That’s the thrust of a phony grassroots campaign proposed by David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief strategist. Axelrod is the senior partner of a political consulting firm called ASK Public Strategies. And, as Newsweek reports, this ou…

Is there a problem here?

Now how could he possibly be good for Exelon?

Jaibones on May 25, 2008 at 10:07 PM

[The Illinois-based Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power plant operator] also helped Obama’s 2004 senatorial campaign. As Ken Silverstein reported in the November 2006 issue of Harper’s, ‘[Exelon] is Obama’s fourth largest patron, having donated a total of $74,350 to his campaigns. During debate on the 2005 energy bill, Obama helped to vote down an amendment that would have killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects … the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default.’”

There’s a lot of interesting stuff about Obama donors in that link. I found this tidbit amusing, considering the latest news about David Axelrod:

Obama backed down from an earlier pledge that lobbyists “will not work in my White House” after the media questioned its feasibility. He then said that lobbyists would not “dominate” or “run” his administration but acknowledged that they would “have a seat at the table”.

Nichevo on May 26, 2008 at 8:54 AM

To the best of my knowledge, Michelle Obama is still working “part-time” for the University of Chicago Hospitals. I’d be interested to know is her salary has been adjusted downward to reflect her part time status.

Bill Ayers’ father, Thomas Ayers. Tom Ayers, of course, was a very prominent Chicago business man, a retired head of Commonwealth Edison…[snip]

Read the entire piece! It’s an amazing story.

It is the good fortune of Democrats that people are generally stupid and won’t be able to follow the nuances. That is to say that most Democrats won’t be able to follow it either.

Thank you greatly, Danish!

Axelrod says he isn’t a lobbyist because he doesn’t do business in DC . . .

What??? Is he crazy? So who are those people that lobby the state and local politicians and agencies? Do they have a different title/name for them besides “lobbyist”?

Now how could he possibly be good for Exelon?

Jaibones on May 25, 2008 at 10:07 PM

Excellent question. Connecting the dots is very important.

Buy Danish on May 25, 2008 at 9:25 PM

Nicely done!

This begs for a snarky TV ad about BHO’s strategist working for an organization that was trying to help prevent indigents from getting healthcare.
eeyore on May 25, 2008 at 12:34 PM

You could say the same for Michelle Obama.

So if I understand correctly, Axelrod’s consulting firm proposed persuasive means to protect people from being forced to give away more of their time, effort, supplies, equipment, and facilities without hope of being paid.
Kralizec on May 25, 2008 at 2:04 PM

Not exactly: they’re being redirected to taxpayer-funded clinics:

Chicago Tribune, 4/22/07:

“For all its national prestige, the University of Chicago Medical Center had a local public-relations problem.

“The academic center was spending millions of dollars on care that would have been more effectively dispensed by a primary care provider. It was a dicey issue because it put the prestigious hospital in the position of telling its low-income, underinsured and mostly African-American neighbors to go somewhere else.

“Michelle Obama was charged with tackling the problem—a delicate issue not just for her but potentially for her husband. A close ally and supporter of Barack Obama, the Service Employees International Union has been one of the hospital industry’s fiercest critics of how it handles care for the uninsured.

“But the U. of C. program has won praise from community health providers who say Michelle Obama was uniquely suited to tackle the issue.

“Because she is of color, that gives her some credibility,” said Wendy Cox, chief executive of Chicago Family Health Center, which operates health centers on the South and Southeast Sides.

“In early 2005, Obama assembled a meeting of health-care providers and members of the community to ask for their help. She talked about the black community’s distrust of the health-care system and about how the lack of health insurance prevents people from seeking less expensive, preventive care.

“Berneice Mills-Thomas, executive director of clinic operator Near North Health Service Corp., said the meeting differed markedly from many she had with University of Chicago Hospital executives over the years.

“Her meetings stood out from others because our goals were also her goals,” said Mills-Thomas.

“The team got to work. Obama started a screening system in the ER waiting room, where people routinely showed up with a lunch and camped out to wait for a doctor, to search for people who didn’t belong there.

“After treating those individuals, hospital employees would sit down and talk with them. Rather than tell them they should go somewhere else in the future, Obama’s staff referred them to specific clinic doctors and scheduled appointments.

“Coming from someone else, the message might have inflamed relations with the community.

“After just a year, the effects of the outreach program don’t show up in the hospital’s bottom line. Still, officials think they’re starting to chip away at one of the worst recurring problems of the health system.”

TRANSLATION: Michelle’s job is to get the freeloaders out of the profit-making UCH ER, and force them into clinics run by Near North Health Service Corp. and Chicago Family Health centers, which are federally-funded Section 330 health clinics. In addition to lump sum federal grants, Section 330 clinics receive “enhanced Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, medical malpractice coverage through the Federal Tort Claims Act, eligibility to purchase prescription and non-prescription medications for outpatients at reduced cost through the 340B Drug Pricing Program, access to National Health Service Corps, access to the Vaccine for Children program, and eligibility for various other federal grants and programs.”

Almost half of Near North Health SC‘s clients are on Medicare/Medicaid, by the way.

to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent.

Yikes.

may have been hoist by his own petard

Thank you Ed for getting this Shakespeare reference right. It’s a pet peeve of mine. So often you hear “hoist on his own petard.” A petard is a bomb for goodness sakes.

I also hate it when people use “literally” to give more emphasis to a figurative statement, i.e. “That last lap literally killed me.” The mistake seems to be a lot more common lately. It literally makes me want to kill the speaker.

Will Obama fire Axelrod, or will he admit that he has been a hypocrite for questioning McCain for his connection to lobbyists — lobbyists who didn’t resort to creating fraudulent front groups for their clients?

As noted above, No. Obama will not fire Axelrod, and will get the coverage (or lack of it- let the story die) he needs to let this slip away, IMO.

All the comments about Axelrod made me think of Rove and Democratic projection. Is he their Rove, the person who can accomplish getting a thoroughly unqualified candidate (at least that was the Democratic meme) elected?

Something to think about.

Buy Danish on May 25, 2008 at 9:25 PM
Jaibones on May 25, 2008 at 10:07 PM

Damned interesting posts. Patterns are starting surface, aren’t they?

If our media had any balls, Obambi would’ve been toast a long time ago. There’s no way these connections don’t get looked at hard in the next 5+ months.

Buy Danish on May 25, 2008 at 9:25 PM

It’s weird, isn’t it? On the racial meme, Frank Clark is a black guy, I guess the first black CEO there, but it’s still a publicly held company. There is no affirmative action for CEOs of any color. His bio indicates a guy who somehow worked his way all the way through the company to the top. Not exactly the current path to CEO in the Fortune 100.

So, how does a guy like that support a tax-hiking, big-government socialist? He doesn’t, and race can’t possibly change that, right? I don’t like conspiracy crap, but it’s awfully hard to figure out why Exelon would be big for Obambi, unless the company bigs believe that he is good for them.

Now how could he possibly be good for Exelon?

Wasn’t William Ayers’ father the head of Commonwealth Edison for a good while. What a tidy little group this is beginning to look like. It makes you wonder if Obama is their own little Manchurian candidate.

RW_theoriginal on May 25, 2008 at 3:37 PM

Why yes!

A leading figure in the Chicago business groups that were lobbying for cost cutting and “efficiency” in the Chicago schools in the 1980′s was Bill Ayers’ father, Thomas Ayers. Tom Ayers, of course, was a very prominent Chicago business man, a retired head of Commonwealth Edison…[snip]

Interestingly, after [Barry's] first year in law school Obama returned in the summer of 1989 to work as a summer associate at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. This in and of itself is a bit unusual. Very few top tier law students work for big law firms during their first summer. The big law firms discourage it because if you work for them in the first summer you are likely to work for a second firm the following year and then the firms have to compete to get you.

So, why or how did Obama – at that point not yet the prominent first black president of the Harvard Law Review (that would happen the following year) – end up at Sidley?

Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was Comm Ed’s key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (and Sidley partner Newton Minow, too).It turns out, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also.. She was hired there in the late 80s, because of the intervention of her father-in-law Tom Ayers, even though she was (and is) not a member of any state bar.

Moreover, Commonwealth Edison has been very generous to Barry’s campaign.
Lobbyist bundlers:

The following, according to Public Citizen/WhiteHouseForSale,[14] have been identified by the Obama campaign as bundlers who are also lobbyists who contributed to Obama for America.

* Frank M. Clark[15] is chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation. As an Obama bundler, Clark raised $200,000+. FEC records show that on January 26, 2007, he personally contributed $2,000.[16]

For weeks now, the Prophet Barack, Harbinger of Hope, Change, and Waffles, has been slamming John McCain for ties to lobbyists. Well, what do you know? To be honest, I’m a little surprised Newsweek carried this, given how in-the-tank for…

I honestly believe this country is in deep trouble and all the facts in the world wont save us.

That’s a scary story.

In 2004 I worked with a number of people who had been eligible to vote for years but had never been interested in doing so. Of course they all voted for Kerry, because that’s who MTV was backing. Before this, I had bemoaned the apathy that caused these people not to vote at all; but now that looked like the good ole days.

Now you tell us your educated contemporaries are not a lot different from my former coworkers who didn’t all make it out of high school and whose main source of information/news is MTV. Great.

Great start, but wrong digit pointing, and it should be straighter :)

OldEnglish on May 25, 2008 at 8:34 PM

Heh. Thanks. I didn’t think about that. ;o)