Thirty Degrees Below Zero
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/08/thirty-degrees-below-zero.html
For more than five weeks during the brutally cold winter of 1997, tenants suffered without any heat in a government-subsidized apartment building. The 31-unit building in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood had been “rehabbed” just four years prior at taxpayer expense, no less.
The building’s owner — Rezmar Corporation — didn’t bother to turn on the heat for weeks. In fact, it didn’t do so until it was sued.
Rezmar’s properties turned out to be catastrophic failures: 17 buildings ended up in foreclosure, 6 are boarded up, hundreds of apartments are vacant and require repair... and taxpayers were stuck with millions in unpaid loans.
All of these buildings were in — or just blocks away from — a single state senator’s district. A district belonging to a young, up-and-coming politician named Barack Obama.
In fact, during the brutal winter of 1997, even while Rezmar refused to heat its Englewood apartments, it was donating $1,000 to state senator Obama’s campaign fund.
And as a so-called “community organizer” and then a state senator, Obama — and close friend and confidante Valerie Jarrett, who was responsible for property management — couldn’t even keep huge, federally subsidized housing complexes like Grove Parc habitable.
Photo’s at links;
Who is Valerie Jarrett, senior White House adviser to Barack Obama?
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/11/who-is-valerie-jarrett-senior-white.html
“Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.)
Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis.
As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered “uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage...”
All subsidized by the taxpayers, mind you, and aided and abetted by the likes of Jarrett and Obama. The Boston Globe explained the troubling quid pro quo between Jarrett, Rezko and Obama:
Obama [rewarded his backers with] legislative action as a state senator. In 2001, Obama sponsored a successful bill that increased state subsidies for private developers. The law let developers designated by the state raise up to $26 million a year by selling tax credits to Illinois residents. For each $1 in credits purchased, the buyer was allowed to decrease his taxable income by 50 cents...
The developers gave Obama their financial support. Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko all served on Obama’s campaign finance committee when he won a seat in the US Senate in 2004...