Sound Politics: Change we can believe in

June 27, 2008

Change we can believe in

Okay, not all of Obama's press coverage reads like it's written by an 8th grade girl at a Bow Wow concert.

The Boston Globe reports on one of Obama's (very few) actual achievements as a legislator: "Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy"

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

To be fair, giving public subsidies to public landlords doesn't always work very well either. And public-private partnerships could probably work better than solely public management, given the right incentives and oversight. But I'm not sure that I'd want Obama to be the one to design the program and choose the public-private partners:

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.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 27, 2008 08:10 PM | Email This

Comments

1. Well, that's certainly change we can believe in.

Posted by: Obi-Wan on June 27, 2008 08:15 PM

2. Shark:

Have to agree. Why waste public tax dollars putting humans in decent housing here in this country when we could be using those very same dollars to pay Halliburton for security of Govt Bureaucrats in the Green Zone.

And you wonder why the term Republican is now something to be embarrassed about…..

Posted by: Unkl Witz on June 27, 2008 09:13 PM

3. Heh Unkl, I hear they are not going to pull out those 5 million dollar self flushing outhouses in Seattle until they have something to replace them with.

So my suggestion for the total replacement of this 20+ million dollar boondoggle is:

4 sanicans

300 - 500 hotel suites so the prostitutes in seattle have somewhere to perform

300 - 500 hotel suites so the drug dealers can feel safe.

I feel like a liberal - so refreshed!

Posted by: GS on June 27, 2008 09:27 PM

4. In his usual witless rant, witz may have stumbled on the answer. Have Hal.iburton manage the apartments BHO and his ilk bring about.

Posted by: PC on June 27, 2008 09:53 PM

5. O is becoming the candidate of "CHANGE my position every week", depending on what he thinks "sells."

Obama has said he's for traditional marriage, but just this week I heard audio of Michelle speaking to a gay activist group and she was disparaging DOMA. Whoa. She was essentially saying Barack would get rid of DOMA. O is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

Posted by: Michele on June 27, 2008 10:15 PM

6. When has subsidy ever worked? The socialists never learn that their ideology is flawed. When you give something for free, it has no value. When there is no value there is no inventive to take care of the item. And you can't legislate success.

The Chicago developers got their political favor from Obama and then it was all downhill. This does not sound like Change. This sounds like Chicago politics as usual.

Posted by: Jeff B. on June 28, 2008 12:22 AM

7. Obama cetainly didn't change Chicago politics. What are the grounds for his claiming he'll change anything on a national level, except to punish workers with fat tax increases? No thanks.

Posted by: Michele on June 28, 2008 01:11 AM

8. Bill Clinton recently was alleged to have said that Obama will have to kiss his ars if he wants his support. So its Chicago-style politics as usual against the Arkansas Mafia...

In this case: The enemy of our enemy becomes the ally of the people. Guess that it works that way in politics also.

Posted by: KS on June 28, 2008 12:08 PM

9. Wiz, they've got treatment for your case of BDS.

Derangement CAN be helped. Seriously. Look into it, would you?

Posted by: Hinton on June 28, 2008 01:08 PM

10. Socialized education is solidly entrenched. Socialized medicine is already creeping up on us, and will likely be fully in place in the near future. We're moving towards increased public (socialized) transportation. Ms. Waters wants socialized energy. And Obama wants socialized housing.

Tell me again, who won the great 20th century ideological conflict between collectivism & individualism?

Posted by: russell garrard on June 28, 2008 02:15 PM

11. However the 21st century is upon us and the impetus is that the loony left sees a window of opportunity to get socialism back in place for the flattening of the world (ie. globalization). Of course, it was sliced and diced in the 20th Century that capitalism sans significant corruption is vastly superior to collectivism. Nothing has really changed since then.

In addition, the left wants to drop the word liberty from the dictionary like a hot potato in their continuing endeavor to rewrite history and make it seem like the marxist/collectivist ideology is in vogue. They will distort and spin - whatever it takes, for the end justifies the means. Their motives are dishonest propaganda and an outrage and it is up to the traditionalists to speak out against it at every turn and send a message to the progressive loons like Waters, Pelosi and the Obama-nation that we aren't going to put up with your horses**t any more...

Posted by: KS on June 29, 2008 01:23 PM