Mag, It looks like you’ve got her number...Wish fox news would pick this up, Try sending it to special@ foxnews.com Bret Baier seems to be listening.
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CORRUPTION & CRONYISM
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DALEY SETTLES ON GHOST CHECK STORY - MAYOR SAYS COUNSEL FIRST TOLD HIM ABOUT REPAYMENTS LAST WEEK
Chicago Tribune - Wednesday, January 29, 1997
Author: Jacquelyn Heard, Tribune Staff Writer.
Mayor Richard Daley said Tuesday that he did not know until last week that a former alderman had repaid the city $91,000 he had obtained as a ghost payroller on three City Council committees, including the Finance Committee led by Ald. Edward Burke (14th).
Daley said City Corporation Counsel Susan Sher did not notify him of the reimbursements from former Ald. Joseph Martinez (31st), even though they were accompanied by letters addressed to Daley
Sher has said that she was so alarmed by the payments that she immediately contacted federal authorities.
“Last week, Susan Sher came in and mentioned it to me when I got back from Washington,” Daley said.
Sher could not be reached for comment.
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CITY’S TOP LAWYER LEAVING POST TO BECOME U. OF C. HOSPITALS VP
Chicago Tribune - Tuesday, February 11, 1997
Author: Jacquelyn Heard, Tribune Staff Writer.
Having informed Mayor Richard Daley that she will soon be leaving his administration, City Corporation Counsel Susan Sher said Monday that she will miss what she called the toughest job she has ever held.
As an 8-year veteran of the city’s legal department and its top lawyer since 1993, Sher, 48, oversees a staff of 160
But on May 1, Sher said she will begin a new job as vice president and general counsel at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she will supervise a legal staff of four.
“Most jobs are slower-paced than City Hall,” said Sher, whose bid to become a federal judge in 1995 was backed by Daley, but failed to attract the backing of U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun.
While not ruling out another bid for the federal bench at some point, Sher said she took the post at the hospital because, “I think the hospital is a wonderful institution. It’s a great opportunity.”
It doesn’t hurt that the job also comes with tuition breaks for her two sons, ages 11 and 15, to attend the University of Chicago Lab School.
Sher is paid $112,000 a year as corporation counsel and declined to comment on her new pay, except to say it represents a “substantial pay increase.”
Sher maintains that it is “pure happenstance” that her decision to leave City Hall coincides with the current federal ghost payrolling investigation and the controversy involving Ald. Edward Burke (14th), chairman of the City Council Finance Committee.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704220038apr22,0,3860794.story
Barack’s rock - Obama ‘s blunt, tough partner Michelle helps shape her husband’s politics and life and is integral to his campaign
Chicago Tribune (IL) - Sunday, April 22, 2007
Author: Christi Parsons, Bruce Japsen and Bob Secter, Tribune staff reporters
EXCERPT
At City Hall, Michelle Obama forged close and lasting friendships with Jarrett and many other top Daley aides, including former Corporation Counsel Susan Sher and David Mosena, who was the mayor’s chief of staff when Michelle Obama first joined his administration. She left in 1993.
All have long since left the city payroll as well, but are loyal to the mayor and now the Obamas. Their careers also have frequently overlapped, and together they make up a network that reaches into virtually every aspect of Chicago politics.
After leaving City Hall, Jarrett went on to lead the Chicago Transit Authority. She recruited Michelle Obama to the transit agency’s citizen advisory committee. Mosena, who now is president of the Museum of Science and Industry, served with Obama on the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.
Currently, she works as the $273,618-a-year vice president for community and external affairs at The University of Chicago Medical Center. Her boss there is Sher.
City Hall records show Michelle Obama , then still named Robinson, began work as a $60,000-a-year mayoral assistant in September of 1991. She didn’t stay long in the mayor’s office. Within weeks, Daley promoted Jarrett to run the new Department of Planning and Development. Obama followed.
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Susan Sher, associate counsel to the president and counsel to the first lady, previously brought home $718,477 from the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was general counsel and vice president for legal and governmental affairs.
“Like many Arab Americans, Rezko had close ties to the Nation of Islam, which sympathized with the Palestinian and Arab causes. He became close to the inspiring icons like Muhammad Ali and even young Obama, a little-known state legislator who later rose to stardom.”
Rezko is representative of a recent trend in Chicago politics: the rise of Arab wheeler-dealers as corruption catalysts.
The elites of the African-American and Arab communities may tend to agree on foreign policy. But down on the street, relations are hostile. The Arab immigrants, who are best known in Chicago as middle-man merchants operating liquor stores and the like in the ghetto, much like the Koreans in South Central Los Angeles at the time of the 1992 riots, are too hated by black voters to win political power for themselves through the ballot box. Hence their leaders tend to play shadowy roles in Chicago politics.
Rezko kept a sharp eye out for upcoming black political talent who could provide a politically correct front for him. Rezmar offered Obama a job in 1990. He didn’t take it, but that was the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial friendship between Rezko and the man who is now the Democratic Presidential nominee. Rezko paid for 15 percent of Obama’s first campaign, and Obama looked out in the state senate for Rezko’s interests in low-income housing and in packing the state’s hospital construction board.
Contract set-asides for minorities provide a lucrative opening for crooks like Rezko. The demand for “diversity” provides an excuse for a thumb on the scales, a justification for diverting the contract from the lowest bidder to a political ally who employs a minority frontman. Most of America’s pundit class hasn’t figured this out yet, but Rezko grasped how “diversity” works soon after getting off the plane. (Indeed, multicultural America is becoming ever more like the Ottoman Empire, giving an advantage to immigrants from old Ottoman mercantile minorities.)
Chicago explained: “Rezko ran Jabir Muhammad’s firm, Crucial Concessions. Under Mayor Washington [remember that fundraiser?], Crucial won the concessions to sell food at city beaches.”
Now I know why Chicago beach concession food in the 1980s was so untasty. The municipal hot dog stands were managed by the Nation of Islam and Tony Rezko!
Muhammad and Rezko worked the same minority set-aside scam with several high-grossing Panda Expresses at O’Hare airport. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on March 17, 2005:
“Two restaurants at O’Hare Airport have been allowed to rake in millions of dollars, even though the Daley administration learned back in 2002 that the company running them was probably a phony minority “front” for Panda Express and Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a top fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich. Crucial Inc. won the O’Hare concessions in part because it was certified as a minority-owned business. Its largest shareholder was listed as Jabir Herbert Muhammad, son of the late Nation of Islam founder, Elijah Muhammad. … The [Chicago minority contractor] program has been tarred by a relentless string of scandals…”[City ignored possible O’Hare ‘front’ for years, By Chris Fusco, Fran Spielman And Michael Sneed]
Jabir and Tony also got a $10 million affirmative action contract from SBC, the giant phone company whose president was William Daley, Mayor Richie Daley’s brother, to run the payphones at the Cook County jail. Their designated owner-operator was a twofer under the quota of 35 percent of contracts reserved for minority and women-owned businesses: a black woman named Deloris Wade, although she happened to be dead.
Building on these black Chicago roots, Rezko eventually became the statewide power behind the throne when the Democrats swept to victory in the 2002 elections. Chicago Magazine reported:
“Rezko became a virtual one-man headhunting firm for staffing the Blagojevich administration, sending along recommended candidates, many of whom ended up getting appointments. … (The U.S. attorney here has charged that Rezko schemed to pack the government with his cronies so that they could peddle their influence.)”
Diversity sensitivity also provides a convenient justification for corruption:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/080901_chicago.htm