Posted on 01/11/2012 6:17:19 PM PST by ConservativeStatement
President Barack Obama returned tonight to the comfort of his hometown, where he made his first trip to his re-election headquarters that opened in May and used a supportive political base to raise millions in campaign cash at a series of fundraisers.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Eden_Martin
R. Eden Martin is an American lawyer. Martin was a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin LLP from 1975 to 2004. Martin has served as President of The Commercial Club of Chicago since 1999. He is a member of the Boards of Directors of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and Nicor Inc., a Life Trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University. He has been an Aon Corporation director since 2002 and serves as Chairman of Aon Foundation. He has also served on the boards of the University of Illinois Foundation, the Chicago History Museum, and the Ravinia Festival.
http://theobamafile.com/ObamaWife.htm
On a personal note, Michele was simply the most angry, arrogant and caustic young person I have ever met in my life. She simply would not engage with her fellow associates and apparently viewed herself as superior to them. I personally observed that she would only engage with partners, most notably senior partners. Never a friendly smile or good morning for staff or fellow associates as she walked past them day after day after day. I remember one particular instance where a group of associates and I were chatting at a firm cocktail party and I noted how no one seemed to know Michele but were constantly gossiping about her. The gang just commented about how arrogant and unfriendly she was and never around. I commented that maybe she was just uncomfortable as a Southside girl being around all of these elitist, snobby white folks at a silk stocking firm. So I walked over to her when she was getting hors d’oeuvres and introduced myself as a friendly overture. She gave me a dirty look, literally threw her head back and turned her back on me and walked back over the a group of senior partners gathered around Eden Martin! As if you say how dare you approach me you filthy little underling. I went back to my group of associates friends feeling embarrassed and they just chuckled and said “told ya’.” So, Michele was not the sweet or kind person the media would like us to believe. She was an elitist and only was interested in those who could advance her personal interest, not ordinary folks. To this day, that episode was the rudest I have ever been treated by anyone, and there are lot of rude lawyers out there.
Eden???
R. Eden Martin
Occupation Lawyer
R. Eden Martin is an American lawyer. Martin was a partner at the law firm Sidley Austin LLP from 1975 to 2004.
Martin has served as President of The Commercial Club of Chicago since 1999. He is a member of the Boards of Directors of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, and Nicor Inc., a Life Trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University.
He has been an Aon Corporation director since 2002 and serves as Chairman of Aon Foundation. He has also served on the boards of the University of Illinois Foundation, the Chicago History Museum, and the Ravinia Festival.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Eden_Martin
~~~~~~~~~~
Tom??? Is he referring to Tom Ayers? [I think he died in 2008]
John???
John W Rogers, Jr. (from Hyde Park & played college b-ball with Michelle’s brother, Craig)
He was part of the inner circle of the Barack Obama presidential campaign.[7] He is a long-time Obama associate who serves as the co-chair of Obama’s Illinois finance committee and who has been a major fundraiser for Democratic Party candidates.[39] He served along with Bill Daley, Pat Ryan, Penny Pritzker and Julianna Smoot on Barack Obama 2009 presidential inauguration committee.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Rogers,_Jr.
Her turn to radicalism came as a surprise. “My parents couldn’t imagine what hit them,” she says. She was born in Chicago on January 12, 1942. Her father, then Bernard Ohrnstein, was Jewish and changed the family name to Dohrn when Bernardine was in high school.
No one tries to divide this nation more than Obama has.
Tom Cole???
http://www.sidley.com/thomas-cole/
Thomas A. Cole
Partner
Chicago
312.853.7473
312.853.7036 Fax
tcole@sidley.com
Vcard
THOMAS A. COLE is a partner in Sidley’s Chicago office. He became a partner of the firm in 1981, a member of the firm’s Executive Committee in 1987 and a member of its Management Committee in 1988. Since May 1998, he has served as Chair of the firm’s Executive Committee, the committee that exercises general authority over the affairs of the firm. While a partner in the firm, Mr. Cole was also vice president-law of Northwest Industries, Inc. from 1982 through 1985.
Mr. Cole maintains a substantial practice in public company mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance, along with his firm management responsibilities. In 2001, Mr. Cole was recognized by Chambers Global, the London-based publication, as one of the 26 U.S. lawyers included in its list of the “Global 100 Lawyers”—“lawyers who stand out from their colleagues and are recognized internationally.” He was designated an M&A “Dealmaker of the Year” for 2007 by The American Lawyer. He was selected to BTI Consulting’s “Client Service All-Star” team for 2008 and 2011. In 2010, he was among 19 lawyers named to “The Directorship 100,” the NACD’s list of “the most influential people in corporate governance and the boardroom.”
He has been involved in dozens of public company mergers and spin-offs, including the following that were each valued at more than $1 billion:
Fortune Brands spin-off of Home and Security Business (pending)
Alberto-Culver/Unilever
AGL/Nicor (pending, represented independent directors)
Aon/Hewitt
EOP/Blackstone
Clear Channel/THLee and Bain (represented special committee)
Exelon/PSEG (terminated)
Exelon/NRG (terminated unsolicited merger proposal)
Pulte/Centex
Tribune/ESOP-Zell
Corn Products/Bunge (terminated)
Nationwide Financial/Nationwide Mutual (represented special committee)
ServiceMaster/Clayton Dubilier
CDW/Madison Dearborn
CNL Hotels/Morgan Stanley
Ventana Medical/Roche (began as hostile defense)
Sally Beauty/Clayton Dubilier
Tellabs/AFC
Maverick Tube/Tenaris
IMC/Cargill
Williams/Barrett (including the successful defense against Shell)
Kimberly-Clark/Scott Paper
Monsanto/DeKalb Genetics
Jefferson Smurfit/Stone Container
Interpublic Group/True North
Wolters Kluwer/CCH
Fred Meyer/QFC
Aon/Alexander & Alexander
IMC Global/Vigoro
Tribune/Renaissance Communications
Northwest Industries/Farley
Ohio Mattress/Gibbons Green
His other significant public company merger transactions include:
Central Vermont Public Service/Gaz Met (pending)
Renaissance Learning/Permira (pending, represented independent directors)
Midwest Air Group/TPG (including the successful defense against Air Tran)
Sun Capital/ShopKo Stores
Goldner Hawn/ShopKo Stores (topped by Sun Capital)
Lyphomed/Fujisawa
Unilever/Helene Curtis
Mercantile/Mark Twain
True North/Bozell (including the successful defense against Publicis)
Humana/Emphesys
GE Medical/Marquette
Berisford/Scotsman
Corporate Governance assignments have included advising public company boards, standing committees and special litigation, transactions and investigative committees. For the five years ended 1998, he taught the seminar on corporate governance at The University of Chicago Law School.
Memberships & Affiliations
Trustee, The University of Chicago
Chairman, Board of Trustees, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare
Director, World Sport Chicago
The Economic Club of Chicago
The Commercial Club of Chicago and its Civic Committee
The Law Club of Chicago
Former Chair of Northwestern University’s Garrett Corporate and Securities Law Institute
Former Co-chair of the Tulane Corporate Law Institute
Fellow of the American Bar Foundation
The American Law Institute
News & Media
171 Sidley Lawyers Ranked in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business 2011
June 13, 2011
76 Sidley Lawyers Recognized in Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business for 2011
April 2011
More
Events & Presentations
Bay Area General Counsel Roundtable
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Current Developments in Delaware Corporate Law
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
excellent! much better fit, as Tom Ayers is deceased.
So...then...Who got BHO the internship at Sidley?
For that matter, have we even known how Michelle got her job at Sidley?
She met Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm, Sidley Austin (she has sometimes said only two, although others have pointed out there were others in different departments),[31] and she was assigned to mentor him as a summer associate.[32] [He went to Sidley the summer after his first year at Harvard]
Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.[33] The couple’s first date was to the Spike Lee movie Do the Right Thing.[34]
Wiki, previously cited.
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Women doing better, but blacks still stagnant, at law firms
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, February 16, 1990
Author: Michael Briggs
EXCERPT
Sidley & Austin, with 250 partners the fifth-largest firm in the country and the biggest based in Chicago, had four black partners, one Hispanic and one Asian partner.
“Law firms are very conservative. They tend to do things the old way,” said Chester L. Blair, president of the Chicago Bar Association. The major law firms
“are tending to break away from old habits slowly,” added Blair. “Some are finding that it is very risky not to change.”
Businesses that hire law firms must shoulder some blame, Blair said. They “ignore their responsibility to the community (by) not making much effort to see to it that legal business is fairly distributed.”
The nation’s best-known law schools also have done too little to recruit minorities, Blair said. “The tendency is for the larger, older prestigious schools to not take much action in that arena. They take the students from the wealthy families and alumni.”
Blair last year became the first black to head the 116-year-old Chicago Bar Association, which had a female president for the first time in 1978.
The Law Journal survey said women made greater strides than racial minorities during the past decade in reaching the top rungs of what remained a profession dominated by white males.
Sidley & Austin had 18 females among its 250 partners and 166 of its 427 associates were women.
R. Eden Martin , Sidley ‘s managing partner, said the number of minorities and women in the firm will increase. “You see more women and blacks and Hispanics graduating from law schools and quite properly see the percentages increasing over time,” Martin said. “We’ve seen increases over the last decade, and I’m sure we’ll see it increase in the future.”
//
Black is in line to head Chicago Bar
Chicago Sun-Times - Tuesday, March 24, 1987
Author: Tom Gibbons
Chester L. Blair has been nominated to become second vice president of the Chicago Bar Association, a post that could lead to his selection as the first black president of the lawyer group, its president, Joseph L. Stone, said.
With no dissenting votes, the group’s 17-member nominating committee endorsed Blair last week to the office in the city’s largest bar association.
If Blair remains unchallenged for the post, he will be appointed in June. That position would almost certainly lead to Blair becoming president of the 21,000-member association for a one-year term in June, 1989.
(snip)
Although a black has never headed the 113-year-old group, a woman, Esther R. Rothstein, was president in 1978.
Blair , 58, is the former president of the all-black Cook County Bar Association, and has served in a leadership role on several Chicago Bar committees. He heads the review board of the state Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.
He heads his own four-lawyer general practice firm, Blair Legal Services. He graduated from John Marshall Law School in 1959.
The Hyde Park Herald, Volume 90, 28 May 1975
Making plans for the Ancona Montessori School Society’s Seventh Annual Scholarship Benefit are left to right: Diane Silverman, Dr. Arnold Bickham, Catherine Stokes, Ellen Be nodin and Attorney Chester L. Blair, Chairman. This year’s dinner and dance will be held at the Playboy Club in Chicago. Dick Gregory, Comedian-Philosopher; T. Daniel, Chicago’s famous mime and other celebrated artists will entertain, ther committee members not shown on the photograph are: Susan Pritzker, Aureen Winter, Shelia Thoman, Leon Finney, (.us Athas, Blanche Foster, Christine Dinwiddic, Carol Cole, Carol Parham, Deanna Brown, Mary Doles, Mary Ashley, Eliza Davey, Donald Williams, Barry Dritzberg, Barbara Shim sky, Sharon Counts, and Judy Blair.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Preckwinkle
She is married to Zeus Preckwinkle, a seventh and eighth grade teacher at Ancona Montessori School.
(no links)
LAWYERS’ GROUP SEEKS TO BLOCK TAX AMENDMENT
State Journal-Register, The (Springfield, IL) - Friday, May 18, 1990
Author: JAY FITZGERALD
A Chicago law group on Thursday said it will file a lawsuit next week to keep off the November ballot a controversial referendum that would restrict
the legislature’s power to increase taxes.
Meanwhile, labor unions and other groups vowed to support that action to block the so-called Tax Accountability Amendment, which calls for a three-fifths vote by lawmakers to raise any tax.
Chester Blair , president of the Chicago Bar Association, said the proposed measure violates the state’s constitution and shouldn’t be put to a referendum.
“We believe the association is providing an important public service by challenging the constitutionality of this use of the initiative process,” said Blair, whose group plans to file suit next week with the Illinois Supreme Court.
Blair’s announcement on Thursday came amid a Statehouse fracas over House Speaker Michael Madigan’s role in the court challenge to the amendment.
Secretary of State Jim Edgar, the Republican gubernatorial candidate and a supporter of the amendment, blasted Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, for orchestrating opposition to the measure. Edgar also challenged Attorney General Neil Hartigan, the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate, to force Madigan to back off his opposition to the amendment.
In turn, Hartigan, who himself supports the ballot question, said Edgar’s statements were the “height of political demagoguery and hypocrisy” because Edgar has called for extension of the state’s temporary income tax hike approved last spring.
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said Madigan is against the amendment because it’s designed to give Republicans, a minority party in the legislature, more power.
Ironically, while lawmakers lobbed salvos all day at each other over controls on the state’s taxing power, the Senate was busy debating Republican and Democratic measures to control local government spending by capping property tax levies.
(snip)
//
Chester L. Blair
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, March 2, 1990
Author: Bob Herguth
HE IS President of the Chicago Bar Association. He’s first African-American to head it.
ATTORNEY STATS ATTORNEY STATS Partner in Blair & Cole, 122 S. Michigan. Headed Cook County Bar Association. Was attorney to U.S. Rep. George Collins, then congressional aide to his widow, Rep. Cardiss Collins.
WHY CHICAGO? WHY CHICAGO? “In high school in Houston, I had a teacher who had come to Chicago for the World’s Fair. She talked about Chicago as a great city: If you were a black person and wanted to try to achieve without a lot of barriers, Chicago was the place. I fell in love with Chicago without seeing it.”
FIRST CHICAGO PROBLEM FIRST CHICAGO PROBLEM He graduated from high school in Houston, then came to Chicago “cold”: change in his pockets and a letter of introduction to Euclid Taylor, prominent black lawyer. He discovered he couldn’t get his $300 savings from his Houston bank account for eight days.
CHICAGO SOLUTION CHICAGO SOLUTION “The first night I slept in a 15-cent movie theater. The second night I spent in the bus station. Then I got a restaurant job” with free food. He slept in Union Station until payday, then got a room. Taylor got him a Chicago Defender job offer, but he stayed with restaurants. Later he worked at a post office.
LIFE STATS LIFE STATS Degree from Chicago State U. Taught at Blaine Elementary. Was drafted, served as a photographer. Worked his way through John Marshall Law School. He and wife Judith live in Hyde Park -Kenwood. Six children.
(snip)
(no link)
Rogers’ Political Ties Run Deep
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, April 23, 1993
Author: Ray Long ; Fran Spielman
John W. Rogers Jr., new president of the Chicago Park District, is one of the city’s political insiders.
Besides being a successful businessman, Rogers, 35, is a friend of Mayor Daley, the son of a judge and a former ambassador, and the husband of a state official.
Rogers is president of Chicago-based Ariel Capital Management Inc., an equity money management firm he founded in 1983. He manages assets worth more than $2 billion.
His parents are Cook County Circuit Judge John W. Rogers , who ran as a Democrat, and Jewel Lafontant, a former United States ambassador-at-large and a Republican who supports Democrat Daley. His wife is Desiree Rogers, the state lottery director. They have a daughter, Victoria, 3.
When he was 23, Rogers said, he went to a breakfast meeting with Daley and has stuck by the mayor ever since. Last year, he was the co-chairman of a Daley fund-raiser, and he has been a frequent contributor to his campaigns.
Rogers is a trustee of Princeton University, the Chicago Foundation of Education, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, LaRabida Hospital and the Chicago Symphony. To take the parks post, he’ll have to give up his post of secretary-treasurer of McCormick Place and chairman of the Navy Pier Committee.
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!!
http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/obamas-ties-to-ayers-back-to-high-school/
THE AYERS/OBAMA TIMELINE: (Version 2.0; a work in progress; dates are approximate)
1981-1983[William Ayers and Barack Obama meet at Columbia?]
1987 William Ayers links up with Barack Obama in Chicago
1988 Ayers solicits Khalid Al-Mansour to raise money for Obama’s Harvard law School education
1989 Tom Ayers and William Ayers get Obama a summer job at Sidley & Austin (where he meets Michelle Obama); Ayers’ wife Bernadine Dohrn also worked at Sidley at about the same time as Barack and Michelle.
1993 Ayers places Obama on Woods Foundation
1995 Ayers makes Obama Chairman of Annenberg Challenge
1995 Ayers hosts a coffee klatch for Obama’s political debut (Obama falsely claims this is when he met Ayers)
2007-2008 The structure of Obama’s presidential campaign increasingly comes to resemble an Ayers-designed national “community organizer matrix” straight out of Maoist theory. This is not merely a presidential “campaign.” Obama’s organization is the first installment of an ongoing movement being paid for with tax-exempt contributions to his campaign, approaching half a billion dollars.
2008 Obama In response to ABC News, Obama tells a national TV audience he was “six years old” when Ayers bombed federal buildings, and they are only casual neighborhood acquaintances. A lie.
_____________________________________________
While at Sidley & Austin (1989-1991), Michelle would meet the terrorist, Bernadine Dohrn, who helped bomb something like 25 targets, including the Capitol and the Pentagon.
Dohrn was working at the firm as a result of the recommendation of the CEO of Chicago’s power company, Tom Ayers. His son, the unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers, ran the organization that put up the money to bring Obama to Chicago in the first place.
Ayers’ father, Thomas Ayers, was CEO of Commonwealth Edison as well as a trustee of Tribune Co. and chairman of the board of Northwestern University.
Dohrn was hired by . . .”the powerhouse firm of Sidley Austin.” The very same law firm where Barack Obama was hired as a summer associate after his first year at Harvard Law School. Where he met Michelle, his future wife. And just how did that coincidence happen?
Trienens headed Sidley Austin when the firm hired Dohrn in 1984. She had never practiced law and had been out of law school for 17 years.
When I asked Trienens if he had hired Dohrn, he replied: “Yes.”
Wasn’t that a bit of nepotism, considering his relationship to her father-in-law? A lot of lawyers would love a first job with such a prestigious firm.
“We often hire friends,” replied Trienens, 84.
Dohrn had not practiced law and been out of law school for 17 years while she was oh so busy doing, uh, other things,
Dohrn wasn’t licensed to practice law. Though she passed the bar exam, the ethics committee turned her down because of her rap sheet. That limited the type of work she could do at Sidley Austin, which she left after a few years.
“Dohrn didn’t get a license because she’s stubborn,” Trienens said. “She wouldn’t say she’s sorry.”
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/10/michelle_obama_book_tells_of_h.html
excerpt......
“But Michelle could also frustrate her supervisors. Quincy White, the partner who helped recruit Michelle and who headed the marketing group, remembers finding her a challenge to manage. White, who is now retired from the firm, says he gave her the most interesting work he could find, in part because he wanted to see her advance, but also because she seemed perennially dissatisfied.
She was, White recalls, “quite possibly the most ambitious associate that I’ve ever seen.” She wanted significant responsibility right away and was not afraid to object if she wasn’t getting what she felt she deserved, he says.
At big firms, much of the work that falls to young associates involves detail and tedium. There were all sorts of arcane but important rules about what could and could not be said or done in product advertisements, and in the marketing group, all the associates, not just the new ones, reviewed scripts for TV commercials to make sure they conformed. As far as associate work goes, it could have been worse — “Advertising is a little sexier than spending a full year reading depositions in an antitrust law suit or reviewing documents for a big merger,” says White — but it was monotonous and relatively low-level.
Too monotonous for Michelle, who, White says, complained that the work he gave her was unsatisfactory. He says he gave her the Coors beer ads, which he considered one of the more glamorous assignments they had. Even then, he says, “she at one point went over my head and complained [to human resources] that I wasn’t giving her enough interesting stuff, and the person came down to my office and said, ‘Basically she’s complaining that she’s being treated like she’s a second-year associate,’ and we agreed that she was a second-year associate. I had eight or nine other associates, and I couldn’t start treating one of them a lot better.”
White says he talked to Michelle about her expectations, but the problem could not be resolved because the work was what it was. He is not sure any work he had would have satisfied her. “I couldn’t give her something that would meet her sense of ambition to change the world.”
“Not many people went over my head,” says White. It was an unusual move for a young associate to make, and he believes it was consistent with her personality. She “wanted something that pushed her harder {lcub}hellip{rcub} Waiting five to seven years to make partner was a good career move for me but not for [her]. There are too many other opportunities out there {lcub}hellip{rcub} that mature faster than that.”
Abner Mikva, a former congressman and federal judge who is close to the Obamas and was an early mentor to Barack, finds that account of Michelle’s 20-something impatience amusing. “It doesn’t surprise me at all,” he says.”
..........................................................
(no links)
DOHRN SURRENDERS, FACES COURT
Boston Globe - Wednesday, December 3, 1980
Author: Associated Press
Bernardine Dohrn , the one-time student radical leader who had eluded authorities for 11 years, surrendered today and pleaded innocent to charges stemming from a series of violent demonstrations in Chicago.
Dohrn , once on the FBI’s “most wanted” list, refused to talk to reporters but smiled and seemed calm as she appeared before Circuit Judge Richard J. Fitzgerald. After arraignment, she was taken away for booking, and a bond hearing was set for later today.
(snip)
Dohrn and Ayers, who according to the New York Times had most recently been living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, had contacted the Cook County state’s attorney’s office through attorney Michael Kennedy, apparently to arrange some sort of plea bargaining.
(snip)
The new state’s attorney, Richard M. Daley , said yesterday that his office had been in touch with Dohrn ‘s lawyer, but that there would be no plea bargaining until she surrendered.
(snip)
2 Weathermen May Surface
Washington Post, The (DC) - Monday, November 24, 1980
Author: Chicago Sun-Times
Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayers, who disappeared into the radical-left underground a decade ago, may soon come out of hiding as a result of plea bargaining being conducted here.
A New York lawyer, Michael Kennedy, has contacted the office of outgoing State’s Attorney Bernard Carey to seek a deal on any outstanding charges against the two leaders of the Weather Underground movement.
(snip)
Kennedy, reached Saturday at his home in Bridgehampton, N.Y., would not comment on his plans to surrender Dohrn and Ayers.
(snip)
Kennedy reportedly offered to surrender Dohrn and Ayers in return for assurances that probation would be sought for them after they entered guilty pleas to any outstanding charges. Kennedy was told that since Carey is leaving office Dec. 1, any decision on plea bargaining would have to come from the newly elected state’s attorney, Richard M. Daley .
(no links)
Chicago Park District Gets New President
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, April 23, 1993
Author: Fran Spielman ; Ray Long
Mayor Daley accepted the resignation of Chicago Park District President Richard Devine on Thursday and tapped a longtime friend and political fund-raiser to replace him.
Daley said he is confident John W. Rogers Jr., president of Chicago-based Ariel Capital Management Inc., has what it takes to shake up the Park District. The mayor said Devine’s bid to become U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois prompted his resignation.
(snip)
Claypool Named Park Chief - Daley Choice Vows `Radical’ Changes, Focus on Security
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, July 9, 1993
Author: Fran Spielman
Security at Chicago’s 550 parks will be the “No. 1 priority” of Forrest Claypool, named Thursday to be Park District superintendent despite his lack of experience in parks or recreation.
(snip)
Although Claypool has no background in parks or recreation, Daley said his management skills and government contacts at all levels are ideally suited to the $98,000-a-year superintendent’s job.
(snip)
Park Boss Quits Under Fire - Daley Ready To Give Job To Ex-Aide
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, July 8, 1993
Author: Fran Spielman
Under fire for a shortage of recreational programs in Chicago parks, General Supt. Robert Penn resigned Wednesday with Mayor Daley apparently poised to replace him with a former aide.
Penn, a former Buffalo, N.Y., official recruited by Daley allies in 1990, said he decided to quit after enduring months of criticism from the mayor and steady speculation about his successor.
City Hall sources said Daley has settled on his former chief of staff, Forrest Claypool, to replace Penn in the the $98,000-a-year job. Claypool, now a top aide to state Treasurer Patrick Quinn, could not be reached for comment.
John W. Rogers Jr., a Daley campaign fund-raiser, recently took over as president of the Park District Board.
(snip)
Claypool, 36, a former chief of staff for Mayor Daley , promised “radical” changes in the park system by beefing up security, changing union work rules and tailoring recreational programs to working parents.
Daley named Claypool to replace Robert Penn, who resigned under pressure Wednesday. With the expected approval of the Park Board, Claypool, now deputy state treasurer, will join new Board President John W. Rogers Jr. at the helm of the $315 million-a-year agency.
(snip)
Charmed Pair Shares Good Fortune
Chicago Sun-Times - Sunday, December 19, 1993
Author: Adrienne Drell
“I have had a life of privilege and want to give something back.”
- John Rogers
ou could call John and Desiree Rogers a billion dollar couple.
Not that it’s their dollars. But lots of other people’s money flows through their hands. As president of his own capital investment firm, John W. Rogers Jr. handles $2 billion in pension and mutual funds, and his wife, Desiree Glapion Rogers, director of the Illinois Lottery, passes out more than $827 million in prizes each year.
The Rogers also have lots of clout, connections and charm. The fun-loving couple - she more outspoken and direct, he quieter and diplomatic - number as friends the likes of Mayor Daley , Gov. Edgar, Chicago Urban League President James Compton, Shirley Ryan and her husband, Patrick, the chairman of Aon Corp., and Lewis Manilow, former chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
They travel, live on East Lake Shore Drive and have full-time live-in help for their 3 1/2-year-old daughter, Victoria.
But the Rogers have another side, one involved in the city’s civic life and in helping those in need.
He is president of the Chicago Park District Board and a director of the Urban League. She is on the boards of Children’s Memorial Hospital, the Chicago Children’s Museum and the Women’s Board of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Three years ago, John created the Ariel Foundation, which adopted 39 sixth-graders at the now-shuttered Shakespeare elementary school. They’re now being tutored daily and have been promised free college educations. His wife devotes hours to Old St. Pat’s elementary school on the Near West Side and to the Marwen Foundation, which teaches the arts to inner-city kids.
“I have had a life of privilege and want to give something back,” says John, 35, who grew up in Hyde Park. He’s the son of prominent Republican Jewel Lafontant, a onetime deputy solicitor general and U.S. ambassador at large, and Cook County Judge John W. Rogers Sr.
The liberal world of Hyde Park, where he had friends from every racial and social strata, gave Rogers a sometimes blind “trust in people.” Later, as a ballpark vendor and as a college student, Rogers became attuned to the subtleties of discrimination.
“When I went off to Princeton, it was such a shock to see all the black students sit in one place and all the white students sit in another place,” says Rogers.
His parents divorced when he was 3, and Rogers, an only child, spent weekdays with his more permissive mother and weekends with his dad. He was very close to longtime housekeeper Vevia Shelby, who calls his generosity “something special.”
She cites his graduation “gift” as a prime example. When Rogers graduated from the University of Chicago lab high school, he was promised anything he wanted. The poker-loving youth chose to take his mother and Shelby to Las Vegas for five days.
Desiree, 34, has this same warm spirit. She likes to think it springs from a household in New Orleans constantly filled with family and friends of hers and her younger brother, Roy. Her mother, Joyce, and grandmother Marie founded three day-care centers, and her father, Roy, is athletic director of the city’s schools and a current Democratic candidate for the New Orleans City Council.
(snip)
John spent two years as a stockbroker before founding the highly successful Ariel Capital Management Inc. in 1983. With some financial help and contacts provided by his parents, Rogers was able to shape Ariel into one of the country’s largest minority-owned investment management firms.
Ariel has grown from $500,000 in managed funds and two employees 10 years ago to more than $2 billion in assets and 19 employees today. The 50 institutional clients include Howard University, Procter & Gamble, and the Cook County Officers & Employees Annuity and Benefit Fund. Ariel also manages two equity mutual funds for individual investors.
The effervescent Desiree appears weekly on the televised $100,000 Fortune Hunt, giving away pots of money from the state lottery.
Off camera, Desiree is fiscally prudent and a tough, demanding boss. Under her stewardship, the lottery saw its best two years with $1.635 billion in sales in fiscal 1992 and $1.575 billion in fiscal 1993.
Aware of the possible impact of riverboat gambling and potential economic losses from proposed gambling casinos in Chicago, Desiree has aggressively sought ways to maintain and attract revenue.
(snip)
‘She has this great ability to do things world class’
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Author: Lynn Sweet, The Chicago Sun-Times
Dipping into their close circle of Chicago friends to find the new White House social secretary, President-elect Barack Obama and wife Michelle named business executive Desiree Rogers to the job Monday.
Rogers , 49, is a former Illinois Lottery director, Peoples Energy chief and current president of Allstate Financial’s Internet play, who has been a major social and civic figure in Chicago for years.
Rogers will have one of the most important jobs in the East Wing — the domain of the first lady — which oversees the social events in the White House.
“She just has this great ability to do things world class,” said her former husband, John Rogers , another close friend of the Obamas who will be one of the Inauguration co-chairs. The Rogers have a daughter, Victoria, 18, a Yale freshman.
Desiree met Michelle Obama through John — he attended Princeton with Michelle’s brother Craig Robinson and later met Barack. Rogers would go on to become close friends with Valerie Jarrett, who grew up on the same block on South Greenwood Avenue as John Rogers.
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http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/archives/2009/03/kellman.html
Obama’s mentor
Community organizer Jerry Kellman trained the man who would become president
EXCERPT
Help-wanted ads were placed in newspapers across the country, including one in the New York Times. A 24-year-old Columbia University graduate saw it and applied.
http://www.wnd.com/2008/09/74877/
As far back as 1988, however, Obama had serious pull. He would need it. As previously reported, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama’s behalf.
LOL! I have this picture.
“Americans ‘rise and fall together as one nation,’”
Not the way the founders saw it. This was the reason for the 10th Amendment in the first place.
If the feds wanted to do something stupid, or a neighboring state decided to do something stupid, that stupidity wouldn’t be forced upon all the states.
However, if one state figured something out, the feds could adopt it, or the neighboring states could as their unique cultures would allow.
The man either understands this and rejects it, or he’s that ignorant. I’m not sure it makes a difference in any case.
lol; I should have suspected. I have never seen it posted. Not dated, but looks to be an early date. Doesn’t fit into the “angry black woman” category, but a classic, nevertheless.
GOD help us!
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