Some years back, I had the chance to visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California's Simi Valley. It's a beautiful setup, a beautiful building in a beautiful setting.
Presidential libraries serve as a historical marker, and in President Reagan's case, a monument to one of the most effective, transformative presidents of the 20th century. President Reagan was instrumental in bringing the Cold War to an end by facing down the Soviet Union. His policies ushered in a generation of American prosperity. His presidential library reflects that.
Barack Obama's attempt at a presidential library, now under construction in a Chicago park, resembles nothing so much as something out of a dystopian science-fiction movie, and will serve as a monument to... what?
Now, with the Obama Foundation, formed to build this monstrosity, almost broke - deposits total about $1 million out of the $470 million goal - the taxpayers may be on the hook for this... thing.
When the Obama Foundation snagged a sweetheart deal to build its beleaguered Obama Presidential Center on a Chicago public park, it pledged to create a $470 million reserve fund to spare taxpayers should the project ever go belly up.
But new tax filings show the foundation has only deposited $1 million into the fund and has not added to it in years, with critics saying the empty promise could potentially leave Chicagoans on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Under its agreement with the city, the foundation was required to create the fund, known as an endowment, in order to take control of the sprawling 19.3-acre section of Jackson Park — often described as Chicago’s Central Park equivalent — where the complex is now slowly rising.
So, $1 million out of the required $470 million? That tells us the Democrat donor class has seen fit to donate 0.2 percent of the expected cost of this horror. That is, the initial expected cost; there are indications now that the actual cost may be nearly double that:
The foundation ultimately secured the public land for just $10 in 2018, under a 99-year deal.
But when former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama turned the sod at the site in September 2021, just $1 million — or 0.21% of the pledged funds — had been deposited into the endowment, and that figure has remained unchanged ever since.
With construction progressing at a snail’s pace and costs ballooning from an original estimate of $330 million to at least $850 million, the lack of progress on the promised endowment has fueled fears the Obama Presidential Center could leave taxpayers holding the can if finances spiral into the red.
We should note that the endowment was meant not only to build this monstrous structure, but also to maintain it. Now the taxpayers of the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois may be on the hook for both.
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Isn't it funny how this thing seems to be a rather sad reflection of the Obama administration itself? It's a testament to a man who over-promised and under-delivered. The only legislative item of real note during the 44th president's term was Obamacare, an utter calamity. Oh, President Obama wasn't without his admirers; the Nobel people gave him a Peace Prize for, well, existing, and the African-American activist community lauded him as their first president, even though he was not the descendant of Africans brought to the New World against their will. No, Barack Hussein Obama was the product of a white American mother and a Kenyan father from a prominent family, and was raised primarily in Hawaii, by his white grandparents, where he attended the elite Punahou Academy and lived the consummate life of wealth and privilege. Nothing about the man is what it seems; nothing about the man is authentic; nothing about his administration was a positive for America, other than the fact that he managed to screw things up bad enough to usher in the Age of Trump.
Now the taxpayers will likely be on the hook for a presidential library that is much like the Obama administration: Huge, ugly, dystopian, expensive, and mostly unfunded.
In the end, this thing will likely end up like the presidency of its namesake: An utter failure.
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