Corruption We Can Believe In

 (promoted by Soren -- this is great independent research)

Once again, Obama uses taxpayer dollars to pay back key political allies

Senator Barack Obama is a prodigy when it comes to procuring federal funding.  Just ask the Crown family, who, in addition to being one of the most successful financial families in the country, are also high-profile and generous Obama campaign contributors. Since 2006, Barack Obama has provided earmarks for two groups in which the Crown family has a stake.  The first is General Dynamics, for which Barack Obama attempted to get an $8 million earmark. (Senator Obama was ultimately only able to procure $1.3 million of the amount requested) Lester and James Crown both sat on the board of directors at General Dynamics in 2005, Lester Crown having recently retired.

But Senator Obama’s ties to the Crowns run deeper than one corporate earmark.  Paula and Lester Crown are also both directors of the Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, an organization for which Senator Obama has requested a total of $7 million in earmarks since 2006.  The first was a request for $4 million in 2006 to fund the Children’s Memorial Medical Center’s Electronic Medical Record Project, and the second was a request for $3 million in 2008 to build an intensive care unit.  All told, one third of the directors at CMH, including the Crowns, have donated $95,124 to Barack Obama’s senate campaign, and $119,137 to his presidential campaign.  These include Director Vicki Heyman, who along with her husband is a prominent Democratic fundraiser and bundler for the Obama campaign.  In total, bundlers on the CMH board and their relatives, the Crowns included, have raised and pledged a total of at least $1.15 million for Obama for America.  To top it all off, James Crown and his wife Paula are both bundlers for the presidential campaign, and are members of his National Finance Committee.  James Crown was also on Barack Obama’s 2004 campaign finance committee, and is currently co-chair of his Illinois finance committee.

What is particularly damning about the Children’s Memorial Hospital earmark in particular is that the Obama campaign has openly referenced this earmark to deflect other allegations of corruption. When Obama was accused of accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists at the Illinois Primary Healthcare Association, his campaign pointed to the CMH earmark as a non-corrupt earmark.  

Apparently the candidate who was supposed to bring us to a post-partisan political paradise is willing to say or do anything to rescue his own career.