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View Full Version : Obama's Earmarks: $1 Million for Wife's Hospital


nevadamedic
03-15-2008, 06:43 AM
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has released a list of $740 million in earmark requests he made in the past three years, and it includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife Michelle is a vice president.

The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a new pavilion.

“I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Kelly Sullivan, another vice president at the medical center, told the New York Times.

In any case, the 2006 request for the hospital was not approved by the Senate, as was about $7 out of every $10 the Illinois senator asked for in earmarks.

Bud he did manage to secure $1.3 million for a high-explosive technology program for the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The program was overseen by General Dynamics, and one of Obama’s top supporters, James Crown — a member of Obama’s national finance committee — serves on the board of General Dynamics.

Obama also secured a $750,000 earmark for renovation of a space center named for Crown’s grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

And Obama secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones Jr., a close personal friend of Obama and one of his benefactors, has been a strong supporter of Chicago State, according to the Times.

Other earmarks sought and secured by Obama include more than $10 million for a military arsenal in Rock Island, several million dollars for research on soybean disease and livestock genes, and $100,000 for after-school programs at the Chicago Jesuit Academy.

Michelle Obama is on leave from her job while her husband campaigns for president, but after Barack was elected to congress, she received a big raise.

USA Today reports that officials at the University of Chicago Hospitals told the Chicago Tribune that Michelle is "worth her weight in gold."

"She's terrific," added Michael Riordan, who was president of the hospital in March 2005, when Michelle Obama was promoted to vice president for external affairs and had her annual salary increased from $121,910 to $316,962.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_earmark_wife/2008/03/14/80393.html?s=al&promo_code=4736-1

Huh, more contraversy. Also this seems like some serious conflicts of interest and payoffs.

lily
03-16-2008, 02:58 AM
Um........so she didn't get the money, so what's the problem?

Drocket
03-16-2008, 05:41 AM
I really don't see where it matters whether the money was eventually given out or not - he attempted to get it either way. The fact that the earmark was denied wasn't (so far as it sounds like) because of anything he did. Its intentions that matter, generally, not the end result of circumstances that are beyond the person's control.

At the same time, however, I'm not really particularly worried about earmarks for a hospital, regardless of any connections Obama may have to it. As I argued in another thread, I don't really have a problem with earmarks, in theory - its a matter of what they're for, and generally, a hospital is a worthy target for spending, IMO.

The matter of it being a hospital that employs Obama's wife isn't really something that's necessarily a problem either - that can very easily be explained by the fact that he saw a need/problem, and worked to fix it. Would it really be better if Obama saw a problem he could help to fix, then just shrugged his shoulders and did nothing because he had a connection to the problem? (and that, of course, raises the question of how politicians are supposed to fix problems if they don't know about them, since in learning about the problem, they automatically acquire a connection to the problem, which some would argue would disqualify them from working on it. Or something.)

I could get off on a tangent about the lobbyist, and the fact that I think a lot of the worry about them is simply scapegoating, but that's not directly relevant.

nevadamedic
03-16-2008, 06:36 AM
Um........so she didn't get the money, so what's the problem?


The problem is the conflict of interest and favortism.