The Opposition

Somewhere, someone is doing a caption contest on this one.

Fear the "Fairness" Doctrine, because it would make it much harder to get information like this out there:

It's impossible to know Obama's motives. But several of his official acts benefited Rezko, who in turn raised some $250,000 for Obama's campaigns.

In October 1998, Obama wrote city and state officials, urging them to give Rezko $14 million to build an apartment complex outside of Obama's state Senate district. The Chicago Sun-Times noted last year that Obama's request included $855,000 in "development fees" for Rezko and for another developer, Allison Davis, who happened to be Obama's old law-firm boss. Obama's spokesman said it was just a coincidence that the state senator wrote letters to obtain millions of dollars for his two longtime friends.

In fact, Obama was a dependable ally of subsidized developers in the Legislature, giving Rezko and others broader help as well. In "The Case Against Barack Obama" I identify and parse six housing bills with which Obama was closely involved. A few examples:

• * In 2001, Obama cosponsored a bill allowing developers to sell state tax credits to others and pocket half of theproceeds.
  
• * In 2002 and 2004, he was chief cosponsor of a bill to authorize a rent-subsidy fund giving "grants . . . directly to developers" of low-income housing. Seventy percent of the money was earmarked for the Chicago area.
• * Obama cosponsored the Illinois Housing Initiative Act of 2003, which required the governor to develop a plan for more low-income housing and "provide[d] for funding for housing construction and rehabilitation and supportive services."
• * In 2003, Obama voted for the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act, which required Illinois municipalities to make 10 percent of their housing units "affordable" (by definition, this included subsidized housing). This forced 46 communities just outside of Chicago to create more than 7,000 new "affordable" units - a huge boost in demand for area developers. The bill also provided loopholes for developers to circumvent local ordinances and regulations.

After voting for this measure (it passed narrowly), Obama then cosponsored a new bill that moved up its implementation by more than a year.

These and the other Obama-backed bills helped make millionaires of Rezko and other slum developers at taxpayers' expense. The developers - including his former law boss and an adviser to his current campaign - reciprocated, together giving and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama's campaigns.

To sum up: Obama got them subsidies to build. He secured them a steady income of government rent subsidies. He arranged special tax credits and abatements for them. He backed measures that increased demand for their services, and helped them legally circumvent local laws.

The modern, new day, post racial, above it all candidate got into politics with the help of criminal landlords and the old-fashioned Chicago "machine". I'm glad Biden is on board, ready to pummel McCain with accusations of being rich. I say personal attacks will be good for our side, because most Americans aspire to being rich. Also, because John McCain didn't get there by writing letters like this:

(clickbiggenate)