Two More Obama SCAMS

Two more Obama Scams to fill you folks in on. The first is personal. You may have wondered where I have been for the past 24 hours. Blogger locked me out from posting on my site. They said that a spambot showed that Yidwithlid was Spam blog. I filled out the appropriate "please remove the lock" form and after a day of trying to design a Typepad site (which I am still doing) I got back into blogger about an hour ago. As I reached out to other bloggers for help, I received e-mail from two bloggers asking me if I posted a lot of negative stories about Senator Obama. You see, it may be just a coincidence, but lots of Anti-Obama blogs get put in the 24-48 hour penalty box by blogger. Apparently they do this as a way to harass us.

So I thought it appropriate that my first post back cover the story of another Obama-related coincidence. When the candidate was in the State Senate he got a $100,000 donation from a guy that he helped to get a state grant. I believe the technical term for that is Quid Pro Quo:

Obama Paid By Donor Who Got State Grant

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 12:20 PM

By: Newsmax Staff

As an Illinois state Senator, Barack Obama received more than $100,000 from a company owned by an entrepreneur whom Obama helped to obtain a state grant.

Robert Blackwell Jr., a contributor to Obama’s campaigns, began paying Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer in early 2001 to provide legal advice to his technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange.

At the time, Obama had recently completed his unsuccessful campaign for Congress, and had numerous debts and a law practice he had neglected for a year while campaigning, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Obama had been so strapped for cash that his credit card was initially rejected when he tried to rent a car at the 2000 Democratic convention, Obama disclosed in his book “The Audacity of Hope.”

The monthly payments from EKI supplemented Obama’s $58,000-a-year part-time state Senate salary, and eventually totaled $112,000.

“A few months after he received his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin,” the Times story disclosed.

Killerspin runs table tennis tournaments around the country and sells its line of equipment and apparel, along with DVD recordings of the tournaments.

The day after Obama wrote his letter urging that Killerspin receive the grant, Blackwell contributed $1,000 to Obama’s Senate campaign.

Killerspin eventually received $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its competitions.

Blackwell is credited on Obama’s Web site with committing to raise $100,000 to $200,000 for Obama’s presidential campaign.

According to the Times, Obama did not specify on disclosure forms for 2001 and 2002 that EKI provided him with most of his private-sector compensation.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told the Times that Obama did nothing wrong in acting on Blackwell’s behalf for a “worthy project” developed by a constituent.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political advisor, was more vehement in his statement: “Any implication that Sen. Obama would risk an ethical breach in order to secure a small grant for a ping pong tournament is nuts.”