Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.Taking advocacy to a whole new level. Here's his official explanation:
One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu. In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease.
The spokesman, Bill Burton, said Mr. Obama’s broker bought the stocks without consulting the senator, under the terms of a blind trust that was being set up for the senator at that time but was not finalized until several months after the investments were made.“He went about this process to avoid an actual or apparent conflict of interest, and he had no knowledge of the stocks he owned,” Mr. Burton said. “And when he realized that he didn’t have the level of blindness that he expected, he moved to terminate the trust.”
Maybe he just expected a little help from his friends, not a lot. The NY Times tut-tuts:
Mr. Obama has made ethics a signature issue, and his quest for the presidency has benefited from the perception that he is unlike politicians who blend public and private interests. There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.The NY Times entertains questions:
Even so, the stock purchases raise questions about how he could unwittingly come to invest in two relatively obscure companies, whose backers happen to include generous contributors to his political committees. Among those donors was Jared Abbruzzese, a New York businessman now at the center of an F.B.I. inquiry into public corruption in Albany, who had also contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sought to undermine John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004.
Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed about the stock deals, has already had to contend with a controversy that arose out of his reliance on a major campaign contributor in Chicago to help him in a personal financial transaction. In that earlier case, he acknowledged last year that it had been a mistake to involve the contributor,a developer who has since been indicted in an unrelated political scandal, in deals related to the Obamas’ purchase of a home.
Obama, when he announced, talked about rising above the "smallness of our politics". Well this may be small potatoes to some but not to most. I suppose he just read the Wall St. Journal to pick 'em, like Hillary claimed for her $100K killing in cattle futures. Obama also said the campaign can't "only be about me". This looks pretty me-first to me.
"Chicago is a city that lives and breathes the Olympic ideals. Chicago will embrace an Olympics that represents the triumph of hope over fear," said Obama.Good luck to Chicago on the Olympic bid. I'm afraid, though, Sen. Obama will have to do better than mouth pieties. He's stamped his signature on more than a few questionable transactions and raised the issue again of his hypocrisy on ethics.
Previous posts: Obama Come Lately, Obama the Dream
Related post: Political Bedfellows
UPDATE: Jason Horowitz, NYO, RCP cover story "It's Obamalot!" (Yes, moving on from Lincoln to JFK) Nice quote apropos of the above post. It seems a little mangled to me:
Under an illuminated cross, gold organ pipes and hanging chandeliers, Mr. Obama closed his eyes and nodded to the hymns and prayers. He shook his head in a show of embarrassment when Bishop T. Larry Kirkland illustrated his point about racial equality by saying, “Show me a John Fitzgerald Kennedy and I’ll show you a Barack Obama.”But for all his squirming, Mr. Obama seemed eager to encourage the comparison.
“It’s not enough just to ask what the government can do for us—it’s important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves,” he said.
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