Chicago: Obama's Sad and Crooked Legacy

US presidential candidate Barak Obama has a large and loud voice that reverberates throughout national and international media. The voice sounds reassuring--particularly as presented by a sympathetic media--but what is the reality behind the voice? What is Obama's record of achievement? Do we dare look too closely at the man behind the curtain?

In "The Case Against Barack Obama," David Freddoso tries to answer such questions by describing the tension between Mr. Obama's public persona and his practical politics. The key, for Mr. Freddoso, is the Chicago world in which Mr. Obama made himself first a community organizer and then a state senator (1997-2004), before heading off to Washington in 2005. It is by viewing Chicago that the gap between Mr. Obama's rhetoric about reform and his career as a conventional Chicago pol is most visible.

In the past week or so, we have learned more about Alaska than we ever cared to know, including details about tiny Wasilla, where Sarah Palin once served as mayor. But about Mr. Obama's hometown we hear very little. Chicago, let it be said, is a place in decline. In recent years -- and well before the current economic turmoil -- it has lost its two leading banks and thousands of jobs in the futures and commodities markets. Not only does it have the highest retail sales tax in the country, at 10.25%, it is the only city with a head tax on employment. Its public schools are in terrible shape. The city's middle-class population continues to flee. (Chicago lost 63,000 people between 2000 and 2006.) Meanwhile corruption and crime, not to mention machine politics, continue to thrive. In Chicago, it is no big deal to discover that an alderwoman's boyfriend is a member of the Gangster Disciples; this was the same gang that was given voter-registration money by Mayor Richard M. Daley. Chicago's murder rate is three times that of New York. _WSJ

Barak Obama promises change for America if he is elected US President. No doubt that will be true. But things can change for the worse more easily than for the better. Obama's home city, Chicago, reflects rapidly worsening change in rates for violent crime. Chicago murder 2.70 times the National Average, robbery is 2.73 times the National Average, aggravated assault is 1.88 times the National Average, and violent crime overall is 2.18 times the National Average (source).

Chicago is a mob town from bottom to top. Chicago is also the political womb that nourished, incubated, trained, and elevated young BHO from his early adulthood to the present. He earned his chops on Chicago's mean streets alongside William Ayers, diverted hundreds of millions of charitable tax-free funds to political cronies in the Chicago machine, and worked his way to becoming a "made man" inside the machine.

You will never understand the man until you do the research. Have the courage to look behind the curtain at the real man and his record. You may save yourself from a fatal mistake.