Robert Weissbourd: Obama 2008 Urban Policy Committee Chair

RBO returns today to Jennifer Rubin’s September 13, 2008, observation at Pajamas Media that Barack Obama had a “pattern of funneling money to political allies and their allies” throughout his “tenure” on the board of the Woods Fund — not to mention other boards upon which he served, including the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and the Joyce Foundation.

POTUS Obama now has a well-established pattern of rewarding political campaign donors with positions on his campaign advisory teams, Obama-Biden transition teams, and in his administration. Unsurprisingly, many of these folks have historical relationships with Obama as well.

Take for example RBO’s May 4 article about Harry C. Boyte, just another radical Alinskyite Obama supporter, in which we wrote about Boyte’s co-chairmanship of the “civic engagement group”, which was part of the Obama 2008 Urban Policy Committee.

The Committee itself was chaired by Robert Weissbourd (right), president of RW Ventures, LLC, a regional and community economic development consulting firm, and as well as former Vice-President of Shorebank Corporation and Executive Vice-President of Shorebank Chicago Companies. Weissbourd also served as a member of the Obama-Biden transition team.

Along with other national urban policy and housing experts, he conducted a review of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, briefed the new Secretary, and developed recommendations for the incoming administration.

Before we go any further, let’s be clear that Weissbourd was not only an Obama bundler committed to raising a minimum of $50,000, but he also contributed significant funds to Obama’s campaigns from his own bank account: $3600 in 2007 to Obama for America and $29,373 to the Obama Victory Fund (thereby achieving Mega-Donor Status) in 2008; $5000 in 2005 to help launch Obama’s Hopefund Inc., with another $5000 in 2006; and $9113 in 2003-2004 to Obama for Illinois for Obama’s U.S. senatorial campaign.

In 1998 Weissbourd was the recipient of an alumni award at the University of Chicago:

Robert Weissbourd (J.D.’79), vice president of Shorebank Corporation, works to strengthen Chicago neighborhoods by investing in entrepreneurs, real estate and community organizations, and to help market institutions understand the benefits of returning to the inner city. The success of his efforts has inspired institutions across the nation to invest in the inner city.

Note the mention of “investing in … community organizations.” It would appear that Weissbourd’s “investing” extends to “investing” in future presidents, as well.

Chicago Annenberg Challenge

In 1995 Obama was the founding President of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and served as Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1995–1999. Fred Lucas pointed out October 15, 2008, for CNSNews.com, that during that time:

As chairman, Obama oversaw the disbursement of $49.2 million in Annenberg grants, most of which went to non-profit groups with the stated intent of improving Chicago’s public schools.

Since the start of his political career, Obama has received a total of $331,528 in campaign contributions from people who served as staff and board members of non-profit groups that received grants from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC).

Weissbourd’s Ventures LLC profile states:

[He] is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. He has been active for over twenty-five years in community and civic organizations, including service as President or Vice-President of the Boards of City Colleges of Chicago, Crossroads Fund, Businesspeople in the Public Interest, the Center for Neighborhood Technology and PROCAN, as well as on the Visiting Committee of the University of Chicago Law School, and the Advisory Committees for the (Chicago) Mayor’s Technology Advisory Committee, Brookings Metropolitan Economy Project and Brookings Urban Markets Initiative.

Additionally, to put Weissbroud’s involvement with Obama into perspective, we have this from a 2008 speaker’s profile:

Before joining Shorebank, Mr. Weissbourd was a partner at Hartunian, Futterman & Howard, specializing in federal constitutional and class action litigation, school desegregation and representation of government and non-profit agencies.

One of those non-profit groups Lucas mentioned was, as stated in Weissbourd’s bio, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPPPI or BPI), which received $375,000 in CAC grant funds between 1998 and 2002, while Obama served on CAC’s board. Meanwhile, Obama’s political campaign war chest received $105,513 from BPI staff and board members — including Robert Weissbourd.

FYI: Another BPI contributor is Cindy Moelis, who now serves as Obama’s Director for the Presidential Commission on White House Fellows; her husband, Robert S. Rivkin, who also served on the Obama-Biden transition team for Transportation, is General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Crossroads Fund

Weissbourd also served on the board of the Crossroads Fund. In his October 8, 2008, article, Even More Weathermen For Obama – Connections, Connections, Connections, Trevor Loudon wrote about the Crossroads Fund:

Chicago is home to the Crossroads Fund, a foundation that channels money to organisations such as the Ad Hoc Committee on Chicago Police Torture, Feminist Response in Disability Activism, Female Storytellers Igniting Revolution to End Violence, Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (Formerly Coalition for Education on Sexual Orientation), and well known CPUSA/DSA [Communist Party USA/Democratic Socialists of America] linked organisations such as the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights and Jobs with Justice. Get the picture?

The Fund is co-chaired by leading Chicago DSA member Bill Barclay while Ali Abunimah (right), a claimed Obama associate serves on the board.

Steve Tappis [an original leading Weatherman] is a donor to the Crossroads Fund. Other donors in recent times might also be familar to keen Obama watchers.

A view of Crossroads’ annual reports here and here reveal some interesting names.

They include Obama’s personal friends Timuel Black (left) (CCDS [Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism] member and husband of Progressives for Obama [P4O] endorser Zenobia Black) and DSA member Quentin Young–present at the famous 1995 meeting at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn which launched Obama’s political career.

Obama financier Bettylu Saltzman (right) is listed as are Progressives for Obama founders Carl Davidson and Tim Carpenter. P4O endorsers Aviva Futorian and Susan Klonsky appear as does MDS board member Mike Klonsky and unsuccessful board nominee Barbara Ransby.

P4O petition signers Ted Pearson (CCDS, former Illinois CPUSA chairman) and Prexy Nesbitt (CPUSA and Black Radical Congress connections) also donate.

Unsurprisingly Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are also listed (in 2005).

Ayers and Dohrn are not just Crossroads donors, they are active fundraisers.

In fall of 2005, Crossroads Fund worked closely with donors and board members to put together houseparties featuring discussion on critical community issues, and also raise money for Crossroads Fund. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, along with Yvonne Welbon and Dorian Warren hosted a group of donors and friends as they engaged in a lively discussion about political participation in Chicago…

Interestingly, when Crossroads held anniversay celebrations [in 2007] they established a 25th Anniversary Host Committee.

Honorary Hosts included Congressman Danny Davis and Alderman Helen Shiller, Alderman Joseph A. Moore, Cook County Clerk David Orr and, of course, Senator Barack Obama.

Weissbourd is here among an interesting assortment of socialists, Maoists, Marxists, Communists, and progressive radicals if ever there was one.

Center for Neighborhood Technology

Weissbourd currently serves on the board of directors for the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Although the dates Obama served on the board are unknown, RBO can say with certainty that he was no longer on the board as of December 1, 2000.

FYI: Anne Hallett, of whom RBO wrote last October, who is one of the co-founders with Bill Ayers in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and an Obama campaign contributor, currently serves on CNT’s board with Weissbourd.

RBO wrote in October 2008:

This would be the same Anne Hallett who was one of the co-founders with Bill Ayers in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. As Stanley Kurtz wrote September 23, 2008, at NRO:
The partnership between Ayers and Obama is about much more than the number of occasions on which the two were recorded together in the same room. As CAC board chair, Obama was essentially authorizing the funding of Ayers’s own educational projects, and the projects of Ayers’s radical allies. And especially in CAC’s first year, Ayers was largely in charge of the process. One of CAC’s own evaluations notes that during 1995, CAC was a “Founder-Led Foundation.” That is, Ayers was not merely an ex officio board member that year, but as the key founder and guiding spirit of CAC, he was effectively running the show.

This is consistent with what I found in the documents, which, for example, show Ayers not only speaking for the [Chicago School Reform Collaborative] before the board, but speaking in place of absent board members when they couldn’t be present to make a report. In general, in 1995, Ayers seems to be deeply involved in the work of every important body and committee at CAC. Of the three CAC founders, Ayers, Anne Hallett, an urban school advocate, and Warren Chapman, a state school reformer, only two, Ayers and Hallett, were Collaborative co-chairs and ex officio members of the board. And in a letter, Hallett describes herself as “joined at the hip” with Ayers. Clearly Ayers was the senior partner of the pair, given his prominence as an author, and as a national spokesman for educators consciously committed to politicizing their classrooms. Ayers is not only an activist, but a sort of father-figure to radical educators, authoring not only books of his own, but editing collections of like-minded authors, and putting together coalitions of educators, as he did at CAC. Hallett and Ayers may have co-chaired the Collaborative and together been ex-officio on the board, but this was largely Ayers’s show.

This would mean that Hallett had a hand in selecting Obama for the CAC board — and a hand out when it came to the CAC granting funds to Cross City Campaign. Neat how that works, isn’t it.

And speaking of Hallett, and Obama campaign current events, according to her Northwestern University Asset-Based Community Development Institute profile, in 2004-2005, she was a consultant to both Illinois ACORN and National ACORN. Weren’t those the years that Obama was running to become the U.S. Senator from Illinois? We thought so.

Moving on, back to CNT:

Additionally, we do know that in 2005 and 2006 U.S. Senator Barack Obama delivered considerable earmark funds to CNT. RBO wrote September 17, 2008:

On September 9, 2008, the GOP posted an excellent summary on its website entitled “Obama/Biden Earmark Makeover” [from which we learn] Over A Two-Year Period In The U.S. Senate, Obama Requested $3.2 Million In Earmarks For The Center For Neighborhood Technology, An Organization Led By Political Supporters And Friends.

FYI: CNT’s head, “Jacky” Grimshaw, was an Obama friend and supporter. RBO wrote in September 2008:

Jacquelyne (Jacky) Grimshaw, who served as “director of intergovernmental affairs” under Mayor Harold Washington, has also been described as Washington’s “chief lobbyist”, “top aide”, as well as a “political analyst” and a “longtime political activist”.

On December 3, 2002, when Illinois governor-elect Rod Blagojevich named his transition committees, Obama was listed on the Health Committee and Grimshaw on the Transporation Committee.

Daily Kos poster abe57 wrote February 15, 2008:

Obama’s neighbor on the less famous side of his house is Jacky Grimshaw who ran Harold Washington’s successful campaign for Mayor. Her husband Bill is a U. of Chicago prof. The Grimshaws sometimes baby sit the Obama girls. Jacky and Michelle Obama are very close. Jacky is Vice President of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago based Environmental group at cnt.org. She is also vice chair of the Congress for the New Urbanism at cnu.org, a group focused on reviving traditional urban neighborhoods and transit.

[...]

Jacky Grimshaw was named in May 2008 to represent Obama on the Credentials Committee for the Illinois Democratic Delegation to the DNC held [August 2008] in Denver.

PROCAN

Now we come to PROCAN — Progressive Chicago Area Network — on which board Weissbourd also served.

Here we have a huge info gap. There is little information available online about this group. This is the little we know; RBO would certainly be grateful to know where to find more.

In the September 14, 2004, Tribute to Lutrelle Palmer, Chicago journalist and community activist, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) stated in the U.S. House of Representatives:

[Lu Palmer] played a key role in the development of Pro-Can, the Progressive Chicago Area Network, which was made up of mostly blacks, young whites and Hispanics whose goals were good, clean, progressive and honest government.

In 1986 Robert Weissbourd was president and Bernard Lacour was vice president of Pro-Can.

^{Bernard Lacour (L), Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), Catalyst, April 1999}
Bernard Lacour, a “longtime school reformer,” is Community Relations Consultant for the Illinois Network of Charter Schools; he is also identified as spokesman for Chicago’s Rehab Network. In 1998 Lacour co-wrote “An Agenda for the Reform of Chicago Public Schools,” the final report of Mayor Harold Washington’s Education Summit, with Sally Reed and R. Craig Sautter. In 2000 Lacour was “policy reform director of Designs for Change, a school advocate group.”

At some point, Greg A. Kinchewski, General Counsel/Vice President, Marco Consulting Group, served as “Co-Chairman of the Progressive Chicago Area Network (PROCAN) for five years.”

Shorebank

Whatever picture you may formed in your head about Weissbourd by now, there’s even more to come. As reported above, Weissbourd is the former Vice-President of Shorebank Corporation and Executive Vice-President of Shorebank Chicago Companies.

ShoreBank boasts on the header for its website “ShoreBank invests in people and their communities to create economic equality and a healthy environment.”

So, let’s compare and contrast:

In January 2005 ShoreBank was held up as a “model for development project.”

In Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, the Shorebank Corporation was established with funds from philanthropic organizations, and it established the South Shore Bank. The bank financed apartment renovations and encouraged retail development. Much of the stability and eventual prosperity of the South Shore neighborhood was a result of the effort.

Richard Taub, Chairman of Human Development and the Paul Klapper Professor in the Social Sciences and the College, at the University of Chicago said in January 2005:

“The South Shore Bank’s success was mainly in shoring up the housing market, and by so doing, made it possible for a group of small investors to increase their income by purchasing and rehabilitating housing.”

In an October 2006 Dallas Morning News article, Chicago economic consultant Robert Weissbourd and Dallas scholar Marcus Martin shared “their insights about a powerful new approach to the problems of neglected inner-city neighborhoods.”

Fundamentally, it’s just this: If we want to develop assets and create wealth for people, for all kinds of people, and for companies that invest in communities, we need to pay attention to the mechanisms by which the assets get converted to wealth. In this country, in this economy, those are markets. [...]

The classic example in the finance area is ShoreBank’s lending to real estate entrepreneurs and rehabbers. ShoreBank is a Chicago bank holding company that began by doing housing and venture capital and community development as well as conventional banking in targeted areas on the south side of Chicago.

I spent nearly a decade working there, and we had a special product designed for local people living in low-income neighborhoods who wanted to buy and fix up small buildings. It let them get much higher loan-to-value on the buildings, it was a different structure for underwriting.

It has created an industry – I mean dozens of millionaires in the neighborhoods – while totally rehabbing a huge percentage of the housing. For ShoreBank, it had the lowest loss rates of any of the bank’s portfolios. It became so profitable that all the banks are now chasing after it, competing for these borrowers.

In May 2009 ShoreBank was deeply troubled. Steve Daniels wrote May 18 at Crain’s:

ShoreBank, the Chicago lender that set out to prove banks can make money serving low-income communities, is staggering under a pile of bad loans that’s forcing it to raise substantial capital.
The bank has more bad loans as a percentage of total loans outstanding than all but two of 54 other banks its size in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, the states in which it operates, according to Virginia-based data provider SNL Financial. Only Mutual Bank of Harvey [the bank used by Rita Rezko to finance the "Rezko lot"], which is operating under a regulatory order and sustaining heavy losses, and Chicago-based Corus Bank, which is scrambling to raise capital and sell assets to stave off failure, are in worse shape.

How ShoreBank’s leaders — co-founders Ronald Grzywinski and Mary Houghton, chairman and president, respectively, of parent company ShoreBank Corp. — navigate the storm will put their claim that banks can profitably lend in low-income neighborhoods to the stiffest test since the pair took over the old South Shore National Bank 36 years ago. [...]

A bank spokesman won’t say which investors ShoreBank plans to approach or how much it thinks it needs. But based on the bank’s finances, the sum clearly will be in the tens of millions.

ShoreBank, which at $2.7 billion in assets is Chicago’s 13th-largest bank, blames its loan-quality issues on the economy. Real estate values in neighborhoods it serves have dropped 25% to 40%, it says. Bank CEO Joseph Hasten, who joined ShoreBank two years ago, is focusing on working out delinquent loans, boosting core deposits and controlling expenses, [...]

ShoreBank’s balance sheet took a pounding in the six months ended March 31. Loans delinquent at least 90 days ballooned 139% to $182 million, nearly 12% of ShoreBank’s $1.53-billion loan portfolio. That compared with a 3.5% median percentage of bad loans to total loans at banks with $1 billion to $10 billion in assets in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, [...]

There’s no guessing as to Weissbourd’s involvement with ShoreBank at this time. While employed by ShoreBank, he contributed $9113 to Obama for Illinois from June 30, 2003 to March 24, 2004. Additionally, in March 2005, he contributed to the congressional campaigns of Kent Conrad ($2000), Bill Nelson ($1000), and Robert Byrd ($1000).

In fact, according to his political campaign records, beginning in 1991, Weissbourd was with ShoreBank when he contributed $700 to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign; in 1995-1997 when he contributed $2,000 to Carol Moseley-Braun for U.S Senate 1998; in 1996 when he contributed $1000 for Danny K. Davis’s congressional campaign; and in 1997, 1998, and 2000 when he contributed to Rep. Jan Schakowski’s congressional campaigns. (You can read about Schakowsky’s connections here, here, and here.)

Weissbourd’s board of directors profile at Sourcelight, a personalization software company, states:

[Weissbourd] was Vice-President of Shorebank Chicago Companies, the management team responsible for Shorebank’s Chicago operations. His work at Shorebank encompassed business planning for development finance institutions and programs; financial restructuring and capitalization; public policy; new product development and training.

To state the obvious, there is no way Weissbourd can distance himself from ShoreBank’s “bad loans” made to low-income communities in Chicago.

Any questions?

Speaking of ShoreBank

While we’re on the subject of ShoreBank, let’s turn back the RBO clock to April 2008 where we meet Howard Stanback, who was on the board of Shorebank’s Neighborhood Institute and president of the Hyde Park Community Association, which governed the neighborhood where, in 2005, Barack and Michelle Obama bought their faux Georgian mansion and Rita Rezko bought the adjacent empty garden lot.

Oh. Did we mention that Stanback was also board chairman at the Woods Fund in 2000 when Obama’s boss, Allison Davis, and Tony Rezko, Rita’s spouse, came looking for money for their New Kenwood LLC, which Davis and Rezko had formed to build an apartment building for low-income seniors at 48th and Cottage Grove? It seems Obama voted to make the $1 million investment but Stanback abstained.

ShoreBank in Kenya

Would it surprise you to know that in August 2006, when U.S. Senator Obama visited Nairobi, Kenya, news of microfinance, and a $1million investment in Kenya, made by ShoreBank made its way to ABC News in Chicago?

MicroCapital reports: “In November 3, 2008, MicroCapital reported on President Barack Obama’s support of ShoreBank’s loan program to Kenyan microfinance bank K-Rep during his trip to Kenya in 2006.”

In 2006 Mr. Obama visited Kibera, a district in Nairobi, Kenya, and had a session on microfinance with a roundtable discussion touching on below-market micro-business loans developed by Chicago-based community development and environmental bank holding company Shorebank with the Kenyan microfinance bank K-Rep. He commented that, “Every country that develops, develops because women are given opportunity”. Mr. Obama helped fund the Shorebank program with $14,000 earned from his children’s book deal.

Also note that ShoreBank is a part owner in Kenya’s K-Rep Bank.

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And, as always, see RBO’s The Obama Socialist / Marxist / Communist Reader for more.