The Obama-Daley Connection

Only people from Illinois can truly grasp the depths of corruption steeped into the Democrat/Daley generational machine. CHANGE is not a word you would use to describe Richard Daley...status quo would be a much more accurate description.

No bid contracts for friends and fellow Democrats, awarding his own company as recipient to millions in funds is nothing new for Chicago politics, it's business as usual. This is the environment where Barack Obama cut his political teeth.

Richard M. Daley is serving his sixth term as Mayor of Chicago. If Daley finishes out his term he'll make history as the longest serving Mayor in the city's history, breaking the record currently held by his father, Richard J. Daley. To list all of the corruption scandals they've been caught in, or even accused of would take too long...let's just go recent shall we?

In 2003, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s son Patrick and nephew Robert Vanecko became original investors in Municipal Sewer Services, a sewer cleaning and inspection company which had bought out a bankrupt firm.

The company quickly had the old firm’s contracts with the city of Chicago extended without competitive bidding, at a value of $3 million to the company. MSS did not disclose the Daley family members as investors in its official filings, as required by city ordinance, and it remains unclear how much money Daley’s family members made when they cashed out of the firm in late 2004.

MSS would go on to acquire other city contracts and receive $7.9 million from Chicago before Tim Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times reported the conflict of interest late last year. The company was forced to walk away from a live contract and close its doors earlier this year.

On Friday, that same sewer contract was awarded to another company on a non-“friends and family” basis. It was one more story of dirty Chicago politics that went unnoticed in the national media.

This story of Patrick Daley feeding from the trough — or more properly, from the sewer — exemplifies the sweetheart deals that are typical of the political environment in which Senator Barack Obama rose. It rounds out the story of how each member of the family of Obama’s Illinois Senate mentor, Emil Jones, somehow manages to make big money from government salaries and contracts. It may evoke memories of the illegal pension-fund manipulation that landed Obama’s fundraiser, Tony Rezko, in federal prison — or of the millions in corporate welfare that Obama, as a state senator, showered upon Rezko and his other major donors in Chicago’s slum development business.

But Friday’s story also serves as a reminder of what sort of governance Obama has willingly and knowingly backed with his good name.

Will we hear this on the MSM?....only if we watch some of the opinon shows, not in the news, even though these are facts which need to be shown. Change is a new idea to Mr. Obama, unless you mean change to a Demcrat politial machine as opposed to Republican politics (as lame as they've been). We Republicans want change too, but we aren't real excited about Obama's brand.

This is just the tip of the corruption iceberg ...READ THE REST at NRO. Guilt by association? ...well yes if this is the kind of change he was trained in, we don't need it.

***UPDATE

Just as scary as Obama's connection to Chicago corrupt politics is Obama's connection to ACORN. (ACORN is most recently in the news for perpetrating mass voter fraud)