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Michelle Obama: "Don't Go Into Corporate America"
The Corner at NRO ^ | 29 February 2008 | Byron York

Posted on 02/29/2008 7:54:58 AM PST by SE Mom

I have a new story today about Michelle Obama's visit to Zanesville, Ohio, where she met with a group of women at a local day care center. According to the U.S. Census, Muskingum County, where Zanesville is located, had a median household income of $37,192 in 2004, below both the Ohio and national averages. Just 12.2 percent of adults in the county have a bachelor's degree or higher, also well below the state and national averages. About 20 percent don't have a high school degree. Nevertheless, Mrs. Obama urged them to foreswear lucrative professions like corporate law or hedge fund management and go into the helping industry, even if the sacrifice is great:

-As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids,” she says.

“Barack and I were in that position,” she continues. “The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.” A former attorney with the white-shoe Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin, Obama explains that she and her husband made the choice to give up lucrative jobs in favor of community service. “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”

What she doesn’t mention is that the helping industry has treated her pretty well. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office. And that does not count the money Mrs. Obama receives from serving on corporate boards. She would have been O.K. even without Jack’s magic beans.

Mrs. Obama also bemoaned the amount of money she has to spend — nearly one-third of the median household income in Zanesville — on piano, dance, and other lessons for her two children. But she was grateful for the concern her husband's supporters have shown for her. "Everywhere I go, no matter what, the women in the audience, their first question for me is, 'How on earth are you managing it, how are you keeping it all together?'" she told the women.

02/29 08:19 AM


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Illinois
KEYWORDS: 666; byronyork; chicago; michelleobama; obama; theblackhillary
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To: frogjerk

ROFLOL, Michele’s job was “vice president for community affairs”?!?! Those types of positions are the biggest BS jobs imaginable!!!

I can guarantee you Michelle’s “busy days” mainly consisted of attending luncheons, black tie events, ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and milking evil corporations for cash.


101 posted on 02/29/2008 8:44:27 AM PST by RooRoobird20 (Thankfully Converted Catholic)
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To: SE Mom

The are, quite simply “The Black Clintons”.
All the patterns are the same.
Except that now, “IT’S THEIR TURN”
Wonder what Toni Morrison would say about her “First Black President” now being usurped by a “real” Black presidential possibility?
The supreme poetic justice in all of this is that the Clintons paved the way for all of this, (their political burial) while being too stupid to see it coming.


102 posted on 02/29/2008 8:48:37 AM PST by supremedoctrine (w)
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To: SE Mom
It seems that she never took an economics course at Princeton.

She is TRULY the black Teresa Heinz Kerry.

103 posted on 02/29/2008 8:48:43 AM PST by Pharmboy (Democrats lie because they must.)
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To: RooRoobird20

You mean to say she is a poser?!!


104 posted on 02/29/2008 8:51:41 AM PST by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)
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To: SE Mom

Gee Michelle, you chose to go to Princeton and Harvard. That costs. Poor you. You could have gone to a state university and a state law school. It wouldn’t have been as prestigious, but you still would have been an attorney, made a really good living and not had the big student loans. You chose the Rolls Royce and had to pay for it. I’m not going to shed one tear for you. And to whine to women who work just to put food on the table about the cost of piano and dance lessons for your privileged children is just unreal. But, as Marie Antionette said, “They have no bread? Well, let them eat cake.”


105 posted on 02/29/2008 8:52:04 AM PST by keepitreal
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To: SE Mom
Don't go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and weÂ’re encouraging our young people to do that.
Somebody please tell this woman that parasites need a host…
106 posted on 02/29/2008 8:54:21 AM PST by cartan
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To: freekitty

Michelle’s real message is “Don’t go into Corporate America——that’s for US , and the New Guard who will soon rule you.” She seems even more arrogant and overly self-confident than her idiot husband.


107 posted on 02/29/2008 8:54:38 AM PST by supremedoctrine (w)
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To: SE Mom

I’m sorry, I didn’t hear who put that baseball bat to her head and forced her to go to such expensive universities?


108 posted on 02/29/2008 8:54:43 AM PST by Darnright
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To: SE Mom

I choose not to vote for a “power couple” instead of a president. This “two for the price of one” stuff makes me as angry now as it did when the clintons pulled it.


109 posted on 02/29/2008 8:57:58 AM PST by Helen
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To: SE Mom
OMG, she's priceless! I hope the Obama campaign keeps her front and center. She's much more of a loose cannon than Therese Heinz Kerry.
110 posted on 02/29/2008 8:59:51 AM PST by ishmac
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To: keepitreal

Funny. She suggests people not go into the corporate world yet complains about having to pay the people who provide the sevice of giving her children dance and piano lessons.


111 posted on 02/29/2008 9:00:53 AM PST by jennyjenny
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To: SE Mom

***As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts.***

What a whiner! She knew when she got the loan she would have to pay it back. If she had made it a priority, she could have paid it off in just a few years. I wonder if the reason why it took so long is that she let it slide and accrued a huge amount of interest and penalties? If it hadn’t been for Barrack’s “magic bean book deal,” she’d be just another deadbeat. Michelle “Deadbeat” Obama.


112 posted on 02/29/2008 9:00:58 AM PST by nanetteclaret (Baby-Killer & Deadbeat: More dangerous than Bill & Hill.)
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To: SE Mom
I have no patience with people who whine over student loans. There is no more valuable an investment than education. The 200k someone would pay to go to Princeton and Harvard Law School is a pittance compared to what such a graduate could earn if money is what matters to him or her. Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as someone “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.
113 posted on 02/29/2008 9:02:25 AM PST by utahagen
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To: mass55th
I’m waiting to see where they send their daughters for school. More than likely, it will be a private school.

No need to wait. The already do send their girls to a private school. They certainly aren't going change that if the end up living in Washington DC.

114 posted on 02/29/2008 9:10:32 AM PST by G-Bob
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To: SE Mom
"Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. "

I think they are going to have to borrow whatever closet Hillary has been using to shut Bill up in to shut this cretin up if Barack HUSSEIN Obama hopes to win in November.

115 posted on 02/29/2008 9:20:17 AM PST by ZULU (Non nobis, non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. God, guts and guns made America great.)
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To: SE Mom
"Don’t go into corporate America..."

I couldn't agree more! Stay out of corporate America!...

Less competition for me! ; )

116 posted on 02/29/2008 9:20:32 AM PST by opus86
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To: mylife
Why?

She, apparently, is John McCain's secret weapon. With a mind that small and a mouth that big, she will sink Barack HUSSEIN Obama's career.

117 posted on 02/29/2008 9:21:55 AM PST by ZULU (Non nobis, non nobis Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. God, guts and guns made America great.)
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To: mylife; StarFan; stanz
I am beginning to loathe this woman

Same here, the more I hear from her. She may be Hillary II, except even more of a Socialist...

118 posted on 02/29/2008 9:23:55 AM PST by nutmeg (Obama supporters: Drink the Kool-Aid? Yes we can!)
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To: mylife

“You mean to say she is a poser?!!”

Of course. :0) I’ve worked for a couple of major corporations and have done engineering consulting for dozens of hospitals.

“Community relations” (in general) is a department held in contempt by other departments in a corporation. This is because Community Relations doesn’t do a d@mn thing other than attend luncheons, black tie events, and hog the corporate sky box tickets. They also have the attitude that they have the MOST IMPORTANT job in a company. We have someone in our Community Relations department who has the Michele Obama attitude problem. She’s universally regarded as incompetent and unpleasant, but keeps her job nonetheless.

My personal experience is that Community Relations departments house high numbers of women and minorities—it’s a corporation’s way of saying, “We’re not really racist and sexist!!” LOL


119 posted on 02/29/2008 9:26:16 AM PST by RooRoobird20 (Thankfully Converted Catholic)
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To: SE Mom
My immediate response to my husband when he sent me this article:

Basically, it’s like, don’t go into corporate America so you can earn less than you would otherwise, which will of course make you resent corporate America even more, so that you will continue to vote for people like us, who will keep telling you how bad your life is and how it’s all the fault of corporate America and that they should paypaypay with high taxes so we can give you the things you would otherwise be able to provide for yourself. Blech.
120 posted on 02/29/2008 9:26:31 AM PST by RedSoxBatgirl
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