{"id":1017,"date":"2026-02-22T16:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T16:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=1017"},"modified":"2026-02-22T16:49:59","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T16:49:59","slug":"obama-monument-to-himself-is-ripping-off-the-illinois-taxpayers-and-is-strangely-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/obama-monument-to-himself-is-ripping-off-the-illinois-taxpayers-and-is-strangely-ugly\/","title":{"rendered":"OBAMA’S MONUMENT TO HIMSELF IS RIPPING OFF THE ILLINOIS TAXPAYERS, AND IS STRANGELY UGLY !"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bombshell Investigation Exposes Cover-Up of Obama Center Taxpayer Scam<\/h1>\n
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Barack Obama Presidential Center \u2014 Public Domain<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
Barack Obama promised Chicago a \u201cgift\u201d with his Obama Presidential Center. Instead, he delivered yet another boondoggle, buried in secrecy, with missing money, and stonewalling straight out of a Chicago corruption playbook.When Obama got approval to build his presidential center in Jackson Park, he vowed the project would be privately funded. Every penny, he said, would come from donations to his foundation. Taxpayers, he insisted, wouldn\u2019t be on the hook. That was the sales pitch \u2014 and like so many Obama promises, it\u2019s proven to be fiction.<\/p>\n

The Obama Foundation may be paying for the building itself, but taxpayers have been secretly<\/a> shouldering hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden infrastructure costs. Roads were torn up, utilities relocated, and parkland reshaped \u2014 all to serve Obama\u2019s monument to himself. Cornell Drive, a major four-lane roadway that once ran along the park\u2019s lagoon, has been erased so Obama\u2019s massive campus could dominate the landscape.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t just a minor tweak to city planning. It was a taxpayer-funded overhaul of a historic public park \u2014 one that Obama\u2019s team couldn\u2019t have pulled off without Chicago and Illinois residents footing the bill.<\/p>\n

Back in 2018, officials estimated public infrastructure costs at $350 million. Fast forward to today, and that number is almost meaningless. The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) now admits to roughly $229 million in \u201cstate-managed spending.\u201d Chicago\u2019s records show another $206 million linked to the same project. No one in city or state government will say how those figures line up \u2014 or whether the total cost is far higher.<\/p>\n

And if you don\u2019t think there\u2019s something scandalous going on, then why are all the agencies involved being tight-lipped about it?<\/p>\n

Fox News Digital filed Freedom of Information Act requests with IDOT, Chicago\u2019s Department of Transportation, the Office of Budget and Management, Mayor Brandon Johnson\u2019s office, and Governor J.B. Pritzker\u2019s administration. Not one produced a complete accounting of public spending. IDOT offered vague numbers. The city stalled and refused to release records. Pritzker\u2019s office contradicted itself, then stopped responding entirely. OBM even admitted it had \u201cno responsive records\u201d \u2014 an absurd claim for the agency that manages the city\u2019s capital budget.<\/p>\n

This is a coordinated cover-up, plain and simple.<\/p>\n

The Illinois Attorney General\u2019s Public Access Counselor is now investigating whether multiple agencies violated the state\u2019s open records laws. But you don\u2019t need a court order to see what\u2019s going on. Obama\u2019s so-called \u201cgift\u201d turned into a taxpayer-financed vanity project \u2014 protected by the same political machine that made Chicago famous for corruption.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, Obama\u2019s promised $470 million \u201cendowment\u201d to shield taxpayers in case the foundation ran out of cash has barely materialized. The fund has just $1 million in deposits \u2014 one-fifth of one percent of what was pledged.<\/p>\n

“Illinois Republicans saw this coming a mile away. Now, right on cue, Illinois Democrats are leaving taxpayers high and dry and putting them on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to support the ugliest building in Chicago,” Illinois GOP Chair Kathy Salvi told Fox News Digital. “Illinois\u2019 culture of corruption is humming along with pay-to-play deals to their allies and friends while lying to Illinois voters.”<\/p>\n

WHO EXACTLY WILL BE VISITING THIS MONUMENT?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bombshell Investigation Exposes Cover-Up of Obama Center Taxpayer Scam Barack Obama Presidential Center \u2014 Public Domain Barack Obama promised Chicago a \u201cgift\u201d with his Obama Presidential Center. Instead, he delivered yet another boondoggle, buried in secrecy, with missing money, and stonewalling straight out of a Chicago corruption playbook.When Obama got approval to build his presidential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}