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July 07, 2008 Obama and the Woods Fund of ChicagoBy Richard Henry LeeBarack Obama served on the board of directors of Woods Fund of Chicago from 1993 to 2001. During that time, the tax exempt foundation made some interesting grants, including one to Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, headed by Rev. Jeremiah Wright at the time. Grants were also made to ACORN, a left wing voter registration group and to a partnership for constructing low income housing. The fund also used Northern Trust for financial services, which is the same company that provided Obama his 2005 mortgage. In 2001 the board of directors included Obama, William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical terrorist, and serving as chairman was Howard J. Stanback who headed New Kenwood LLC, a limited liability company founded by now-convicted felon Tony Rezko and Allison Davis, Obama's former boss at the law firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland. Grant to Obama's Church The Woods Fund in 2001 awarded a $6,000 grant to Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, headed by his now ex-pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The grant was probably awarded since Obama did not receive his $6,000 director's pay in 2001. He had received $6,000 in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Even though the grant may have been made in lieu of Obama's pay, the Fund's own web page in 2001 states that religious organiztions are not eligible for grant consideration. The reason for the grant to Obama's church may have been because Obama might have felt bad for not having donated much previously. According to the Obamas' tax returns, they deducted $2350 in charitable donations in the year 2000 and a lesser amount of $1470 in 2001. Their adjusted gross income was $240,000 in 2000 and $270,000 in 2001. According to a Chicago Tribune story, the Trinity United Church of Christ encourages its members to donate 10% of their income, yet the Obamas gave only $400 in 1998 to TUCC. The $6,000 grant may possibly have been made to keep Obama in the good graces of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The tax code apparently allows such contributions. The grant is especially interesting in view of Obama's sudden conversion to the faith based initiative started by President Bush. Northern Trust Connection As reported previously, the Obamas' financed their upscale Hyde Park home in 2005 through a mortgage with Northern Trust and obtained a better than average mortgage rate. Coincidentally, Woods Fund had started using Northern Trust investment services a couple of years earlier. The 2005 Woods Fund 990-PF tax filing shows that the fund paid $105,583 in fees and also participated in a Northern Trust private equity fund. Ayers and Stanback were still on the board of directors at that time so it is possible that one of them was somehow involved in helping Obama choose Northern Trust. Funding for ACORN ACORN is well known to readers of AT as a left wing voter registration group which seems to skirt the rules. Woods Fund made annual grants of around $70,000 annually to ACORN from 2001 to 2005 for a total of $355,000. There appears to be no grant to ACORN in 2006. Investment in Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners The Boston Globe has a recent article about Chicago's housing problems including Woods Fund's investment in Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners (NRP). The Chicago Sun Times has an earlier story about this investment with much more detail. Allison Davis (Obama's former boss) asked Woods Fund to invest $1,000,000 in NRP. Obama voted in favor and Stanback abstained since he worked for Davis as noted above. The Sun Times reports:
Obama voted for the investment, but Stanback abstained because he worked for Davis. Davis has donated $25,000 to Obama's various political campaigns according to the Sun Times. Obama fact check page is wrong Obama's fact check web page concerning the Boston Globe article claims that Woods Fund has not actually made any payments to Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners, yet the 2002 990-PF tax filing shows in fact that Woods Fund has an investment of $408,000. As of 2006, the investment was $908,000 out of $1,000,000 committed. Someone needs to fact check the fact checkers. Investments One interesting investment Woods Fund made was to purchase shares of Countrywide Financial Corporation stock in 2005. As of 2006, the investment was worth $382,000. At the end of 2006, the stock was selling at $42.50. Today it is $4.25 after the sub prime mortgage fiasco. Another is Wal-Mart, the company every liberal likes to hate. In 2005, Woods Fund had $327,000 invested in Wal-Mart stock. The investment seems to coincide with the approval for the first Wal-Mart store in Chicago in 2004. It is still remarkable that someone like Ayers would be on the board of a fund investing in the bête noire of liberals. Obama's long association with the Woods Fund is another chapter in his involvement in left wing ideology and it is one which deserves additional scrutiny. Certainly the many associations of Obama with members of the Chicago political machine are noteworthy. Also Obama's term on the board overlapped three years with Bill Ayers. Since the board met quarterly, Ayers and Obama could have been together at least 12 times. If someone wants to research more about Woods Fund, their non-profit tax forms from 2001 to 2006 are available onlne here. Richard Henry Lee is the pseudonym of a retired Illinois state employee.
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Comments
By offering "change", does Mr. Obama actually mean "corruption"?
Posted by: rachel | July 7, 2008 03:11 AM
Obama is a machine politician who hasn't ben scrubbed by the media.This kind of patronage goes on all the time in big cite Dem controlled circles.Kickbacks,bribes and wheel greasing is as normal as breathing for these people.Rezko makes Abramhoff look like a choir boy.
Posted by: Spidey | July 7, 2008 03:30 AM
the "change" obama talks about is he intends to change the people who are corrupt with his own group.
Posted by: mark abby | July 7, 2008 08:09 AM
The sign of the side deal, "gone down," are the buildings going up. Down with the old slum up with the new slum. Old scum seems to always replace new scum in the cleanest city I've ever seen. Obama is as yellow as the cake moved to Canada. Both headed for disposal. The accusations of racism will begin before he's not elected, not long after the riots. Not just from the radical left but dirty white will riot too. They've already begun to build the bombs. How lucky we are to the have the FBI, just wish they'd been funded better than the politicians they've guarded.
Posted by: Stonehand | July 7, 2008 09:00 AM
Whoever you are masked-man Richard Henry Lee, keep shootin those silver bullets!
Posted by: LDC | July 7, 2008 09:20 AM
In dispensing all this Woods Foundation largesse,vetted by Obama and the Foundation's terrorist chair, is there even one modest, non-politicized donation not amenable to rake-offs by Rezko and his ilk?
Should Woods metastasize on a national scale during an Obama administration, articles of impeachment write themselves.
Posted by: John Blake | July 7, 2008 09:52 AM
All this shows that you cannot rely on the MSM to report the truth. With the loss of credibility, you can't believe anything is real including (or especially) their polls. We saw the same phenomena with Bill Clinton until after his election. The public had him pegged, he would never have been president but for the 19% that voted for Perot. The Democrats have had a long time to master their subterfuge. Little confidence remains that they won't fix this election, save for the possibility of a landslide victory for McCain.
Posted by: FRS | July 7, 2008 10:25 AM
You can easily follow these radical Marxist connections on this site.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individual.asp
It's a big file and takes time to load but is truly phenomenal in connecting the dots. There is NOTHING like it on the Internet I guarantee you.
Give it a chance to load, follow the dirsctions and you will be introduced to the web of radical organizations subverting the US today.
Posted by: Habu | July 7, 2008 11:38 AM
I think that any resemblence between GWBush's idea of "faith based" and BHObama's would be entirely coincidental. Trinity Church readily comes to mind.
PC is Thought Control
LEE
Posted by: Lee - Missouri Ozarks | July 7, 2008 03:45 PM
or a little more tracking -
The Crown family backing of
OB this websie:
Chicago.indymedia.org/newswire "Barack Obama's Crown Dynesty Connection"
And of course Crown is on board of Northern Trust.
and the chicago community trust is as of end JUne this year put in hands of NOrthern Trust. & Crown and Pritzker, etc are on the board for Chicago education fund.
Posted by: jr | July 7, 2008 06:03 PM
We sure need more BO crap out of the woodwork. The MSM has totally invested itself in BO, anything derogatory about BO is automatic blackout. Oh, another BO word.
Posted by: Raemon | July 7, 2008 08:57 PM
It is always good for people to remember where we come from and their pasts. For a Presidential candidate it is good to have a light shone on it. In that light, I hope that you would considerer these three serenity prayers.
Serenity Prayers for Sen. Obama, The Media, & Larry Sinclair which can be found at zachjonesishome.wordpress.com:
http://zachjonesishome.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/serenity-prayers-for-sen-obama-the-media-larry-sinclair/
Posted by: ZachJonesIsHome | July 8, 2008 06:34 AM
These loony left wingnuts cannot understand the basics of public trust. Their goal is to fund their life-style on the backs of the taxpayer and use the poor as pawns. We could relieve pollution by more than incremental amounts if we just cut off their CO2 emissions.
Posted by: FRS | July 9, 2008 05:32 PM
are you related to the Lee's of Virginia?
Posted by: deercreek36 | July 11, 2008 03:22 PM
Even if a farmer intends to loaf, he gets up in time to get an early start.--Edgar Watson Howe (1853-1937), American journalist
Posted by: HiliFulk | July 15, 2008 08:36 AM
This is a question. Please, print or send to my email address the Archieved Grant List for the Woods Fund. Yesterday, I saw it on their web site but today the Archieved Grant List was deleted the page being "under construction". If you happen to have a copy then it might hold the key to the real Barack Hussein Obama.
Posted by: Ed Cooper | July 17, 2008 07:12 PM
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In nutshell, My (late) father Mr. Solomon Toure was a very wealthy gold and cocoa merchant who based in Accra and Abidjan respectively. But he was killed along side with my mother during last two year'sRabble attack and all his properties was totally destroyed.
However, after their death I managed to escape with a very important document (DEPOSIT CERTIFICATE (US$20.6m) Twenty million six hundred thousand U.S Dollars deposited by my late father in the bank which i am the next of kin.
Meanwhile, I am saddled with the problem of securing a trust worthy foreign personality to help me transfer the money over to his country and into his possession pending my arrival to meet with him.
I am inclined to offer you 30% of the total sum as a mode of compensation for your effort after the successful transferring of these fund to your nominated account oversea.
Conclusively, I wish you send me a reply immediately as soon as you receive this proposal. I remain with the best regards Viginie Toure,
Posted by: viginie | July 30, 2008 06:13 AM