MooPig Report from the Middle: Chicago Talks Back

To Dream the Impoo-sssibull Dreammmmmm.... bwamp!!!

"Eh?"
"Eh, did choo do dat t'ing, dere?"
"What!"
"Dat t'ing... do's books?"
"No. I taut you mint pahkin cahrs."
"Yeah, dat's it... pahkin' cahs! Well, didja?"

Whad we goin' do 'bout dis charact'r dat got cawt?"

"Don' know."
"Da boss is callin' him Quarters, for whadt he done, heh?"

"Qwa'ters, heh, heh... das a goo'dwan, heh, heh."
"He gonna do time.."

"Say, did it ever occuhr to youse why we t'ahlk dis' way?"

"The Daley political machine in Chicago has thrown its support behind presidential candidate Barack Obama, forging an alliance that could make him the next president.

"Although the machine supported Obama’s rivals early in his political career, viewing him as an outsider, Obama’s success on the national stage has changed all that.

“It’s a simple political calculus,” Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago-based watchdog group Better Government Association, said.

“Here is a popular guy with a reasonable shot at winning, from the same party. It’s good for Illinois if he wins. So the machine [and] the mayor [are] backing Obama.” (12 October 2007; PHOTO and excerpt from HERE )

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with David Freddoso, Author of 'The Case Against Barack Obama'

08/04/2008 (Excerpt Retrieved HERE for reclamation project by MooPig Middle)

Excerpt.....
MO: Your book focuses a lot on the “Chicago Machine.” Not everyone knows about Chicago’s political corruption. In short, how does it work? And how has Sen. Obama been a part of it?

DF: Just to give a few examples from my book, chapter one discusses at length Sen. Obama’s support for and alliances with Chicago machine politicians, that’s chapters one and two.

The “political machine” is all about using the apparatus of the government treasury, using the taxpayer’s money to keep yourself in power permanently. You put your political cronies on the payroll to help yourself get elected and re-elected and then when you’re in power you get to do things like steer pension funds and investment to benefit your pals. All of this stuff was going on.

Liberals and conservatives had come together and had the Cook County, Illinois machine on the ropes but Sen. Obama did not help them. In fact, he ended up endorsing the machine candidate that year in the competitive general election and called him a good progressive Democrat. In this case he didn’t support the reformer, because to support the reformer in that election, he would have upset all the allies of the machine politician. That would have been against the interests of now-convicted developer Tony Rezko, who was tied closely to the Stroger family. He would have upset Mayor Daley, he would have to upset Emil Jones. So he played along like a good machine politician.

Obama’s very much about the old politics, and he’s very much not a reformer. It shouldn’t be a surprise except the only surprise is that he has managed to project this reformer image. Obama was denounced by a lot of liberals including some big people who were still big fans of his at the time.

Obama’s very much about the old politics, and he’s very much not a reformer. It shouldn’t be a surprise except the only surprise is that he has managed to project this reformer image.

MO: Why do you think the mainstream media hasn’t reported on these stories of Obama’s career in Chicago? Your book references many stories from the Chicago Sun-Times. Why does the national media ignore it?

DF: Well, unfortunately, I think the national media -- which resides largely in New York and Washington and perhaps out West in Los Angeles -- doesn’t look at or read the Chicago papers nearly as much as they should.

Part of the problem is that Chicago’s politics are so dirty that it’s almost hard to believe it’s true. Who would think that a guy who was convicted of stealing $4 million in quarters from Chicago area toll booths would then be given a city job with responsibilities where he could shake down city contractors for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and campaign contributions?

MO: That’s true!?!

DF: Yes, that’s absolutely true. The man earned the nickname “Quarters” because of his earlier conviction. He came out of prison and went right on to the city payroll shortly thereafter. He was part of one of Daley’s political organizations -- the Coalition for better Government -- so he got the job.

This is the way Chicago politics works and Sen. Obama can’t do or say anything to change it because Sen. Obama’s allies, the people who got him where he is today and the people who are going to help him become president of the United States -- they all started the problems.

He can’t speak out against the problems because his friends are the problem.,, (read on by clikkin' HERE)