Chapter X: Obama Brings Chicago Politics to Washington

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program included $499 billion in 

federal spending, most of which was channeled through state and local 

governments. Eight of the 10 states getting the most contracts were heavily

Democratic, with highly unionized state and local government work forces, 

according to stimulus award data at recovery.gov.

Chapter X: Obama Brings Chicago Style Politics to Washington

From the Washington Examiner

Chicago has been called the home of "gangster government." How bad is it?

Consider the following facts about the city from which President Obama rose through the ranks of American public life, from community organizer and local lawyer to the Illinois state legislature to the U.S. Senate and finally the Oval Office:

Chapter VIII: Obama's State Pension Scheme

William Atwood, executive director of the

 giant Illinois State Board of Investment, 

told The Washington Examiner that 

Obama was relentless in applying pressure. 

"Anytime I saw him, he brought the issue up. 

I would see him in Springfield or I would

see him at a function and invariably he

raised the issue."

Chapter VIII: Obama's State Pension Scheme 
From the Washington Examiner

State Sen. Barack Obama and members of an Illinois lobbying group representing politically connected minority-owned businesses launched a campaign in 2000 to pressure state pension funds to help their friends and donors.

Obama and his cohorts targeted state officials in charge of pension funds for teachers, police and firemen, and regular government employees.

Much as the Rev. Jesse Jackson had been doing for years to Fortune 500 corporations, Obama and the Alliance of Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs, or ABLE, demanded that the officials set aside at least 15 percent of pension assets for management by minority-owned investment companies.

Chapter VI: The Poor People Obama Left Behind

A man moves furniture at the Altgeld Gardens

 housing project Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008, on 

Chicago's South Side. where Democratic 

presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., 

used to work as a community organizer. 

(AP Photo)

Chapter VI: The Poor People Obama Left Behind
From the Washington Examiner

Four years after Barack Obama's historic election as president, little seems to have changed for the African-American communities on Chicago's South Side.

The lack of change -- or the sense that these neighborhoods are getting worse -- is eroding the president's standing among African-Americans in his hometown.

In 2011, Chicago suffered the third-highest black jobless

Chapter V: Obama's Toughest Critics on the Left

Obama’s toughest critic on the Left, the late

Robert Fitch, charged that Obama’s most 

trusted aide, Valerie Jarrett, made a fortune

as a real estate developer. Fitch, a radical 

leftist and freelance journalist who 

specialized in urban politics and economics,

said Obama surrounded himself with people

 who got rich on Chicago’s $1.6 billion 

neighborhood demolition program known 

officially as the Plan for Transformation.

Chapter V: Obama's Toughest Critics on the Left 
From the Washington Examiner

Barack Obama's carefully constructed image as a civil rights lawyer who wanted to heal the black community was greeted with skepticism by some Chicago activists.

"I never drank the Kool-Aid about Barack Obama," veteran Chicago black activist Eddie Read told The Washington Examiner. Read is president of the Black Independent Political Organization, one of Chicago's largest black community groups.

Read -- who describes himself as a "black nationalist" -- said Chicago streets are filled with genuine "street gangsters" and phonies known as "studio gangsters." The latter are impersonators who make money acting in studio-produced rap videos.

The same dichotomy is found among Chicago's street activists, Read said. "So what you get from me is I'm still up in the air on whether or not my brother Obama was a real

Chapter IV: For the Slumlord's Defense, Barack Obama, Esq.

via Getty Images and ap A security company

owned by now-jailed political fundraiser 

Tony Rezko sought help from Obama

and then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in an effort

to gain a lucrative contract in Iraq, 

according to a report published in 2007.

Chapter IV: For the Slumlord's Defense, Barack Obama, Esq.
From the Washington Examiner

Writing in his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama said he became "a civil rights lawyer" because "to lend meaning to a community's suffering and take part in its healing -- that required something more."

There was indeed "something more" to Obama's legal career, but it wasn't civil rights litigation at the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where he was employed for a decade.

"He spent about half his time working with Bill Miceli and my former partner, Allison Davis, and that team," senior partner Judson Miner told The Washington Examiner. Most of the entries on Obama's client list for the firm from that period were in real estate, construction and finance.

Miceli and Davis were the partners in charge of the firm's housing and real estate practices. Davis would later leave

Chapter III: The 1997 Speech That Launched Obama

Like so many in the liberal powerbase 

that served as a springboard for Obama, 

Marilyn Katz’s activist roots stretch back to

her days as a Students for a Democratic

Society operative. Today, Katz is an

influential political operative in Chicago

who has visited the White House

26 times since 2009.

CHAPTER III: The 1997 Speech That Launched Obama
From the Washington Examiner

Few doubt that Barack Obama's stirring oration before the 2004 Democratic National Convention vaulted him into the national limelight.

But another, less-heralded Obama address -- delivered on Valentine's Day 1997 at First Chicago Bank -- was equally essential to his later successes. Without it, it is doubtful that he would have ever been in position to assume so prominent a role in 2004.

Obama was a newly elected Illinois state senator in 1997 when he addressed an audience that included many of Chicago's most powerful political insiders and activists, nonprofit executives, business movers and shakers, and philanthropic funders.

CHAPTER I: Obama's Childhood of Privilege, Not Hardship

CHAPTER I: A Childhood of Privilege, Not Hardship
From the Washington Examiner

Obama and his bride Michelle Robinson,

a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, on

their wedding day, Oct. 3, 1992, in Chicago.

(Associated Press)

First lady Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Convention that "Barack and I were both raised by families who didn't have much in the way of money or material possessions."

It is a claim the president has repeated in his books, on the speech-making circuit and in countless media interviews. By his account, he grew up in a broken home with a single mom, struggled for years as a child in an impoverished Third World country and then was raised by his grandparents in difficult circumstances.

The facts aren't nearly so clear-cut.

Introduction: The Obama You Don't Know

President Barack Obama

INTRODUCTION: The Obama We Don't Know
From the Washington Examiner

Few if any of his predecessors took the oath of office with higher public hopes for his success than President Obama on Jan. 20, 2009.

Millions of Americans hailed his election as an end to partisanship, a renewal of the spirit of compromise and a reinvigoration of the nation's highest ideals at home and abroad.

Above all, as America's first black chief executive, Obama symbolized the healing of long-festering wounds that were the terrible national legacy of slavery, the Reconstruction Era and Jim Crow. We would be, finally, one nation.