LA Times: Obama donor received a state grant

[annie1]

WASHINGTON -- 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.

continued......
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-killerspin27apr27,1,2764345.story

[Muttocracy]

1. covered on another thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5706678

[annie1]

3. k, thanks. : )

[anigbrowl]

2. Yeah, I saw right-wingers trying to make hay out of this on a mixed forum where I post a lot

They got comprehensively ridiculed for attempt to paint a picture of 'table tennis gate'.

[annie1]

4. LOL. love it.

[cliffordu]

5. Please read the memo for the most up to date list of stuff you're

supposed to spam this list with.

Who will put these things up in order if YOU don't?

[MADem]

7. Kinda hard to "spam" on three GDP posts a day. I mean, REALLY. NT

[MADem]

6. Uh-oh. I'll bet he's not "happy to have that debate" over this issue....

Not quite General Dynamics, the Crown family, and eight million dollar earmarks, but still...

Here's where it gets a little gritty. In the big picture, this is PENNIES, but it's that old "appearance of impropriety" that is at issue:

Full disclosure

Illinois ethics disclosure forms are designed to reveal possible financial conflicts by lawmakers. On disclosure forms for 2001 and 2002, Obama did not specify that EKI provided him with the bulk of the private-sector compensation he received. As was his custom, he attached a multi-page list of all the law firm's clients, which included EKI among hundreds. Illinois law does not require more specific disclosure.

Stanley Brand, a Washington lawyer who counsels members of Congress and others on ethics rules, said he would have advised a lawmaker in Obama's circumstances to separately disclose such a singularly important client and not simply include it on a list of hundreds of firm clients, even if the law does not explicitly require it. "I would say you should disclose that to protect and insulate yourself against the charge that you are concealing it," Brand said......Obama's wife, Michelle, then a member of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks, reported her husband's work for EKI on a city of Chicago financial disclosure form obtained by The Times. Gibbs said she had identified EKI on her form after consulting with her husband. Gibbs said the questions on the city form were different from the state's and required different answers.

[BzaDem]

8. Silly you, this is the NEW POLITICS!!!oneone