Wanna know Barry?
Here's a good place to start, about his start in politics.
http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/ A good, entertaining and well written piece. Some snippets.
His Illinois State Senate Record:
Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio program.
I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:
"He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'"
"Oh, you are? Who might that be?"
"Barack Obama."
Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.
"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.
"I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book."
During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.
It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics — and he couldn't have done it without Jones...
So how has Obama repaid Jones?
Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district.
Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending.
I'll never forget what he said:
"Some call it pork; I call it steak."
Good old Emil Jones -- machine politician and steak lover.
An endorsement I had forgotten about from the same article:
Though it didn't make national news, Obama inflamed many residents in his old state Senate district last March when he endorsed controversial Chicago alderman Dorothy Tillman in a runoff election.
Flamboyant and unpredictable, Tillman is perhaps best known for once pulling a pistol from her purse and brandishing it around at a city council meeting. The ward she represented for 22 years, which included historic Bronzeville, comprised the city's largest concentration of vacant lots.
Just three months before Obama made his endorsement, the Lakefront Outlook community newspaper ran a three-part investigative series exposing flagrant cronyism and possible tax-law violations that centered on Tillman and her biggest pet project, a taxpayer-funded cultural center built across the street from her ward office that had been hemorrhaging money since its inception.
The series won a national George Polk Award, among the most coveted prizes in journalism. Not bad for a 12-page rag with a circulation of 12,000 and no Web site. I had already left the Outlook and had nothing to do with the project.
In the end, Tillman lost the election despite Obama's endorsement, which critics said countered his calls for clean government. Obama told the Chicago Tribune that he had backed Tillman because she was an early supporter of his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.
Some of Obama's other endorsements for change:
There was little controversy earlier this year when Sen. Barack Obama endorsed Mayor Richard Daley over two black opponents for a sixth term, lending his star power to an inevitable rout...
In the 2006 Democratic primary, for example, Obama endorsed first-time candidate Alexi Giannoulias for state treasurer despite reports about loans Giannoulias' family-owned Broadway Bank made to crime figures. Records show Giannoulias and his family had given more than $10,000 to Obama's campaign, which banked at Broadway...
Obama supported the re-election of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose administration is embroiled in corruption probes...
And during the race for Cook County Board president, Obama predictably endorsed Todd Stroger over a Republican. But he was criticized for calling Stroger "a good progressive" despite allegations of job-rigging to favor members of Stroger's 8th Ward organization...
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-obama_endorse_12jun12,0,484394.story
If you live in the state you would know that, aside from Daley, there is clear, broad and fairly bipartisan disdain for all of his endorsed candidates. These folk are considered politcal tools (hacks, corrupt, more of the same, investigated by both the justice system and the media, etc.) and are part of the state/cook county democratic machine. The endorsements were clearly politically motivated for anti-change. I personally include Daley and his corrupt city and county govt. in the group of political tools, but daley does have his ardent supporters with some room to argue the validity of the endorsement, I suppose..
I didn't mention Rezko because that's old news.
What about the federal level?
His mentor is Illinois is Senator Dick "Guantanamo is a concentration camp/gulag" Durbin. Ted Kennedy gave him an early and strong endorsement. Obama seems to keep similar political company as he does religious guidance.
His votes on key issues (
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/o000167/key-votes/ ) mirrors that of the Democratic party, by and large. You will likley get change with him as president, they type of change you would expect under, say, President Ted Kennedy.
What about reform? Barry makes a big deal out of not taking obvious lobby money, but he has plenty of less obvious money from special interests. Not a single penny comes from an offical lobbyist -- all are individual donations. An awful lot of employees from specific institutions know for their progressive desire for change, like Wall Street, of course, gave Barry a bunch of cash:
Goldman Sachs $571,330
University of California $437,236
UBS AG $364,806
JPMorgan Chase & Co $362,207
Citigroup Inc $358,054
National Amusements Inc $320,750
Lehman Brothers $318,647
Google Inc $309,514
Harvard University $309,025
Sidley Austin LLP $294,245
Skadden, Arps et al $270,013
Time Warner $262,677
Morgan Stanley $259,876
Jones Day $250,725
Exelon Corp $236,211
University of Chicago $218,857
Wilmerhale LLP $218,680
Latham & Watkins $218,615
Microsoft Corp $209,242
Stanford University $195,262
Various links:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/indus.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638There is of course, much more. The elitism charge dates back to his state senate days actually. He has played Hillery style games at the state/local political level and won with those tactics. He says he's against NAFTA in public but reassures the Canadians in private. He claims to be for the 2nd Amendment but is the worst candiate in the field on the issue (and was when there wwere more running).
Just another machine political tool, and one that manages to make Hillery seem better and more nobel buy comparison. And that says a lot. The best thing about Obama as President is not having Obama as my Senator.
Charon
