Jarrett is honored at pre-inaugural gala (the audacity of Chicago audacity)

A longtime confidant of President-elect Barack Obama who will serve in his administration was honored tonight at a pre-inauguration celebration in Chicago.

Valerie Jarrett -- a Chicago businesswoman, lawyer and civic leader tapped in November to be a senior adviser for Obama -- received the League of Black Women's annual Black Rose Award.

"This weekend is bittersweet for me," Jarrett said. "I am leaving a city that I just love. It has been a good city to me. . . . I will be back. This is my home."

City Treasurer Stephanie Neely gave the welcoming address at the event, held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Chicago. Jarrett received the award, a sculpture of a woman's silhouette, for her commitment to providing opportunities for minority women.

Jarrett is president and chief executive officer of the Habitat Co., a real estate firm assigned by a federal judge to help ensure the Chicago Housing Authority ends segregation in public housing.

The White House appointment means Jarrett will give up her job at Habitat. She has already begun to step down from civic boards and corporate directorships.

Jarrett, 52, is a good friend of both Barack and Michelle Obama. She served as chairwoman of the finance committee for his 2004 campaign for U.S. Senate and was a key adviser in the presidential race.

She reminded the mostly African-American audience on Saturday that they too helped elect Obama to office and should feel they are part of the historic victory.

Jarrett warned the crowd that although Obama was elected, there will be challenges.

"The hard work is ahead," Jarrett said. "Roll up your sleeves, and you can help. Just don't count on President Obama to solve all the problems."

Jarrett, a former city planning commissioner under Mayor Richard Daley, will be Obama's senior adviser and assistant to the president in charge of intergovernmental relations. In that role, she will have the ear of the president and act as a go-between with state and local elected officials and public interest groups.

The League of Black Women invites supporters of President-elect Barack Obama to celebrate his historic election and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at Chicago’s premier pre-inaugural dinner/dance, The People’s Ball.

The Honorable Richard M. Daley is the Honorary Chair of the celebration, which will include a special tribute to Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President-elect Obama and CEO of the Habitat Company. Highly accomplished in her own right, she also comes from a long line of accomplished African-Americans; the first to graduate from MIT, the first to head the Chicago Housing Authority, and her father was the first black resident at St. Luke’s Hospital. She is also the niece of Vernon Jordan. She will be honored for her leadership as an outstanding African-American woman in Chicago’s business and philanthropic communities.

Sandra Finley, National President of the League of Black Women, an organization founded in the 1970s to empower African American women through education, research and the promotion of joyful living, is the creator of The Peoples Ball, which is anticipated to attract Obama supporters from the entire Midwest region.

“You’ve helped, hoped and won and this is your time to shine,” Finley says. “Spark the inaugural spirit right here in Chicago and send it all the way to Washington, D.C.

Proceeds from The Peoples Ball will benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Attendees are asked to donate a non-perishable food item or make a contribution. To purchase tickets, go to http://www.shop.leagueofblackwomen.org.

To learn more about the League of Black Women, visit http://www.leagueofblackwomen.org.

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http://www.obama-mamas.com/blog/?p=138

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Who is Valerie Jarrett? Characterized as "the other side of Barack Obama's brain" by CBS News, Jarrett first met the Obamas seventeen years ago when she offered Michelle Obama a job. Since that time Jarrett has served as a very close advisor to both Obamas. While some have speculated that Jarrett is interested in taking Obama's place in the U.S. Senate, the New York Times reported that it is more likely she will become a senior White House adviser. And that is terrible news.

Judicial Watch recently obtained documents linking Valerie Jarrett to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and former Obama fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko.

According to the documents, which we obtained from the Illinois Secretary of State, 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 Antoin "Tony" Rezko and Allison Davis. (You may recall that 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. Jarrett wrote of her support for Davis/Rezko projects, and was also one of the strongest supporters in revitalizing two struggling Chicago banks which later provided loans and mortgages for the Davis/Rezko housing projects.

And what sort of housing projects were Davis and Rezko operating? According to press reports, housing projects operated by Davis and Rezko have been substandard and beset with code violations. The Chicago Sun Times reported that one Rezko-managed housing project was "riddled with problems -- including squalid living conditions…lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers." Davis, meanwhile, was nailed for a code violation when sewage began to seep through electrical outlets in one of his low income apartment buildings.

Of course, Jarrett would have no issues supporting these kinds of housing projects. As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company, Jarrett 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…In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition." It is no stretch to say that she was a slumlord. Jarrett refused to comment on the conditions of the complex.

Valerie Jarrett is a product of the corrupt Chicago political machine. Washington already has plenty of corruption; we don't need to import more of it from Chicago.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=D6616CC8-163B-427D-8A7F-28A19BF759F5

Good read:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2162599/posts

It’s the Democrat-on-Democrat nature of the Blagojevich controversy that gives it its present legs, and therefore keeps the story alive. The objection to Blago isn’t that he’s a crook. It’s that he’s a crook who got caught on tape being a crook. And on tape with him is Rahm Emanuel, who in order to preserve his pristine reputation (and by extension, that of the guy he reports to) must see to it that Blago takes the fall. So all those who support Rahm and his boss have closed ranks around the incoming president and in the great new tradition of throwing one of their own under the bus, have nominated Blago to take the fall.

The problem is, Blago didn’t get the memo. As nice as it would be to exonerate the Democrat party by falling on his own sword and making his crimes appear as just one of another series of supposedly isolated Democrat scandals, Blago has no intention of eating stale baloney sandwiches for the next fifteen years while sharing a cell with some guy named “Crusher.”

Therefore, despite Harry Reid’s and the press’ wishes, Blago isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. To stay in office he’s using the same Democrat logic on his fellow Dems that they’ve used on our side these past many years. Where’s the courtroom-quality proof? And if it’s there, it wasn’t collected legally, so it never really happened. And even if it did, it’s just about “money” (everyone in Illinois and the Democrat Party embraces pay for play, so why is Blago being singled out?). Like it or not, Blago is still the President — er, I mean Governor — and he’ll continue to act on the people’s behalf while his political enemies spread their lies and untruths, which they can’t prove, and even if they could it wouldn’t matter anyway because that’s how things are really done and everyone knows it.

Roland Burris is Blago’s post-deposition cruise missile launch against an empty aspirin factory. Don’t judge my boy Blago for his political chutzpah. Just admire it for what it is. He’s following in a great tradition of Democrat leaders who are helping to chart new ways to screw the American public, whose only questions of late are how far to bend over.

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