Thus, we have an example, even before the President had been elected, of his familiarity with the cavalier trade of political offices. And we discover the modus operandi of these kinds of operations: the approach through an intermediary, to keep Obama’s hands clean. Thus, it is Obama ally Tom Balanoff who approaches Governor Blagojevich. Later it was former President Clinton who met with Rep. Joe Sestak and offered him a job in order to get him to drop out of the Pennsylvania Senate race. And, similarly, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina was dispatched with job offers to entice Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff not to enter his state’s Senate primary.
The White House has at least attempted to justify the Sestak and Romanoff incidents, but had no comment on the Balanoff story. This comes as no surprise since the key players of the Obama political operation cut their teeth in Chicago politics, where dealing in Senate seats is like ordering cheese and mushroom pizza.

Correction: The original draft stated that the mushroom and cheese pizza quote was used by Gov. Blagojevich to placate John Harris’ worry about being recorded.  It was, in fact, the other way around and the text has been changed to reflect this.

Valerie Jarrett has been subpoenaed in the Blago trial along with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

From Politico:

Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett have received subpoenas from defense lawyers in the corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, joining a long list of federal officials who could be called to testify in the closely watched trial.

A White House official confirmed that Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, and Jarrett, one of Obama’s senior advisers, received the subpoenas, the existence of which were first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times Wednesday afternoon.

Blagojevich faces charges ranging from corrupt practices on the state level to trying to sell his power to appoint a successor to then-Sen. Barack Obama when Obama won the presidency in late 2008.

Jarrett joins a long list of corrupt officials that will be packed into a Windy City court room throughout the summer.

1. Valerie Jarrett’s Grove Parc Fiasco:  The Rich Got Richer: “In 1987, U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen had appointed Habitat to oversee construction of all public housing in Chicago as part of the historic Gautreaux case, which found that the CHA had failed for decades to integrate housing.  At first, Habitat’s job was to desegregate housing by building “scattered site” units in more affluent white neighborhoods across the city. But the effort had little impact. The company built about 1,800 units, mostly in lower-income Hispanic neighborhoods before the program ended.”
2. Valerie Jarrett’s Underwater Demolition:  Cataloging Failure: Mayor Daley was displeased when Jarrett lost Spiegel, a catalog company which had operated warehouses in Chicago for 88 years. Daley wanted a more aggressive effort from the Department of Planning and Development. The company wanted to relocate its old warehouses. Her department proposed six sites, but Spiegel found all of them to be deficient. The best site was covered with 20 to 30 feet of water. Jarrett promised that the site could be filled-in in time to meet Spiegel’s deadline, but the company did not believe it.
3. Valerie Jarrett and Cecil Butler:  Partners in Slime: Cecil Butler started managing the Lawndale Restoration, a low-income community in 1974. In 1995, Cecil Butler received a $51 million loan, backed by the state, to renovate Lawndale Restoration. In 1999, Valerie Jarrett’s Habitat formed an LLC with Butler’s Boulevard Management. In 2000, Cecil Butler hired the Habitat Company to manage Lawndale Restoration.
4. The Valerie Jarrett Health Care Plan: In 2004, Jarrett’s Habitat Company violated the Family and Medical Leave Act by terminating an ill employee. David Burnett had been employed with Habitat for fourteen years. His boss had no problems with him until late 2003 when Burnett began to have symptoms of prostate cancer.
5. Valerie Jarrett’s Cronies See “Green”: It appears that Jarrett tried to get a contract for Allison Davis, Obama’s former boss. In 1996, Habitat was overseeing the redevelopment of Cabrini Green. Habitat seemed to favor a plan from MCL/ASD LLC. This partnership was the creation of Dan McLean of MCL Development Corporation and Allison Davis. Davis went on to become a major fundraiser for Obama.

“In 1987, U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen had appointed Habitat to oversee construction of all public housing in Chicago as part of the historic Gautreaux case, which found that the CHA had failed for decades to integrate housing.  At first, Habitat’s job was to desegregate housing by building “scattered site” units in more affluent white neighborhoods across the city. But the effort had little impact. The company built about 1,800 units, mostly in lower-income Hispanic neighborhoods before the program ended.”

They were eventually able to convince Judge Aspen to allow development where “CHA and Habitat could show that the neighborhood would become ‘revitalized’ through large public and private investments that would lead to racial integration.” This came as a result of CHA’s and Habitat’s desire to tear down the Henry Horner Homes, across the street from the United Center, where the 1996 Democratic Convention was to be held.  It led to the implementation of the “Plan for Transformation” that would replace existing public housing with developments that included public housing, affordable housing and market housing.  This began in 2000.  As of July of last year “under the Plan for Transformation, the city ha[d] lost more than 13,000 housing units for the poor at a time when low-income families face one of the worse housing crises in recent history.

After years of neglect and abandonment, many residents doubt that Jarrett and CHA officials have their interests at heart. ‘They was going to do what they was going to do,’ said Carmen Hart, who moved to Stateway Gardens [public housing] in 1960 and has been waiting three years to go back.” Only about one in three residents was able to return to redeveloped projects.

Meanwhile, “Habitat has earned $6.8 million in fees and $10.8 million in administrative expenses since the plan started in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The company also earns millions as a property manager for the CHA,” while Jarrett has lived very comfortably at her lakefront apartment, while pulling in a six-figure base salary plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for serving on boards.

Jarrett Allowed Grove Parc to Become Uninhabitable

One of the most glaring of the examples of neglect was Grove Parc Plaza.  It was managed by the Habitat Company and is located in the district that Obama represented for 8 years in the Illinois legislature.  “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.”  Residents have been complaining for years to little avail.  “As late as 2003, a routine federal inspection still gave conditions at Grove Parc a score of 82 on a 100-point scale.”  By 2005 that had dropped to 56.  Finally in 2006 Grove Parc received 11 out of 100.  Jarrett’s only comment about this gross mismanagement under her leadership was about how hard it is to manage something you don’t own.

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 has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing – an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

. . .

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.

Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did not notice their plight. The development straddles the boundary of Obama’s state Senate district. Many of the tenants have been his constituents for more than a decade.

“No one should have to live like this, and no one did anything about it,” said Cynthia Ashley, who has lived at Grove Parc since 1994.

. . .

Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:

- Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.

- Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama’s US Senate campaign and a former lead partner at Obama’s former law firm. Davis, a developer, was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used government subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including a North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several apartments.

- Antoin “Tony” Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama’s early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko’s company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama’s district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable.

Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.

. . .

Jarrett, a powerful figure in the Chicago development community, agreed to be interviewed but declined to answer questions about Grove Parc, citing what she called a continuing duty to Habitat’s former business partners. She did, however, defend Obama’s position that public-private partnerships are superior to public housing.

“Government is just not as good at owning and managing as the private sector because the incentives are not there,” said Jarrett, whose company manages more than 23,000 apartments. “I would argue that someone living in a poor neighborhood that isn’t 100 percent public housing is by definition better off.”

. . .

One of the earliest public-private partnerships of the type supported by Daley and Obama took place in the Woodlawn neighborhood, a checkerboard of battered apartment buildings and vacant lots just south of the University of Chicago.

Grove Parc Plaza opened there in 1990 as a redevelopment of an older housing complex. The buildings had a new owner and a major renovation funded by the federal government. Even the name Grove Parc Plaza was new.

The owner, a local nonprofit company called Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., was led by two of the neighborhood’s most powerful ministers, Arthur Brazier and Leon Finney. Obama had relationships with both men. In 1999, he donated $500 of his campaign funds to another of their community groups, The Woodlawn Organization.

Woodlawn Preservation hired a private management firm, William Moorehead and Associates, to oversee the complex. In 2001, the company lost that contract and a contract to manage several public housing projects for allegedly failing to do its job. The company’s head, William Moorehead, was subsequently convicted of embezzling almost $1 million in management fees.

Woodlawn Preservation hired a new property manager, Habitat Co. At the time, the company was headed by its founder, Daniel Levin, also a major contributor to Obama’s campaigns. Valerie Jarrett was executive vice president.

Residents say the complex deteriorated under Moorehead’s management and continued to decline after Habitat took over. A maintenance worker at the complex says money often wasn’t even available for steel wool to plug rat holes. But as late as 2003, a routine federal inspection still gave conditions at Grove Parc a score of 82 on a 100-point scale.

When inspectors returned in 2005, they found conditions were significantly worse. Inspectors gave the complex a score of 56 and warned that improvements were necessary. They returned the following year and found things had reached a new low. Grove Parc got a score of 11 and a final warning. Three months later, inspectors found there had been insufficient improvements and moved to seize the complex from Woodlawn Preservation.

After negotiations with tenants, the government agreed to allow a new company, Preservation of Affordable Housing, a Boston-based firm, to replace Habitat as the manager of Grove Parc. The company is negotiating to buy the development, which would then be demolished and replaced with new housing.

Officials at Woodlawn Preservation say the government didn’t give them enough money to properly maintain Grove Parc. Habitat’s Jarrett declined to comment on Grove Parc in particular but said it is hard to manage something you don’t own.

But other Chicago developers and housing activists say federal subsidies can be adequate if managed properly. They say Grove Parc stands apart for how badly it fell into disrepair.

Preservation of Affordable Housing has assumed responsibility for numerous subsidized complexes across the country.

“Grove Parc is quite an exception to what we’ve normally done because it’s in such bad shape,” said the nonprofit’s chief executive, Amy Anthony. “These complexes are often tired, they’re always denser than today’s philosophy, but they’re not usually anywhere near as deteriorated.”

(The Boston Globe 6/27/08)

“They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.”—Jim Malone, The Untouchables.

Call it “gangster government”—an over-glorified protection racket that favors those who tow the party line, and viciously retaliates against those who dare to depart from the dogma of the Dear Leader.

Said Congressman Steve King in an exclusive interview with the Washington News Observer, “In Chicago, you have gangster government. Valerie Jarrett’s been in the middle of that—she’s been brokering power for a long time—and the links she has with William Ayers and other nefarious characters in Chicago tell us what we’ve got in the White House itself.”

In other words, either you pay tribute to Obama, or you pay the price—Chicago-style. As Jarrett recently stated at the recent World Economic Forum in Switzerland that, “I think knowing Chicago is essential to knowing America and our new President.”

That’s it, a racket. And Jarrett is at the heart of it. According to CNN, “Obama says he runs every important decision by Jarrett, trusts her completely and considers her family.” And, you never go against the family.

In fact, anyone that dares to speak out against the Administration is made an overt political target by Jarrett and Obama. Just ask FOX News and the Chamber of Commerce. Or Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge. Or the GM and Chrysler bondholders. Or Humana. Or America’s Health Insurance Plans, an insurance industry lobby. Or Edmunds.com, which made the disastrous mistake of criticizing the failed “cash for clunkers” program.

Or, for that matter, the American people, who were called liars by Obama in his address to Congress and labeled extremists, “un-American”, and “political terrorists” by their own representatives.

This is right out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook—“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.” The idea is to isolate the opposition and to make them pariahs, freeing the way for the Administration to act with impunity.

Which is exactly what has happened.

Since Barack Obama has been elected, de facto one-party rule has reigned in Washington on virtually every policy measure pushed through either Congress or by executive fiat. The so-called trillion-dollar “stimulus.” Nationalizing the auto industry. The national energy tax. They’re all of a piece.

In just one year, Republicans have been shut out of discussions on everything from creating jobs to health care in the House and Senate. They have been completely isolated—and vilified.

But not if you ask Valerie Jarrett. According to the top Obama advisor, Obama has been the model “bipartisan” president, who meets with his opponents and reaches compromises.

“He has reached out,” Jarrett assured Stephanopoulos. “He has listened. He has reached across the aisle. Just recently meeting with both the Democrats—the Republicans and the Democrats in both the House and in the Senate. His effort has been sustained throughout the year.” Really?

If so, the record clearly doesn’t show it. In fact, Obama’s “bipartisan approach” has been so anemic that not a single House Republican voted for the “stimulus.” Only one voted for the controversial health care takeover on Saturday. And the energy cap-and-tax drew far more Democrat votes against than Republican votes for, courting only eight Republicans in support versus 44 Democrats who opposed it.

In fact, the only real bipartisanship in Washington as of late has been against Administration policies. 39 Democrats joined with 176 Republicans in voting against the Pelosi health bill in the House on Saturday.

Senate Republicans have fared little better. According to Senator John McCain, speaking to FOX News, as health care legislation has proceeded through Congress, “Republicans have been completely shut out of any conversation or negotiation. And you know that during the campaign — I wish our viewers could see it over and over again. The president is saying when we take up health care reform, C-SPAN will be in the room, Republicans will be there, and the American people will be able to see who’s on the side of the pharmaceutical companies and who’s on the side of the American citizens.”

But, said McCain, that never happened. “Behind closed doors they cut deals with the pharmaceutical companies, with the hospital people… [I]t’s business as usual. There is no change.”

In other words, it has been one-party rule from the very beginning from the President who told Republican Congressional leaders on day one: “I won, you lost.” And Jarrett knows it—because she has orchestrated it. And yet, when asked by Stephanopoulos why Obama had failed to “heal the partisan divide,” she said, “Well, you should ask that question to the Republican Party.”

No, he shouldn’t. Stephanopoulos was asking the right person the question. In essence, why is the Obama regime so divisive, thuggish, and pushy? Because it was designed to be. And one of the top engineers of this “gangster government” is Valerie Jarrett.

This post was authored by Robert Romano, the ALG Senior News Editor.

“I think knowing Chicago is essential to knowing America and our new President,” she told them.  Chicago was the city where he got his start as a community organizer.   And since, she claimed, all that most of the audience (at the World Economic Forum, no less) knew about Chicago was Oprah and Michael Jordan, she proceeded to tell them that it is the heartland of America, with a hardworking, pragmatic populace.  She neglected to mention that it is also infamous for its widespread culture of political corruption.

She passed over the fact that in the past 30 years 79 local officials have been convicted of corruption.  That would have sounded awkward given her claim that “Chicago was a natural for the president.”

The panegyric continued, “In so many ways, he embodies those timeless values that sum up the spirit of the city.”  For example, the persistent tradition of machine and thug politics (mostly extinct elsewhere in the country) in the midst of which the President got his start in politics, evident in his electoral tactics: prior to the 2008 presidential election, the only election in which his opponents were not either thrown off the ballot because Obama’s campaign challenged their required  signatures, or  hit by scandals from sealed divorce records, was his 2000 primary challenge against Democrat Bobby Rush (which resulted in a resounding defeat for the President).  Or perhaps his espousal of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, a book the author dedicated to Lucifer, aka, Satan and the Devil.

Thank you, Mrs Jarrett.  Your admission, ahem, insight has been illuminating.

Many have wondered how anyone as extreme as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones – a self-described “Communist” obsessed with racial conspiracy theories – could have been named to head a federal agency. David Horowitz described the radicalization of the Democratic Party as the appointment’s subtext. Closer to the fore, Jones owed his elevation to another new factor: the unparalleled influence of Valerie Jarrett. To call Jarrett a presidential adviser, even a close adviser, is misleading. She is an alter ego, an inner conscience, a touchstone of clarity for both President Obama and first lady Michelle. In the frenzy of the presidency, she reminds both Obamas of their identity and deepest-held beliefs. In exchange, the president makes no decision without her and has said she can “speak for me.” Unfortunately, she is also a racially polarizing elitist. She obtained her first foothold in Chicago politics through the patronage of a former SDS radical who regrets “nothing” about her role in the Days of Rage and ventured in 2003 that she “would probably reject violence as a useful form of revolution.” The same radical tried to persuade Rod Blagojevich to name Jarrett to Obama’s empty senate seat. Instead, Jarrett has served as a conduit of far-leftists into the administration.

“We Have Kind of a Mind Meld”

One thing is beyond question: Jarrett’s unprecedented sway over the president. An Obama 2008 campaign official told the New York Times, “If you want him to do something, there are two people he’s not going to say no to: Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama.” Susan Sher, who helped Jarrett recruit Michelle Obama to the Chicago mayor’s office before Michelle married the president, said, “I don’t think either of them [the Obamas] made major decisions without talking to her,” adding that Jarrett failed to appreciate “how incredibly instrumental she’ll be in virtually everything” in the White House.

The president confirms Jarrett’s tremendous cache with him, personally and politically. In July, Obama told New York Times reporter Robert Draper, “I trust her completely…She is family.” Obama trusts Jarrett “to speak for me, particularly when we’re dealing with delicate issues.” When asked, he admitted he runs every decision by her.

If Jarrett failed to anticipate her power, she acknowledges her closeness to the leader of the free world. “We have kind of a mind meld,” Jarrett said about Obama. “And chances are, what he wants to do is what I’d want to do.” Chicago tycoon Martin Nesbitt identified the source of Jarrett’s power in the fact that she establishes both Michelle and Barack’s “whole notion of authenticity.” Nesbitt relates she channels the Obamas’ inner voice, telling them: “That’s not you. You wouldn’t say that. Somebody else is saying that. Barack Obama wouldn’t say that.” Jarrett admitted to Vogue, “I kind of know what makes them who they are.”

Part of who Jarrett is can be seen in her obsession with racial issues. After the Jeremiah Wright tapes threatened to sink his campaign, it was Jarrett who encouraged Barack to give his “race speech” at Constitution Hall (the speech that sent the infamous thrill up Chris Matthews’ leg). African-American administration staffers have said without her patronage “their opinions and the often-legitimate concerns voiced by black leaders like [Al] Sharpton would have been thoroughly disregarded by the white-dominated senior staff.” (Emphasis added.) A black staffer claimed “there’s a cultural nuance” white Obama officials “just didn’t get.” If so, it’s not for Jarrett’s lack of hectoring. When Robert Gibbs tried to downplay Obama’s statement that Republicans were emphasizing that Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills,” Jarrett instructed white staffers, “You guys, you’re not getting this issue right.” After Jarrett’s intervention, the allegedly post-racial candidate Obama brought the white staff into line, telling them they were too “gun-shy on race issues.” A campaign source revealed, “moving forward, the candidate made it very clear to us that we were just a bunch of white people who didn’t get it – which, by the way, was true.”

After the inauguration, Jarrett successfully pushed to loosen restrictions barring officials from meeting with lobbyists, a rule enshrined in Obama’s executive memo on the Recovery Act, for fear other “legitimate” concerns – raised by “civil rights organizations whose directors happen to be registered lobbyists – will not be heard.”

Without her patronage, it seems Van Jones would not be heard. A White House official told Politico Jones “did not go through the traditional vetting process”; instead, Jarrett interviewed Jones, a signal she bucked for his appointment. Jarrett gushed to the Netroots Nation conference: “We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching him…for as long as he’s been active out in Oakland. And all the creative ideas he has. And so now, we have captured that, and we have all that energy in the White House.”

Jarrett lobbied Obama to create the office of Chief Diversity Officer within the FCC, a position filled by Mark Lloyd, an Alinskyite and former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who appears fixated on silencing conservative talk radio. Her intent, according to some, was to change policy by altering the structure of the FCC. Jarrett also helped recruit Cass Sunstein, who believes in the Fairness Doctrine, has argued we should “celebrate tax day,” and believes animals should have legal standing to sue humans. (This is a growing movement on the Green Left. As I note in chapter seven of my book Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Radical Gifts, the Heinz Endowments gave $25,000 to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which complains that “trees and forests and streams and cougars and bears – they have no rights under our structure of governance.”) As David Horowitz has noted, Saul Alinsky wrote, “From the moment an organizer enters a community, he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing, and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army.” Part of that motion involves burrowing into existing structures and changing them from the inside out – as has been done in academia, the major tax-exempt foundations, the Democratic Party, and now the U.S. government.

Who is Valerie Jarrett?

Part of Jarrett’s identification with the president is her international childhood and experience as an African-American growing up abroad. She was born in Shriaz, Iran, to a renowned physician father and spent the first five years of her life in Iran. There, she said, she was treated as an American, not an African-American. Her family lived in London for one year before settling in Chicago’s elite neighborhood, Hyde Park, where she was teased for both her race and British accent. Chicago-based journalist Lynn Sweet reports, “In the manner of privileged Hyde Park-Kenwood children from smart families, Jarrett went to the exclusive University of Chicago Lab School before transferring to her mother’s alma mater, Northfield Mt. Hermon, in western Massachusetts for the last two years of high school.” After graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, she went to work for Chicago’s first African-American mayor, Harold Washington, whose election many Sixties radicals attributed to themselves. After Washington’s death in 1987, she stayed on under his successor, Richard Daley. In City Hall, she and her colleague Susan Sher recruited Michelle Robinson, then engaged to Barack Obama, and Jarrett quickly melded her way into their lives.

After Daley administration in-fighting, Jarrett continued to serve Daley in a different capacity and found a job at Habitat, a real estate firm headed by Daniel Levin. (Daniel is the cousin of Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan.) Michelle Malkin has noted the tracts of public housing – including that bearing the name of her grandfather – have deteriorated after being run by Habitat. Although the New York Times lists the stint as “baggage,” it proved profitable, and she has gone on to sit on numerous corporate, civic, and academic boards.

Sweet noted to whom Jarrett owed much of her success: “Activist public affairs consultant with close ties to City Hall Marilyn Katz introduced Jarrett to Levin.”

With a Little Help from my (Radical) Friends

Who is this person to whom Jarrett is so indebted – and who, we shall see, she calls a personal friend? Marilyn Katz provided “security” for Students for a Democratic Society at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Undercover Chicago policeman William Frapolly told prosecutors that during the Days of Rage, Katz showed protesters a new weapon to use against the police: “a cluster of nails that were sharpened at both ends, and they were fastened in the center.” Police later reported being hit by golf balls with nails through them, as well as excrement. Years later, Katz would insist her “guerrilla nails” were merely “a defensive weapon” to prevent “possible bad behavior by the police.”

The SDS soon imploded. Bill Ayers – whom Katz has known since he was 17 – helped create the terrorist Weather Underground from its ranks. In 1971-2, Katz would lead another remnant to form the New American Movement (NAM), a combined Old Left-New Left organization that included Communist Party USA members from the 1930s. Rabbi Michael Lerner was among its early founders, though he left to start his own organization. (His reaction when David Horowitz rebuffed his recruitment efforts is described in Radical Son, p. 274.) NAM’s primary political text, entitled Basic Marxism: What It Is & How to Use It, revealed the group’s devotion to Gramsci. For most of the Seventies, the organization’s local chapters ran socialist “schools” open to the public with little national structure. The L.A. school listed as the first point in NAM’s “basic perspective”: its belief “that a socialist revolution will be necessary to solve the problems of the U.S.” NAM declared its “solidarity with the Third World grew out of a correct reaction to United States chauvinism.” A 1973 NAM manifesto declared: “We admire, and draw inspiration from, many accomplishments from the Russian, Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions…as representing, on balance, very positive steps forward in human history…we deeply value Lenin’s contributions to revolutionary theory and practice…We identify with Lenin’s  revolutionary spirit and determination; we agree with his critique of mechanistic determinism and economism, his writings on the nature of the state, his approach to creating a ‘revolutionary alliance of the oppressed,’ and his treatment of nationalism and imperialism.” Katz, through NAM, founded the Reproductive Rights National Network in 1977-8. A sympathetic author summed up R2N2’s motivation: “The long-term goal was to develop an ‘offensive movement’ [against the pro-life movement] that could fight for a more comprehensive set of demands as the conditions for ‘free choice,’ including child care, national health-care, high-quality education, and guaranteed income.” Sound familiar?

NAM’s local chapters merged with Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) in 1983 to form the Democratic Socialists of America.

That year, Katz became an organizational entrepreneur herself, founding MK Communications, Inc., a public relations firm. Its clients include the ACLU, Amnesty International, Chicagoans Against War & Injustice, Harold Washington 1983-1987 Mayoral Campaign, Lloyd Doggett’s senate campaign, Human Rights Watch, Illinois Campaign for Choice, Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the socialist publication In These Times, the MacArthur Foundation, Mother Jones, National Community Development Initiative (for the Rockefeller Foundation), UAW Local 719, and numerous City of Chicago accounts. Katz did spin for the developers of the “Presidential Towers,” a HUD-financed yuppie-heaven which moved homeless out of Skid Row in hopes of moving the upper middle class into their place. The new Mayor Daley’s rapprochement with SDS nail-throwers became most conspicuous in 1996, when he, Katz, and the Chicago Seven did PR for the 1996 Democratic National Convention, which returned to Chicago.  The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass reported, even as he laid off 1,000 city workers, he gave “Katz and other public relations firms five-year contracts that could pay them as much as $5 million each.” As part of Katz’s work for the city, she wrote press releases for the Chicago Transit Authority, then headed by Jarrett.

Katz had a few other noteworthy clients: Project Vote, the ACORN-affiliated voter registry that first brought Barack Obama to Chicago as a “communist organizer”; the Habitat Company; The Joyce Foundation, on whose board Obama sat; and History Makers, which interviewed Valerie Jarrett, her mother, and her father-in-law.

Katz called on her radical rolodex in 2002, when she and former national secretary Carl Davidson started Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq. (He and and Tom Hayden founded the Venceremos Brigades, a joint triumph of Cuban intelligence and the KGB. In 1992, he joined the Committees of Correspondence, now known as Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He has also been active nationally with United for Peace and Justice. In December 2008, Katz was also elected to UFPJ’s national steering committee.) Katz and Bettylu Saltzman organized the 2002 antiwar demonstration where the little-known state senator Obama gave his famous speech opposing the Iraq war, calling it a “stupid” war, and a conspiracy by Karl Rove to “distract” from the (by then recovering) economy. This speech made Obama the choice of his party’s left-wing in 2008.

Katz knew of Obama politically and through Valerie Jarrett. Davidson, too, knew of Obama, writing on the Marxism Mailing List he had “known Obama from the time he came to the New Party to get our endorsement for his first race ever. I’ve been in his home, and as an IL legislator, he’s helped or community technology movement a number of times.” He later assessed an Obama economic speech, finding, “I probably couldn’t written a better one myself.” Together, he and Katz wrote the book Stopping War, Seeking Justice: Essays in a Time of Empire.

Now a longtime beneficiary of Democratic spoils, Katz put her new organization to work for the party. CAWI – which lists “allies” like MoveOn.org, Code Pink, International ANSWER, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, and the World Can’t Wait – trained 200 people to register voters in 2003. Katz and Davidson wrote an article, “From Protest to Politics,” urging radicals to support Democrat John Kerry. Four years later, in a blog entry adorned with a picture of Barack Obama, Davidson urged readers of the CAWI homepage to “[b]reak decisively with the ultraleft mindset, in order to deepen and broaden left-progressive unity.” Davidson later attempted to defend Obama, writing:

Obama is a decent liberal out of the Alinksky [sic.] tradition of community organizers. Everyone knows there’s nothing Marxist about Alinsky. I’m simply an acquaintance of Obama, meeting him three times for a few minutes over 15 years…Harold Washington’s movement, for instance, was launched by Black nationalists and independent Black Democrats, hardly “connected” to the socialist left. Obama really does have mentors, but certainly not me…It’s two very tough, accomplished, influential and smart Black liberal women, Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice.

If Katz’s tactics have changed, her underlying ideology has not. In the article, Katz and Davidson agreed: “it is true that the next president of the U.S. will represent one or another imperialist grouping…We should do this without illusions. The day after Bush’s defeat, the U.S. will still be an imperialist power.” (Emphasis added.)

Last August, Katz and her old SDS comrade Don Rose (who mentored David Axelrod, another friend of Katz) met with In These Times to discuss the 40^th anniversary of the Days of Rage. When asked if they learned anything from the violence, she first charged the FBI with having 28 Black Panthers “assassinated,” calling the mythical murders “a wakeup call where we saw the underbelly of our own country.” She then offered her takeaway from 40 years’ reflection on the rebellion she led: “I would have to say for me permanently, I would probably reject violence as a useful form of revolution.”

Probably.

Asked whether she regretted her actions “in this age of terrorism,” she replied, “I regret nothing.”

Katz: Obamas’ Friend, Blagojevich’s Suppliant

Katz is not merely a friend of Jarrett’s but also both Obamas. The president met Katz through his first job at a law firm run by Judd Miner. The New York Times reports Katz “gave him entry into another activist network: the foot soldiers of the white student and black power movements that helped define Chicago in the 1960s.” Michelle Obama has close social ties with her, as well. Biographer Liza Mundy quotes Katz as saying the moment Jarrett introduced Michelle Obama to her friends, Michelle “was recognized as brilliant and beautiful, and immediately accepted into a very sophisticated social circle.” Mundy writes Michelle “and Barack…enjoyed a range of relations with people who shared their lifestyle, as well as their progressive views and political involvement. ‘These are folks,’ says Marilyn Katz, a member of their social circle, ‘who talk to their friends a number of times a day.” Mundy describes a May 2008 fundraiser for DSA member Rep. Jan Schakowsky, which Katz attended and Michelle Obama addressed.

From their common social circle, Katz was welcomed into the Obama campaign. Like Code Pink radical Jodie Evans, Marilyn Katz became a bundler for Obama, as well as a member of his national finance committee. According to Public Citizen, Katz raised at least $50,000 for Obama ‘08.

After seeing one friend elevated to power, the graying radical tried to convince disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to appoint Valerie Jarrett to Obama’s open U.S. Senate seat. The Times describes Katz as “a friend” of Jarrett’s who encouraged Jarrett to step out of Obama’s shadow and “be the sun.” Katz tried to schedule lunch with the governor’s wife, Patti, to advocate for her friend’s appointment. When that failed to materialize, Rod Blagojevich writes in his new book, Katz contacted the governor and “indicated that if I appointed Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate, the Obama people would help me raise money from their network of contributors across the country.” Federal investigators allege an unnamed individual suggested a three-way deal for Blagojevich to appoint Jarrett to the seat, take a position with the SEIU-affiliated “Change to Win” labor coalition, and then have President Obama bolster the organization.

Ultimately, nothing came of Katz’s overture. Jarrett opted to stay in the White House. (Why would she want a demotion?) In late July, Katz joined Jarrett and Sher in Washington at the Obama administration’s celebration of the 37^th anniversary of Title IX. Katz, the unrepentant ‘60s nail-tosser, now has a well-placed patron and a history as part of the first family’s inner circle. All three are indebted to her, literally or figuratively, and she enjoys their affections. Though she is the most disturbing to come to light, she is hardly Jarrett’s only extremist influence.

It Runs in the Family

Her late father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, was a pioneering black journalist in “negro” newspapers, After graduating from Knoxville College, Vernon Jarrett started at The Chicago Defender in 1946, where he wrote columns extolling Communist poet Langston Hughes and lifelong Stalinists W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. (Obama would write in Dreams of My Father that “I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm [X], DuBois and Mandela.”) A contemporary writer at Kansas City Star asserts by 1948 Jarrett “had been forced out [of journalism] by the Cold War, the Red scare and racism.” He freelanced at Kansas City’s The Call from 1954-58, then returned to Chicago to become the first nationally syndicated black columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and still later wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times. Valerie married his son, William Robert Jarrett, who preceded his father in death. Together, they had a daughter, who now attends Harvard. The elder Jarrett may have been part of his daughter-in-law’s rise through Chicago’s political ranks. The Washington Post called Jarrett “a key influence in [Harold] Washington’s decision to run for the Chicago mayoralty.”

Vernon Jarrett later wrote of another up-and-coming political figure in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Good news! Good news! Project Vote, a collectivity of 10 church-based community organizations dedicated to black voter registration, is off and running. Project Vote is increasing its rolls at a 7,000-per-week clip. Just last Saturday it registered 2,000 during the Chicago Defender’s annual Bud Billiken Parade. But now, the not-so-good news: If Project Vote is to reach its goal of registering 150,000 out of an estimated 400,000 unregistered blacks statewide, “it must average 10,000 rather than 7,000 every week,” says Barack Obama, the program’s executive director…”There’s a lot of talk about `black power’ among the young but so little action.”

When Vernon died in 2004, he was saluted in the pages of People’s Weekly Worker, the house organ of the Communist Party USA. A final point of confluence, perhaps more fortuitous than anything: Vernon Jarrett once sat on a union publicity committee with Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist poet who occasionally counseled…the young Barack Obama.

Valerie Jarrett had more immediate radical ties. Her mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, co-founded Her mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, co-founded the Erickson Institute in Chicago and still serves on its Board of Trustees. Tom Ayers, the father of Bill Ayers, was a one-time fellow trustee. According to WorldNet Daily’s Brad O’Leary, the Erickson board also included Bill Ayers’ wife, Bernadine Dohrn. For his part, Bill Ayers called Bowman “a neighbor and friend” in his book A Kind and Just Parent, noting his neighbors include Louis Farrakhan (whose guard, The Fruit of Islam, patrols the neighborhood and “has an eye on things twenty-four hours a day”), and “writer Barack Obama.”

Mr. Obama’s Neighborhood

Perhaps this last reference is the key to understanding Jarrett and the Obamas: their common formation by Chicago’s elite Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago essentially created the neighborhood from scratch, driving out its poor (and middle class) residents, of all races, and creating a chic atmosphere of cultural elitism. This bubble reflected the far-Left bubble of modern academia – though it would not hurt Obama’s political fortunes. Katz would tell In These Times, “I believe that Barack Obama could only have emerged in Chicago,” because of its longtime confluence of radical organizations, culminating in Washington’s mayoralty.

One of Obama’s neighbors, the late, left-wing Rabbi Arnold Wolf – a Democratic Socialist who once invited the Chicago 7 to address his synagogue – described the Hyde Park environment and Obama’s place in it to The Weekly Standard. “We had a party for him at our house when he was just starting, back in the Nineties. I said right away: ‘Here’s a guy who could sell our product, and sell it with splendor!’” And what is the Hyde Park “product,” the reporter asked? “It’s a rational, progressive philosophy based on experience. You see it here. This neighborhood is genuinely integrated. We did it here, we really did it! Not just talk about it. Look around. And Barack and his family fit right in. This is their neighborhood.” He then referred to Bill Ayers as “an aging, toothless radical, a pussycat,” and Dohrn as “thoroughly conventional, just very nice.”

That’s Jarrett’s product, and Obama’s. An international, rootless wanderer abandoned by his father, and occasionally his mother, in search of authenticity, he never felt at home until he found his roots, and himself, in the milieu of Hyde Park – a neighborhood big enough to encompass everyone from Marilyn Katz to Bill Ayers, from Tony Rezko’s vacant adjoining property to Louis Farrakhan’s wandering “security” force.

And Valerie Jarrett.

Is this what Jarrett reminds the Obamas of: the neighborhood that has been the president’s only true home and shaped or reinforced their values and identity? An elitist sanctuary of pampered radicals, racists, and terrorists, liberated of working class stiffs who bitterly cling to their guns and religion?

Increasingly, it seems as though this is what “makes them who they are,” and is becoming the atmosphere Obama, with Jarrett’s help, is recreating in his administration.

• In the Obama Administration, her official role is the Senior advisor and and assistant to the president for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.
• Before coming to DC, she was the CEO of The Habitat Company. To see the successes of her work in this role, please click here and watch the video.
• Jarrett was also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the University of Chicago Medical Center from 2006-2009. During her reign as chair, she worked closely with Michelle Obama, and also was involved in a patient dumping scheme.

According to the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2006:

Valerie Jarrett joined the Habitat Company, a real estate development and management company, in 1995. Before that, she served for eight years in City of Chicago government posts, first as Deputy Corporation Counsel for Finance and Development, then as Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Richard Daley in 1991 and finally, as Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development from 1992 through 1995.

From 1995 to 2003, Jarrett served as Chair of the Chicago Transit Board, the body that oversees the business of the Chicago Transit Authority, the provider of public transportation service to 1.5 million people in the City of Chicago and 38 suburbs. She is Chair of the board of the Chicago Stock Exchange and vice chair of the executive council of Metropolis 2020. She also serves on the board of directors for the USG Corporation, RREEF America II, Navigant Consulting, Inc., The Local Initiative Support Corporation, The Joyce Foundation and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. She also is president of the board of the Southeast Chicago Commission.

Jarrett is also a member of the board of trustees of the Museum of Science and Industry and Window to the World Communications Inc. She served as finance chair for the 2004 campaign for now U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and was the first treasurer for Obama’s PAC, the Hopefund.

A lifelong resident of Chicago’s South Side, Jarrett attended the University of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools before going on to receive a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1978 and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981. In January, Jarrett gave the keynote address at the University’s celebration of the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Her mother, Barbara Bowman (A.M., 52), taught in the Laboratory Schools while earning her graduate degree in Education. Jarrett’s father, James Bowman, is Professor Emeritus in Pathology and Medicine and the College. He is also the namesake for the University’s Bowman Society Lecture Series, which focuses on topics important to the health care of minority communities and supports diversity at the University.

The Boston Globe reported on this in June of 2008:

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.

Interesting. The above video shows exactly what Jarrett is–a slumlord.

-Adam Bitely form NetRightNation.com is the author of this post.