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
I'm waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy ahead of you. Where's that emoticon for a major barf alert?
I'm so glad they're able to keep it together on just half a mil per year.
As if her kids will ever need to pay a dime for college...who is she trying to kid?
You're killin' me, Izzy!
Whenever Hillary cries, I vomit.
Whenever McCain says "my friends", I drink a beer.
My wife will be a rich lady this year. I'm not going to survive until November, and I'm worth much more dead than alive.
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.
Tell you what Michelle honey, I'll be happy to be a teacher or a nurse at 316,962 a year (or even a useless "vice president for community affairs") if you'll only pony up the $$. We can discuss benefits and other compensation later.
What say you?
< crickets>
That is a metaphysical impossibility!
I was thinking of another word that begins with a t and ends with a t, and it wasn’t “tart.”
Being a corporate lawyer is a whole lot more lothesum than being a hedge-fund manager, IMHO.
I noticed she did NOT consider the military (low-paying, so they say) an honorable profession.
Am I surprised?
Yea, right.
Rush is talking about Mrs. Hussein and her last job in corp America paid $350,000. I guess that she and Hussein want the sheeple to stay on the plantation just as Kennedy and the rest of the Rats always want.
Washington State has been pushing this philosophy in their schools for years. They call it goal based or outcome based education. It’s all about not over educating the population for the jobs that are available to them. In other words, if McDonalds are the biggest employers in your rural county, you educate the kids to work at McDonalds.
They want to perpetuate a permanent underclass, which will be supported by the real workers.
She reminds me of Mrs. Cosby from the Bill Cosby TV show.
Arrogant, annoying and a big mouth..
I cannot stand her.. hopefully she will hurt Zero-boy in the end..
Yet more proof that liberalism is a mental disorder.
long time lurker, first time poster-
but because part what I do involves teaching music, I just have to comment. I’m a public sector teacher and provide a service in a competitive market- do i not deserve to be compensated for my work helping kids like Mrs. Obama’s (which I love doing as well, but it’s a SERVICE JOB) and years of training, education, and college degrees? I make a nice living, and I work hard doing it because there is a demand for it!!
Comments like that just sound so incredibly out of touch. I got my degrees on scholarship instead of going to the more prestigious universities, and I’m really glad I did that. She could have as well, and her going to Harvard does not make her a better lawyer than those who went to state school, sorry.
I am secretly hoping Hillary overtakes Obama- Obama scares me worse than Hillary, because if he wins, he’ll have this public mandate to actually institute all of these hairbrained, economy ruinining schemes and become this century’s FDR, keeping social security and adding massive health care boondoggle and other nonsense.
At least a lot of people already detest Hillary, and she’d have a harder time pushing her legislation through Congress, but I’m hearing a lot of devout republicans who disagree with Obama’s policies who still like the guy and can find nothing bad to say about him personally. That scares me, because I think he’s a disaster in the making. I hope I’m wrong.
As a music teacher myself, I laughed a lot. We’re free market people who have invested in a lot of education, practice, and training, yet have chosen not to involve ourselves in the cushy and frustrating public school mess :)
My son is going to find that out very, very soon. After a less than stellar fall semester, I gave him the word: straighten up, or the only way I'm going to pay for his college next year is if he matriculates at New Mexico Military Institute.
Perfect metaphor. Jack got rich by stealing from the giant.
Never liked that story much.
Reminds me of Pres Palmer’s ex-wife (24)
It's a combination of his suave demeanor (read: "slick") and the fear of being labeled a racist for criticizing him for ANYTHING. Even McCain's PR guy has said he will absolutely not run any ads attacking Obama. The Obamas are race-card sharks of the highest order.
(Welcome to FR! Glad to have you on board.)
These people are going to be SO EASY to destroy in the general...
But we must thank them for dropping thier house on the evil witch, first....
Welcome to Free Republic!
You’re not alone in your worries and concern about Obama- and part of the problem many of us see is his “likability”...it’s covering an agenda of socialism which he intends to convert us to...
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