By Michelle Malkin
September 18, 2009
In Culture of Corruption, I spotlight the intimate relationship between Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s crony lawyer Valerie Jarrett and First Lady Michelle Obama.
Jarrett’s slum lord record in Chicago is highly relevant to her current and ongoing pursuit of Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid — which will cost taxpayers nearly $5 billion and bring an untold windfall to developers and contractors. From my chapter on Jarrett’s role as president and CEO of The Habitat Company, which the Boston Globe probed in a rare, non-fluffy look at the Obama’s consigliere:
Jarrett refused to answer any questions about Grove Parc, “citing what she called a continuing duty to Habitat’s former business partners.” A “continuing duty,” presumably, to whitewash the inconvenient truth about the failed public-private partnerships the Obamas continue to promote in the White House:
“They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement,” said Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that seeks to help tenants stay in the same neighborhoods.
“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.”
In 2006, while Valerie Jarrett was executive vice president of Grove Parc’s management firm Habitat Company, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex a bottom-of-the-barrel 11 on a 100-point scale. Another Habitat-mismanaged property called Lawndale Restoration was so run-down that city officials urged the federal government to take over the complex.…
…Ever since the Obamas moved to 1600 Pennsylvania, Jarrett has used her power to boost her old pal and employer Mayor Richard Daley’s bid for the Olympics.
Now, FLOTUS is getting in on the act and Jarrett is giddy…
The entire article is on MichelleMalkin.com
See also the Boston Globe’s June 27, 2008 article, Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy:
The candidate endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair…