Can't tell the players without the scorecard - Chicago Olympic bid
Michelle Malkin
has done an excellent job ferreting out just who will benefit from Chicago getting the nod for the 2016 Olympic Games:
An illustrated guide: All the president�s Olympic cronies
When government officials play the Olympic lottery, taxpayers lose. That has been the disastrous experience of host cities around the world (Forbes magazine even dubbed the post-Olympic financial burden the �Host City Curse�). So, why are President Obama and his White House entourage headed to Copenhagen, Denmark this week to push a fiscally doomed Chicago 2016 bid? Political payback.
Bringing the games to the Windy City is Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley�s �vision.� The entrenched Democratic power-broker � in office since 1989 � would like to cap off his graft-tainted career with a glorious, $4 billion bread and circuses production. The influential Daley machine backed Barack Obama for the presidential primary. Obama lavished praise on Daley�s stewardship of the city. Longtime Daley cronies helped pave Obama�s path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, they�re returning the favor for their hometown boss.
Senior White House adviser and Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett is a Daley loyalist who worked as his deputy chief of staff, deputy corporation counsel, and planning commissioner. She hired the future First Lady of the United States, then-Michelle Robinson, as a mayoral assistant. Jarrett went on to serve as president and CEO of The Habitat Company, a real estate firm with a massive stake in federally-funded Chicago public housing projects.
One of those public-private partnerships, the Grove Parc Plaza Apartments, was run into the ground under Jarrett�s watch. Federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex a bottom-of-the-barrel 11 on a 100-point scale. �They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement,� Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that seeks to help tenants stay in the same neighborhoods, told the Boston Globe last year. �The same exact people who ran these places into the ground,� the private companies paid to build and manage the city�s affordable housing, �now are profiting by redeveloping them.�
Coincidentally enough, Grove Parc � now targeted for demolition as a result of years of neglect by Obama�s developer friends�sits in the shadows of the proposed site of the city�s 2016 Olympics Stadium.
Michelle is just getting started.
Go to her page and read the entire thing. The preamble is wonderful too. Be sure to check out the comments -- a lot of fed up Chicagoans out there...
Posted by DaveH at October 1, 2009 12:06 PM