"Untainted" Obama is fully stocked with ethics problems

Now on to more serious matters in regards to Obama. Early on in his senate career, Illinois' junior senator took advantage of perk that members of the upper chamber until recently enjoyed: Flying on charter jets (what global warming?) for the price of a first-class commercial airline ticket.

Once the Abramoff scandal broke--corporate jets figured into that story--and Obama became the Democrats' point man for ethics, Barack switched to flying to first class, where Obama once suffered the indignity of having a kid spill orange juice on his shoes.

I can only imagine what awaits Obama in coach.

Now Obama, who says he's a new type of politician and whose supporters claim his inexperience is an asset because he hasn't been tainted by the ills of the political system, has his duplicity on full display in the front store window with the revelation that his financial blind trust wasn't all that blind.

From Lynn Sweet's Chicago Sun-Times column:

The Senate Ethics manual has detailed rules about blind trusts and qualified blind trusts. Obama did not want to sign on to either of those options because he did not want to wash his hands of the responsibility of investments made in his name, attorney Robert Bauer said.

Because the off-the-shelf trusts were not satisfactory, "We tried to see if we could jigger it to make it work better," Obama said. He signed papers on May 31, 2005, for the custom trust designed to shield him from knowing how his money was invested -- but let him respond to media inquiries about potential conflicts. Obama realized his system was not working when he received some sort of shareholder letter in fall 2005.

Katten Muchin Rosenman attorney Michael Hartz in Chicago drew up the papers for and was the trustee of the "Freedom Trust." Bauer said this particular kind of trust did not require any clearance from the Senate Ethics Committee because he did not ask to be relieved from any reporting rule. Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, said that if any kind of blind trust was created, "you should have the Ethics Committee sign off on it."

The trust was revoked on Dec. 31, 2005. Obama put his money in cash and mutual funds.

Thanks to a $1.2 million dollar advance from his book publisher, Obama had an extra $100,000 in loose change to invest. This "untainted" man asked for some financial advice from a couple of his wealthy donors.

However, Obama first considered approaching Warren Buffett, one of the world's wealthiest persons but he "decided it would be embarrassing with only $100,000 to invest to ask for his advice."

I'm not sure if Obama was joking but having only $100,000 to invest is a problem that most of his constituents, including this one, would like to have.

Obama purchased $5,000 in shares of AVI Biopharma, a company that was developing a drug to treat avian flu, and sure enough, Obama was on the Senate floor in 2005 asking for federal funding to treat avian flu. The suggestion to buy AVI came from a donor.

Obama has been bragging about his role in getting the Senate to pass a recent ethics bill. However, I can't seem to find anything that covers book advances in the bill, and of course Obama wouldn't have had that $100,000 to invest, nor would he have been able to afford his Chicago mansion; he only was able to buy that house with the help of since-indicted political insider Tony Rezko, had Crown Publishing not written that generous check to him.

Untainted.

Thanks for the link: Corruption Chronicles

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