202 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyRezko - 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.
The Boston Globe also includes a somewhat lower level figure as an example of the broader
clientele implicated in these operations:
One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized
complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found
more than 1,800 code violations.’ (Binyamin Appelbaum, “Grim proving ground for Obama’s
housing policy,” Boston Globe, June 27, 2008)
The Chicago landscape is filled with individuals who claim to have once been civil rights
activists, but who now seem to be concentrating on graft; Obama himself is an example. The Boston
Globe writes:
Chicago’s struggles with the deterioration of its subsidized private developments seemed to
reach a new height in 2006, when the federal government foreclosed on Lawndale Restoration,
the city’s largest subsidized-housing complex. City inspectors found more than 1,800 code
violations, including roof leaks, exposed wiring, and pools of sewage. Lawndale Restoration
was a collection of more than 1,200 apartments in 97 buildings spread across 300 blocks of
west Chicago. It was owned by a company controlled by Cecil Butler, a former civil rights
activist who came to be reviled as a slumlord by a younger generation of activists. [...] In 1995,
Butler’s company got a $51 million loan from the state to fund additional renovations at
Lawndale Restoration. In 2000 Butler’s company brought in Habitat Co. to help manage the
complex. Nonetheless, the buildings deteriorated badly. The problems came to public attention
in a dramatic way in 2004, after a sport utility vehicle driven by a suburban woman trying to
buy drugs struck one of the buildings, causing it to collapse. City inspectors arrived in the
ensuing glare, finding a long list of code violations, leading city officials to urge the federal
government to seize the complex.’ (Binyamin Appelbaum, “Grim proving ground for Obama’s
housing policy,” Boston Globe, June 27, 2008)
Valerie Jarrett, who has been part of Obama’s traveling entourage during much of the primary
season, turns out to be a dedicated ideologue of the public-and private partnership, that is to say, of
privatization in a way which would be typical of a Friedmanite economics professor at the
University of Chicago:
Jarrett, a powerful figure in the Chicago development community, agreed to be interviewed but
declined to answer questions about Grove Parc, citing what she called a continuing duty to
Habitat’s former business partners. She did, however, defend Obama’s position that public-
private partnerships are superior to public housing. “Government is just not as good at owning
and managing as the private sector because the incentives are not there,” said Jarrett, whose
company manages more than 23,000 apartments. “I would argue that someone living in a poor
neighborhood that isn’t 100 percent public housing is by definition better off.”’ (Binyamin
Appelbaum, “Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy,” Boston Globe, June 27, 2008)
This, we should recall, is one of Michelle Obama’s closest friends and indeed in many ways the
initial sponsor of her career. Concepts like the “Chicago development community” may translate
into “the Chicago graft community” on closer examination.