Chicago's Obamaland "Scam" Reaches Mainstream Media
When Barack Obama announced he would forgo a presidential library, the news was trumpeted as a win for good government. Instead,
Mr. Obama would open an official center on Chicago’s South Side, funded
entirely with private money. One author at Politico, who called
presidential libraries a “scam,” wrote that Mr. Obama “will rip off the band-aid, removing government from what it has no business paying for.”
Now comes news that Illinois taxpayers will put up at least
$174 million for roadway and transit reconfigurations needed to
accommodate the Obama Center. If you don’t live in Illinois,
you may be smirking - but you’ll be footing the bill, too. Eighty
percent of such spending is generally reimbursed by the federal
government, and Illinois officials confirmed to me that they expect to
receive $139 million from Washington if they request it.
All that taxpayer money - and for what? Originally,
Chicagoans imagined they’d be getting a true presidential library, akin
to those they might have visited for Ronald Reagan in California or John
F. Kennedy in Boston. But unlike those libraries, the Obama Center
won’t be run by the National Archives and Records Administration.
It won’t even house Mr. Obama’s records, artifacts and papers, which
will be digitized and available online. Instead the center will be owned
and operated by the Obama Foundation.
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