Obama's Chicago garden a $100,000 wasteland

In his three years as a US Senator, Barack Obama has virtually no legislative accomplishments. If you disagree with me, please cite his achievements in the comments section. The same goes for his eight years in Springfield. There were a flurry of bills with his name on them in 2003, but that was with the help of State Senate President Emil Jones, who wanted to bolster Obama's thin résumé as Obama prepared for his 2004 campaign for the US Senate.

During his unsuccessful run for the House of Representatives in 2000, Obama engineered a $100,000 state grant to campaign volunteer for building a botanic garden in Chicago's blighted Englewood neighborhood. At the time Obama said the garden would build a "a sense of neighborhood pride."

The Chicago Sun-Times has more:

Instead, what was supposed to be a six-block stretch of trees and paths is now a field of unfulfilled dreams, strewn with weeds, garbage and broken pavement.

Kenny B. Smith, whose nonprofit group got the money, said it was spent legitimately, mostly on underground site preparation. But he admitted Thursday that the garden is a lost cause because other government money never came through.

More...

Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said through a spokesman he wasn't responsible for monitoring the work; the staffs of Gov. Blagojevich and former Gov. George Ryan were.

"It is clear that Englewood residents have not been able to benefit from a completed community garden," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said. "Sen. Obama will . . . do everything he can to ensure that the Englewood community gets the resources it needs to provide its residents with a livable neighborhood."

That's not change this Obama constituent can believe in. And it's another warning sign of what we face with an Obama presidency. As I did a couple of weeks ago, I want to refer to what the National Review wrote about Obama recently:

When he left for law school, Obama wondered what he had accomplished as an organizer. He certainly had some achievements, but he did not--perhaps could not--concede that there might be something wrong to his approach to Chicago's problems. Instead of questioning his own premises, he concluded that he simply needed more power to get the job done. So he made plans to run for political office. And in each successive office, he has concluded that he did not have enough power to get the job done, so now he is running for the most powerful office in the land. And what if he gets it? He'll be the biggest, stongest organizer in the world. He'll dazzle the country with his message of hope and possibility. But we shouldn't expect much to actually get done.

You've been warned.

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