CHICAGO, September 29, 2011—In Nelson Algren’s tome, Chicago: City on the Make, the author describes a city with a history chock full of hustlers and corrupt politicians. It is considered the definitive “prose portrait” of the City by the Lake.
Not much has changed in the sixty years since Algren’s words were first published (1951). The city’s big shoulders broadly emerged in the guise of one Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s protector elite, shouldering the media to the side, protecting the liberal bias that has dominated this city and its 20th century history as a town owned by the Democratic Party.
In this town, the media and the black-suited guys protect the politicians. It has always been that way. A giant leap away from the famed Bug House Square where free speech was the hallmark of Chicago oratory.
Rahm Emanuel recently spoke before a group of prominent businessmen at Chicago’s Fairmont Hotel, creating the perfect opportunity for Chicago media to ask the former chief of staff about his involvement in the now widening Solyndra scandal.
A perfect opportunity to expose, or question, what the then White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama knew, and therefore what one can presume, President Obama knew, about the Solyndra scandal. It was, after all, during Emanuel’s tenure as White House chief of staff that the $535 million loan to Solyndra was finalized following a much briefer than normal review.
After his speech before the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association, with the opportunity to ask that hard question firmly in hand, I asked now Mayor Emanuel if he had anything to say about Solyndra, the bankrupt solar company and poster child for President Obama’s green initiative.
In typical Rahm Emanuel fashion, he smiled, tittered, and brushed past me with his aides.
This is normally where the story ends and the questions begin. However, crony capitalism and liberal media bias are part of the social fabric of Chicago’s closed society. When the unspoken rule – ask no questions – is broken, it threatens to destroy the equilibrium of this sensitive political caste system.
The encounter with Emanuel was brief. A nothing. However following that encounter, and after Emanuel was long gone, and just about the time Truth Squad staff would have been leaving what was virtually a non-event, John Chikow, President of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association, angrily grabbed my microphone and took me aside, standing in my face, grabbing my microphone as other large men in black suits surrounded us, issuing thuggish threats, threatening to ‘kick-in” my teeth.
Algren’s 1951 portrayal of Chicago brought to stunning light after sixty years.
Yet the simple question to Emanuel was a legitimate one – especially since he claimed “memory lapse” on the Solyndra controversy a week ago. “I don’t actually remember that or know about it [Solyndra],” he told WLS radio's Bill Cameron
It is interesting to note that Emanuel similarly dismissed Cameron at that event with an "I'm here to talk health care," an example of contemporary politicians favorite abstract-destract.
However, Emanuel's memory lapse aside, facts have come to light that put Emanuel in the middle of the controversy. In an August 2009 e-mail that has surfaced, a special assistant to Chief of Staff Emanuel wrote to the Office of Management and Budget about the administration’s upcoming announcement on Solyndra and asked whether “there is anything we can help speed along on OMB side.”
According to White House logs, Solyndra officials and investors also met with White House officials at least 20 times between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011. One of these visitors was billionaire Democrat donor George Kaiser, who has a 37% investment stake in Solyndra.
Who did he meet with? Rahm Emanuel.
So when Emanuel told WLS he didn’t remember anything about Solyndra, was he lying?
Was he, as White House chief of staff, personally involved in pressuring the OMB to approve Solyndra’s loan, putting the taxpayers at risk?
Was it a quid pro quo for George Kaiser, a top campaign bundler for President Obama?
These questions require an answer from President Obama and his former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, even if he is now Mayor Emanuel.
As White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel is arguably responsible for the culture of Chicago-style cronyism that thrives at the White House today. It is a mentality that endorses the principle that government power brokers, motivated by campaign contributions, have the right to pick the market’s losers and winners.
Unfortunately, in the case of Solyndra, when the Obama White House picked this so-called “winner,” it was the taxpayers who lost.
But we will probably never get to ask, much less receive an answer, to the question.
Not while the City of Chicago's big shoulders are standing guard.
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