More Obama: Wife serves on board of company whose biggest customer is Wal-Mart

More trouble today for St. Barack Obama. Remember that Wake Up Wal-Mart conference call last month? It proved to be an embarrassment for John Edwards, who had a lot of explaining to do when later that same day one of his staffers tried to, metaphorically speaking, jump ahead in the line to purchase a Playstation3 from Wal-Mart.

Now it's Obama's turn, or at least his wife's, to look hypocritical.

From Greg Hinz' Crain's Chicago Business column:

The Chicagoan who would be president — maybe — told members of a union-backed coalition that they have "a moral responsibility to stand up and fight" the big retailer. "The battle to engage Wal-Mart and force them to examine their own corporate values and what their policies and approaches are to their workers . . . is absolutely vital," the Associated Press quoted the U.S. senator as saying.

I share the sentiment. Companies that pay top execs tens of millions a year while squeezing the little guys on the production line or in the back office are destroying middle-class America.

Which raises a question — not about corporate values but about Mr. Obama's values. Specifically, while Mr. Obama bashes Wal-Mart, why does his wife, Michelle, make $45,000 a year serving on the board of a Chicago-area company that pays its executives a very hefty amount of money while laying off mostly minority workers in an economically deprived area, a company whose No. 1 customer is — you guessed it — Wal-Mart?

I wonder if the national media will pick up on this story? Probably not.

UPDATE 2:10 PM CST: Also from the Crain's Chicago Business article, as there is a bit of confusion on which board Ms. Obama serves on:

In early 2005, Texas-based Dean Foods Co. spun off its processed-food subsidiary into an independent company, TreeHouse Foods Inc. Stock in Westchester-based TreeHouse began trading on June 15, 2005. Elected to its board of directors on June 6 of that year was Michelle Obama, who receives $30,000 a year plus $1,500 per board or committee meeting she attends. That totaled $45,000 in 2005, according to Mr. Obama's Senate ethics disclosure. Ms. Obama got 7,500 stock options this year, company filings show. At the current price of TreeHouse stock, she has a paper profit of about $60,000 on the options.

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