OBAMA’S
TOWERING MONUMENT TO HIMSELF: A Psychopath’s trail of lies all built on theft
and public welfare… But you can bet his crony Saudis, who have long nurtured
and financed Obama’s schemes, are in good with the money!
The Obama Foundation switched the
planned facility to a purely private entity, designed, built, and operated for
its own purposes — my take is that it is a monument to Obama (curiously, shaped
like a cenotaph) and a center for political organizing. Not a
single book or government document would be housed there. It would
be run at the whim of the Obama Foundation, glorifying the man whom few would
ever call modest.
It sounds to me as though Judge Blakey is a true believer
in the wonderfulness of Barack Obama, so that nay monument to him is a public
benefit.
Obama-appointee to
federal bench dismisses lawsuit against transfer of park land to Obama's
personal monument
The
monument to Barack Obama, the community organizer turned president, has
vanquished the community organizers who attempted to stop its takeover of
public land.
Federal Judge John Robert Blakey, appointed by Barack Obama and
confirmed by the Senate in 2014, wants construction to begin “without delay” on
the “Obama Presidential Center” (OPC) on former park land belonging to the
citizens of Chicago. The OPC should
not be confused with a presidential library, as it will not contain any
official records of the Obama presidency and will not be under the control of
the National Archives or any governmental body at all. It is strictly a private
project, under the control of a board of Obama acolytes unaccountable to the
public and will function as a monument to Obama.
One of several renderings of the proposed OPC released
by the Obama Foundation
In a
move the Chicago
Tribune called “surprising,” Judge Blakey used strong language to
dismiss the lawsuit.
BLOG: SPOKEN LIKE A TRUE COMMUNIST PARTY MEMBER!
“The facts are clear in this case and the law is more
settled than the parties are suggesting,” Blakey said from the bench.
“Everyone’s had their day in court. … There’s been no
rush to judgment,” he said before declaring there should be “no delay in
construction. This case is dismissed.”
He
also dismissed criticism from the plaintiffs that the museum is a personal
monument, not accountable to the public:
“The museum itself is the public benefit,” he said.
“The record is swelling with evidence of the benefits,
not only of this particular museum, but also to its location in a park
generally and to this particular location,” he said.
The Chicago
Sun-Times adds:
Blakey announced his ruling after an hour of oral
arguments at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. He concluded in a 52-page written
opinion that “the facts do not warrant a trial, and construction should
commence without delay.”
However,
Judge Blakey’s desire to see groundbreaking and construction right away is not
likely to be realized.
…lawyers for the advocacy group that filed the
lawsuit, Protect Our Parks, immediately told reporters they would take the case
to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
And before construction can take place, the project
must also go through what has been a long-running federal review, mandated
because Jackson Park is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Once the review is done, there are more time-eating
steps, including a public comment period to consider the findings, time to
reply and time to weigh plans to mitigate adverse impacts, if any, caused by
the development.
Also
at issue is another aspect of community organizing: a “community benefits
agreement” in which a powerful party (in this case, the rich Obama Foundation
backed by the powers-that-be) agrees to payoff community groups. The Sun-Times
notes that Chicago’s brand-new mayor wants one:
On top of that, it’s not known how Mayor Lori
Lightfoot intends to wrangle a pledged community benefits agreement from the
Obama Presidential Foundation, and whether she is on board with the proposed
$174 million related-traffic redo plan.
The foundation and former President Barack Obama
oppose a benefits deal.
The
specifics behind the ruling are explained by the Chicago
Maroon, of the University of Chicago:
Public trust doctrine originates from the common law
principle of maintaining public access to navigable waterways for commerce,
which in Illinois includes submerged land a mile outward from Chicago into Lake
Michigan. This land cannot be transferred from the state to a private entity,
as it would constitute “private encroachment and interruption,” against public
trust doctrine.
Blakey responded in the ruling, “Plaintiffs invite
this Court to find that because the OPC site may have been submerged
approximately 11,000 years ago, it constitutes ‘formerly submerged’ land for
purposes of the public trust doctrine. Respectfully, the Court declines the Plaintiff’s
invitation.”
POP’s second major argument called for “heightened
scrutiny” in this case due to potential conflicts of interest between the
Obamas and the City of Chicago that calls into question the public benefit of
the OPC.
Blakey was unconvinced. “Plaintiffs attempt to twist
this public benefit into a private purpose, arguing that the Museum’s mission
merely ‘seeks to preserve and enhance the legacy of the former President and
his wife’ rather than benefit the public,” he argued.
He dismissed POP’s assessment of the Obamas’
intentions behind the OPC, stating, “This Court cannot accept such a
mischaracterization.”
It
sounds to me as though Judge Blakey is a true believer in the wonderfulness of
Barack Obama, so that nay monument to him is a public benefit.
Obama Center Breaks
Pledge Not to Remove
Trees in Jackson
Park
The Obama Presidential Center has already started destroying dozens of
age-old trees in Chicago’s Jackson Park, despite a pledge not to start removing
trees until all legal paths are cleared.
The
City of Chicago, the park district, and the Obama Center agreed to wait until a
handful of lawsuits have developed before beginning preparations for
construction, but the Chicago Sun-Times reports that
the Obama Center’s promise has essentially been broken because the Chicago Park
District has already begun destroying baseball diamonds and tearing out trees
as part of the work associated with the Obama complex construction.
In
January, the Obama Center promised that until the foundation had all permits
secured and all lawsuits were satisfied, “there will be no trees removed or cut
down.” But now, the Center claims that only the 19.3 acres upon which the
center will sit is included in that promise, and the trees destroyed by the
Park District are not on that acreage.
The
Center’s claim is technically accurate. But the paper explains that the
decades-old trees are being destroyed to make room for a track field that is
being displaced by the impending construction of the Obama Center. One did not
need to transpire without the other, so the moving of the track field is
inextricably tied to the Obama Center, critics note.
The
paper also points out that the Obama Center is impacting far and away more
acreage and city facilities than just the area upon which the complex will
eventually sit.
The Times wrote:
Since
former President Barack Obama picked Jackson Park for his center in August
2016, a series of intertwined projects in and around Jackson Park has made the
impact much larger than just the 19.3 acres to be occupied by the center,
including retooling roadways and relocating athletic fields.
Despite
claims by Obama representatives, the famed Jackson Park, designed by landscape
architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1893, will see major
alterations even though the park was placed on the federal National Register of
Historic Places in 1972. And preservationists say the Obama Center is
destroying the carefully planned parklands across the city’s Lake Shore region.
The
claim that the Center will not force the city, state, or federal governments to
spend tax dollars on the complex is also coming up false.
According
to the Wall Street Journal, taxpayers are now being asked for
nearly two hundred million dollars for costs resulting from the Obama Center.
“Now
comes news that Illinois taxpayers will put up at least $174 million for
roadway and transit reconfigurations needed to accommodate the Obama Center. If
you don’t live in Illinois, you may be smirking — but you’ll be footing the
bill, too,” the Journal reported on
August 10. “Eighty percent of such spending is generally reimbursed by the
federal government, and Illinois officials confirmed to me that they expect to
receive $139 million from Washington if they request it.”
Former
Obama chief of staff and current embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel thinks
the $174 million in tax dollars to be spent on the center is “money well
spent.”
Oddly,
the city will not even enjoy rent money from the sprawling Obama Center because
another sweetheart deal the city agreed to when it entered into the pact with
the Obama Foundation maintains that the Center will pay only
one dollar for the land. And that is one dollar only, in perpetuity–not per
month or even per year, just one single dollar.
The
one-dollar rent and the $174 million in taxpayer funds certainly do seem like
great deals, indeed–but for Obama, not for the American people or the citizens
of Chicago.
PSYCHOPATH BARACK OBAMA HAS LONG CONCEALED HIS PATH TO RICHES
AND POWER BECAUSE MOST OF THESE PATHS WANDER DOWN THE TRAILS OF HIS CRONY
BANKSTERS AND MUSLIM DICTATORS
"Obama’s
presidential papers will not be housed there, and no scholars will be afforded
the opportunity to explore the history of his presidency."
Obama Foundation’s
monumental rip-off
The Obama Presidential
Center planned for Chicago is nothing more than a personal monument to Barack
Obama and a center for political indoctrination in his radical views. It serves
no public purpose the way that a presidential library would. Obama’s presidential papers will not be
housed there, and no scholars will be afforded the opportunity to explore the
history of his presidency.
And, this is receiving
vast public subsidies, despite assurances that it would be privately funded.
Barack and Michelle Obama have been playing a major role in its design,
in a fashion reminiscent of a dictator putting up monuments to himself in some
third world country. As the revised design stands, it will look like a cenotaph
bizarrely erected before the death and burial of its principal.
I have written several
pieces about the folly of the OPC. But I am delighted to be joined in this by
the Wall Street Journal. In an article there,
Mark Glennon challenges the vast subsidies that all American taxpayers will be
affording this personal and political endeavor:
Illinois taxpayers will
put up at least $174 million for roadway and transit reconfigurations needed to
accommodate the Obama Center. If you don’t live in Illinois, you may be
smirking—but you’ll be footing the bill, too. Eighty percent of such spending
is generally reimbursed by the federal government, and Illinois officials
confirmed to me that they expect to receive $139 million from Washington if
they request it.
Bait and switch
Taxpayers were softened up
by a bait and switch strategy:
In a 2014 request for
proposal, the Obama Foundation said that the planned presidential library “will
include an Institute that will enhance the pursuit of the President’s
initiatives beyond 2017.” This institute now seems to have taken over the
project. As the Chicago Tribune reported in
February: “Obama said he envisions his center as a place where young people
from around the world can meet each other, get training and prepare to become
the next generation of leaders.” No doubt, his definition of “leaders” will be
political.
Which raises the question
of why the state and city are giving the Obama Center official support. Back
when it was still being sold as an official presidential library, the city of
Chicago took steps to allow the project to be built in Jackson Park. Under a
deal approved by the City Council in May, the Obama Foundation will lease 19.3 acres in
perpetuity for $1.
One dollar for perpetual
use of a huge amount of priceless lakefront land.
Fortunately, this is not
going to happen without a legal challenge:
A nonprofit group called
Protect our Parks has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that this violates state
law. The suit calls the Obama Center a “bait and switch,” since the “public
purpose” of a presidential library no longer exists.
I am proud to report that
my work was cited
in that lawsuit.
Promises made, promises
broken
Last fall WTTW, a Chicago
public television station, was reporting skeptically on
“preliminary plans” for Illinois to cough up $100 million to “assist” the Obama
Center: “How could a public financing proposal fly in a state that is bleeding
red ink, especially when the Obamas have promised 100 percent private funding?”
The Obama Foundation
responds that no public money will flow into its coffers (the tax deductibility
of donations is another matter). But a hundred and seenty-four million taxpayer
dollars spent on construction specifically designed for the facility is a
subsidy, period.
Hat tip: Michael Nadler
The Obama Presidential Library That Isn’t
President
Obama unveiled the plans for the Obama Presidential Center in May 2017. He said
he wanted a place that “looked forward, not backward, and would provide a place
to train future leaders.”CreditScott
Olson/Getty Images
The four-building,
19-acre “working center for citizenship,” set to be built in a public park on
the South Side of Chicago, will include a 235-foot-high “museum tower,” a
two-story event space, an athletic center, a recording studio, a winter garden,
even a sledding hill.
But the center, which
will cost an estimated $500 million, will also differ from the complexes built
by Barack Obama’s predecessors in another way: It won’t actually be a
presidential library.
In a break with
precedent, there will be no research library on site, and none of Mr. Obama’s
official presidential records. Instead, the Obama Foundation will pay to
digitize the roughly 30 million pages of unclassified paper records from the
administration so they can be made available online.
And the entire
complex, including the museum chronicling Mr. Obama’s presidency, will be run
by the foundation, a private nonprofit entity, rather than by the National
Archives and Records Administration, the federal agency that administers the
libraries and museums for all presidents going back to Herbert Hoover.
But as awareness of
the plan has spread, some historians see a threat to future scholarship on the
Obama administration — and to the presidential library system itself.
Without a dedicated
repository, they argue, the rich constellations of related material found at
the other libraries — papers donated by family members, cabinet members and
aides, as well as pre-presidential and personal papers — could end up
scattered, or even uncollected. And without help from specialized archivists,
the promised digital democratization could just as easily turn into a
hard-to-navigate data dump.
Unlike
the complexes of previous presidents, the Obama Center will be privately run
and will not include a federal research library onsite. Instead, his
unclassified official records will be digitized and made available online.CreditThe
Obama Foundation
More broadly, there’s
concern that the creation of a privately run presidential museum undermines the
ideal of nonpartisan public history.
Timothy Naftali, the
former director of the Richard Nixon library, where he is credited with overhauling museum exhibits to
give a more honest accounting of Watergate, called the decision “a huge
mistake.”
“It opens the door,”
he added, “to a truly terrible Trump library.”
‘An Act of Faith’
The current system
had its origins in 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt donated his papers to the
federal government and began building a library to hold them near his home in
Hyde Park, N.Y. (Before the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a president’s
papers were considered his private property.)
“It seems to me that
the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith,” Roosevelt said at the opening in 1941,
standing on the porch of the modest Dutch colonial-style structure, which also
housed a small display of artifacts.
The library, paid for
with private funds, was donated to the National Archives. Since then, the
federal system has grown to include all 13 presidents going back to Hoover,
whose library was created retroactively.
Today, the museums
may draw the crowds, but it’s in the research libraries where historians piece
together a more accurate view of a presidency. White House records and other
collections at the libraries have, for example, overturned the idea of
Dwight D. Eisenhower as a genial, golf-playing figurehead, and revealed the
depth of internal debate in Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House over the escalation
of the Vietnam War.
Anthony Clark, the
author of “The Last Campaign,” a
recent book about presidential libraries, called the Obama Foundation’s break
with the existing model “an unambiguous good for the American taxpayer.”
The National Archives
“will not be saddled, as it is at the federal presidential libraries of Mr.
Obama’s 13 immediate predecessors, with the expense and embarrassment of
hosting troublingly politicized exhibits, speakers, events and educational
programs,” he said.
Just how the Obama
Foundation’s decision to opt out of the current system took shape remains
unclear. In Jonathan Alter’s 2010 book “The
Promise,” the newly elected President Obama was quoted musing that
maybe his future presidential library should be “an online library.”
The idea was
certainly in tune with the increasingly digital nature of the presidential
paper trail. In addition to millions of pages of paper, the Obama presidential
records include some 300 million emails, as well as Snapchat posts, tweets and
other born-digital records.
It is also in line
with trends at the National Archives, which faces stagnant budgets and an
exploding number of records to care for. The agency’s current strategic plan calls
for digitizing all its holdings, which it estimates at amounting to some 12.5
billion pages.
In May 2017, when President
Obama appeared
in Chicago to unveil the design for the center, renderings
included a 50,000-square-foot “Library Building.” But the research facility and
archives most people had assumed would be inside it had disappeared.
The decision to break
with the National Archives model “was not disclosed” at the unveiling,
according to The Chicago Tribune.
It was not noted in the foundation’s main news release describing
the center, but was instead outlined in a separate, terse release.
Some observers are
dismayed at what they see as the lack of transparency, and the slow trickle of
information from both the foundation and the National Archives.
“They are creating a
fog and confusing the public and the broader historical community about what
this thing actually is,” Bob Clark, a former director of the Franklin D.
Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, said in an interview.
“Everybody is still
calling it a presidential library, but it’s not,” said Mr. Clark, who published
a highly critical article about
the Obama decision in the journal The Public Historian. “It’s a museum and a
headquarters for a foundation that is funding the National Archives’ goal of
digitizing all its documents.”
The
Digital Future, or ‘Bait and Switch’?
The decision to forgo
an on-site partnership with the National Archives could be a problem for the
center, which has yet to break ground. A lawsuit currently
in federal court is challenging the legality of building it in a public park,
calling the abrupt transformation of what had been pitched as a federal
“presidential library” into a privately run center an “institutional bait and
switch.” (On Tuesday, the judge denied the city’s motion to dismiss
the suit and allowed it to proceed.)
Robbin Cohen, the
executive director of the Obama Foundation, said in an interview that
digitization had been part of the vision from the beginning. “The main goal,”
she said, is making the Obama White House records “as accessible and available
to the public as possible.”
She declined to be
specific about when the decision to forgo a physical library altogether, and to
opt out of any National Archives presence in Chicago at all, was made, saying
it resulted from an “evolving discussion.”
Ms. Cohen emphasized
that the center, while privately run, would have public partnerships. Under an
agreement reached last May, it will include a 5,000-square-foot branch of the
Chicago Public Library. (The center’s buildings will have an estimated 325,000
gross square feet.)
And it will work with
the National Archives to borrow documents and artifacts for display in the
museum, which is headed by Louise Bernard, a former director of exhibitions at
the New York Public Library.
But the decision, she
said, was driven just as much by the logic of digitization. Under National
Archives policy researchers are not given access to paper originals when
electronic versions are available.
“Even if we were to
build a physical library at the center, the records would still be largely
accessed digitally,” she said.
As they are released,
the documents will be available through both the National Archives Catalog and
a dedicated Barack Obama Presidential
Library website. As for research support, a spokeswoman for the
National Archives said it would have “the same dedicated kinds of staff” for
the Obama materials as it has at existing presidential libraries, but would not
say where they would be located or provide further details.
Some scholars are
alarmed by the decision. “The absence of a true Obama presidential library will
have the effect of discouraging serious and potentially critical research into
the Obama presidency,” said David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
and the author of “Rising
Star,” a nearly 1,500-page biography of Mr. Obama.
Others take a
cautiously sanguine view. Mr. Zelizer, the Princeton historian, said there was
“enthusiasm for sure” about digital access, but uncertainty over whether the
new model would improve or worsen the known frustrations of
the current libraries, like huge backlogs in processing and protectiveness around politically
sensitive documents.
Ultimately, some in
the presidential library system say, the move to a digital model is the future,
like it or not.
But the realities of
money and technology “cannot be denied.”
“Let’s give the
digital a try,” she wrote, “before giving in to dismay.”
An earlier version of this article
misstated the number of buildings planned for the Obama Presidential Center. It
is four, not three
Obama's dream of a monument to himself in Chicago suffers a blow
from a judge he appointed
Hopes for timely groundbreaking for
the "Obama Presidential Center" in Chicago suffered a blow yesterday
in a federal courtroom. A federal judge appointed to the bench by
Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for a lawsuit that will delay, and quite
possibly end, the plan to build and operate the monument as a center for
extolling the sheer wonderfulness of Barack and Michelle Obama. The
lawsuit, brought by Protect Our Parks, challenges the legality of handing over
20 acres of irreplaceable lakefront park land for 99 years to a private
interest group, the Obama Foundation, which enjoys tax deductibility for
donations to it but is unaccountable to any elected representatives of the
people.
Courtesy of the Obama Foundation.
Michael Tarm of the AP lays
out the basic facts of the news:
U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey
heard arguments last week on the city's motion to dismiss the suit and was
largely focused on whether the group had standing to sue.
The granting of standing to the
plaintiffs is critical, for that was probably the best hope of the Obamas to
quash the lawsuit right away.
In its 2018 suit, Protect Our Parks
accused the city of illegally transferring parkland to a private entity, The
Obama Foundation, effectively "gifting" prized land to
a Chicago favorite son. The group said city officials
manipulated the approval process and tinkered with legislation to skirt
long-standing laws designed to ensure residents have unobstructed access to
lakeside parks.
"Defendants have chosen to deal
with it in a classic Chicago political way … to deceive and seemingly
legitimize an illegal land grab," the lawsuit says.
To make the park available for the
project, the Chicago Park District first sold the land to the city
for $1. Illinois legislators amended the state's Illinois Aquarium
and Museum Act to include presidential libraries as an exception to the
no-development rules if there's a compelling public interest. The Chicago City
Council approved the project by a 47-to-1 vote last May.
The Obama Foundation, a private
nonprofit, would pay $10 to the city for use of the parkland for 99 years,
cover the costs of building the complex and be responsible for covering
operating costs for 99 years. Once built, the Obama Presidential Center's
physical structures would be transferred to the city for free, meaning the city
would formally own the center but not
control what happens there.
This report obscures the critical
factor: the state legislation allowed the construction of "presidential
libraries," which are owned by U.S. taxpayers and run by the National
Archives in the public interest. The Obama Foundation switched the
planned facility to a purely private entity, designed, built, and operated for
its own purposes — my take is that it is a monument to Obama (curiously, shaped
like a cenotaph) and a center for political organizing. Not a
single book or government document would be housed there. It would
be run at the whim of the Obama Foundation, glorifying the man whom few would
ever call modest.
The term for this sort of maneuver is
"bait and switch," and I think it is a solid legal
claim. The legislation does not authorize a private monument.
Judge Blakey was appointed to the U.S.
District Court for Northern Illinois in 2014 by President Obama. His
is twice a graduate of Notre Dame University, with undergraduate and law
diplomas from the school.
Judge Blakely also threw out what I
regard as a far-fetched argument that the First Amendment rights of the
plaintiffs would be violated because the facility would be used for political
speech with which they might disagree.
One claim Blakey tossed Tuesday was
that taxpayers' First Amendment rights would be infringed upon because tax
money would be spent to reconfigure roads and traffic. The suit
argued that taxpayers would thus subsidize any partisan political activity
by Obama at the center.
The immediate consequence of the
ruling is the start of discovery, as the Washington
Examiner explains:
The judge's ruling means the hearing
determining the parameters for discovery in the case will take place Feb.
27. Because discovery may take months, the judge's decision will
delay construction on the center even if it is later approved.
I expect fireworks at the hearing next
week. If I were the plaintiffs' counsel, I would demand discovery of
a huge range of communications of the Obama Foundation and the Obamas
themselves with any political figures in Chicago and the State of
Illinois. Given that the city and state are strongholds of the
Democrats and notorious for corruption, the possibility of embarrassing emails
or letters, and memoranda of conversations, is not negligible. In
that environment, people may feel safe from hostile scrutiny.
Incidentally, Protect Our Parks is
vehement that its members do not oppose construction of a monument elsewhere,
and they even point to a plot of vacant land on the Southside of Chicago that
is not park land. But it is not lakefront property, so it is much
less prestigious and visible. Less personal glory for
Obama. But if part of the aim of the facility is to help "urban
youth," it would be located in the midst of a community with many, many
more minority young people than live in and around Jackson Park.
Hat tip: Peter von Buol
Obama Makes ‘Surprise’ Visit to Chicago Food Bank – WITH HIS OWN
CAMERA CREW (VIDEO)
Barack Obama made a ‘surprise’ visit to a Chicago food bank on
Tuesday and brought his own camera crew.
Obama waltzed into the Greater
Chicago Food Depository wearing a White Sox hat with his Obama Foundation
camera crew in tow.
Leave it to Obama to make feeding
the homeless and poor about himself.
VIDEO:
Obama then tweeted about it, thanking the food bank for ‘letting
him crash.’
OBAMA: Thanks to the Chicago @FoodDepository team
for all you do and to the volunteers who are doing great work and let me crash
today. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
The Obamas
are set to become a billion-dollar brand soon off of book
deals, speeches and Netflix videos.
Didn’t Barack Obama once say ‘At
certain point you’ve made enough money’?
At least he put some potatoes in
a netted baggie for the poor while his crew captured it on camera.
THE
RISE of BARACK OBAMA, sociopath huckster from Chicago, and the FALL of AMERICA
http://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2018/09/sociopath-barack-obama-gets-award-for.html
“My guess is that the students and employees at the U of I
who listened to Obama's self-righteous speech believe that Obama is ethical
because most of the media intentionally hid the mass corruption, or if they
reported on it, they downplayed it. The corruption and unethical
behavior started as soon as Obama took office.” JACK HELLNER / AMERICAN THINKER.com
“They
knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was
a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great
injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an
egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic
(perhaps irreparable.)” ALLAN ERICKSON
JUDICIAL
WATCH TEN MOST CORRUPT
President
Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to
run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in
office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing
Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. JUDICIAL WATCH
Obama Foundation is raising big bucks but hiding the identities of its
mega-donors
The planned Obama presidential
library "Presidential Center" that wants to grab priceless
lakefront property from taxpayers for a vast campus that amounts to a
cenotaph-like monument to the wonderfulness of the 44th president of the United
States recently filed its required Form 990 for 2017 with the
IRS. It revealed three surprising facts.
One: The Foundation's
fundraising skyrocketed from $13.175
million in 2016 to an eye-popping $232.6
million in 2017, 17.6 times as much. Would it be too
cynical of me to notice that this coincided with the elimination of the
self-imposed limit of $1 million per contributor? We do know that
Obama and his wife actively courted donors once out of office with Clinton
Global Initiative-like schmooze
fests.
Two: The Obama Foundation
decided to mask the identities of its mega-donors. With Obama out of
office in 2017, I presume that federal restrictions and disclosure requirements
also went by the wayside. Would it be too cynical of me to wonder if
any foreign actors were among the mega-donors? We are told,
"Most contributions last year came from individuals, 94.9 percent or
$220.7 million."
Three: The Foundation is
lavishly compensating its top executives. The Chicago
Tribune reports:
CEO David Simas earned
$590,651. His salary is nearly twice what the CEO of the George W. Bush
Foundation earned in 2016, the last year available. ... The executive director
of the foundation, Robbin Cohen, earned $827,834 last year[.]
The Nonprofit
Quarterly figuratively raised its eyebrows over this 2017 data, in an
article entitled "The Obama Foundation's Financials Don't Match Its
Rhetoric." Danielle Holley writes:
The Obama Foundation
released its 2017 financials early last week, providing an in-depth look at the
organization's priorities and the extent to which they match – or in this case,
don't match – the overarching narrative that the Foundation has been telling
its Chicago South Side neighbors.
The Foundation has caused significant controversy over the
past year, with Chicago's public sector and activist
groups raising questions on whether the Presidential Center at Jackson
Park, the Foundation's most significant project, will truly be of public
benefit or simply a force for elitism and gentrification in Chicago's South
Side. Those flames were fanned again last week when the Foundation's
Form 990 filing revealed skyrocketing executive compensation, with Executive
Direct Robbin Cohen making an outsized $827,834 annually, and with a fundraising
bonanza of unknown – and therefore to many suspicious – origin.
One should look at this
compensation a few different ways. Prime among them are:
· Does
it conform to the compensation of like organizations – in this case,
presidential libraries?
· What
mission message does the compensation send to the community, which here
includes a relatively low-income neighborhood concerned about gentrification?
A compensation comparison among
other presidential libraries was done five years ago and reported that some
directors have earned more than $600,000. That said, the 2016 Form
990 report from [the] George W. Bush Foundation shows the Obama
Library CEO's compensation to be twice the highest there.
Read the whole thing.
Meanwhile, the Chicago
Tribune editorial board seems a bit nervous over the possibility of
the OPC becoming an issue in the mayoral election, now that Mayor Rahm Emanuel,
Obama's former chief of staff, has bowed out of the race.
From the start,
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been both pitch man and troubleshooter for the
proposed Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side.
The mayor steered his old
boss' project through Plan Commission and City Council approvals earlier this
year. He has touted the center's "tremendous economic,
educational and cultural" opportunities. This week, his
administration is introducing legislation that sets up a 99-year agreement for
the center's operation on Chicago Park District property.
The worry about the
future of the lavishly funded project is palpable:
If we could have a moment
with each mayoral candidate, we'd explain that this situation is
delicate. That the center is far from a slam dunk. That
the competing interests will try to lure candidates into their respective
camps.
That use of the word
"lure" is revealing.
And as the Trib
editorialists note, there is a precedent for Chicago rejecting use of park land
for monuments to gigantic egos:
Recall that Star Wars
creator George
Lucas envisioned a private museum on public lakefront parkland – and
got derailed by a lawsuit challenging his vision. Lucas abandoned
the idea after the federal judge in the case said he did not believe it would
benefit the public, but would instead "promote private and/or commercial
interests." The Obama Foundation says the public benefit here
is obvious – and has agreed to transfer ownership of the center to the city
once it's built. Will that persuade a judge to toss the
lawsuit? Or will the case lurch along? We'll see you in
court – someday.
In the end, the Trib
wants the project built:
So, in our hypothetical
huddles with the candidates, we'd advise them not to shoot from the lip:
Emanuel and his decisions are fair game; many of the candidates got into the
race to defeat him. But this proposal should be too crucial to the
South Side to become a chew toy for candidates eager to build their anti-Rahm
cred. We'd remind the candidates that for South Siders and other
Chicagoans who see the promise of an Obama Center, squandering this opportunity
would be a sorry mistake.
Everyone's entitled to
his opinions, of course. As are we.
Barack Obama’s plot for a third term for life
A Muslim dictatorship like his crony paymasters, the 9-11
invading Saudis who have financed him for decades.
“Obama has the totalitarian impulse.
After all, he went around saying he didn't have Constitutional authority to
legalize the illegals, and then he tried anyway. The courts stopped him.”
What was
Obama’s motive? Simple, he knew if he did that for Hillary, he’d own the next
President of the United States, and could blackmail her with the truth till the
end of time. It literally would have given him a 3rd and 4th term.
OBAMA AND HIS SAUDIS
PAYMASTERS… Did he serve them well?
Malia,
Michelle, Barack and the College Admissions Scandal https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/03/malia-michelle-barack-and-college.html
*
Michelle was the next to attend Harvard, in her case Harvard
Law School. “Told by counselors that her SAT scores and her grades weren’t good
enough for an Ivy League school,” writes Christopher Andersen in Barack and
Michelle, “Michelle applied to Princeton and Harvard anyway.”
*
Barack Obama’s back door, however, was unique to him. Before
prosecutors send some of the dimmer Hollywood stars to the slammer for their
dimness, they might want to ask just how much influence a Saudi billionaire
peddled to get Obama into Harvard.
///
From $13
to $232 million - Clinton Foundation laundering money through
the Obama
Presidential Center?
David
Brock runs a scam like that between his various foundations
How much
overlap in personnel between Clinton and Obama Center?
Obama’s
monument to himself covertly grabbing $244 million of Illinois taxpayers’ money
for ‘privately-funded’ project
Barack Obama announced
that he would not have a federally-funded presidential library, but instead
would rely on private money paid to the Obama Foundation to build a
“presidential center” that may or may not have any books (we still don’t know,
but there definitely will be basketball courts). That's what
Obama wants, so that's what Obama gets.
The entire project would
be all his to control, a monument created by the person being honored.
Normally, that is the practice of dictators like Saddam Hussein, but Barack
Hussein Obama was a president like no other.
And oddly enough, the
building style chosen by the Obamas resembles nothing so much as a cenotaph,
even though Obama is alive and kicking.
Of course, the usual
claque applauded. Politico
Magazine gushed that it would be:
…a new model for a
privately run presidential museum that can be laudatory in its exhibits and
partisan in its programming, but not while under the troubling imprimatur of
the federal government—and without the taxpayers footing the bill.
Unfortunately, the notion
that taxpayers would be unmolested is fake news. Start with the acres of city-owned
park land on the shore of Lake Michigan that Chicago handed over as a gift, in
apparent violation of law. The group Protect Our Parks has sued to prevent the
giveaway, and cites this Illinois
State Law. (They have also cited
my writings, which gratifies me no end.)
But the taxpayer-owned
parkland is but one aspect of the rape of the taxpayers. The new Illinois state
budget artfully obscures the estimated $244 million dollars that Land of Lincoln Obama
taxpayers will be giving to make the project happen. The Illinois
Policy Institute writes:
Projects relevant to the
forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park will cost
taxpayers $224 million,
according to the Washington Examiner.
This includes $174
million for roadwork in and around Jackson Park and $50 million for renovations
to the Garfield Green Line station, two miles from the presidential center.
Illinois taxpayers will be on the hook for $199 million of the total cost, with
$25 million of the Garfield station renovations funded through a federal grant,
according to the Washington Examiner.
Fifty million dollars for
renovating one El station that is two miles from the
project? Are we supposed to believe that tourists would walk that far though
Chicago’s notoriously dangerous Southside to visit the library? And how can it
take that much money to spiff up a station that already is in operation? Paint
and ceramic tiles aren’t that expensive. Elevators and escalators don’t cost
ten million dollars each.
Unfortunately, Illinois
taxpayers would have no way of knowing this money was flowing to the
presidential project from looking at the state’s 1,245-page budget, which makes
no mention of the Obama Presidential Center. That spending is hidden, but has
been confirmed by
political figures such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
Taxpayers aren’t the only
ones kept in the dark:
The negotiating process
in drafting of the budget took place outside of public view and state senators
were given five hours to read the massive document before taking a vote.
But rest assured that
diversity will be foremost in the minds of those selecting contractors to build
unusually expensive projects for the library. As the Obama
Foundation promises:
In our first year, we
announced our plans to hire a diversity consultant to prioritize the hiring of
local, diverse residents for construction and subcontracting.
THE RISE of BARACK
OBAMA, sociopath huckster from Chicago, and the FALL of AMERICA
http://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2018/09/sociopath-barack-obama-gets-award-for.html
“My guess is that the students and employees at the U of I
who listened to Obama's self-righteous speech believe that Obama is ethical
because most of the media intentionally hid the mass corruption, or if they
reported on it, they downplayed it. The corruption and unethical
behavior started as soon as Obama took office.” JACK HELLNER / AMERICAN THINKER.com
“They knew Obama was an
unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck
waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America
and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar;
yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps
irreparable.)” ALLAN ERICKSON
WELFARE
CHEAT BARACK OBAMA FUNDS HIS EGO TOWER off tax payers backs!
I am sure
that Obama and his friend and former chief of staff Rahm would not like to see
pols running for mayor on a platform of halting the giveaway."
But that halt to
lawlessness hasn't stopped the Windy City's politicians rushing to hand
over almost 20 acres of precious lakefront park land to the private
foundation controlled by Barack and Michelle Obama. The Obama
Foundation (Obama.org)
promises to build a monument to his presidency, called the Obama Presidential Center (OPC). It has to be called the OPC because it will not be an actual presidential library, under the control of the National Archives, but rather a privately controlled entity, free to focus on whatever pleases the 44th president.”
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