In “The Undistinguished Gentleman,” I surveyed Barack Obama’s threadbare record of supposed public accomplishments. The first of these was his work as a community organizer at a a housing project called Altgeld Gardens, which the Boston Globe revisited and found “far from the kind of success story politicians like to tout.”
The Boston Globe now digs deeper, finding that as a state senator, Obama coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers and pressed for increased federal subsidies as a US Senator:
But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies – including several hundred in Obama’s former district – deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.
Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.
Those friends and supporters include senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, fundraiser Allison Davis (also a partner of Obama’s former law firm) and yes, convicted fraudster and Obama moneyman Antoin “Tony” Rezko:
Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.
Moreover, the Grove Parc development includes cameos from powerful local ministers and machine organizations of the sort Obama claims to have avoided during his meteoric ascent.
Jarrett and others defend Obama’s position that public-private partnerships are superior to public housing. And to be fair, the Chicago housing projects torn down under Mayor Richard M. Daley were truly wretched. But public-private partnerships have a spotty track record in general. Even at the time, critics in Chicago noted that such projects had a history of deteriorating because guaranteed government rent subsidies left companies with little incentive to spend money on maintenance.
NRO’s Jim Geraghty wisely observes that “one of the problems of constantly moving on to the next promotion is that you never get to see the consequences and ramifications of past actions.”
(h/t Memeorandum.)
snake oil salesloser
Those aren’t the slums O! remembers!
threadbare record of supposed public accomplishments
I know what you mean though.
My takeaway from this is that everything Baracky touches dies. No wonder they were so eager to get him out of Chicago and off to Washington.
My takeaway from this is that everything Baracky touches dies.
Kinda like a “black thumb”!
“one of the problems of constantly moving on to the next promotion is that you never get to see the consequences and ramifications of past actions.â€Â
– Hey, thats not a “problem”, thats just a new opportunity. Ain’t changiness the cool.
– I’ve known guys like Obama, probably we all have. We used to call them “lillypad” climbers, stay just long enough on a project that they smelled trouble, or nothing they could wring out of it anymore to their advantage, and whooose, off to a new gig. Never actually produced a damn thing, but always first to talk about everything connected with their tasks in glowing terms.
– I cab also predict exactly what he would say if you confronted him with the present condition of some of these slums he helped develop:
“Aww man….what happened…..When we turned that over to the followup team everything was really going good….damn….just a shame.”
Not only do the newly built properties deteriorate, the crime that was rampant in the projects “amazingly” follows the tenants from their former areas. Instapundit had a link to an article earlier this week about the effects of Section 8 housing and this little reported tidbit that the politicians and developers of “mixed use” areas don’t like to talk about. Poverty and crime are not endemic to a physical area, but are endemic in the culture of social leaches promoted by government handouts. You can relocate criminals and freeloaders from housing projects to a much better class of neighborhood, but they don’t develop any more sense of responsibility for their environs and decay inevitably follows.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime
The “I feel your pain” left just doesn’t seem to give a damn about actual results. Results don’t matter. Throwing OP’s (other people’s) money at poor people is what they care about, because it makes them look “sensitive and caring”.
What they don’t ever do, is look over their shoulder and see the disaster and dependency that they have created. The libs have destroyed the black community and the black family in the name of “caring”. There has NEVER been a government “projectee”, or section 8’er that has any reason to even care what happens to their residence. I used to work on section 8 houses in Nashville, and you would not believe how some of these people treated their “own” homes. Some of these people would even strip all the copper wiring out of their own residences.
Until people are prepared for responsibility, and given a sense of investment in their own homes, welfare will be nothing but a cruel and useless hoax.
And yet, our educational system is geared to prolonging this insanity.
But try to tell that to a progg….
Anyone know whether the Habitat for Humanity houses have this same issue? Many, nay most, of the recipients are previous section 8ers. All Habitat homeowners,are by contract, required to maintain the homes and are charged a nominal “mortgage” payment. They, unlike Obama’s leaches, have a financial stake in the home, but whether this makes a difference, I don’t know. Jimmah, probably in league with the MSM, doesn’t exactly publicize the long term results. And Habitat recipients are much more thoroughly vetted and couseled on the responsibilies they are taking on. The Obama recipients, not so much. It would be interesting to see if the Habitat model is any more effective, and if so, why it is not the model that big cities are adopting instead of the public/private avenue Obama championed? Of course, Habitat homes are built by volunteers and use mostly donated materials, so the kickbacks/financial rewards aspect is much less lucrative for either the politicians or the developers. I think I just answered the previous question…..
bmeuppls, the answer is that Habitat homes have many of the same issues, just not quite as bad (more actual semi-success stories). It is on balance a successful program, but not nearly as much so as sometimes painted. Ric’s Rule #1: It Ain’t That Simple (true for arbitrary values of complexity).
Regards,
Ric
So should we declare the war on poverty a lost cause and withdraw? Would Obama (or the Proggs) ever face this reality? Do they even know reality except as they choose to view/define it in terms of feel goodisms as opposed to metric based determinations or when they use it to further their own power and greed? They do not, as Lost Dog asserts, ever examine their handiwork or care about the long term results.
Howard Husock wrote in City Journal back in ’95:
Not a cure-all, of course, but a damn sight better than you’re likely to find in your Section 8 approval compounds.
If we could just get Jimmah to stick with Habitat all would be well. Well, at least not as f**ked up. And O! too, for that matter.
So should we declare the war on poverty a lost cause and withdraw?
It’s a quagmire. Or it would be if not for this damn drought down here.
So Habitat recipients are not representative of most of the leaches on public assistance. They have supervisors reports from work so they must have a job. They get along well with others and have some measure of control over their children and keep their homes tidy. If we were to apply this criteria to public works projects, the Obama’s of this world would probably fight it. And as for the people that don’t fit this criteria? Obama would say give them the same deal the Habitat folks get and damn the consequences. Anything else would be proclaimed discriminatory even though, here in the South, outside the large cities, most of those in Section 8 housing are poor, white and in no different circumstance than the blacks in the inner city “ghettos” save for geography. Yet no developers or community activists clammer for mixed use projects in these areas to serve these folks. Might it be that inner city projects are prime, highly visible projects that politicians opportunistically champion? So, is Obama a champion of the downtrodden only when it accrues to his career to be feted as such by the media and the PTB in the democrat party? That is opportunism at the expense of those he claims to want to help and as bad or worse than a predator looking for the next easy target to prey upon. Ronald Reagan had it right… “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” is a sure indication of a politician climbing the political ladder on the backs of the poor and helpless…
bmeuppls @ 10:
“It would be interesting to see if the Habitat model is any more effective, and if so, why it is not the model that big cities are adopting instead of the public/private avenue Obama championed?”
Part of the answer to the question above is that Progressives depict qualification standards as means of oppression. This allows them to detach from objective standards and deal with issues on a purely subjective ideological basis. Check out Jane Elliott below w/r to measuring intelligence.
Jane Elliott: http://www.reason.com/news/show/27632.html
[…] Elliott is unbearably tendentious and ignorant. To teach what an IQ test truly is, she gives the brown eyes half of the answers to an impossible test before the blue eyes enter the room, explaining that, for people of color, the IQ exam is “a test about which you know absolutely nothing.” IQ tests only measure “white culture.” They are a means of “reinforcing our position of power,” and “we do this all the time in public, private, and parochial schools,” using “culturally biased tests, textbooks, and pictures on the wall…for white people.”
“Comment by bmeuppls on 6/27 @ 9:26 pm #
So should we declare the war on poverty a lost cause and withdraw? Would Obama (or the Proggs) ever face this reality? Do they even know reality except as they choose to view/define it in terms of feel goodisms as opposed to metric based determinations or when they use it to further their own power and greed? They do not, as Lost Dog asserts, ever examine their handiwork or care about the long term results.”…………………
Their results don’t matter. What the proggs are doing is convincing more and more people that they are not responsible for their own decisions. The fact that we have spent almost SEVEN TRILLION DOLLARS on the “war on poverty” and still have the same rate of “poverty” is NOT TO BE MENTIONED!
“FREE SHIT! YEAH, BABY! I want OP’s money! With NO responsibility! You who have worked your butts off to have a good life have stolen all of OUR money! I can steal you blind, and STILL get more of your money, you rich motherfuckers!”
You work eighty hours a week to make a good life for your family?
ASSHOLES! I get your money for not doing SHIT! You OWE ME, because I am too stupid to use logic, and it’s YOUR FAULT!! YOU have stolen MY money! I don’t need to work for it, because The Swimmer says it’s MINE!
Fuckin’ SAPS! That’s what the left consists of. A bunch of irrational saps. There is no end to “Gimme, gimme, gimme” when idiots think thaty they can buy their way out of “…isms”.
Jerkism – the only “…ism” that I am affected by.
Hmmmmm…
I wonder if I talked to any clueless idiots tonight?
TerryH… I totally agree with your argument that they think qualifications=oppression. And I find it totally amusing that they then want to bash anyone that strays from the truth as they perceive it by proclaiming their qualifications (I have a pee-aich-dee, I am a scientist) and wielding them as a club to attempt to silence debate. It is doubly amusing when the intended persuasiveness of their qualification bash does not induce silence, but I digress. The layers of irony and paradoxism inherent in their arguments and behavior would be laughable if it were not so tragic. They are proud even arrogant in their rants, marches and attempts at debate. I think with my heart… therefore I care… Rethuglicans don’t, so they are uncaring and mean. I am superior!!!! (Breast-beating then ensues). All the while they won’t even cast their blinkered eyes to view the results of their heartfelt dogma. Intentions = Results in their view, and all else be damned including rights, metrics, and civil discourse. And these are the mob at the gates of power demanding to be put in charge! Obama is a tested and true believer in this method of non-debate and that makes him and his followers dangerous. He is attempting to wield his race with the zest of a zealot demanding no opposition and no accountability and a subjectivists world vision (it is because my heart tells me so), Oh and by the way I am black… so that is the end of the discussion – or are you a racist? That he sees no inherent contradiction in this worldview as it pertains to politics is to put it mildly frightening.
One additional thought and I will retire…
The subjective way in which they apply their subjectiveness is another amusing paradox.. metrics don’t have meaning as they are applied to the war on poverty but climate change metrics PROVE that the earth is warming. It’s no wonder they tend to be unhappy and in therapy. The contorted mental gymnastics they use to further their arguments would make even Mallanaga Vatsyayana flaccid…
It is doubly amusing when the intended persuasiveness of their qualification bash does not induce silence,…
Unbeknown to the Proggs themselves, they tend to be dumber than posts. I gots stories.
21. Comment by J. Peden on 6/28 @ 1:38 am #
“”It is doubly amusing when the intended persuasiveness of their qualification bash does not induce silence,…”
“Unbeknown to the Proggs themselves, they tend to be dumber than posts. I gots stories.”
Quite so. As the posts from people like datadave, Semanticlit, nishi, cynn, and the usual bombing-run posters PW gets from the KozKidz, DU, etc. Sad, really…
Getting back to the main point, the simple truth is that ObamaLamaDingDong would not be where he is right now, except for the fact that he is black (half-black, whatever). Affirmative action on steroids, if you will.
Had O! been white, he would have long since been left in the electoral dust, rather like John Edwards; just another vacuous but egomaniacial poser utterly lacking in any real experience or skills pertinent to the job. And what little experience he does have, as demonstrated here, does not bear close scrutiny.
Of course, Hillary was no better, and the fact that the Democrats, as crooked as they are, would have allowed either one of these two anywhere near the levers of real power in this country is downright scary. To be sure, the party of Truman and Kennedy is long dead…
[…] called Altgeld Gardens left a potholed trail of boarded-up buildings. As a state senator, his housing policies enriched donors like Valerie Jerrett and Tony Rezko, but spawned uninhabitable slum properties and […]