Jarrett named by Obama as Senior White House Advisor:
Valerie Jarrett, one of his closest confidantes, was named November 14, 2008, by President-elect Barack Obama as Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.
Earlier Speculation
Before the general election, on October 21, 2008, Michael Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times reported she had heard that Valerie Jarrett, “who is this/close to Barack Obama”, was high on his “short list to replace him in the U.S. Senate!”
At the time, Sneed interpreted this to meaning Obama wanted his replacement, to be chosen by Gov. Rod Blagojevich, to be an African American.
On November 10, 2008, CNN reported that Valerie Jarrett would not be Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate. She is headed for a spot on Obama’s White House staff.
However, Allahpundit wrote November 11, 2008, at Hot Air that Obama wants unqualified crony to replace him in Senate“: (h/t RV)
The crony in question: Valerie Jarrett, who’s never run for public office in any capacity as far as I can tell but has earned appointments as chairman of the Chicago Transit Board and as a trustee of the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Which, in fairness, makes her more qualified to hold high office than The One.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the incoming chief of staff, said Sunday that he had not seen the report from Chicago’s WLS-TV that named Jarrett as Obama’s top pick, but he praised her as a “valuable ally.”
“People should know that Valerie Jarrett is — and people do know — she is a very dear friend of the president-elect and a valuable ally of his, not only prior to running for president, in his Senate life, and just personally for Michelle and Barack,” Emanuel said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Jarrett’s Own Brewing Affordable Housing/Real Estate Scandal
Judicial Watch reported November 13, 2008, that it had
… obtained documents linking Valerie Jarrett, an advisor to Barack Obama and the co-chairman of the President-Elect’s transition team, to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin “Tony” Rezko.
According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.) Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis. …
As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered “uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage…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.” Ms. Jarrett refused to comment to the Globe on the conditions of the complex.
The Boston Globe’s Binyamin Appelbaum wrote June 27, 2008, that presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.”
Appelbaum commented that this was a “[g]rim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy.” Sen. Obama “endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair.”
Sen. Obama’s political patron and personal real estate fairy, convicted political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko, is not the only one in his past to have connections to Chicago’s slum housing.
Chicago Tribune reporters Jason Grotto and Laurie Cohen added July 5, 2008, that close campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett “stands at the center of Chicago’s controversial efforts to redevelop public housing.”
Jarrett has pushed to integrate new developments by limiting the number of residents, mostly poor and black, who can live in the new communities. From the beginning, that stance clashed with efforts by residents and housing advocates to ensure the number of units set aside for the poor was as large as possible.
Got that? Can’t have too many poor black people living in new developments. Bad for the ‘hood.
Since 1995, Jarrett has been a high ranking executive at Habitat Co., a real estate firm tasked by a federal judge to ensure the CHA ends segregation in public housing.
The company decides how many public, affordable and market-rate units will be built at each site, approves the budgets and helps negotiate the contracts. In some cases, Jarrett, who became chief executive officer of Habitat last year, has personally signed off on the location of public housing units inside the new developments.
Habitat argues that to integrate public housing it must attract middle-class families, who will not buy into a development that includes too many poor people.
See next page for “Jarrett’s Basic Bio” and “Long-term, close Obama-Jarrett relationship”
Wonder if she had to fill out that “questionairre” to get a staff position, lol. If she did, she wouldn’t have passed. For a group of people who claim to be advocates and community organizers for the poor, they sure do discriminate against them when it comes to living arrangements don’t they?
Wonder how much money they took in from HUD for all these housing projects?
I can’t help but wonder if part of the plan for these properties being used by Rezko, Jarrett et al weren’t part of a greater scheme which would have included the Olympic bid? Buy up all this property, get the Olympic bid then either develop the land for big gains from the Olympics or sell them off to others for bigger gains?
The people out of Chicago sure do know how to game the system don’t they?
Fitzgerald could work his entire life in Chicago and probably never get all the people who are corrupt. Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that Fitzgerald is going to be one of the FIRST to be removed after inauguration. I think the GOP is hesitant to name him as a special prosecutor because of some of their dirty ties to all this in Chicago.
The questionnaire might not be to weed people out who are unsavory but to add them in. Just a thought. Given Obama’s history of choosing such nice associates.
I’m thinkin’ the same thing, huntingdonpost. You get extra points for associations with radicals, double credits if they planted bombs, bonuses if they actually detonated the bombs, extra points for graft and knowing how to play the Payola game.
Want to work for Obama? Make sure you pepper your resume with these things.