The Patriot Post® · Obama's Dark Tower

Am I in North Korea?

If you have even the faintest inkling of what beauty is, and isn’t, that’s the first thought that’ll pop into your mind when you gaze upon the active architectural crime scene that now dominates the sky over Chicago’s blighted South Side. And the second thought is: Where on earth are the dang windows?

And whiny Democrats thought Dana White’s temporary UFC octagon on the South Lawn was garish. This Obama thing is 225 feet tall. And permanent.

Friday, folks, is the day you haven’t been waiting for, the day you haven’t had marked on your calendar since Barack Obama exited electoral politics on January 20, 2017. Friday is opening day for the Obama Presidential Center — at least for schlubs like us. Thursday, though, will be the private opening day for the headliners, for speeches from Barack and Michelle, and for performances by Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, and U2’s Bono and The Edge. But don’t fret: It’ll be livestreamed to the unwashed masses.

And the unpaid minority-business-owning masses. Take Michael Owen, for example, who’s the president of Addison-based Adamson Plumbing Contractors. As The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman reports, “Owen, who previously worked on prominent Chicago jobs including renovations of Wrigley Field and Soldier Field, said his firm is owed nearly $4 million on the roughly $12 million it spent on its portion of the project.”

Owen isn’t alone. Far from it. According to Crain’s Chicago Business, “Several subcontractors on the nearly finished $850 million campus say they are quietly fighting to collect millions of dollars in unpaid bills for completed work and are being pushed to the financial brink.”

Thus, what was supposed to have been an act of business-building Obamian beneficence for local minority contractors has instead become a big backstab. As African American Contractors Association President Omar Shareef told Crain’s, seven subcontractors have been “muzzled by non-disclosure agreements [and] have sought his help in pursuing their claims over the past four months.” These are seven-figure sums, says Shareef, who adds that these heretofore-anonymous contractors wish they’d never signed up for the project.

So, Deadbeat Obama didn’t build that. Heck, he didn’t even pay for that. But his flacks are certainly defending it. Obama Foundation spokeswoman Emily Bittner says that the foundation is “committed to a subcontracting process that exceeds industry standards for financial support” and is “thrilled that so many of the project’s subcontractors have used this opportunity to transform their businesses and dramatically expand their horizons.”

First, they came for the environmentalists. Now, they’re trampling the minority contractors. And it’s funny, too, that one of the many complaints routinely trotted out by Trump-deranged leftists is that he stiffed his contractors. Hmm … where are all these sanctimonious critics now?

As Freeman quips, “Early in his career of political activism, Barack Obama didn’t have much luck as a community organizer, and now it seems that organization is still not his strong suit.”

Tsk-tsk, says His Haughtiness, who can’t be troubled with mismanagement and astronomical cost overruns.

“Thank you for raising Michelle, for welcoming me as one of your own and for lifting up our family every step of the way,” said the former president in a hackneyed video message released a couple of months ago. “And thank you for embracing this presidential center, not as something of mine, but of yours. Hope is coming home, and it wouldn’t have happened without all of you.”

Hope is coming, eh? Where have we heard that before? Hope must be thin gruel these days for beleaguered South Siders, whose incompetent socialist mayor, Brandon Johnson, somehow thinks that ICE-free zones are the solution to all the murders being committed in his gun-free zones.

I wonder, though: Did South Siders really have a say in any of this? Did they, for example, vote to give the Obama Foundation a 99-year lease on those 19 acres in Jackson Park for a one-time payment of … $10?

Just think: For not much more than the cost of a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino, Team Obama locked up the land for his brutalist Monument to Himself for the next century.

On the bright side, this longest-delayed and most expensive presidential monument in history will ultimately be subordinate to the historical record. Which tells us that Donald Trump is Barack Obama’s legacy. As Matthew Continetti rightly puts it, “Mr. Obama’s presidency casts a fading shadow. Most of his plans have been dashed, his achievements reversed. He promised to lay ‘a new foundation’ for the country — only to see his successor tear it up. He won’t be known for lasting reform, but for symbolizing an era of rapid social change and preparing the way for Mr. Trump’s rise, fall and restoration.”