Obama’s Garden to Nowhere
Barry, Barry, quite contrary, how does your cronyism grow?
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on a new investigation of The One’s $100,000 botanic state garden grant to a crony…
A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.
The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.
Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer in business.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan — a Democrat who is supporting Obama’s presidential bid — is investigating “whether this charitable organization properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received,” Cara Smith, Madigan’s deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.
In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association as a “member initiative,” the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state grant in 2006.
This is not the community organizing Obama knows.
(hat tip – JB)
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Trackbacks
- Hyscience
- From Bridges to Gardens… - A Grym View
- Suitably Flip
- Where’s Your Garden, Barry? | The American Pundit
- The Beat Goes On - Obama Makes Political Friends Rich, Part Infinity « Above My Pay Grade!
- The Dan Lee Report » Blog Archive » Obama & Smith Tip Toe through the Tulips with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
- Webloggin » $100K Obama `Success’ As Community Organizer Being Investigated
- Obama’s Garden That Is Nowhere « Beltway Snark
- The Secret Garden - by Barack Obama « Future News Blog
- Experience: How The Debate Reveals Obama’s Unpreparedness « Pocket Change - Now Lint Free!
- BizzyBlog » ‘Obamazebo’ Project Under Investigation; Sun-Times Follows Up, Drudge Takes Note
- Mofo Politics | Everything McCain, Obama, Palin, and that other guy-related» Blog Archive » More change you can believe in: Obama got $100,000 grant for radical preacher Michael Pfleger
- Double standards of the main stream media; Dropping the bar for Obama while raising it for Palin « Northern Thoughts And Reflections
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But Sarah Palin doesn’t have a clue!
It’s the Senator Obama Kogelo School all over again… only this time he actually provided
fundsother people’s money.I hope the investigation grows legs.
This is what “community organizer” means. Very Christ-like, too, isn’t it?
All democrats are officially or publicly supporting ‘The One.’ Now if she is a Clinton backer behind the scenes, this could be interesting.
With such a big garden maybe he can learn to throw roses with deference now.
Or not.
What’s up with that pic? He looks an assassin from Pulp Fiction leaving flowers on the grave of a recent hit!
D.I.T.T.O.
Did Obama know these crooks would take the money without doing the work? Who knows for sure. It does say a lot about his judgment and the company he keeps.
Why is this just coming out? If the MSM put half the effort they used to smear Sarah Palin into digging into Obama’s relevant political past, things would be a little more balanced.
The smell surrounding Barry is anything but the flowers and roses he and media sycophants would have us believe.
I think he’s got about $165 MILLION to explain in total.
Get started MSM.
I don’t know why they keep on comparing him to Jesus Christ. Do they have a cross planned for him?
You left one crucial ‘graf out of your excerpt, Michelle (my emphasis added):
In other words, others go under the bus and Osama Obama skates.
Again.
I am looking for flying pigs but don’t see any…
Since it is painfully obvious the money was NOT spent on a garden, this investigation should take – what – about 10 minutes?
Did anyone really think Barack HUSSEIN Obama’s actions in this case would be investigated? She’s a HUSSEIN Obama supporter, for Pete’s sake!!! Whatever dirty laundry she finds, will just be “washed away.” Move along folks. Nothing to see here.
Look! Over there! Sarah Palin hunts moose and owns a gun and therefore hates Jews and blacks!
/dinosaur media distraction from Obama
It should only take me 10 minutes to get my driver’s license too.
I smell a McCain ad! At least I hope so.
Does anyone know where our 527s are? I have seen a few ads, but there does not seem to be a steady stream of ads coming out and smacking THE MANCHILD down.
Also, anyone noticed since McCain announced he was going to Washington, the markets are up today? LOL! Multi-tasking, saving the economy and recouping money in everyone’s 401K!
what’s in a name?
that which we’d call corruption by any other name would smell as horribly
Paul Revere
I’m really growing tired of being called racist by people who know absolutely nothing about the people to whom they are referring.
You, me, and hopefully about 65% of the electorate.
I thought Obama can make the flowers grow with his very presence.
He is beyond deplorable.
Next Obama will tell his followers, he is going to plant money trees in this garden and pay back what he owes with what he grows…I made a rhyme.
Paul Revere
Check out the story on hot air because ABC decided to leave out the fact that Hastings is a criminal who shouldn’t even be in elected office in the first place.
I think you meant he could turn water to wine.
More like mid January
Just a small example of how our money will be used under the Odumbo administration.
Giving other peoples money away to your favorite crony only to have it stolen seems like a normal qualification to be a politician. I don’t know if it’s enough to qualify for POTUS or not,but certainly for other positions in government.
H.E.I.S.V.E.R.M.I.N.
paper roses, paper roses
oh how real those roses seem to be…
but they’re only imitation,
like your
hopNchange has proved to be……...
with apologies to Marie Osmond
I can turn beer into water…
Another community activist steals big time: Almost Half a Million Bucks
Maybe he was going to grow marijuana there. Then he decided to run for President and figured he should wait ’til he was elected. Then he’d just legalize it.
The funny part is that Chicago already has two very good Conservatories. If Obama had wanted to do something useful, he could have given them extra funding. Instead, he lined his cronies pockets. What a jerk.
I understand you are only allowed to have marijuana when you are under 23
[Forgive me if this double-posts. The first time I clicked on the "submit" button the post simply disappeared.]
Au contraire, Michelle — this is exactly the “community organizing” that Hopenchange knows very well.
He’s counting on the voters not knowing what he knows. Same goes for his buddy-buddy relationship with Ayers.
What’s this? Money thrown at another “community organizing” scam disappearing down the rat-hole with nothing to show for it? How could that be?
My wife didn’t become a conservative until she took on an internship at a “community organizing” project in Portland, supposedly meant to help “borderline” minority high school students stay in school and graduate. She quickly had the scales removed from her eyes when she saw the people running the organization — who with the exception of a token white were all black — doing no work at all:
- They’d routinely come in late, often more than an hour late, with no explanation. Often they wouldn’t show up at all, again with no explanation asked for or given.
- They’d commonly take off during the day for two-hour lunches, or for nail appointments, or to go shopping, or for no reason at all.
- When they were in the office, they spent half their time playing solitaire on their computers and the other half bitching about Republicans and George Bush.
- They’d pay “Office Assistants” with a high-school education $40,000 a year to do nothing. They’d pay “Administrative Assistants” $60,000 to do nothing. The program directors would pull in six figures …. to do nothing.
The only people who did anything were the interns. And much of what they did was little more than paperwork-shuffling.
Almost everybody connected with the farce “won,” it seems: the staff got a form of subsidized unemployment, and the government grant providers and the corporate sponsors got to pat themselves on the back for their ostentatious support of “diversity,” “inclusion” and “minority education.”
The only people who lost were — naturally — the students whom the program was supposed to help. Virtually all of them dropped out or flunked out.
Every time my wife hears Hopenchange and his pod-people extolling the virtues of “community organizing,” I watch her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. She’s under no illusions about what they’re really talking about.
And with this latest “Where’d the money go?” example, neither should anyone else be fooled. Except for those who wish to be (i.e., Hopenchange supporters).
Now did he just toss them flowers indiscriminately, or did he lay them down with reverence? Anyway, way too much fertilizer involved for that garden.
Would be nice. Can’t get the Justice Department to move on Alcee Hastings so I am not too hopeful. Let either one of those persons of color as it were hunt moose and we’ll see how it goes.
and.. this is what he states and all that support him state is what qualifies him for the POTUS position. his ability to community campaign, run for office and supply cash to his cronies. i see a pattern here..
Dave C.
I bet you’re a hit at parties!
Regulus
Thank you for sharing that story about your wife. It’s very sad that the people supposedly working to help those at-risk students, were uninterested in bettering the lives of anyone. That is what frustrates a lot of people. We don’t trust these types of programs simply because of the people in charge of them. Ultimately, it is always the kids who suffer for the selfishness of these adults.
Isn’t amazing how much money was spent on BO’s community organizing and it didn’t make a dent in the crime rate. How proud he must be of all the things he has done for the Chicago poor. How pathetic!
$100,000 for a Garden to Nowhere.
$14 million in Illinois taxpayers’ money to 30 Rezko run housing projects and all but a few of them are now foreclosed or boarded up.
$110 million in Chicago Annenberg Challenge money to get people (who knew nothing about education or schools) elected to local school boards, grant to communist cronies of Bill Ayers, and provide ineffective education programs. BTW, a third part of CAC found the money resulted in no improvement in students’ education in the schools that “benefitted” by CAC monies.
Obama getting money for his buddies to steal, use poorly, or divert is pretty poor regulatory oversight IMHO.
But bet the house that Congressional Dems will tout all the wonderful things Barack suggests to fix the current financial crisis.
He has been planting ACORNs for years.
GardenGate
Gosh, Obummer, I thought we needed to invest all that pork/earmarks into our “infrastructure.” Since when are freaking “gardens” part of the “infrastructure?”
This guy has the character and judgement to lead? Aren’t there still standing, empty slum tenements in Chicago to this day? Yeah…….right……
I’m not…. call me a Crakka!! Its hurts my feelings every time and makes me feel like a victim.
/sarc
A few years ago, I heard a Muslim in an interview who was discussing the perception of Muslim countries:
“We prefer to be viewed as an Inwardly Looking Society“
Peel the onion and underneath all the layers…..Chicago politician.
http://sarah-palin-2008.blogspot.com/2008/09/above-my-pay-grade.html
Obama it’s above my pay grade True Dat!
Misappropriating public grants – Obama? Never! I refuse to believe Obama The Experienced would ever commit graft; after all, he was a community organizer.
Couldn’t his Brother in the Hut have used $100,000 of other people’s money? In fact, isn’t the Hut covered by the sub-prime bailout – I believe Fannie has it down as a $1.2 million dollar Jumbo. (Jumbo-the-Hut anyone?)
Keep peeling….Chicago criminal…
On September 25th, 2008 at 11:32 am, sonofdy said:
(Follow the links)
You reap what you sow.
It’s also true that that which you rip, you must later sew.
What’s the bet mass media don’t touch it and it gets swept under the rug.
Only 40 days left to the election. I can only hope in that short time Obama will be revealed for the fraud he is. The audacity of his rhetoric doesn’t match the audacity of his actions.
Maybe the forewarning of this story is why Barack threw his flower at the WTC Memorial. The very thought of flowers probably made him a little queasy and he could not wait to get rid of the one in his hand.
He can at least turn a staff into a snake. He is also capable of becoming invisible to the MSM.
I would like to see that too, but the drive-bys have made clear they want Oblahblah. In the article, it said they started reporting on this July 11th.
Where is the rest of the horde?
So that’s what community organizers do! They take a city-owned piece of property and turn it into a “a mess of weeds, chunks of concrete and garbage” for the low, low price of $100,000. That’s hard work, organizin’ communities!
What are the odds that Li’l Mickey lets Somalia and Kinsasha frolic in this urban oasis?
I found it interesting that McCain mentioned the term “criminal indictments” 3 times during the debate.
He knows something too, and was clearly trying to rattle OB….which he did.
But as long as the Obama infomercial employees (ie, journalists) don’t speak up, it won’t make a difference.