<b>The Advice of "Chief Advisor" Valerie Jarrett--- Malkin calls it: Do It Yourself Vetting</b>

Advice on “green energy” czar Van Jones--- HIRE HIM!
Advice on Healthcare--- DUMP and DECEIVE the POOR PUBLIC (in action, not word)
Advice on Public Housing for the Poor and Underprivileged--- SCREW EM! (in action, not word)

“Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House, we've been watching him, really, for - he's not that old— but for as long as he's been active out of Oakland and all of the ways that he has - the creative ideas that he has and so now we have captured that and we have all that energy and enthusiasm in the White House”

<>Advice on Healthcare: Dump and Deceive the Poor Public (in action, not word)

Republicans on Capitol Hill are taking a fresh look at one of the seedier Chicago stories from Barack and Michelle Obama's past in ratcheting up the debate on Obamacare: the University of Chicago Hospital's "Urban Health Initiative," which Michelle Obama ran prior to her taking a leave of absence to campaign with her husband in 2007.

Because of the medical center's location on the South Side of Chicago, a large number of indigent patients, without health insurance, were using the hospital's emergency room for care. The nonprofit hospital, which in 2007 made more than $100 million in profits, largely because its beds and facilities were used by paying patients and those fully insured, paid Mrs. Obama to oversee the Urban Health Initiative program that identified indigent patients and then steered them to other area medical facilities. In fact, some of those profits came from Canadian citizens who traveled to the U.S. for medical procedures they could not get due to Canada's restrictive national health care programs.

It wasn't just Obama's wife who was involved in creating the program. Senior White House adviser and political strategist, David Axelrod, and his PR firm in Chicago were retained to develop a media campaign to encourage area residents not to use University of Chicago as a medical facility. Senior White House official, and Obama friend, Valerie Jarrett served on the board of directors of the hospital and approved the plan for the Urban Health Initiative, and the hiring of Axelrod. And on the recommendation of then Senator Obama, Dr. Eric Whitaker, was named director of the Initiative in late 2007, after serving as the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, a job he got after Obama recommended him to then Gov. Rod Blagojevich via another Obama crony, Tony Rezko, a fund-raiser for Obama and now a convicted felon on federal corruption charges. Candidate Obama thought enough of the program to tout it as an example of how health care reform should be done….

The resultant PR campaign was a study in Orwellian audacity. Chicago's inner city residents soon began hearing that UCMC's patient dumping program would "dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents" and that the medical center was generously willing to provide "a ride on a shuttle bus to other centers." Likewise, the people who ran the community hospitals to which these unwanted patients were being shuttled began to read claims in local media to the effect that the Urban Health Initiative was good for them as well. Dr. Eric Whitaker, the Blagojevich crony who succeeded Mrs. Obama as Director of the program, repeatedly assured gullible reporters that the financial impact on these hospitals would be positive: "The initiative actually is improving their bottom lines." The CFOs of those hospitals were no doubt relieved to learn that treating Medicaid and uninsured patients is profitable.

See also:
Michelle Obama’s Shady Involvement in Chicago Hospital’s “Patient Dumping” of the Poor Being Investigated
http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/2009/07/27/michelle-obamas-shady-involvement-in-chicago-hospitals-patient-dumping-of-the-poor-being-investigated/
U. of C. shunning poor patients?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1122691,CST-NWS-hosp23.article

Advice on Public Housing for the Poor and Underpriviledged: Screw em! (in action, not word)

Valerie Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.

The owner, a local nonprofit company called Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp....Woodlawn Preservation hired a private management firm, William Moorehead and Associates, to oversee the complex. In 2001, the company lost that contract and a contract to manage several public housing projects for allegedly failing to do its job. The company's head, William Moorehead, was subsequently convicted of embezzling almost $1 million in management fees.

Woodlawn Preservation hired a new property manager, Habitat Co. At the time, the company was headed by its founder, Daniel Levin, also a major contributor to Obama's campaigns. Valerie Jarrett was executive vice president.

Residents say the complex deteriorated under Moorehead's management and continued to decline after Habitat took over. A maintenance worker at the complex says money often wasn't even available for steel wool to plug rat holes. But as late as 2003, a routine federal inspection still gave conditions at Grove Parc a score of 82 on a 100-point scale.

“About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. 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.”

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/?page=full

See also:
What the NYT’s 8,100-word Valerie Jarrett profile didn’t tell you http://michellemalkin.com/2009/07/27/what-the-nyts-8100-word-valerie-jarrett-profile-didnt-tell-you/

Jarrett has surrounded herself with some rather unsavory characters who appear to be more like 'enforcers' than 'advisers.'

Strautmanis is one of Barack and Michelle Obama's closest friends, going all the way back to the beginning in Chicago. He has worked not only for the Obamas but for disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

But here is an interesting tidbit concerning Strautmanis, in Jarrett's own words:

Obama describes him as a “utility man,” and campaign advisor and Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett says he’s the person you call when you need help with a delicate situation. “He understands the importance of the personal touch and that e-mails and phone calls are not always appropriate,” she said, talking about a specific example that she wouldn’t describe in detail…

http://www.examiner.com/x-3704-Columbia-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m9d5-The-powers-behind-the-throne

Since moving to the White House, Jarrett has resigned her position as chief executive of Habitat Co., one of the Midwest's largest property-management firms. Her report shows she earned $550,000 in deferred compensation from Habitat Executive Services, plus a salary of $302,000 in 2008.

She also reported $346,687 in income from serving on seven boards, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Jarrett's most lucrative fee as a director was $146,643 from Chicago-based USG Corp., a building products maker.

Jarrett is also still receiving compensation from the Chicago Transit Authority, where she was Mayor Richard Daley's handpicked chairwoman from 1995 to 2003. She estimated $35,559 in deferred compensation as part of the CTA's supplemental retirement plan.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-white-house-wealthapr09,0,1573304.story

(no links)

CHICAGO A NEWCOMER TO THE BUSINESS OF POLITICS HAS SEEN ENOUGH TO REACH SOMECONCLUSIONS ABOUT RESTORING VOTERS’ TRUST.
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - Saturday, August 3, 1996
Author: JOE FROLIK NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT

EXCERPT

Before entering the race, Obama said, he spoke to about 30 elected officials in the district, which includes the integrated, middle class neighborhood around the University of Chicago as well as some of the city’s poorest precincts.

“Not one asked me where I stood on an issue,” he says, smiling.

“What they cared about was, `Who sent you? How much money you got?’

His answers were apparently good enough; the party backed his nomination.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////

AIDE BRINGS OWN VISION TO CITY POST
Chicago Tribune - Sunday, December 8, 1991
Author: Wilma Randle.
Valerie Jarrett `s temporary stint at Chicago`s City Hall is turning into

quite a long affair.

Jarrett, 35, was recently named by Mayor Richard Daley to head the city`s soon-to-be-merged offices of planning and economic development. In that role

she will have a wide influence overdowntown development projects, neighborhood urban-renewal projects and the city`s numerous business-development programs. Her appointment comes only a few months after she moved from her job in

the city`s legal department to serve as Daley`s deputy chief of staff. Those

two moves, coupled with the apparent meteoric rise of her star within the

mayor`s inner circle, have set tongues wagging at City Hall.

It also has triggered talk in the city`s development circles. ``Just who

is Valerie Jarrett and why did she get this job?`` people are asking.

(snip)

SNEED
Chicago Sun-Times - Wednesday, October 7, 1992
Author: Michael Sneed
Tipsville . . .

Dateline: The Hiring Line - City Planning and Development Commissioner Valerie Jarrett began cleaning house Tuesday (as per Sneed’s tip Aug. 25) by hiring Deborah Mitchell as her first deputy. The kicker: “Not only have I known her (Mitchell) for eight years,” Jarrett told Sneed, “but she was once my client!” Translation: Jarrett used to be Mitchell’s lawyer!

The addendum: Jarrett’s broom is just beginning its job. There’s more to come.

(snip)

SNEED
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, October 15, 1992
Author: Michael Sneed

EXCERPT

Tipsville . . .

Dateline: City Hall - Watch for City Planning Commissioner Valerie Jarrett to hire Michelle Robinson- Obama , an assistant to Mayor Daley’s former chief of staff, Dave Mosena, as her new point person responsible for monitoring the city’s major business expansion and retention efforts.
//

KUP’S COLUMN
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, August 11, 1995
EXCERPT

City Planning Commissioner Valerie Jarrett is hosting a private autograph party Saturday for Chicago lawyer Barack Obama , author of Dreams From My Father. Obama was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.

Commentary
Daily News, The (Batavia, NY) - Monday, August 26, 2002
a farewell to an old friend

EXCERPT

“It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and make commentary. It’s harder to apply oneself to bring about change in the world,” said state Sen. Barack Obama , whom Jarrett mentored. “That in the end was Vernon Jarrett ‘s legacy.”

They lauded a man whose parents were children of former slaves, who grew up in Paris, Tenn., during Jim Crow laws and went on to earn a degree from Knoxville College. A man who went on to work alongside W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes.

Gala revels in Chicago blues
Chicago Sun-Times - Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Author: Mary Cameron Frey
Once again, the Black Creativity Gala at the Museum of Science and Industry kicked off Black History Month with a stunning new exhibit, “Sweet Home Chicago: Big City Blues 1946-1966.”
EXCERPT

Michelle Obama arrived with Valerie Jarrett — and a shopping bag full of “ Obama for Senator” buttons for her husband, candidate Barack Obama . “Everyone’s always asking me for them, so I thought I’d be prepared tonight,” she said.

STELLA’S COLUMN
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Author: Stella Foster
EXCERPT

WE WERE MAKING a joyful noise and dancing up a storm at Ebony/Jet mag’s Linda Johnson Rice and hubby Mel Farr’s holiday bash Friday. The party people included Linda’s beautiful parents, John and Eunice Johnson; radio’s Tom Joyner with wife, Donna Richardson; Johnathan Rodgers and wife, Royal Kennedy; U.S. Sen.-elect Barack Obama with lovely wife Michelle; Valerie Jarrett and Kevin Duckworth; WVON’s Melody Spann with hubby Pierre Cooper; Nora Daley Conroy and husband, Sean; Boeing’s James Bell and wife, Mary; ComEd’s Frank Clark and wife Vera; Starcom Media’s Renetta McCann with husband, Kevin; Bill Smithburg with wife, Maria, and Avis Lavelle and hubby Osekre Hoes.

(snip)

Obama riding momentum
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - Thursday, October 19, 2006
Author: Lynn Sweet, The Chicago Sun-Times
Monday night, on the eve of his book tour, Sen. Barack Obama was feted by some of his closest friends and supporters.

Just a few blocks from his own house, the reception was at the Kenwood home of Barbara and Jim Bowman, the parents of Valerie Jarrett , who until recently was the treasurer of HOPEFUND, Obama ‘s national political action committee.

The guests — people who were there at the beginning of his 2004 Senate bid and some of his best donors, even comedian Bernie Mack — were given copies of The Audacity of Hope that Obama already autographed.

The invitation was sent out on behalf of Obama 2010, the war chest for Obama ‘s Senate re-election campaign — presuming, that is, if he is not elected president or vice president in 2008, a prospect that was the buzz at the party and increasingly in political circles.

(snip)

//
http://news.muckety.com/2008/11/16/as-senior-white-house-adviser-valerie-jarrett-will-be-loyal-networker/6821

More important, she is fiercely loyal to the Obamas, whom she has known since 1991 when she persuaded Michelle Robinson to leave a high-paying law firm job to come to work on the staff of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Then Daley’s deputy chief of staff, Jarrett reportedly assured Obama that his fiance would not be asked to do anything untoward.

“She is one of our best friends, somebody who is practically a sister,” Obama told the Wall Street Journal. “I don’t make any major decisions about asking her about them first.”

Jarrett traveled extensively with the Obamas through the long presidential campaign, playing the role of honest broker.

“I’m very frank,” she told Time. “I always tell them what I think. But that’s probably easier to do when you’re good friends.”

Her job title in the new administration will be White House senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison.

Besides advising the president-elect on a wide-ranging set of issues, she told the New York Times, she will be the White House point person for state and local officials and will supervise the Office of Public Liaison, which she hopes to make a channel for government-citizen collaboration.

“The level of the engagement in the campaign was tremendous, and we want people to understand this will be their White House,” she said.

While lacking Washington experience, Jarrett has well-honed political instincts after years spent in the trenches, often playing the role of conciliator and fixer.

As a court-appointed overseer to the desegregation of public housing in Chicago, for instance, she negotiated between residents of several notorious housing projects and the real-estate developers who were replacing them with middle-income housing.

In her latest iteration, she was CEO of The Habitat Co., a real estate development and management company, as well as vice chair of the 2016 Chicago Olympic Committee, which is spearheading the city’s bid for the Summer Olympics.

Jarrett comes from a distinguished family.

Her great-grandfather was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T., her grandfather was the first African-American to head the Chicago Housing Authority; and her father, James Bowman, is a pathologist who was the first African-American to receive tenure in the University of Chicago’s department of biological sciences.

Her mother, Barbara Bowman, is a child psychologist and co-founder of the Erikson Institute for child development in Chicago.

Her great-uncle, Vernon Jordan, is the Washington super lawyer and Clinton confidante.

Like the Obamas, she lives in Hyde Park. Her daughter, Laura Jarrett, attends Harvard Law School.

(no links)

Jarrett Leaving As Head Of Planning
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, September 15, 1995
Author: MARY A. MITCHELL
Planning and Development Commissioner Valerie Jarrett said Thursday that she will leave her cabinet post at the end of the month to become executive vice president of Habitat Co.

“After my vacation - where I did a lot of soul searching - and conversations with my family, we decided this opportunity was really too good to pass up,” she said.

At a press conference early in the day, Mayor Daley ducked questions about Jarrett’s departure. He later issued a statement praising her performance.

“She has been great in a tough job,” Daley said. “You often have competing interests, developers, community groups and preservationists. It is not easy finding a balance that’s good for the whole city, but Valerie has done it.”

One of Jarrett’s responsibilities at Habitat will be to oversee scattered-site housing.

Jarrett, 38, has lasted through three administrations and is seen by some key business, civic and community leaders as the force behind Daley’s push for neighborhood redevelopment.

“I’ve worked with commissioners for the last 24 years, and I think Valerie Jarrett is one of the most resourceful, creative and dedicated persons in city government that I have ever met,” said Jonathan Kleinbard, vice president of the University of Chicago.

But behind the scenes, there were feuds with some of Daley’s advisers, including Paul Vallas and Gery Chico, who since have been dispatched to the Board of Education.

The Planning Department has been criticized as being bloated with deputies and slow to finalize loans with developers. Recently, it came under fire for its role in a $5.5 million loan deal with a movie company suspected of having mob ties. The administration later yanked the loan.

“Daley asked me to stay,” Jarrett said. “When you make tough decisions, you are not always popular. . . . I always felt and still feel I had the mayor’s complete support.”

Jarrett, whom Daley chose for the job in 1991 during a sweeping reorganization of his administration, was considered the highest-ranking African American in the cabinet.

(snip)

LOOPHOLE LETS CITY BACK OUT OF STUDIO
Chicago Tribune - Friday, June 30, 1995
Author: Joseph A. Kirby and John Kass, Tribune Staff Writers.
A simple X in a “no” box buried in a terse, bureaucratic four-page questionnaire will allow the Daley administration to scotch a $5.5 million, low-interest loan it promised to associates of organized crime figures who planned to build a $10 million West Side movie studio.

The failure of principals to disclose the 1994 gambling indictments of investors William and Sam Galioto gives the city a legal escape hatch, Mayor Richard Daley said Thursday

But dead or not, questions about the deal linger.

How did people with established connections to mob boss Sam “Wings” Carlisi convince at least two aldermen, a city agency’s review committee, one City Hall commissioner, several mayoral aides and even the mayor that the city should invest more than $5 million in their venture before anyone detected something amiss?

The mayor conceded Thursday that many politicians, businessmen and Hollywood officials privately suspect that organized crime is involved in some aspects of local moviemaking. But those suspicions set off no whistles at City Hall until after the mayor had signed off on the loan.

“Yes. There have been accusations of that,” Daley said of links between movies and the mob . Once specifics about mob ties to the studio investors surfaced, he said, “We stopped it.”

Mayoral aides said Daley vetoed the loan after reading a confidential FBI report that outlined organized crime’s influence on a number of local production companies.

Yet Daley could not explain why suspicions about the industry didn’t short-circuit the loan deal when representatives of StudioWorks first sought funding from the city’s Department of Economic Development. According to various sources, the genesis of the deal dates back to 1991, when then-27th Ward Ald. Rickey Hendon, now a state senator, first introduced the Galiotos to top city officials, including Valerie Jarrett , the city’s economic development chief.

On Thursday, Daley appeared to excuse Jarrett, saying that while others in city government might have been aware of mob links to moviemaking that would have made them leery of granting the loan, she was not.

Jarrett was not alone. State officials, too, had pledged a year ago to arrange as much as $750,000 in loans for the group if it succeeded in securing city financing, according to Marshall Rosenthal, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. Officials of the Prime Group, an established Chicago real estate company, also were working as consultants for StudioWorks.

But on Tuesday, one day after the groundbreaking ceremony at 2200 W. Madison St., the city, the state and Prime Group had all backed out of the deal.

Daley said he would stand by Jarrett and wanted her to continue in her post. But a different sentiment was circulating among some mayoral advisers who speculate that some bureaucrat will have to pay the price for the mayor’s embarrassment. The likely candidate appears to be Jarrett, sources said.

(snip)

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