Nov 14, 2008 8:43pm
Jarrett Named White House Senior Adviser
EmailAn Obama campaign source tells ABC News that close Obama family friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett has been named Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.
Jarrett is a former chairman of the board of the Chicago Stock Exchange, and was director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and has served as an executive of The Habitat Company. She first met Barack Obama when she was in the midst of hiring Michelle in 1991.
- jpt
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Ah, The Chicago Machine at its finest. Next Tim Daley. Chicago politics gets nationalized.
Posted by: Kyle | November 14, 2008, 9:22 pm 9:22 pm
Kyle:
Since we’re being harsh and judgemental and using a buzz phrase (“Chicago politics”) for a blanket condemnation . ..
Anything is better than Republican politics . . . anything!
Posted by: pefros | November 14, 2008, 9:31 pm 9:31 pm
America is about to get their rewards for electing Obama.
Posted by: toby hill | November 14, 2008, 9:42 pm 9:42 pm
“Her father, who is of African American descent, is a pathologist and geneticist. He is currently Professor Emeritus in Pathology and Medicine, University of Chicago. Her great-grandfather was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T., her grandfather was Robert Taylor the first black man to head the Chicago Housing Authority, and her father, Dr. James Bowman, was the first black resident at St. Luke’s Hospital. Though Ms. Jarrett has never worked in Washington, her great-uncle is Democratic powerbroker Vernon Jordan. Her mother, Barbara T. Bowman, is an African-American early childhood education expert and co-founder of the Erikson Institute for child development.”
Posted by: pefros | November 14, 2008, 10:06 pm 10:06 pm
Antoin “Tony” Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama’s early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko’s company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama’s district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable.
Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.
Posted by: Kyle | November 14, 2008, 10:22 pm 10:22 pm
This woman comes with an abundance of credentials for running a change government. She was a small-time fundraiser for Obama. She’s been a real estate executive. Those are some credentials I tell you. Sounds like the George Bush administration all over.
Posted by: WestCoastMessenger | November 14, 2008, 10:26 pm 10:26 pm
Kyle, your’re a one-man conspiracy-buff convention.
Don’t forget that Obama’s half-brother in Kenya once knew a guy who caddied for a lawyer whose brother-in-law had a friend went to school with IDI AMIN!!!
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S FIRE!!!
… OR A BONG.
LOL
Posted by: Ed from MA | November 14, 2008, 10:27 pm 10:27 pm
Kyle:
Anything is better than Republican politics . . . anything!
Posted by: pefros | November 14, 2008, 10:28 pm 10:28 pm
“She is also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago Medical Center, Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago and a Trustee of Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.”
Posted by: pefros | November 14, 2008, 10:31 pm 10:31 pm
WestCoastMessenger – you still around now that the GOOP (Gray Old Obsolete Party) has gone belly-up?
Yeah, those Chicago community-organizer types have nothing of any value to offer … BUT THEY SURE KNOW HOW TO WIN ELECTIONS, DON’T THEY?
PALIN IN 2012!!!
LOL
Posted by: Ed from MA | November 14, 2008, 10:32 pm 10:32 pm
The Boston Globe identifies three key “political supporters” who “profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered”: Tony Rezko; Valerie Jarrett, a “senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee”; and Allison S. Davis, a “major fund-raiser for Obama’s US Senate campaign and a former lead partner at Obama’s former law firm.”
“The developers gave Obama their financial support. Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko all served on Obama’s campaign finance committee when he won a seat in the US Senate in 2004,” Appelbaum wrote.
“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.”
Posted by: Kyle | November 14, 2008, 10:38 pm 10:38 pm
Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Tony Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis.
(According to press reports, housing projects operated by Davis and Rezko have been substandard and beset with code violations. The Chicago Sun Times reported that one Rezko-managed housing project was “riddled with problems — including squalid living conditions…lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers.”)
“Like Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett is a product of the corrupt Chicago political machine.”
Chicago politics is moving into the White House. Any takers on how long once he’s in office until he pardons Rezko?
Posted by: Kyle | November 14, 2008, 10:43 pm 10:43 pm
Article failed to mention she was born in Iran. Also, having Vernon Jordan as your great uncle is a big plus for someone in the democratic party.
Posted by: tothestars2 | November 14, 2008, 11:20 pm 11:20 pm
The Guilt By Association Mob is at it again.
Posted by: Lucky Lucy | November 14, 2008, 11:38 pm 11:38 pm
Chicago politics is moving into the White House. Any takers on how long once he’s in office until he pardons Rezko?
I’ll take that bet. Obama will never pardon Rezko.
I’m also taking bets on Bush pardoning Cheney.
Posted by: Don | November 15, 2008, 1:11 am 1:11 am
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents linking Valerie Jarrett, an advisor to Barack Obama and the co-chairman of the President-Elect’s transition team, to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin “Tony” Rezko.
According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, 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.) Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis.
(According to press reports, housing projects operated by Davis and Rezko have been substandard and beset with code violations. The Chicago Sun Times reported that one Rezko-managed housing project was “riddled with problems — including squalid living conditions…lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers.”)
As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered “uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage.
Will it surprise anyone at all if Obama’s presidency ends in scandal? It won’t me. I’m sure it was so difficult to find one of his close friends that isn’t involved in scandal that he just gave up.
Posted by: Kyle | November 15, 2008, 1:13 am 1:13 am
Given the level of corruption and venality that’s existed in The White House and the Congress for the past eight years, it’s pretty funny to see all this hyperventilating about “Chicago politics.”
Bush/Cheney/Rove, the crooks in the Republican Congressional delegation, and the right wing lobbyists and cronies have taken public looting and corruption to extremes that the old-time Chicago hacks would never have thought possible.
Posted by: Brooklyn Democrat | November 15, 2008, 8:41 am 8:41 am
Very good news. Obviously a very smart woman. Stanford and Michigan grad, law firm experience, former Chairman of the Chicago Stock Exchange, plus high-level city government work.
Very encouraging.
Posted by: Bud | November 15, 2008, 9:51 am 9:51 am
This man, his philosophy and his administration will cause great harm to our values, our economy and our country.
I do not doubt that he is well intentioned, but his misguided liberal economic policies and foreign policy appeasement strategy never worked in the past and never will work.
This man will saddle our children and grandchildren with a massive government machine riddled with corruption and so tied down in red tape that it will be impossible to operate.
As the government grows and drains resources from the private sector there will be reduced competition and increased dependency on the government. When the borders are opened and amnesty programs enacted we will have far less citizens paying taxes and far more citizens depending on already bankrupt entitlement programs and future ineffective entitlement programs.
His foreign policy of appeasement will weaken our superpower status and embolden the enemies that have sworn to destroy us.
This has happened repeatedly throughout history and now it will happen again. It’s as plain as day for anyone willing to step back from Obamamania and take an honest look.
And sadly its not just the Democrats. The Republicans are a weak, watered-down, spineless version of the Conservative values that made this country what it is. The Lindsey Graham’s and John McCain’s will pitch in with their amnesty programs and drive the stake that BO, Pelosi and Reid got started, further into the heart of our Country.
Resistance is futile.
Posted by: Marx My Words | November 15, 2008, 12:01 pm 12:01 pm
TUCSON, Ariz. — A racketeering charge and other counts have been added to an indictment against Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi.
The indictment made public Thursday also adds another defendant in the case against Renzi, a three-term Republican.
Posted by: pefros | November 15, 2008, 3:32 pm 3:32 pm
I thought Jarrett is the guy who lost 300 lbs eating Subway. Come to think of it, he would probably do a better job!
Posted by: Cult Of Personality | November 15, 2008, 6:46 pm 6:46 pm