but food purchased at the grocery store was 4.2% higher than in 2006. This increase was the highest percentage year-over-year increase since 1990. The price of bread rose 7.4%, eggs 29.2%, and milk increased 13.1%.

The data shows college tuition and expenses increased by 6.2% in 2007, the cost of attending a technical or trade school was up 4%, and the fees for child care and nursery school increased 4.3%.

Health insurance costs rose 10.1% in 2007, medical care increased 5.8%, and the price of medical-care services rose 5.3%. In August 2007, the US Census Bureau reported that the number of Americans without health insurance rose to 15.8% of the population in 2006, or 47 million people.

On December 30, 2007, a report by Sam Zuckerman in the San Francisco Chronicle called 2007, “the year that the greatest housing boom of the post-war era turned into the greatest housing bust,” and explained:

“It started with a rising tide of foreclosures among subprime borrowers - those who took out loans with loose documentation requirements or little money down. By the summer, losses among subprime lenders spread to big banks around the world that had invested in securities based on subprime mortgages.”

“The result was one of the most severe lending lockdowns of recent decades,” according to the report in the Chronicle. “Banks stopped making loans, and when they resumed, they tightened requirements and jacked up rates for all kinds of customers, including other banks.”

“As credit dried up,” Mr Zuckerman notes, “home price stopped rising and then lurched downward, while the number of sales plummeted.”

When introducing former President Clinton for a campaign speech supporting his wife, at a Kirtland, Ohio high school, on March 1, 2008, Ohio’s Lt Governor Lee Fisher, summed up the best reason for sending Hillary to the White House in the following concise statement quoted in the Toledo Blade:

"Bill and Hillary Clinton for eight years set this nation on a new course and we have now the best chance we have since then, not only to take that course and set it right again, but to take it to new heights."

Hillary can beat McCain and no offense to Mr Obama, but with her knowledge and experience in the White House she is the most qualified person for the job in 2008.

Clinton v Obama - Hillary Most Qualified for the Job - Part 2

Evelyn Pringle March 5, 2008

More than any time in the past fifty years, this country is in need of a qualified leader with a solid base of combined knowledge and experience. Barack Obama does not fit the bill. The first Clinton Administration provided disaster relief after Bush Sr left office and a first-rate team of responders is needed more now than in 1993.

Bush Jr’s torrid affair with the oil and defense industries has turned the US economy into a war zone with Americans running out of money to pay for the basic necessities in life such as housing, utilities, and health care.

According to Nobel Prize winning economist and former World Bank vice president, Joseph Stiglitz, so far, the war in Iraq has cost $3 trillion, instead of the $50 or $60 billion price presented to the American people in 2003. On February 28, 2008, he provided testimony to the Senate Joint Economic Committee and told lawmakers we are spending $50 billion in operations every 3 months.

But the most important costs, he said, that go beyond the operational costs are the expenditures required to provide health care and disability for returning veterans. “These are likely to be very, very high, and we will be paying these bills for decades to come.” he warned.

Professor Stiglitz also told lawmakers that our country and businesses are suffering due to America’s changed standing in the eyes of the world because of the war and the way it has been conducted and surveys show a clear relation between attitudes towards America generally and attitudes towards American businesses. “In many quarters,” he stated, “the supposed war for democracy has even given democracy a bad name.”

He pointed out that the mounting war debt means we have borrowed more and more money from abroad. “The fact that we borrowed rather than paid the bills as they came due does not mean that the war was for free;” he said, “it only postponed the payments.”

He criticized the “lose monetary policy,” a “flood of liquidity,” and “lax regulation” which allowed household saving rates to plummet to zero, the lowest since the great Depression, and fed a housing bubble, allowing hundreds of billions of dollars to be taken out in mortgage equity withdrawals that increased the irresponsible consumption boom.

He said, “the subprime mortgages and lending programs with slogans like “qualified at birth” meant that easy credit was available for anyone this side of being on a life support system.”

According to the Professor, we were living on borrowed money and borrowed time and the day reckoning has now arrived. “The games we played—which for a time allowed us to hide the true costs of the Iraq war—are now over,” he stated.

He noted the huge problem facing the social security system, and the jeopardy to the economic security of our elderly and said, “for a fraction of the cost of this war, we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half century or more.”

His prepared statement says the defense contractors and oil companies have been the only true winners in this war, evidenced by what has happened to their stock prices.

This assertion is proven by the August 30, 2006 report, “Executive Excess 2006, Defense and Oil Executives Cash in on Conflict,” by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, which shows that between 2002 and 2005, the CEOs of the top 34 defense contractors enjoyed average pay levels double the amount they received during the period of 1998-2001.

Defense contractor's pay was up 107% in 2005, compared to 2001, and the average compensation for the top 34 CEOs went from $3.6 million to $7.2 million. Halliburton CEO, David Lesar made $26.6 million in 2005, a bigger package than the $24.2 million send-off awarded to his predecessor, Dick Cheney, the report points out.

In stark comparison, the average pay for Army privates in combat in 2005 was only $25,085, and military generals with 20 years experience, only earned $174,452, with housing allowances and extra combat pay included.

According to the report, between the end of the year 2000 and the end of 2005, the share prices of the top 34 defense companies increased 48% on average.

The oil industry contributed $2,627,825 toward the 2004 reelection of George Bush. In 2005, the top 15 US oil company CEOs were paid an average of $32.7 million, and received an average raise of 50.2% over their 2004 pay packages.

Lee Raymond, the outgoing CEO of ExxonMobile, was the third highest paid and he made $69.7 million, according to the report. Exxon reportedly gave Raymond a send-off package worth nearly $400 million, in combined pension, stock options and other perks, including a $1 million consulting deal, the use of a corporate jet for professional purposes, 2 years home security, and a car and driver.

Throughout his first campaign, Bush was critical of the Clinton Administration. He taunted President Clinton every chance he got for failing to get the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to increase oil production.

During the first Republican primary debate, in December 1999, Bush said President Clinton “must jawbone OPEC members to lower prices.”

"What I think the President ought to do is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots," he said during a January 2000 debate.

"The President of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price," he stated.

“I think the president ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say: ‘We expect you to open your spigots’." he said in the Financial Times on February 2, 2000.

"And if, in fact, there is collusion amongst big oil, he ought to intercede there as well,” Bush told the Times.

On June 28, 2000, the New York Times reported comments Bush made the day before during a news conference while campaigning in Michigan and stated:

"Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude."

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Bush told reporters.

Implicit in his comments, the Times said, "was that as the son of the president who built the coalition that drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, Mr. Bush would be able to establish ties on a personal level that would persuade oil-producing nations that they owed the United States something in return."

"Ours is a nation that helped Kuwait and the Saudis, and you'd think we'd have the capital necessary to convince them to increase the crude supplies," Bush told reporters.

When asked why the Clinton Administration had not been able to use the power of personal persuasion, Bush stated: "The fundamental question is, 'Will I be a successful president when it comes to foreign policy?' "

"I will be," he said.

"But until I'm the president," he told reporters, "it's going to be hard for me to verify that I think I'll be more effective."

He verified his effectiveness all right - to the oil companies. During his first 3 years in office, the top 3 US companies, ExxonMobile, ChevronTexaco, and ConocoPhillips, raked in more than $33 billion in profits.

During the first quarter of his second term in 2004, oil companies and refineries reported record profits for operations in the US. Earnings for domestic refining and marketing operations increased by 294% for Chevron-Texaco, 165% for British Petroleum, 125% for ExxonMobil, and 44% for ConocoPhillips.

On May 12, 2004, the International Energy Agency released a study warning that higher oil prices had hurt the global economy and would further depress economic growth, fuel inflation, and increase unemployment over the next two years if prices stayed near the current levels at that time.

Five months later, on September 24, 2004, oil topped a record level of $50 a barrel, and CBS News noted that, "Mr. Bush has shown no propensity to personally pressure, or “jawbone,” Mideast oil producers to increase output."

Ten months after the start of his second term, ExxonMobil posted a quarterly profit of $9.9 billion, "the largest in U.S. corporate history, as it raked in a bonanza from soaring oil and gas prices," Reuters reported on October 27, 2005.

On October 28, 2005, the Wall Street Journal noted that Exxon's quarterly profits "amounted to a per-minute profit of $74,879.23 during the quarter." The Journal also reported that Shell said its third-quarter net income rose 68% to $9.03 billion.

The same week, Energy Information Administration data showed the price of a gallon of gas was up 28% from the year before.

A month ago, on February 2, 2008, the Washington Post reported that, “Exxon broke the record it previously had set for profits by a U.S. corporation, earning $40.6 billion last year.”

“Exxon's profit for the year came to $4.6 million an hour,” the Post calculated.

Twenty-five days later, crude oil prices hit a record high of $103 a barrel. On February 27, 2008, Nigel Gault, an economist at Global Insight, told the New York Times, “You’re adding an oil shock on top of a crunch on credit and a housing collapse.”

“Even the U.S. economy cannot withstand all of that at the same time,” he stated.

The skyrocketing energy costs have a trickle down effect on everything that happens in the US. On average, every time oil prices go up 10%, an estimated 150,000 Americans lose their jobs, according to calculations based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Federal Reserve Board.

In a survey conducted in June 2006, 75% of small businesses said increasing energy costs had impacted their businesses. Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed had to increase the prices they charged customers, and others coped by limiting production.

If the price of energy goes up, it costs more to turn on the power to run equipment and machinery in offices and manufacturing businesses alike. If prices go up, it costs more to heat and cool the buildings for businesses, schools, and government agencies.

The majority of products purchased in the US are transported by trucks, trains and ships that burn diesel fuel. A rise in the cost of diesel fuel can increase the price of nearly every product sold to consumers across the board.

Higher fuel prices increase the costs for every kind of service depended on by Americans in daily life, from school buses to taxi cabs to emergency vehicles to pizza delivery cars.

Bush’s Sham Energy Policy

Two and a half years ago on August 8, 2005, while signing a new Energy Policy into law, Bush lied through his teeth, when he told the country that the “Energy Policy Act of 2005 is going to help every American who drives to work, every family that pays a power bill, and every small business owner hoping to expand.”

According to an analysis of EIA data, when Bush took office in 2001, the average American family spent $3,300 on home heating, gasoline, and electricity combined.

In May 2001, the price of home heating oil was $0.76 per gallon. On February 25, 2008, the average residential heating oil price set a nominal high record at $3.46 per gallon.

The price of natural gas was $4.52 per thousand cubic feet in May 2001, and 6 years later, for the year-to-date through October 2007, the average price was $7.05, a 23.8% increase over the October 2006 price.

In 2001, the average cost of residential electricity was 8.62 cents per kilowatt-hour. The average price in November 2007 was 10.69 cents. The price of propane was $0.51 per gallon in May 2001, and on February 25, 2008, the average residential propane price reached an all-time high of $2.58 per gallon.

The Department of Energy estimates that heating oil costs would be up 26% this winter. In New Hampshire families are paying more than $3 a gallon, up from just over $1 in 2000. In Maine, one of the coldest states in the US, state officials have estimated that heating oil will cost more than $2,700 for the average household in 2008.

In November 2007, Senator Chuck Schumer released a report that showed New Yorkers would pay an estimated $830 million more this winter to heat their homes than last winter. His report included homeowners and renters who used gas, fuel oil, or electricity.

This year, Wisconsin experienced a 40% increase in home heating oil costs, according to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

A December 2007 poll commissioned by CreditCards.com found that in 2008, two out of 3 Americans plan to cut back spending on other things, as a result of higher energy costs, and nearly 25% said they would cut back significantly.

As many as 27 million Americans will have to borrow money for home heating, and 20 million will use credit cards to pay utility bills. The poll found that 27% of adults who earned between $20,000 and $30,000 a year, believed they would have to borrow money to pay their utilities during the winter of 2008.

The average family uses 1,429 gallons of gasoline a year. On January 20, 2001, the day Bush was sworn into office, the price of gas was $1.44 per gallon. On February 29, 2008, MSNBC reported that the average price of gas was $3.16 a gallon.

In 2001, a family buying 1,429 gallons of gas would have paid $2,057. In 2008, the same family will pay $4,515, providing the gas remains at $3.16 per gallon for the year.

Families living in rural communities are worse off because they must drive long distances to work, to shop, to drop off kids at school, and to access healthcare. Rural households drive 28,000 miles a year on average, or 15% more than urban families, and use 22% more fuel, according to Economic Research Service/USDA. This means families living in rural areas will pay $5,779 for gas in 2008.

The Department of Energy predicts that gas prices will peak this spring near $3.40 per gallon but some energy analysts say the cost could be as high as $4 this summer.

Trucking Industry

Among the hardest hit by rising energy costs, is the trucking industry, which includes hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Eighty percent of communities in the US get their goods solely by truck.

As of November 2006, there were over 700,000 interstate carriers in the US classified as small businesses, with 97% operating 20 or fewer trucks, according to a June 14, 2007 statement before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, by Timothy Lynch, Senior Vice President of the American Trucking Associations.

Fuel is the second-largest operating expense for trucking companies, after labor. In order to haul the nation’s freight, Mr Lynch told the Senate Committee, the industry would consume 51 billion gallons of fuel, at a record cost of $106 billion in 2007, more than double the fuel bill of the industry in 2003.

Mr Lynch noted that Energy Information Administration analysts then estimated
that diesel fuel would average $2.75 per gallon in 2007 and $2.76 a gallon in 2008.

On November 29, 2007, the Bangor Daily News reported on a meeting in Damariscotta, Maine of 400 members of the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine and Coalition to Lower Fuel Prices in Maine with federal and state lawmakers, where truckers complained that diesel prices were already more than $3.50 a gallon.

Government had always squeezed logging truckers, they said, but diesel prices were pushing them out of business. They predicted a massive shutdown unless prices fall, according to Bangor Daily.

With diesel prices rising to as high as $3.65 per gallon, Brian Souers, president of a Lincoln logging firm, Treeline Inc, told lawmakers, costs had increased 23% in 90 days for some truckers. "We're not making 4 percent," he said.

"The people who work for us need more money, too," he pointed out, and asked, "Where's it going to come from?"

“The cost of diesel is putting us out of business one day at a time, one truck at a time,” said Larry Sidelinger, owner of Yankee Pride Transport in Damariscotta.

Scott Hannington of Wytopitlock said his company had 65 workers 2-and-a-half years ago and now only has 11. Robin Crawford & Son of Lincoln reported hauling 247,000 cords of wood in 2001, but said the company might handle 80,000 in 2007.

"Less than 10 percent of the people in this room will stay in this business if it keeps going like it is," businessman Dick Day told the lawmakers.

Maine's overall economy is dependent on the logging industry which contributes more than $10 billion a year.

The next month, half way across the country in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a group of truckers, loggers and industry shareholder met at community centers in the small towns of Mass City and Quinnesec, Michigan to discuss the effects of the rising costs of diesel fuel on the future of that state's logging industry.

“If things continue as they are, we’ll all be done by spring,” said Jason Tapani, an owner/operator and one of the meeting’s organizers at the Mass City meeting, according to a report in the December 3, 2007 Daily News.

During the meeting, Mr Tapani explained that 10 years ago, the industry standard was a formula of allowing 25% for wages, 25% for insurance and maintenance, 25% for truck payments and 25% for fuel. At $3.56 for a gallon, he said, fuel now account for 50% of his total expenses, according to the Daily News report.

“I’m working 85 hours a week and I’m barely surviving,” he said. “I shouldn’t have to work that hard and not see it in my business.”

The other organizer of the meeting, Marty DeHaan, told the audience: “Basically, by this point the weak have fallen.”

“We all know guys who were driving a year ago who are now out of business,” he stated.

The Daily News also reported on the December 10, 2007 Quinnesec meeting and quoted Mr Tapani giving an example of how hard it is to make a profit hauling timber.

“Let’s say I get paid $761 dollars for a one-way trip covering 160 miles,” he said. “The cost of fuel is going to eat up nearly 50 percent of that.”

“By the time I take money out for my truck payment, insurance, maintenance and other costs, I’m left with $22,” Mr Tapani stated.

On November 25, 2007, Nathan Phelps reported in the Green Bay Press-Gazette, that rising diesel prices, "just a tick under $3.58 a gallon in the Green Bay area," is one of the challenges facing truckers and the industry this year. "When you're putting in 107 gallons of fuel at a time, those costs add up fast," he pointed out.

On February 29, 2008, Ellen Simon, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reported that Lebanon, Tennessee trucker, Robert Griffith, is on the road 3 out 4 weeks a month, but because the cost of diesel has doubled over the last four years, Mr Griffith's take-home pay has plunged from $50,000 to $11,000, in 2007.

Mr Griffith is literally burning money and "spent $64,000 on diesel in the last eight months," according to the Journal.

A one-cent increase in the price of diesel fuel costs the trucking industry an additional $350 million a year. In the latter part of February 2008, the average price of diesel hit a new record; with the on-highway retail average at $3.55 a gallon, according to the EIA.

Farm Industry

With higher energy costs, farmers are being hit from every which way. Increased prices means it costs more to grow and harvest crops because of higher prices for fertilizer, pesticides, and fuel.

Gasoline, diesel, natural gas and propane are needed to run the equipment used to plant, water, harvest and deliver crops to market. Poultry and pork producers use propane to keep chicken and hog houses warm.

The additional energy costs reduce the selling price and profits from crops because shippers and food manufacturers are also paying more for transportation and production.

According to the January 29, 2008 Rapid City Journal, the average net farm income for South Dakota's 31,300 farmers in 2006 was $28,400, down from an average of $58,000 a year earlier in 2005, citing the National Agricultural Statistics Service,

The costs for fuel and other energy-related expenses are offsetting good grain and cattle prices for farmers and ranchers, especially those who live long distances from nearby towns, Boyd Waara, vice president of First National Bank of Philip, and John Johnson, president of First Western Bank in Sturgis told the Journal.

In addition to the higher costs for fuel to run tractors, pickups and combines, farmers and ranchers are paying higher delivery charges on everything they buy, including fuel, livestock feed, fertilizer and equipment parts, according to the Journal.

Mr Johnson said the residents of rural towns are also seeing higher prices for groceries, clothing and other goods as well as for propane and electricity. "I think everybody is affected by it," he told the Journal.

He said the sales of large-ticket items such as vehicles, kitchen appliances and television sets have all been slow over the past 5 to six months. "We have to assume that some of that is due to less spendable income caused by the price of oil," he added

On November 16, 2007, Capital Press reported that energy costs are taking a big bite out of farm businesses across the West, from keeping crops in production and moving products to markets. Propane prices at the Cal-Nevada Wholesale Nursery, near Sacramento, had increased to $2 a gallon from $1.50 the year before. The owner told Capital Press that even though it would add 25 cents to the price of each plant, he had no choice but to keep 6 heaters running at night to keep the temperature from dropping below 65, or he'd lose the crop.

He also said the nursery business has been hurt by higher freight charges to ship flowers by air. "It used to be $12 to $13 a case and now it us up to $24 a box," he told the Press.

The president of the Washington Apple Commission told Capital Press that the rising cost of fuel to power equipment to pack, process and ship the state's $1.4 billion apple crop has become a major concern. Apple shippers saw surcharges on overseas containers rise $100 per container in 2007, according to the Press.

Travel Industry

When Bush took office, the price of jet fuel was $0.86 per gallon. With a usage rate of 19.5 billion gallons of fuel a year, each penny increase per gallon adds $195 million in annual costs to the airline industry, according to the Air Transport Association.

In 2006, airlines spent a record $38 billion on fuel, 3 times the cost in 2002. Airlines raised fares a total of 12 times in 2005, and in the first quarter of 2006, American Airline raised domestic round-trip tickets by $10, and both Continental and Southwest reported a 5.4% increase.

In the fall of 2007, Carnival Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean began charging a fee of $5 per day per passenger and both companies applied the fee to future and already existing reservations. Norwegian Cruise Lines added a fee of $7 per day to future reservations

Americans do not have the money to pay these ever rising costs. Statistics released by the Department of Labor in January showed real weekly earnings increased only 0.9 percent nationally in 2007. Median weekly earnings increased only 0.9 percent between 2000 and 2006, compared with 7.1% between 1996 and 2000, under the Clinton Administration

The Bush tax cuts have paid off well for those intended. IRS data shows that the wealthiest 1% of Americans, those with an average income of $1,316,000, earned over 21% of all income in 2005, while the workers in bottom 50% earned less than 13%.

And as far as job creation, Bush is competing with his old man to see who ends up with the worst record since Herbert Hoover over 70 years ago. As of October 5, 2007, Labor Bureau statistics show that non-farm payroll jobs increased by 5.6 million since Bush took office. More than 20 million jobs were added during the Clinton Administration.

In January 2009, we need a team of qualified experts on the ground in the White House ready to clean up the disaster that Bush left. The first Clinton Administration faced the same daunting task in 1993. Hillary Clinton is the only candidate in the race with enough knowledge and experience to get the job done.

Barack Obama - The Wizard of Oz

March 29, 2008 Evelyn Pringle

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 ultimately 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.

Barack Obama - Operation Board Games For Slumlords

April 7, 2008 Evelyn Pringle

Barack Obama has a long history of working with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and governors of Illinois, including the current Governor Rod Blagojevich, in doling government funding for housing development in Chicago. His history is hardly a model of success, except for the hundred of millions in profits made by the chosen few slumlords.

Less than a year ago, in the April 26, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times, Fran Spielman reported that Chicago aldermen were accusing the Daley administration "of being asleep at the switch while low-income housing projects developed by the now-indicted Tony Rezko collapsed into disrepair."

"The spigot of loans, grants and tax credits should have been cut off when the first of 30 taxpayer-supported Rezko buildings in Chicago fell into disrepair, the aldermen said," according to the report.

Instead, Spielman said, a “Sun-Times investigation showed that the city, state and federal governments kept the gravy train rolling -- to the tune of $100 million between 1989 and 1998."

The lending continued, the Times noted, even as the city repeatedly sued Rezko's development company, Rezmar, "for such basics as no heat."

"They were going after people for being slum landlords in one department and loaning them money in another," said Alderman Freddrenna Lyle.

Obama now wants to bring this dog and pony show to Washington. I can see it now. His former boss, Allison Davis, at the Davis, Miner & Barnhill law firm, that served as a hub for Rezko's thriving slumlord business for a decade before Davis quit and became partners with Rezko, will be appointed to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Davis and his partners, which include his sons Jared and Cullen, have received more than $100 million in taxpayer subsidies to build and rehab apartments and homes over the past 10 years and have made at least $4 million in development fees, according to the Times.

"Davis has gotten deal after deal from the mayor, helping to make Davis one of the city's top developers," Tim Novak noted in the November 7, 2007 Sun-Times.

There's already a plan in place to guarantee that the Chicago model of "community development" is carried out in the White House. In his "Plan to Fight Poverty in America," Obama says, "we should create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund to develop affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods."

The Plan will create a "White House Office of Urban Policy" to develop a strategy for metropolitan America, and Obama will appoint a Director of Urban Policy who will report directly to him, as president, to "coordinate all federal urban programs," the Plan states.

Mayor Daley will probably be hired for this gig. The Plan explains that Obama will task his new Director "to work across federal agencies and with community and business leaders to identify and address the unique economic development barriers of every major metropolitan area in the country."

While climbing the political ladder, Obama held himself out to be a champion of rights for minority-owned businesses. According to an article on Black Enterprize.com, "it is Obama's strong record when it comes to supporting minority-owned businesses that has black business leaders working overtime to send the 42-year-old congressman to Washington."

However, an example of the Chicago version of a minority-owned business is DV Urban Realty Partners, where Allison Davis, who is an African American millionaire many times over, owns 51%, and Robert Vanecko, Mayor Daley's nephew, owns 49%.

On July 18, 2007, Obama discussed his plan to deal with urban poverty in a speech at the Town Hall Education Arts and Recreation Center in Washington and started out by tugging the heart strings by invoking the name of Bobby Kennedy and stated:

"It's been four decades since Bobby Kennedy crouched in a shack along the Mississippi Delta and looked into the wide, listless eyes of a hungry child. Again and again he tried to talk to this child, but each time his efforts were met with only a blank stare of desperation.

"And when Kennedy turned to the reporters traveling with him, with tears in his eyes he asked a single question about poverty in America: 'How can a country like this allow it?'"

"Forty years later," Obama said, "we're still asking that question."

First of all, "Barack Obama you are no Robert Kennedy," and we're still asking the question because the careers of politicians like Obama are funded by a political mafia which has turned helping the poor into a cottage industry.

During his speech, Obama himself spelled out why low-income housing developers get away with funneling tax dollars through poor people in cities like Chicago without drawing any scrutiny, when he stated:

"These Americans cannot hire lobbyists to roam the halls of Congress on their behalf, and they cannot write thousand-dollar campaign checks to make their voices heard. They suffer most from a politics that has been tipped in favor of those with the most money, and influence, and power."

In Obama's case, a whole gang of slumlords in Illinois made their "voices heard" by writing campaign checks to fund his rise to fame. But as long as the focus of the slumlord allegations remains solely on a crook named Rezko, the other members of the gang will not get the credit they deserve.

One fact is beyond dispute. Without the fundraising of his political Godfather, Rezko, Obama's rise to power would not have occurred. However, Rezko was not the pied piper of Hamlin who led Illinois politicians astray. It's the other way around. Without the cooperation of the corrupt government officials, Rezko would not have been able to fund their political campaigns.

In Illinois, favored politicians are joined at the hip when it comes to fundraising. For instance, from 1999 through 2006, an analysis by the Chicago Tribune shows Obama took in more than $1.5 million from some 700 people who also contributed to Mayor Daley during his political career.

A cursory review of Illinois campaign records shows Allison Davis and his family members giving close to $16,000 to Obama's presidential campaign. The Sun-Times reports that Davis has donated more than $400,000 to dozens of political campaigns, and the top beneficiaries include Mayor Daley, Blagojevich and Obama.

The truth about all the scams run by the political mafia operating in Illinois is only coming out now because of Rezko's corruption trial, and if the Democrats want to lose any chance of winning the White House, all they have to do is nominate Obama.

This case is only the first of what could be many to go to trial. Other criminal charges are pending against several people listed in the indictment, and civil lawsuits have been filed against many of the same people and are awaiting the outcome of the criminal cases.

If Obama had an ounce of respect for Democratic voters, he'd drop out of the race before the details of the corruption in Illinois spread to the rest of the country. If the leaders of the Democratic party had a lick of sense, they would inform Obama right now that under no circumstances will his name be on the ballot come fall.

Political junkies know the details of all the sordid scandals swirling around Obama in Chicago, but the average American voter does not have a clue.

The prosecution team is led by the US Attorney for Northern Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, of Scooter Libby fame; the same guy who put the last Illinois Governor behind bars and convicted a host of government officials from the Daley administrations who were involved in what prosecutors called "pervasive fraud" to rig city hiring for 12 years with persons who got out the vote for Mayor Daley, and the candidates he endorsed, as well as numerous crooks rounded up during the scandal involving Daley's Hired Truck program.

The list of names in the indictment includes about eight persons referred to as "Co-Schemers," and reads like a "who's who list" of major campaign donors to Obama, Blagojevich, Daley and other powerful Illinois politicians.

Blagojevich is referred to as "Public Official A," Obama is referred to as a "political candidate," and there is a list of "Individuals" from "Individual A" all the way up to "Individual HH."

By now, everybody following the case knows the names of the "Co-Schemers" and "Individuals", and the Republicans can use the court filings as a roadmap for their plan of attack on Obama. In fact, they are probably editing their talking points for cable news shows as we speak. They no doubt already have video clips in the can of every failed low-income housing project in Chicago connected to Obama to splash across the airwaves the minute he is nominated.

In addition, the Chicago Tribune has two ace reporters, Bob Secter and Jeff Coen, stationed at the courthouse, who provide a daily blog called "Gavel-to-Gavel" on the Tribune website which gives a blow-by-blow account of the live testimony in the trial every few hours.

The names of corrupt politicians and power brokers from both the Democratic and Republican parties are being dropped before the jury like flies. Many of the witnesses, including the main co-defendant, Chicago businessman Stuart Levine, have already pleaded guilty and are testifying under grants of immunity in hope of getting a lighter sentence, which means they have everything to gain by testifying about the other crooks.

Although the Tribune's Gavel-to-Gavel coverage is just as good as having a front-row seat in the courtroom, the Obama camp apparently feels the need to monitor the trial first-hand. On March 14, 2008, during an interview with the Sun-Times, a reporter said to Obama: "You have somebody in the courtroom to monitor the trial, right?"

"We may," he replied, "I think that may be true."

The case involves the corruption of two state regulatory boards. The investigation, dubbed "Operation Board Games," by the Feds, began in December 2003, based on information supplied by an informant. Its now obvious that Rezko was aware of the investigation as early as 2004, because during a January 16, 2007, court hearing his attorney, Joe Duffy, told US District Judge Amy St Eve that he was hired in 2004.

"And my guess is you hired Mr. Duffy to deal with the Feds?" the judge said to Rezko, and Rezko replied, "Yes, your Honor."

The first board controls the Teachers Pension System, which administers pensions and benefits for all Illinois teachers except for those in Chicago, and the Health Facilities Planning Board, which approves all proposals for construction projects that involve medical facilities in Illinois.

The Teacher's Pension fund has over $30 billion in assets. Investment firms that want to do business with the fund submit proposals, and the board votes on whether to approve the proposal. Some members of the board are elected by teachers in the state, others are appointed by the governor and others serve by virtue of their state office such as the school superintendent.

On Blagojevich took office, the Schemers were able to stack the TRS board with members who would vote whichever way they were told. Once they accomplished that feat, they demanded kickbacks from investment firms in exchange for the approval of their proposals.

Rezko's partner in the Rezmar development company, Daniel Mahru, is referred to as "Individual Z" in the indictment, and according to court filings, Rezko told Mahru that "$500 million" of TRS money was earmarked for their company. Mahru is reportedly cooperating with federal investigators.

In addition to lining their own pockets, the money gained through the scheme was funneled to the campaigns of Blagojevich and Obama. Prosecutors have identified two $10,000 payments that were made to Obama's US Senate campaign through straw donors Joseph Aramanda and Elie Maloof, which originated from a kickback paid by investment firm, Glencoe Capital, to secure approval for a $50 million deal.

Aramanda and Maloof also each gave Obama $1,000 for his failed run for Congress in 2000. Once Obama became a US Senator, Aramanda's son was granted a coveted intern position in Obama's Senate office in Washington during the summer of 2005, based on a request which the Obama's camp has admitted came from Rezko.

Levine was appointed to the TRS Board in 2000, by Republican Governor George Ryan and was reappointed in 2003 by Blagojevich. As part of the team led by Levine to rig the votes, Blagojevich appointed, attorney Anthony Abboud, to serve. He is "Individual Q" in the indictment. He has been donating money to Obama's political career since March 2000, with a total of more than $2,800.

Blagojevich also appointed, attorney Jack Carriglio, or "Individual R." On June 30, 2003, Carriglio donated $1,000 for Obama's US Senate campaign.

The TRS story has the makings of a great Hollywood movie with subplots upon subplots. Allison Davis, or "Individual BB," was a friend of Hollywood producer Tom Rosenberg, who produced the movie, "The Human Stain," with Anthony Hopkins and Davis in a small part. He also produced the Oscar winning, "Million Dollar Baby."

Rosenberg, or "Individual J," is a central figure in the case. His investment firm, Capri Capital Advisers, a real estate manager, had done about a billion dollars of business with the TRS in the past and wanted to do more. In 2004, the Schemers tried to coerce a bribe from Rosenberg, or in the alternative a $1.5 million contribution for Blagojevich, in exchange for approval of a $220 million deal.

According to the indictment, Davis admitted to Rosenberg that Rezko, and Blagojevich's top fund raiser, Christopher Kelly, or Co-Schemer B, had asked Davis who could raise funds for Blagojevich from the state pension system and he volunteered Rosenberg's name.

During his testimony on April 1, 2008, Levine explained that he was already mad at Rosenberg because he expected $500,000 for help he gave Rosenberg in getting the TRS board to approve a $100 million deal in 2001, but he never came through with the money.

The only benefit Levine received from the deal was that Rosenberg said Levine no longer had to pay him $50,000 a year for lobbying efforts, according to the monitoring by Gavel-to-Gavel.

However, all hell broke lose when Rosenberg refused pay the $1.5 million. During the trial, prosecutors played tapes of phone calls in which comical conversations were discussed between the bipartisan group of Co-Schemers and Individuals, as they were trying to figure out how to deal with Rosenberg and his threats.

The jury heard conversations between Republican power broker, William Cellini, or Co-Schemer A, and Levine, in which they said Rosenberg was threatening to "stand at State and Madison," and make public the attempt to extort money for Blagojevich's campaign and that he would "take them all down," and even threatened to go to the Feds.

They claimed Rosenberg said he considered Rezko and Christopher Kelly the two most likely members of Blagojevich's inner circle to end up in prison someday, according to Gavel-to-Gavel. Kelly has been charged in a separate case with hiding $1.3 million from the IRS and using money from his business to pay gambling debts with Chicago bookies and Las Vegas casinos.

Levine testified that Rezko wanted things to settle down and quoted Rezko saying, "Mr. Rosenberg was a dangerous individual, and nobody wanted to be put in a dangerous situation."

Levine said Rezko told him that TRS should grant Capri the $220 million. "But, in fact, that should be the last business that Mr. Rosenberg does with the State of Illinois," Levine recalled Rezko telling him, according to Gavel-to-Gavel. Levine testified that Rezko said Blagojevich had been briefed on the plan and agreed with it.

During his testimony, Levine also told the jury that Rezko had plans for Blagojevich to run for President. "He said that he had raised a great deal of money for Gov. Blagojevich and that he had great hopes and expectations that Gov. Blagojevich would run for president," Levine told the jury.

"And although he knew it was a long shot, he was working toward that end," Levine said.

He also told the jury about an October 29, 2003, trip in a plane he chartered to carry Blagojevich and others to fundraisers in New York, during which Levine thanked Blagojevich for reappointing him to the Planning board and said the governor told him, "Never discuss any state board with me, discuss them with either Tony Rezko or Chris Kelly."

The TRS part of the story has many subplots. For instance, in 2005, the Feds issued a subpoena to the TRS for records pertaining to a $150 million deal approved for the Carlyle Group, in which Robert Kjellander, or Individual K, described in the August 11, 2005 Sun-Times as the "national Republican Party treasurer," and "a Springfield lobbyist with close ties to the White House," was to be paid a $4.5 million fee.

The most famous investor in the Carlyle Group is the family of Osama bin Laden, and its most famous advisor is the first President George Bush. On October 26, 2001, the New York Times reported that the "Saudi family of Osama bin Laden is severing its financial ties with the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm known for its connections to influential Washington political figures."

"It came largely as a result of public controversy about the family's stake in a Carlyle fund that invests in buyouts of military and aerospace companies," a Carlyle executive told the Times.

After the September 11 attacks, the Times noted, "the investment was criticized amid speculation that the family might profit from increased military spending from America's war on terrorism."

Kjellander reportedly headed Bush's reelection campaign in three states and in December 2003, he was able to obtain an invitation from the Bush administration for Levine, Rezko, and Cellini, along with their wives, to attend a Christmas Party at the White House.

Apparently Kjellander is still in good graces with the Republicans because he is "helping plan this September's Republican National Convention in Minneapolis," according to John Kass in the March 7, 2008 Chicago Tribune.

The subpoena issued to the TRS in 2005, also included a request for records involving a $10 million investment approved for Hopewell Ventures in 2003, whose principals included David Wilhelm, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who is now a super delegate who openly supports Obama. Wilhelm was a main player in getting members approved to serve on the Health Facilities Planning Board.

The Board is made up of nine members and approval of a project requires a majority of five votes. At the center of this scheme was a proposal by Mercy Health System to gain approval to build a new hospital in Crystal Lake. On April 21, 2004, the board voted to approve the project, even though state analysts said the hospital was not needed.

Levine was also appointed to the Planning Board by a Republican Governor. However, he established himself as a bipartisan crook early in the trial. On March 10, 2008, he told the jury that even before he got involved with the Blagojevich administration, he used to funnel campaign contributions to Democratic candidates through straw donors at the request of former Chicago Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, who has also been indicted on federal fraud and bribery charges in a related case.

Levine's term on the Board was set to expire in 2004, but the Schemers made sure he remained on the panel. On March 10, 2008, Rezko's lawyer questioned Susan Lichtenstein, former general counsel to Blagojevich, about a series of email exchanges she had related to the appointments of members to the Board in 2003.

One of the emails was between Lichtenstein and the office of Wilhelm, who ran Blagojevich's 2002 campaign, which suggested several appointees, including Levine.

"With the e-mails," Gavel-to-Gavel reports, "Rezko's lawyers appear to be pushing the point that Rezko wasn't alone in backing Levine and that Levine's appointment had a broad array of support."

While all this was going on, as a state senator, Obama was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services. As such, his name also appeared in the email exchanges as a member of a team working on legislation to keep the board from expiring under a sunset provision of Illinois law.

The email exchanges said, Wilhelm had “worked closely” over six months with state legislators to extend the life of the board and listed Democrat and Republican leaders in the Illinois Senate and House, including Obama.

The exchange with the names of four candidates for the board stated that “our attached recommendations reflect that involvement” with the political leaders.

In the end, the changes made by the lawmakers in 2003 dropped the number of members on the Board from 15 to 9, making it much easier to stack the panel, and by the summer of 2003, the Schemers controlled a 5-bloc vote.

At the time, Thomas Beck was the chairman of panel, and Levine was the vice-chairman. Beck testified, under a grant of immunity, and told the jury that he took a $1,000 donation for Blagojevich when he met with Rezko to seek reappointment.

The persons chosen to guarantee the votes were 3 doctors: Imad Almanaseer, Michel Malek and Fortunee Massuda.

Massuda, or "Individual Y," gave Obama $2,000 on January 26, 2004. Malek is "Individual FF," and he donated $10,000 to Obama's US Senate campaign on June 30, 2003, and another $500 in September 2003.

Almanaseer, or "Individual EE," contributed $1,000 to Obama on March 12, 2004, and ponied up another $2,000 on May 24, 2004.

This part of the scheme also opens up several subplots. The person responsible for working out the details for the kickback on the Mercy proposal was Jacob Kiferbaum.
Kiferbaum was the builder hired by Mercy to construct the new hospital. Levine told the jury about a long history of taking bribes from Kiferbaum, who would then pad his bills to hide the payments. He said the money would be passed through middlemen, such as John Glennon, a prominent Republican insider, who had served on a pension board with Levine.

The new hospital was never built after details about the crimes became known. Kiferbaum has pleaded guilty in the case and is cooperating with the Feds.

When referring to the fact that Obama's name shows up in the email exchanges as reviewing the recommendations to appoint Levine and the others to the Planning Board, the media is always careful to mention that Obama is not accused of anything.

However, on March 14, 2008, during an interview with the Tribune, Obama was finally asked directly: "Did you have discussions with him [Rezko] about either recommendations that you sought for people or recommendations that he was making?"

"I did not have any formal discussions with Tony," Obama said, "beyond one individual, and that was Dr. Eric Whitaker, who ultimately became the head of the Illinois Department of Public Health and who had been a longtime friend of mine, who I had known since he was getting his master's at Harvard and I was at the law school there."

"He had expressed an interest in that post," Obama informed the Tribune.

"I think he had applied separately," Obama said, "but I don't recall whether I called Tony or he called me."

"And I simply said, 'I think this guy is outstanding and is certainly somebody who is worthy of an interview,'" he added.

"And was it your understanding that Tony was going to effectuate that?" the Tribune asked.

"No," Obama said. "What I knew was, and I don't think this has been disputed, that he was one of a number of people within the Blagojevich circle who were, you know, helping to screen or interview potential candidates for administration posts."

The job Obama recommended for his friend paid about $150,000 a year. However, Eric Whitaker is now an executive vice-president of the University of Chicago Medical Center, according to the March 9, 2008, Sun-Times. That would be the same employer that pays Michelle Obama a salary of close to $350,000 as a vice president.

But Obama's using the lure of the pension funds to raise campaign money goes way back. In 1999, he "was instrumental in the formation of a coalition of black investment firm owners and legislators in Illinois to create an initiative that would award black-owned firms with the management of some of the state's retirement funds," according to a 2004 article on Black Enterprise.com.

"He's out there fighting for us," said John Rogers, chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Ariel Capital Management in the article. Rogers donated $9,000 to Obama's US Senate campaign.

"He was a catalyst to pull [everyone] together to create the initiative to have these organizations let minority firms do business with state funds," said Lee Holland, managing partner and Chief Investment Officer of Holland Capital. Lee Holland, his wife and two of his partners donated $35,000 to Obama's US Senate campaign. In the October 1, 2007, New York Times, Christopher Drew and Raymond Hernandez reported that:

"Members of the group, the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, say Mr. Obama checked into their problems and helped start a drive that enabled minority investment executives to win millions of dollars in business from the state's giant pension funds."

However, the Times pointed out that Obama's political career had benefited many times over from his ties to the group. "Several of the businessmen or their wives would help clear the debts from his Congressional race," the Times wrote, "and six of the group's members are now among the top fund-raisers for his presidential campaign, according to campaign finance records."

All totaled, the Times said, employees at more than 30 companies listed on the group's website and their relatives donated more than $300,000 to help Obama win his US Senate seat in 2004 and "set fund-raising records early in the 2008 presidential race."

In fact, when Illinois State Senator Emil Jones, Jr became the State Senate president in 2003, he assigned Obama to a committee looking into the pension questions "to help raise his political profile," according the Times.

During this period, the Times says, campaign finance records show executives from Ariel Capital, Loop Capital, Holland Capital and Capri Capital, "sharply increased their donations" to Obama's State Senate campaign fund.

"And once he began his campaign for the United States Senate," the Times wrote, "they quickly became a fund-raising core that has carried over into the presidential race."

Obama quit the State Senate committee in late 2003 as his race for the US Senate heated up, "and just as the panel began a series of hearings that produced the most substantial changes," the Times reports.

The changes generated millions dollars in fees for some of the firms. For instance, Loop saw its fees from one pension fund rise to $2.4 million in 2006, from $5,700 in 2001, and Holland and Ariel both got several hundred million from the pension funds to invest.

John Rogers and two other people at Ariel each bundled at least $50,000 in donations for Obama's presidential campaign, according to the Times.

An October 3, 2005 article in the Sun-Times, by Chris Fusco and Dave McKinney, reported that Ariel and its top executives also contributed $117,500 to Blagojevich's campaign.

Although the current criminal case focuses on two boards, the testimony of Jill Hayden, the former head of Blagojevich's Office of Boards and Commissions, established that the same process was used to fill some 1,500 positions, on 300 boards and commissions, that control a wide variety of regulatory decisions, which would include other pension funds.

Blagojevich appointed Davis to serve on a separate pension board, the Illinois State Board of Investment, which oversees funds for state employees, judges and legislators, and "also has been under federal investigation," according to the November 7, 2007 Sun-Times

In the September 23, 2007, Sun-Times, in reference to the "minority owned" DV Urban, of Davis and Robert Vanecko, Tim Novak reported that a "nephew of Mayor Daley stands to make millions of dollars from city-connected pension funds" in "winning business from pension funds for city workers, cops, teachers and CTA employees".

All total, the pension funds gave DV Urban $68 million. The first investor was the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, but according to Novak's report, the board members did not learn that DV Urban was owned by the Mayor's nephew until 6 months after they voted to approve the investment.

As of September 23, 2007, Davis and Vanecko had received $1 million in management fees and they are "guaranteed at least $3 million in management fees and could make as much as $8.4 million before the pension deal ends on Dec. 31, 2014," Novak reports.

In addition, Davis and Vanecko will share in any profits from the real estate deals and can earn a 3% fee on the property they develop.

Obama says he met Rezko, when he got a call right out of the blue from David Brint, after he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review, wanting to know if he would be interested in being a developer for Rezko's real estate company, Rezmar.

Because they read that he was interested in community development work, Obama says, Rezko and his two partners, Mahru and Brint, met with him to discuss the job. "I said no, but I remained friendly with all three of them," Obama said in the Chicago Tribune on November 1, 2006.

"All three of them remained great contributors of mine," he added.

And so they did. According to the latest tally given during interviews with the Tribune and Sun-Times on March 14, 2008, the amount attributed to Rezko went from a claim of $50,000 or $60,000 a year ago, to Rezko raising roughly $250,000.

In fact, Obama told the Tribune that Rezko "might have raised $50,000 to $75,000" for one campaign alone in his failed run for Congress in 2000.

The Rezmar connection is a gift that keeps on giving. In February 2007, David Brint gave Obama $4,600, and his wife, Elizabeth gave contributed $2,300. Brint also hosted a fundraiser for Obama in June 2007. Elizabeth donated a couple thousand in 2002 and $2,000 more in 2003 as well.

On March 17, 2000, Mahru gave Obama $1,000, listing himself as president of Rezmar. On March 4, 2004, he donated a whopping $5,000. Mahru also tossed $1,000 to Mayor Daley in 2001 and gave him another $1,500 in 2003.

But then Rezko and Mahru had plenty of money to throw around. By 1998, Rezko had a reported net worth of $34 million and Mahru was worth $14.6 million, according to the "Rezmar who's who list," published in the April 24, 2007 Sun-Times.

After turning down the surprise job offer from Rezko, Obama expects voters to believe that he just happened to get hired at the small 12-attorney Davis law firm, which just happened to represent Rezmar in development deals. And then a couple years later, Rezko's companies just happened to appear on the very first contributions made to the "Friends of Obama" committee to launch his political career as a state senator.

On March 14, when asked by the Sun-Times, whether the subject of politics was mentioned at his first meeting with Rezko, Obama stated: "Quite frankly, I don't recall. I think it was talking about the possibility of me working for him."

About the same time that Rezko began funding Obama's campaign for the Illinois senate, Rezmar began developing low-income apartments with three non-profit groups, which were also represented by the Davis law firm, including the Chicago Urban League, the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp, and the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization.

Bishop Arthur Brazier, described as "a powerful ally of the mayor" by the Sun-Times, founded the Woodlawn Preservation Corp and the Fund for Community Redevelopment.

Davis was the treasurer for Woodlawn when the group went into business with Rezmar and he also served on the board that ran the Fund for Community Redevelopment.

By the time Rezmar started working with the non-profits, two of its earlier projects were having major problems, including a building where the tenants were without heat for five weeks between December 1996 and February 1997. The city had to sue to get the heat turned back on and in fact Chicago sued Rezmar for failing to heat buildings at least a dozen times, according to the Sun-Times.

Obama got a $1,000 campaign donation from Rezmar on January 14, 1997, while those tenets were without heat, Novak reports. Records show that Obama also received a $1,000 contribution from Resko Concessions, a day earlier on January 13, 1997.

Rezmar rehabbed 15 buildings between 1995 and 1998 in partnership with the nonprofits.. Each project involved public and private financing including loans from the city or state, federal low-income-housing tax credits and bank loans. The way it was set up, Rezko and Mahru always came out ahead because Rezmar was paid part of the development fees when a deal closed and the remainder when tenants moved in.

The projects were supposed to provide housing for low-income tenents for at least 25 years. "But the first deal Rezmar struck with the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp. collapsed in just six and a half years, when the state sued for foreclosure," according to a report by Novak in the April 23, 2007 Sun-Times.

Of the buildings managed by Rezko and Mahru, 17 ended up in foreclosure, six buildings are currently boarded up, hundreds of the apartments are vacant and in need of major repairs, and taxpayers are left stuck with millions in unpaid loans, Novak reports.

An "Operation Board Games" investigation should be conducted on the slumlord business in Illinois over the past 15 years. The Chicago Sun-Times reporters, and especially Tim Novak, have already done an excellent job in connecting all the dots.

Daley became Mayor in 1989 and Rezmar got its first city loan of $629,000 the same year, even though Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience.

Rezmar stopped making the $2,982 payments three years later and missed 16 payments before the city changed the terms so that Rezmar would only have to pay $465 a month, according to the Sun-Times report by Novak.

Over the years Davis has been appointed to serve on the Illinois Capital Development Board, which oversees state construction projects, and the Chicago Public Building Commission. Daily appointed Davis to the Chicago Plan Commission in 1991, where he stayed until January 2006.

The Plan Commission must approve, disapprove or defer any proposal by a public body or agency "to acquire, dispose, or change any real property within the territorial limits of the city" on the basis of whether or not the referral complies with the city's long range planning goals and objectives, according to its web site.

After Rezko got Davis appointed to the pension fund Board, Davis helped Rezmar in two major developments as a member of the Plan Commission, even though the two men were business partners. The first vote involved a housing development along the Chicago River at Irving Park Road and was cast a month after Davis won a seat on the Board.

The second was cast a year later in March 2004, for the approval of Rezmar's proposal for the 62 acre South Loop project. This deal collapsed shortly before Rezko was indicted in October 2006, according to Novak.

Daley made Thomas McNulty, the attorney who acquired the buildings for Rezmar, president of the Chicago Low-Income Housing Trust Fund, a charity run by the city that doles out tax dollars to landlords to subsidize rent payments for the poor. Rezmar received more than $2.7 million from this charity fund, according to the "Rezmar who's-who list" in the April 24, 2007 Sun-Times.

Mahru was appointed to the Illinois Affordable Housing Advisory Commission in 1993, which helps decide which projects get state funds, by Governor Jim Edgar.

Obama began serving on the board of Woods Fund, a Chicago charity foundation, in 1993, the same year he was hired by Davis' law firm. In 2000, Davis went to the foundation to help fund his plans to build low income housing. Obama voted to invest $1 million with Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners, a $17 million partnership that Davis still operates, according to a report by Novak in the November 29, 2007 Sun-Times.

Davis used some of the money to build a 72-unit apartment building for senior citizens, a $10 million project built with a $5.7 million city loan, which earned Davis nearly $700,000 in development fees, Novak says city records show.

Davis' son Cullen is paid to manage the building, which opened three years ago with a ceremony featuring Mayor Daley.

Kelly King Dibble was the vice president for business development at Rezmar and she became the executive director of the Illinois Housing Development Authority once Blagojevich became Governor. She is now an attorney with, The Northern Trust Company, the same company that financed Obama's mansion.

Velma Butler, an investor in Rezko's 62 acre Loop project, also serves on the Illinois Housing Authority. She donated $1,000 to Obama's US Senate campaign in 2003.

On October 1, 2006, Daley appointed Martin Nesbitt chairperson of the Chicago Housing Authority. The CHA was created for "the purposes of engaging in the development, acquisition, leasing, operation, and administration of a Low Rent Housing Program and other federally assisted programs," according to the agency’s 2005 annual financial report.

Nesbitt succeeded Sharon Gist Gilliam, according to the CHA web site. Gilliam is a former board member of Rezmar. She told the Sun-Times that she was only on the Rezmar board until 1991. However, the Times found her still listed as a board member in a 1994 biography on the company's web site.

Daley had appointed Nesbitt commissioner of the Housing Authority on July 9, 2003, and he served as vice chairperson of the Board since January 17, 2006.

Nezbitt is also vice president of the Pritzker Realty Group, where he procures new real estate investment opportunities, retail investments and developments for the Pritzker Group, according to the CHA web site. A quick trip to the Huffington Post site showed tens of thousands of dollars donated to Obama from people with the last name Pritzker in the Chicago area but many people are listed as homemaker or not employed or information requested, so its impossible to sort them out.

Nesbitt is treasurer for Obama's presidential campaign according to the Center for Public Integrity. Over his political career, Nesbitt has contributed more than $10,000 to Obama's campaigns.

Michelle Obama was hired as an assistant in Daley's office by Valerie Jarrett, Daley's deputy chief of staff in 1991. When Daley appointed Jarrett chairman of the Office of Planning and Development, Michelle became her assistant..

Jarrett is now CEO of the real estate development and management firm, called Habitat, which manages the housing program for the Chicago Housing Authority.

The Commission on Chicago landmarks "is responsible for recommending to the City Council that individual buildings, sites, objects, or entire districts be designated as Chicago Landmarks, thereby providing legal protection," according to the government web site.

Daley appointed Michelle to serve on the Chicago Landmark Commission. The current chairman of the Commission is Daley's former chief of staff, David Mosena.

Mosena was a member of Obama's US Senate Finance Committee in 2004, with other members that included Valerie Jarrett, Tony Rezko, Rita Rezko, and Allison Davis. The committee raised more than $14 million, according to Federal Election Commission records, cited by Novak in the Sun-Times on April 23, 2007. Jarrett serves as an advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign.

The Illinois Finance Authority was established by Blagojevich in 2004. Its "role is to support the Governor of Illinois' economic development agenda," and "IFA approves about $3 billion in project financing each year," according to the its site.

Rezko business associate, Ali Ata, was appointed to head the Finance Authority. He is now under indictment in a separate criminal case in which Rezko is also charged. On June 30, 2003, Ata contributed $5,000 to Obama's US senate campaign.

On June 13, 2007, the Sun-Times reported that as a state senator, "Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting his political patron Tony Rezko's successful bid to get more than $14 million from taxpayers to build apartments for senior citizens."

"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 October 28, 1998 letters to both city and state housing officials. "This project will provide much needed housing for Fourth Ward citizens.''

New Kenwood was set up as another "minority owned" company, where Davis owned 51% and Rezko 49%.

In the Times, Novak reported that the deal included $855,000 in development fees for Rezko and Davis, while Obama was still working at the Davis law firm, for a bid on a project that was "four blocks outside Obama's state Senate district."

Although the law firm represented several companies owned by Davis and Rezko when Obama wrote the letters, the firm did not represent New Kenwood in the deal. According to the Sun-Times, Davis and Rezko instead hired a firm owned by Mayor Daley's brother Michael, "to help them get $3.1 million from bonds issued by the city of Chicago."

"In addition to the development fees, a separate Davis-owned company stood to make another $900,000 through federal tax credits," Novak reported in the June 13, 2007 Sun-Times.

The development opened in 2002 and was supposed to be managed by William Moorehead & Associates. William Moorehead was also a client of the Davis law firm and a business partner of Davis. In April 2007, Moorehead told the Times that his company was dropped from the deal before the apartments opened. The apartments are now managed by a company owned by Davis' son, Cullen Davis, according to Novak.

In the Times article, Novak also noted that Moorehead received a 4-year prison sentence "for stealing more than $1 million from ... public housing projects he managed for the Chicago Housing Authority and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, as well as from two developments he co-owned with Davis."

In a 2006, Moorehead pleaded guilty to fraud and other crimes and admitted stealing more than $600,000 from the Island Terrace and other federally subsidized projects.

During the period when Moorehead was stealing money, the Times reports, he lent Davis $100,000. Davis sent Moorehead a letter on June 15, 2000, and said the sale and refinancing of one of their housing projects had been delayed and wrote: "I need to borrow $100,000 from the Island Terrace resources."

As part of a plea deal, Moorehead is cooperating in an ongoing federal investigation.
David Brint now owns Brinshore Development. He told the Times that he quit Rezmar four years after the company got its first deal with city because Mahru did not find money for building repairs. Brint and his partners have taken over four failed Rezmar buildings -- "in one case paying the city $1 million to settle a $4 million loan made to Rezmar," according to the Times.

Gary Poter owned the construction company that rehabbed all of Rezmar's buildings. He was stabbed to death in May 2006, supposedly by a disgruntled employee, according to the Times "Rezmar who's who" list. Back on March 3, 2004, Poter donated $2,000 to Obama's US senate campaign and on July 19, 2004, he gave Obama another $1,000.

Its more than obvious that the political mafia of Illinois now has plans to install the new, "White House Office of Urban Policy," as a means of getting richer by funneling tax dollars through poor people and retirees on a national level via Obama.

The leaders of Democratic party need to tell him that he will not be the nominee and to drop out of the race. If they do not, the Republicans have enough truthful information lined up to drive Obama out before election day.

A month ago a friend of mine who knew I did not think Obama was qualified to be president, asked me what I would do if he was nominated. I replied that I would vote for him of course, what a dumb question. No more. After a month of research, I could no more support Barack Obama as the leader of this country than I could support another war profiteering Republican.

If he becomes the nominee, all the Democrats in America will be viewed by the rest of the world as either utterly stupid, or totally corrupt. Therefore, for the first time in my life, I have made a conscious decision to take a stand and not vote in a presidential election if the choice is Obama.