The Illustrated Results of Obama's "Community Organizing"...Obama Was Not Even A Decent Community Organizer

If I didn't know better, I'd think this was Beirut in the nineteen seventies. But, in reality, it's the current state of the housing for which Barack Obama claims responsibility as a "community organizer." It turns out the developers enriched by his government-funded subsidies did a heck of a lot better than the folks who once lived here.

I say "once", because the Boston Globe ("Grim Proving Ground for Obama's Housing Policy") calls many of the units "uninhabitable".

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.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

In terms of concrete accomplishments, Obama and “hundreds of other organizers” were not able to transform the South Side neighborhoods or bring in new industries to provide jobs...

Obama’s most commonly cited achievement was in forcing the city to begin testing for asbestos in all city apartments.

...critics claim Obama, now 46, exaggerates his accomplishments, particularly in spearheading asbestos cleanup at a low-income housing project. He omits from his account of that fight a longtime community activist who many people say played a significant role.

And for all his emphasis on the value of grassroots organizing, Obama eventually decided he also needed a law degree to enact lasting change, attending Harvard University... Further blurring the picture are his descriptions of community organizing in his youthful memoir, "Dreams From My Father," in which he admits he disguises names, creates composite characters, switches some chronologies and uses "approximations" of dialogue.

I can see why.

Look at this beautiful playground, with all of children frolicking; they're so care-free and so delighted that Barack Obama's community-organizing has helped them at the expense of his developer friends.

The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered...

As a community organizer, Obama's a hell of a public speaker.

The poor people living here have gotten the shaft from Obama and his developer buddies. And the mainstream media couldn't care less.

Pelosi’s Approval Rating Takes Major Hit

By: David A. Patten
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s popularity has fallen to a new low for the year, with 60 percent of likely voters now viewing her unfavorably according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Friday.
Even worse news for the California Democrat: A whopping 42 percent characterize her job performance as “very unfavorable.”
The trend looks bad for Pelosi as well. Just two weeks ago, 53 percent of those surveyed viewed Pelosi somewhat or very unfavorably, and her “very unfavorable” rating was 36 percent. A 7 point favorability decline in two weeks suggests Pelosi’s popularity is in a serious tailspin.
Despite this week’s rally on Wall Street, pundits say Democrats are taking it on the chin over the bad economy and the fallout over AIG bonuses.
“Congress is feeling voter anger over executive bonuses paid by AIG after it received a massive taxpayer bailout,” the Rasmussen organization reports in its analysis of the results.
Several other findings suggest voters’ patience with Democrats’ handling of the economy could be wearing thin:
# Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is also suffering from weak poll numbers. Of the 1,000 likely voters Rasmussen polled March 24 and 25, some 45 percent rated Reid unfavorably, compared to 23 percent who gave him a favorable assessment.
# Even among Democrats, the popularity of both Reid and Pelosi is sinking. A growing number of Democrats are now critical of their performance.
# In the past two weeks, Pelosi’s favorability among Democrats has dropped from 65 percent to 57 percent.
# Reid’s favorable rating among Democrats has also taken a serious dip, from 51 percent two weeks ago to 43 percent in the survey released Friday.
# One issue plaguing Democrats, Rasmussen says, is that two-thirds of Americans now believe Obama is likely to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000 a year.
# Democrats have shown recent weakness relative to Republicans in generic-ballot surveys of voters’ partisan leanings.
Other Rasmussen survey results suggest Republicans should temper any temptation to wallow in schadenfreude over Democrats’ recent miscues, however.
Although the popularity of Democratic leaders has been falling sharply, the favorability ratings of GOP leaders has remained flat.
Approval numbers for Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner have remained basically unchanged – perhaps indicating voters remain unconvinced that Republicans’ proposals on how to fix the economy are any better.