Obama - More of the Same

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008...ant_probe.html

You got to love the government grant money racket. I've decided I need to become a lobbyist and hang out in Washington or Chicago.

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.
...


Obama vowed to "work tirelessly" to raise $1.1 million to help Smith's organization turn the City of Chicago-owned lot into an oasis of trees and paths. But Obama lost the congressional race, no more money was raised, and today the garden site is a mess of weeds, chunks of concrete and garbage. The only noticeable improvement is a gazebo.


....


In an interview in July, Smith said he was never able to raise the money needed for the garden. But the state grant awarded by Obama was spent properly, he said, on the underground work, with most of the work done by a contractor whose name Smith got wrong.
The Sun-Times tracked down the contractor, Rodolfo Marin, in Austin, Texas, where he now lives.
"What I was hired for was: Clean up the area and cut the trees -- that's all," Marin said. He said he rented a Bobcat -- a sort of small bulldozer -- for the project.
And how much did Smith pay him? "If he spent about $3,000 with me, that was too much."

If I hear Obama complain about economic breaks for Bush's buddies one more time I'm going to vomit. The hypocracy is so thick you can cut it with a knife. It saddens me that McCain is the closest option we have to a fiscal conservative.

And the media plays along. Turns out while the pundits debate whether McCain merely tied the debate, or actually lost it, it seems nobody wants to talk about the pink elephant in the room. Apparently the family of the fallen soldier whose bracelet Barack Obama wears (Mentioned in the debate), has been asking him to quit politicizing their sons death sincs LAST MARCH. Amazing that Barry has no quams about stepping on the bodies of our dead to elevate himself, despite the wishes of the parents. The first time this story got airtime on MSM.... this morning. Pathetic.