132 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biographyin a new development partnership, Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners. Obama, a member of
the board, voted in favor, helping Davis secure the investment. (Binyamin Appelbaum, “Grim
proving ground for Obama’s housing policy,” Boston Globe, June 27, 2008)OBAMA: THE MOST CORRUPT SINCE HARDING? OR SINCE GRANT?
It was a form of corruption which siphoned off immense quantities of public resources in order
to slake the greed of a very small group of insiders, wheel horses, and fixers. In Pringle’s
evaluation, 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 out government
funding for housing development in Chicago. His history is hardly a model of success, except for
the hundreds 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.’ Obama’s resume is
notoriously thin, but it already contains an ample dossier of graft, corruption, and malfeasance in
office.
Obama’s corruption, starting with the beginning of his law practice in Chicago, also has
implications for the future of US housing policy for lower income groups, sure to be a key item in
the wake of the mortgage crisis, and the collapse of the housing industry as it had existed since the
Carter years. According to Pringle, there are already signs that Obama wants to bring the
discredited, scandalous, and failed Chicago model to Washington, where he can launch a new phase
of gangsters and racketeers of the Rezko-Auchi stripe feeding at the public trough. Pringle foresees
that
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.” (Pringle, oped news)
The last big scandal at HUD goes back to the tenure of “Silent Sam” Pierce, an African-
American who was appointed by Reagan. In this case, HUD official Deborah Gore Dean, a cousin