Posted on 12/11/2008 6:35:21 PM PST by XR7
Edited on 12/11/2008 6:42:30 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
President-elect Barack Obama
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
I would love to hear the conservation when Reid & Pelosi discuss this behind closed doors. Pelosi has been in need of a lot of botox lately, well this will bring wrinkles that botox can't erase. They chose Obama, they took 400 million from the union to get him elected. Now everyuthing seems to be turning upside down. Oh, what a dreadful hole one can dig for themselves.
And Reid & Pelosi are helpless when it comes to Chicago politics.
Just sit back and wait.
We do believe in Karma!!!!
History in the making...
Our first black POTUS
The first office of a "president-elect" created
The first "president-elect" shi!!ing political bricks via scandal
A public on the verge of rampant political frustration.
Me thinks Obama has surpassed even Jimma' Carter in destroying public trust in leadership.
You did not see any corruption. What you thought was corruption was an alignment of swamp gas, hope and change.
He may be the first casualty in the Obamanation.
The Marionette’s strings are starting to fray.
Going to a place where he'll be "Rahmed" regularly (jail).
He’s a ‘short little shi!t’, isn’t he? Great Napoleon complex. Just like Tom Cruise and his best friend. ;)
This country is going to be in deep trouble for a very long time, if not forever. U.S. politics has officially “jumped the shark” on Ronald Reagan’s last day as POTUS, IMHO.
I'm just waiitng for the other ballet slipper to fall.
Le’s hope we don’t get a Wag the Dog crisis to push this whole thing off the radar - it’s been done before
And he never had to actually run for cover like Hitlery had to do over seas. ~snort
Oh, what a tangled web at the cost of freedom lost individually in painless graduated amounts.
Bet Rahm can’t prove the kids are his.
There are several hundred million people in this country and the only people the Democrats can get to run for public office are criminals and thugs.
(no link)
Rahm Emanuel : From Clinton aide to money maker - He made friends and then a fortune
Chicago Tribune - Sunday, November 9, 2003
Author: Mike Dorning, Washington Bureau.
Before Rahm Emanuel got elected, he got rich.
The former Clinton White House aide turned investment banker turned Chicago Democratic congressman followed a well-trod path from government service to private-sector wealth. But he did so on a scale and with a speed that are rare.
The story of how the wiry, hyperkinetic 43-year-old made more than $16 million in just 2 1/2 years is a tale of money and power, of leverage and connections, of a stunningly successful conversion of moxie and a network of political contacts into cold, hard cash.
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Emanuel owes his investment banking job to Bruce Wasserstein, a high-rolling Wall Street dealmaker who was one of Clinton’s most active fundraisers in the financial community.
Emanuel ‘s two biggest deals involved politically connected utilities: one representing Commonwealth Edison’s corporate parent in a merger and the other representing a buyer in the purchase of a home security business from telecom giant SBC Communications. Shortly afterward, SBC hired as its president William Daley, the commerce secretary of the former Clinton administration and the brother of Chicago’s mayor.
He gained other commissions by pitching such major Democratic donors as S. Daniel Abraham, the press-shy billionaire and former owner of Slim-Fast, and Bernard Schwartz, a defense industrialist who was a central figure in a scandal over the export of missile technology to China. Taken together with their wives, the two men were the party’s largest individual donors in the last presidential election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group.
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According to congressional disclosure statements, Emanuel received $16.2 million from Wasserstein, based on fees that the bank earned from eight clients. In each case, he worked to land the business either through a key executive he had come to know during his political career or was provided an introduction by a contact he developed through his political work.
Three of those clients were corporations controlled by major Democratic donors who developed relationships with Emanuel through their involvement in national party politics: Loral Space and Communications Ltd., headed by Schwartz, who celebrated his 71st birthday at the White House; Slim-Fast, headed by Abraham; and GenTek Inc., a telecommunications manufacturer headed by Paul Montrone.
Schwartz said Emanuel contacted him shortly after leaving the White House, and the defense industry CEO responded with an invitation to meet at his New York office. He said he hired Emanuel to explore potential deals with other companies, which he declined to describe.
“He knew a lot of high-level people in U.S. corporations, and they respected him,” Schwartz said. “So he can get to the high level of corporations to present ideas. And that’s half the battle: to get to the right people, so you don’t waste a lot of time.”
Another Emanuel client, medical equipment manufacturer Lumenis, is controlled by Arie Genger, a financial backer and confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who has served as a back channel between Sharon and the Bush administration.
Emanuel said he forged a relationship with Genger through work on health-care policy, first encountering the Israeli-American businessman at a talk Emanuel gave on the topic while on the White House staff.
Genger did not return repeated calls, but Emanuel and the company’s former CEO both said he led a Wasserstein team representing Lumenis in the acquisition of Coherent Medical, a California-based laser manufacturer.
Two more clients were institutions with deep ties in the Daley administration: the Chicago Board Options Exchange and Avolar, a since-disbanded business jet subsidiary of United Airlines. Emanuel was hired at CBOE by Chairman William Brodsky, an active player in Chicago politics. At Avolar, it was CEO Stuart Oran, a former chief lobbyist for United who had come to know Emanuel through his lobbying work and through local political and cultural activities.
Brodsky said he hired Emanuel to represent the exchange in negotiations with the Chicago Board of Trade over a governance issue. Brodsky said he based the decision largely on impressions of Emanuel that he formed through contacts they had while Emanuel was a Daley fundraiser and White House aide.
“It was really because I had such confidence in Rahm from my previous dealings with him,” Brodsky said. “There were political dimensions to this. It wasn’t just crunching the numbers. In membership organizations, you have to deal with personalities.”
Oran declined a request for an on-the-record interview.
By Emanuel ‘s account, he benefited most from two big deals. One was representing Unicom, the former corporate parent of Commonwealth Edison, in an $8.2 billion merger with Pennsylvania-based Peco Energy Co. The other was representing GTCR Golder Rauner, a Chicago-based venture capital fund managed by Rauner, in its purchase of the SecurityLink home security unit from SBC Communications.
Rauner said he first met Emanuel for lunch at the suggestion of Erskine Bowles, the former chief of staff for Clinton. For Unicom chairman and CEO John Rowe, it was breakfast at the suggestion of Lester Crown, a billionaire who is a major shareholder in defense contractor General Dynamics. Crown said he developed a strong relationship with Emanuel through their mutual involvement in Chicago’s tight-knit civic establishment.
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