“Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.)…
I rarely agreed with Fr. Andy Greeley. Social change is brought about by people who actually, not virtually, do good. Real people, like Father George Clements and Fr. Dan Mallette actually Marched for Civil Rights with Dr. King, because they followed clerics like Bishop Bernard Shiel who founded CYO - he did not advocate for it. People in the action have little to do with "do-gooders' who never seem to leave the plush Oak Park and Hyde Park dens. It is easier to get behind masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas.
Newspapers rarely talk about people in the action, other than snag a quote that justifies the words of an Advocate, Activist, or Office Holder. Most columnists go to the pap of preachy, pontificating poltroon's who give good prose, like Claypool, Quigley, Schakowsky, Durbin, Quinn and Mell in Chicago because they are policy people and do-gooders. Pap is easy to read and nod-with-ruminent conviction and chew the cud of vegan issues. A few, like John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, go to people in the action and presents their lives and struggles mired in the bog created by policy wonks.
Investigative journalists, the best anyway, go where facts have ignited a prairie fire. The worst are jigsaw puzzle masters of making facts fit a narrative.
Reporters, investigative reporters, connect the dots hidden from the public. Even those of us who read and remember quite a bit have not the time, nor the opportunity to often go 'beyond' the story. People must do their jobs, raise their kids and the millions of dollars of taxes Progressive thinking political insiders loot from the commonwealth.
I am a pathological reader, I read everything from Cosmo to Commonweal, from Pepsodent tubes to the runic script on top of light bulbs. Love to read.
I also love to read works that have something to do with the truth. Editorial boards tend to present only a prefabricated package of political proselytism - Vote for Kim Foxx, or Mark Kirk is not really Dick Durbin's purse puppy.
The Chicago Sun Times, in my opinion, has the wackiest Editorial policy mandate that seems to have been crafted by retired and bonged-up Weather Underground and Catholic Call to Action cranks. That's just me.
However, I believe that the Sun Times has the best investigative reporters Dan Mihiapoulos, Chris Fusco and Tim Novak, when they are not saddled with editorial constraints, or Andy Shaw and Carol Marin.
Tim Novak is a terrier. He is the only reporter in Chicago to maintain a jeweler's eye on the connections between the political grifters and the Progressive machine emanating from Hyde Park and Kenwood.
The Fifth Floor, Real Estate, TIFs, Big banking, the CHA, Slum Lording, Chicago's Department of Planning and Development and the White House are all players with the peoples pensions.
Sewer deals for Daley cousins seem as nothing compared to Valerie Jarrett.
Today, Tim Novak keeps the heat on the most powerful people plaguing Chicago.
Over the past nine years, two nephews of former Mayor Richard M. Daley have been involved in separate plans to redevelop a rundown warehouse on 15 acres of polluted land in Little Village just north of the Stevenson Expressway.
It hasn’t turned out well for Chicago taxpayers.
First, taxpayers have to make up for $4.2 million in city pension money invested on behalf of teachers, police officers and other city workers that ended up squandered on failed development plans involving Daley’s oldest nephew, Robert G. Vanecko.
Now, taxpayers stand to lose another $4.1 million on the same property at 3348 S. Pulaski Rd. That’s the amount of a property-tax break given to a second redevelopment deal for the site.
This one involves Vanecko’s first cousin, Patrick Daley Thompson, an attorney who helped the developers get the tax cut last year shortly before he was elected alderman of the 11th ward — the family’s power base for six decades.
Well them boys are "in the action." Not for social good, but for profit in the name of Progress. There is so much more and Tim Novak delivers! He connects the dots of the contemporary ledger and double book accounting to the days of yore and actually gives us context that a Chicagoan can sink teeth into and gnaw healthy opinion into being - we are screwed not by the usual suspects, but by the do-gooders!
The story of how the polluted Pulaski Road property became toxic for Chicago taxpayers begins in 2004, when Daley was still mayor. That’s when Vanecko — his sister’s oldest son — went into business with Allison S. Davis, the Chicago attorney who gave President Barack Obama his first job out of Harvard Law School, and Davis’ son Jared Davis.
Operating under the name DV Urban Realty Partners, their idea was to redevelop properties in some of Chicago’s most downtrodden neighborhoods. And they were aiming to get government pension funds to invest $100 million to bankroll their plans.Man, if the editorial will of Chicago newspapers matched the grit of some of it's reporters, maybe a couple of dollars might be left in the kitty at the end of a Moody's evaluation.
They had a hard time securing investments from pension funds, though, until the Chicago Teachers Retirement System agreed in early 2005 to put in $25 million of the money it held toward teachers’ retirement pay.
Then, the pension funds for police officers, municipal employees, city laborers and the Chicago Transit Authority also agreed to invest.
Altogether, the Davises and Vanecko wound up with $68 million from five public pension funds.
This is meaty wholesome goodness in font! It will put off the vegan offal digestions of 'edgy,whip-smart and Progressive voices in our city.
Eat more Chicago! Thanks for the red meat, Mr. Novak!
