Daley, Emanuel, Obama: Chicago on the Potomac
No matter how you rearrange
President Obama's
inner circle, it still looks, smells and tastes like
a rotten Chicago deep-dish pizza.
Ready for the latest topping on this
moldy old pie? It's a possible chief of staff slot for
Wall Street banker/lawyer/wheeler-dealer William Daley,
brother of outgoing Chicago mayor/machine politics
mastermind Richard M. Daley (also the former boss of
White House senior adviser
Valerie Jarrett and first lady
Michelle Obama), whose retirement paved the way for
former Obama chief of staff and Chicago mayoral
candidate
Rahm Emanuel. Phew.
The White House is reportedly
looking to manufacture a
"pro-business"
aura with Bill Daley, who holds a
"corporate
responsibility" executive office at J.P. Morgan and
once headed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the latter, a
left-wing hate object and
Obama punching bag leading up to the midterms.
But the Beltway-based Chamber of
Commerce is too often a fair-weather statist lobbying
organization. It supported the TARP all-purpose bailout,
the auto bailout and the bottomless, pork-filled
stimulus package, all of which have forcibly
redistributed money from taxpayers and small businesses
to politically connected special interests (including
Daley's J.P. Morgan, which was most recently swept up in
a massive
pay-to-play bond scheme in Alabama).
Daley has about as much real
experience creating jobs as
Da Boss now
sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave—which is to say,
less than a thimble full. (It's a New Year. I'm being
generous.) In 2009, the head of Chicago's sanitation
department implicated Daley in a hiring corruption
scheme tied to his brother's mayoral administration. The
official was convicted; Daley
shrugged off the federal probe.
"Even if it
happened—and I'm not saying it did—things were
different. There was nothing illegal about that stuff."
Instead of distancing himself from
the favor-trading Wall Street fat cats who have earned
the ire of both anti-bailout tea party activists and
anti-corporate liberals, Obama remains wedded, embedded
and indebted to the worst kind.
Daley has served on the board of
government-sponsored financial behemoth Fannie Mae since
1993. Like the Richard Daley machine in Chicago, Fannie
Mae in Washington has served as an industrial-sized
patronage factory—sharing profits with political allies,
spreading taxpayer funds to ethnic groups, and doling
out jobs to left-wing academics, Washington has-beens
and back-scratching buddies. Like Daley. And close Obama
adviser Jim Johnson, the Fannie Mae exec who got
sweetheart loans from shady subprime lender
Countrywide.
While they raked in six-figure
salaries,
Fannie Mae and government-sponsored sibling Freddie Mac
engaged in Enron-style accounting, plunged into debt and
helped usher in the subprime housing meltdown through
reckless lending practices.
Bill Clinton, the man who appointed
Daley to the Fannie Mae board, also appointed Emanuel to
the
Freddie Mac board of directors at a time when its
oversight manager called the quasi-governmental agency
"so pliant"
that it enabled rampant book-cooking. Freddie Mac's
stock skyrocketed; its CEOs helped themselves to massive
bonuses. Emanuel's hometown paper, the
Chicago Tribune,
exposed how Emanuel's
"profitable
stint" during this corruption-plagued period
entailed almost no work:
"The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike
most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any
of the board's working committees, according to company
proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board,
Emanuel and other new directors qualified for $380,000
in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records
indicate."
[Rahm
Emanuel's profitable stint at mortgage giant, by Bob
Secter and Andrew Zajac, March 26, 2009]
On Emanuel's watch, executives told
the board of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead
shareholders about outsize profits the
government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky
investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the
books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would
appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping
maximize annual bonuses for company brass.
And now the torch may be passed in
an endless
Windy City circle, from Daley to Emanuel, from
Emanuel to Daley, with Obama.
'Round and 'round it goes in Chicago
on the Potomac.
Remember: When Crony State
corruptocrats brag about
"job creation," the only jobs they've ever
created are each other's.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Michelle Malkin
[email
her]
is the author of
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our
Shores.
Click
here
for Peter Brimelow's review. Click
here
for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin
is also author of
Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild
and the just-released Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies.