Outsourcing Obama's hometown

While President Barack Obama's (D) re-election campaign falsely whines about the evils of what they erroneously call outsourcing, sending jobs and profits to foreigners, look who just purchased the observatory in the John Hancock Building, one of the most iconic buildings in Obama's Chicago hometown. The French!

The observatory has been purchased by a Paris-based observation-deck operator that is planning to make a more aggressive run at the leading Willis Tower Skydeck.

Montparnasse 56 Group, which operates observation decks at the Montparnasse Tower in Paris, in direct competition with the Eiffel Tower, and at the Berlin TV Tower, is making its first foray into the U.S. market with the Hancock Observatory on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Center on North Michigan Avenue, it announced Wednesday. (snip)

Montparnasse 56 Group also owns a nature preserve and crocodile zoo in the Provence region of France.

But of course Obama and his ex chief of staff, now Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, might have been distracted from this outsourced purchase because of all the negative news emanating from the area they have represented, are governing respectively--not only all the multiple daily shootings from a city where guns are banned but now, lower tax revenues because of falling property values. Even Chicago's city clerk considers special funds from some of these taxes as "slush funds." Slush funds in Chicago--imagine that!

Falling property values have triggered a drop in property tax collections within the city's controversial special taxing districts that aim to generate money for economic development, Cook County Clerk David Orr said Wednesday.

Revenue in the city's 163 tax increment financing districts will drop by $56 million to $454 million, Orr said as he released his annual report on TIF districts. In nine districts that poured millions of dollars into city coffers just last year, nary a penny will be collected this year, he said.

"These dramatic declines raise critical questions" about financing economic development, Orr said. (snip)

Orr has been a frequent critic of city TIF districts, often calling them a "slush fund" used for the city's pet projects under previous Mayor Richard Daley. Orr had guarded praise for Emanuel, noting that the new mayor put together a panel to review the districts and this year freed up TIF money to help plug school, parks and city budget gaps. (snip)

TIF districts, which are set up to spur economic development, depend entirely on increases in property values. If those increases evaporate in a down economy, so does the revenue used to pay for projects and programs to spur development and job creation.

TIF collections also are expected to decrease in Cook County suburbs, to $275 million this year from $298 million last year. About 48 percent of 280 suburban TIF districts will see a decrease, Orr said.

Maybe Obama and Emanuel, didn't know Paris, France is not part of the US of A as Obama is planning to hold a re-election fund raiser there. Maybe the Montparnasse 56 Group will donate/has donated to Obama's campaign as part of the Chicago Way, as the private sector of foreign owned observatories is doing just fine. Ah, mais non, according to campaign laws, foreign contributions are not allowed. And no matter that the group has promised to retain current employees; the observatory profits will be "outsourced" to a foreign country as property and other tax revenues in Obama's city continue to fall. So maybe Obama will hold a home town campaign fund raiser in the now French owned observatory.

Of course obeying the law regarding foreigners and finances are not that important to Obama or Emanuel.

Following the example of his (former) boss Emanuel has recently announced:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to put a long-standing Chicago practice on the books to ensure that police detain only those undocumented immigrants who are suspected or convicted criminals.

The symbolic ordinance Emanuel proposed Tuesday would allow city police to turn over to federal agents undocumented immigrants who are wanted on a criminal warrant or who have been convicted of a serious crime, but not others.

So hard working foreigners are allowed, nay encouraged, to illegally come to Chicago to illegally outsource, ie, take jobs from Americans, in the Americans' own country and then outsource some of their earnings to family members in the old country until they too illegally arrive here to outsource, insource.

To be fair though, Obama and Emanuel didn't build this corrupt business system by themselves; many Democratic government workers along the line, working together, helped make outsourcing the phenomena it is today.