Obama’s Earmarks Went to Hospital That Employs Michelle Obama ($1,000,000)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1985396/posts
Me too. We should be able to dig these facts up somewhere. I’m trying to find the right keyword combinations in the right search engines.
Obama Camp Has Many Ties to Wife's Employer
By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 22, 2008; A01
A few years ago, executives at the prestigious University of Chicago Medical Center were concerned that an increasing number of patients were arriving at their emergency room with what the executives considered to be non-urgent complaints. The visits were costly to the hospital, and many of the patients, coming from the surrounding South Side neighborhood, were poor and uninsured.
Michelle Obama, an executive at the medical center, launched an innovative program to steer the patients to existing neighborhood clinics to deal with their health needs.
That effort, in time, inspired a broader program the hospital now calls its Urban Health Initiative. To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
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Links to University
Both Barack and Michelle Obama have worked at the University of Chicago, a financial and intellectual powerhouse with 9,500 employees and a legacy of nurturing Nobel laureates.
Barack was a part-time lecturer at the law school for more than a decade, earning as much as $69,000 a year. Michelle was the founding director of the university's community service center, working there for five years before moving to the medical center in 2001.
Shortly after Barack Obama joined the U.S. Senate in 2005, the medical center promoted Michelle Obama to vice president of community and external relations, and more than doubled her salary. She is now on leave from the $317,000-a-year post, in which she sought to bridge the gap between the wealthy institution and its poorer neighbors. The hospital declined to discuss the budget for her program or her input into budgetary decisions.
The vast majority of political contributions from university employees have gone to Democrats, and over the past nine years they have donated at least $373,000 to Barack Obama’s campaigns, records show. The university's executive suites are home to a number of the couple's closest friends and financial backers.
The medical center's chairwoman, Valerie Jarrett, is a close friend and top adviser who travels frequently with Barack Obama. One of Barack’s best friends, Eric Whitaker, is executive vice president at the center and is now in charge of the Urban Health Initiative. Hospital board member Kelly R. Welsh is executive vice president at Northern Trust Co., which extended the couple a $1.3 million home mortgage shortly after Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate. Dan Shomon, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, is a university lobbyist. Jarrett, Whitaker, Welsh and Shomon all declined to be interviewed or did not respond to requests.
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Impertinent question. I know dozens of people who go from 100K to 300K salaries overnight. /s
You might also axe what Michelle did for that 300K since nobody at the hospital could really say. Hard to say what she did since she was rarely there. Probably being the ideal mom so who cares about a little Graft.
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