by Frank Holmes, reporter
Barack Obama unveiled plans to build a half-billion dollar palace honoring himself and his eight years as president – and Chicago’s poor people are outraged that it would put them out in the cold.
The original plans for Obama’s “presidential center” set throngs of community organizers springing into action to save the south side of Chicago from “their” president.
A who’s who of local community organizers oppose the Obama presidential library – including the Black Youth Project 100, the Poor People’s Campaign, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and the Chicago Jobs Council, among many others.
The former community organizer is being opposed by community organizers. How ironic can it get?! Wait, there’s more.
Dozens of professors at Obama’s old college, the University of Chicago, joined them by signing a letter telling Obama to quit exploiting the city’s poor for his own glory.
In fact, they say the Obamas are lying to city hall in order to rope Windy City’s taxpayers into footing part of the bill.
The Obama Foundation claims the center will create 5,000 jobs – but the professors fact-checked that statement and say it’s a bald-faced lie.
“The only new jobs created will be as staff to the Obama Center,” they write.
Obama’s presidential center won’t create any jobs – just like his presidency.
But the center will take from the poor and give to… well, to Obama.
The coalition opposes the monument to Obama’s ego, because it would be built over top of what is now Jackson Park, a historic outdoor park that was intended to be open to everyone in the neighborhood – rich and poor alike.
The government is “taking a large section of an historic public park and giving it to a private entity for development.”
The planners also want to take a huge part of another city park where poor people relax and turn it into an above-ground parking garage.
Yes, Obama wants to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.
Finally, Chicago taxpayers will be “forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for this project,” the organizers write. Making just one of the many changes that the foundation demands will cost residents at least $100 million and create massive traffic jams.
“These are not the best ways to use public funds to invest in the future of Chicago,” they wrote.
Obama would lie about how many jobs he’d create, take away two parks from poor people on the south side of Chicago, then stick them with the bill.
“This is a socially regressive plan,” the professors wrote.
Their objections have already forced the ex-president to settle for a little less-grandiose presidential complex. On Wednesday, the Obama Foundation submitted new plans that would allegedly cost $350 million, and save more trees by moving the parking garage underground.
One of the ways the Obama presidential library is saving money is by cutting back needless expenses — like his presidency’s books and papers.
Obama’s “presidential library” will be shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy by refusing to make any of his administration’s documents available in their original form.
Even now, all of Obama’s documents are in a private facility in Illinois, instead of with the National Archives, like all other ex-presidents.
When the “presidential center” opens in 2021, all the sensitive documents of Obama’s presidency will be carefully scanned. Historians will only be allowed to see a copy of the documents, not the papers themselves.
Obama arranged everything so that researchers never get to hold the original document in their hands — or find out just how corrupt his presidency was.
Instead, the center will have a recording studio, and a “test kitchen” where young people can be lectured on nutrition by Michelle Obama.
“It’s not a park,” said Charles Birnbaum, an activist leaning the efforts against the presidential library. “It’s a bait-and-switch.”
This presidential library is the biggest fraud since the Obama presidency.
Frank Holmes is a reporter for The Horn News. He is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”