Michelle Obama tells the DNC Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council that "Barack Obama will fight for equal rights for gays just as he fought to help working-class families overcome poverty".
Gays and lesbians should run like hell, if Obama's "fight" for the working poor is what they have to look forward to.
Grim Proving Ground for Obama's Housing Policy (Boston Globe)
As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.
How bad?
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. ... Eleven of Rezmar's buildings were located in the district represented by Obama, containing 258 apartments. The building without heat in January 1997, the month Obama entered the state Senate, was in his district. So was Jones's building with rats in the walls and Frizzell's building that lacked insulation. And a redistricting after the 2000 Census added another 350 Rezmar apartments to the area represented by Obama. ... Nonetheless, the buildings deteriorated badly. The problems came to public attention in a dramatic way in 2004, after a sport utility vehicle driven by a suburban woman trying to buy drugs struck one of the buildings, causing it to collapse. City inspectors arrived in the ensuing glare, finding a long list of code violations, leading city officials to urge the federal government to seize the complex.
All of the usual suspects benefited from Obama's legislative efforts to create these hellholes masquerading as "affordable housing projects"--Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis, Tony Rezko, among others. In return, Obama benefited from the $175,000 these developers shoveled into his various political campaigns.
So plenty of people benefited. None of them lived in the slumpits Obama's legislation sponsored, though.
Again--Obama has accomplished nothing of note. He's good at quid pro quo, though. He wins mostly rigged elections and shovelling money to the people who bought his victories. Adequate for a vacuous nobody who reads pretty speeches off a teleprompter. Not enough for a state Senator, much less a US Senator. And certainly not enough for a president.
Jun 29, 08 12:08 AM