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Harris4LarouchePAC
10-05-2009, 03:27 PM
President Obama's most intimate adviser and White House aide, Valerie Jarrett, is in the very center of the conflict of interest scandal that has erupted around the President's failed effort to win the 2016 Olympic Games for his and Jarrett's home town of Chicago. Not only was she the prime White House lobbyist for the Chicago bid. As former CEO of a Chicago construction company that would be bidding on the $1 billion contract to build the Olympic Village, she had good reason to put a super-human effort into the Copenhagen vote, persuading the President to put his personal prestige on the line to lobby for votes.

While Jarrett claims she divested all of her Chicago business ties, she arranged for her longtime friend Lori Healey, President of Chicago 2016 and former chief of staff to Mayor Richard Daley (Jarrett was deputy chief of staff to the Mayor), to meet with officials of HUD, to pitch for a low-income housing grant to cover the costs of the Olympic Village construction. Chicago, like every major city in the country, is broke, and had to come up with a credible source of cash to implement the lavish construction plan submitted to the International Olympic Committee as part of the Chicago bid. Jarrett also escorted Healey to a Sept. 17 Capitol building reception for African diplomats, so she could pitch their votes for Chicago at the Oct. 2 Copenhagen vote. Five days later, Jarrett was in New York City, conferring privately with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair on how to fix the vote for Chicago. Blair had successfully lobbied the IOC for London's successful bid to win the 2012 Olympic Games.

On Sept. 10, as the vote neared, President Obama wrote a letter to undecided delegates to the OIC, promising, "If you honor Chicago with your selection, we will ensure that the Olympic and Paralympic Games are a key priority for our Nation. We have already established a White House Office of Olympic, Paralympic and Youth Sport to serve the Games, and you can count on our government to support Chicago's quest to host an unforgettable event and strengthen the Olympic Movement."

The spotlight on Valerie Jarrett has revived some scandals from her recent days in Chicago politics. Through her ties to Mayor Daley, Jarrett's company, The Habitat Company, was placed in charge of public housing oversight for the Chicago Housing Authority; this, despite the fact that her company had failed to redress disastrous conditions at the Grove Parc Plaza apartments in Chicago, resulting in a 90 percent vacancy rate. The Habitat Company managed the Grove Parc Plaza apartments from 2001 to 2008, and managed another, larger publicly subsidized complex that was seized by Federal officials in 2006, after widespread abuses were discovered. The Boston Globe, in a June 27, 2008 expose, identified Jarrett, Obama law firm mentor and top fundraiser Allison Davis, and swindler Antoin "Tony" Rezko as three Obama intimates who had played a major hand in destroying public housing in Chicago, under a state law sponsored by then-State Senator Obama, putting private real estate interests in charge of building and maintaining public housing—with taxpayers' money

Fail Obama....FAIL...