Obama is scheduled to lecture in South Africa to commemorate Nelson Mandela’s birthday and to encourage Mandela’s goals of tolerance and peace. Of course, there is no tolerance and peace in South Africa. A colony of the British and Germans, post apartheid 1994 saw their first elections. Between 1994 and 2003 during the Mandela Presidency, unemployment among blacks worsened and poverty among whites increased. In 2006 there were massive riots, and since 2004 there have been thousands of ‘protests’. South Africa is considered the most anti-immigration country in the world. It is estimated over half a million women are raped in South Africa every year. And it is ranked in the top ten countries for income inequality… under the tutelage of Obama’s hero, Nelson Mandela.
Obama will be speaking on behalf of his Foundation which he established in 2014 and has since absorbed his scholarship program, My Brother’s Keeper. The purpose of the Foundation is to address challenges and opportunity gaps that boys and young men of color face, providing support through mentoring, education, job training, and other activities, and to oversee the building of the Obama Library.
But according to the Foundation’s IRS 990 Forms, they have paid no grants, no scholarships, and no construction on the infamous Library has commenced. In fact, as of 2016, Obama’s Foundation had raised over $20.5 million, paid no taxes, and had Asset Holdings of $13.5, the remainder of monies went to pay salaries, rent, fundraising and legal.
A few additional anomalies became apparent:
1) Fundraising activity was primarily done by a company called Lakefront Strategies according to the Form 990. But no such company appears to exist?
2) Grenzebach Glier and Associates is listed as the advisor/consultant in the management of the solicitation of fundraising. Their website states as their primary function “analytics”. As in Cambridge Analytics? They have an office in the UK and Chicago.
3) The Library has not begun construction because a coalition of 19 community activist organizations desire a community benefits agreement and Obama has refused. A lawsuit has been threatened because the site Obama has defined is currently historical park land. And lastly – rents in the neighborhood have risen as a result of the proposed project forcing tenants to leave because they can not afford the increases.
4) Meryl Streep’s husband has been commissioned as the sculptor for the Library.
5) The CEO for the Foundation that has yet to actually “DO” anything is raking in over half a million in salary and benefits.
Board members of the Foundation include Glenn Hutchins a co-founder of a $40 billion private equity firm – and a sitting Board Member of the NY Federal Reserve. Others are connected to Amazon, Google, Intuit, the Clintons, and The Council on Foreign Relations. It is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of – $$$$$.
In order to qualify as a 501©(3) under the IRS, the organization must be a charity organized to provide relief of the poor, and/or erect or maintain a public building. While the Obama Foundation filed based on these two status’s, in it’s four years of existence, it has actually done – nothing. While still attempting to negotiate the project status with objectors, breaking ground is stipulated to occur towards the end of 2018 with a completion date anticipated in 2021. The architects are estimating the need of a $1.5 billion endowment to build the Library. By comparison, the Clinton ‘Library’ cost $165 million and sits on 30 acres that the local government confiscated and gave to Clinton via ’eminent domain’.
The University of Chicago has agreed to ‘partner’ with Obama. Other donors include:
*The Miami Foundation – which is supposed to spend it’s own endowments in Miami.
*The New York Community Trust – which serves New York… and beyond.
*Silicon Valley Community Foundation – which is supposed to serve the Silicon Valley…
*The Campion Foundation – whose stated mission is the protection of wilderness and homelessness…
By donating to the Obama Foundation, the above Foundations could all possibly be in violation of their donor trust relationship given their monies were diverted outside the scope of the Foundation.
Given Obama’s last trip to South Africa cost the US taxpayers $100 million, and security detail will still apply, it would seem a rather costly venture supported by a Foundation that has done nothing, to lecture a country mired in riots and crime about tolerance and love and peace. Of course, the Mandela Foundation will contribute to Obama’s lecture. Mandela; a Marxist, Socialist, Communist Nationalist who somehow managed to accumulate over $15 million in wealth – (although that number is quite possibly low given much of it is hidden) …and advocated against income and wealth inequality. Hallelujah.