April 27, 2008

Obama supporters, how do you justify Barry’s Blackwell-EKI-Killerspin wheeling and dealing?

• Barack Obama says that in 2000, he was so broke, his credit card was declined when he tried to rent a car at LAX;

• Michelle Obama (who pisses and moans constantly about how rough she had it, skipping through life from private charter school to Harvard) says she and Barry were still heavily burdened by debt (specifically, by student loans from 1988 and 1991) until Barack’s book sales took off in 2005.

Despite these facts:

• In 1993, the Obamas put a $111,000 down payment on a $277,500 condiminum;

• In 2000, the Obamas earned a combined household total of $240,000.

With that in mind, get a load of what’s come out in this morning’s L.A. Times — “Obama donor received a state grant“:

After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client — a longtime political supporter.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell’s firm that eventually totaled $112,000.

A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.

Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments.

Obama’s staff said the senator advocated only for the first year’s grant — which ended up being $20,000, not $50,000. The day after Obama wrote his letter urging the awarding of the state funds, Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign received a $1,000 donation from Blackwell.

Uh, isn’t this sort of thing illegal?

Oopsy-daisy! My mistake! Apparently, this is just Chicago-style — or at least Illinois-style — politics as usual:

Business relationships between lawmakers and people with government interests are not illegal or uncommon in Illinois or other states with a part-time Legislature, where lawmakers supplement their state salaries with income from the private sector.

So, it’s not illegal. But you know what? It should be.

Now, you take this Blackwell wheeling-and-dealing (and there’s plenty more about it at the LAT link) along with Obama’s questionable dealings with Tony Rezko, and the way Obama got where he is today — plainly put, he was kicked upstairs by another close ally, the powerful Emil Jones, Jr., whom Obama rewarded with pork-barrel earmarks of “more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones’ Senate district” — and you’ve got to start asking just how “transparent” Barack Obama really is.

It shouldn’t matter a whit if Barry’s Peter-Pays-Paul dealing is legal; the question is: Is it ethical?

I say it isn’t.

I say it all just plain stinks.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

Comment on this story