Besides my earlier post on speaking fees in Barack and Michelle Obama’s tax returns, I noticed one other interesting thing.
Michelle Obama’s income from the Univ. of Chicago Hospitals jumped from $115,889 in 2003 and $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005 (the year Barack entered the US Senate).
MIchelle Obama's Wikipedia entry states:
In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May, 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs.
A May 9, 2005 press release from the Univ. of Chicago announced the appointment, reviewed her resume, and mentioned her ties to the new senator:
Michelle Obama has been appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Obama, who was previously the executive director for community affairs at the Hospitals, will be responsible for all programs and initiatives that involve the relationship between the Hospitals and the community. She will also take over management of the Hospitals' business diversity program. . . .
Obama's husband is a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. After seven years as a member of the Illinois State Senate, he was elected this past November to the U.S. Senate and was sworn into office January 4, 2005. He serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Veterans' Affairs Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee.
They live in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago and are the proud parents of two girls. The Obamas are members of Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side.
There was no “Vice President for Community and External Affairs” listed in the 2004 UC Hospitals Annual Report, so the position that Michelle Obama was given may have been created specifically for her. According to the press release, it would appear that in 2005 she was put in charge of at least one new program — the Business Diversity Initiative — besides the one she was running in 2004.
The Business Diversity Initiative is described in a 2006 report:
In 2002, the University of Chicago Medical Center established the Business Diversity Initiative, a program designed to seek out a larger number of minority- and women-owned businesses to deliver products and services to the Medical Center. In fiscal year 2006, the University of Chicago Medical Center spent more than $19 million with minority- and women-owned businesses for an array of goods and services, which ranges from architecture, engineering and construction services to medical/surgical supplies and information technology (IT) consulting.
UPDATE: John Enright writes in the comments below that "The big raise was a bit of a controversy in Chicago when it happened." He quotes from this Nov. 2006 Chicago Tribune story:
Officials at the University of Chicago Hospitals on Tuesday explained a large salary jump for Sen. Barack Obama's wife shortly after he took office as a normal promotion that reflected expanded duties in her job as a liaison with the South Side community surrounding the medical center.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yosrfx
Lead paragraph:
"Officials at the University of Chicago Hospitals on Tuesday explained a large salary jump for Sen. Barack Obama's wife shortly after he took office as a normal promotion that reflected expanded duties in her job as a liaison with the South Side community surrounding the medical center."
Going by the price of gold when that story appeared, and assuming Mrs Obama weighs no more than 140lbs, that means the hospital valued her at $1.3 million in 2005. Going by her current salary, they'll pay her her weight in gold by late 2009.
Anecdotal, my wife works in PR (community outreach is the same department) for a hospital and they created a position "specifically for her" a few years ago when they wanted to give her a promotion. Due to some internal policy at the time, there were only a certain number of directors that could be in the department and that number was filled. They went ahead and created the position, promoted her, then promoted her again when they could assign another director spot.
As to the salary jump, I can't speak for Chicago, but over here on the East Coast those numbers sound about right. The difference between a Director position and a VP position is a very big step in my wife's hospital.
Having been a director at a medium sized technology company, I have no doubt the CTO made over twice what I did.
tl;dr
There's nothing here.
Bring on Hillary's tax returns!
Agreed. What's she hiding?
What we have here is an organization in BHO's state that is paying his wife nearly twice what he is making as a Senator. Of course, this is probably marginally better than Hillary Clinton working for the Rose Law Firm and dealing with state agencies there. Nevertheless, it stinks in both cases. There is the appearance of impropriety and profiteering.
Of course, taking bribes at their level is probably better than what has been alleged with Sen. Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and his companies getting awarded apparently over $1.5 billion in military contracts while she chaired the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (or “Milcon”) sub-committee.
My view is graft is graft, and it would be better if Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Clinton were not/had not taken it for their husbands. If that is the cost of their spouses serving in those offices, then fine. My view is that politicians serve for the benefit of their constituents, and not the other way around.
I'm a big Obama supporter. Jim's earlier post on honoraria is troubling, and may well be a serious lapse in Obama's ethical judgement. But this is just silly. Getting paid a lot of money because your the wife/husband/brother/sister/whatever of a US Senator is business as usual.
Heck, it's a market response -- paying more for a high demand, low supply individual. Aren't you libertarians supposed to be for that sort of thing?
The hospital claims that it was bringing her pay into line with that of parallel officers.
What I wondered was, how many of those officers were white, and had she been *underpaid* previously because she was black?
Snort.
I wonder, was the previous "executive director for community affairs" promoted to VP with over a double increase in salary?
Not that it matters. The first job is useless anyway. A "liaison with the South Side community". A job description of "liaison" is 99% of the time a total make work job.
Sure, the wife of a prominent state senator and law school lecturer was underpaid becaues of racism. Makes perfect sense.
Does it change anyone's mind that the same year that Michelle Obama got her promotion and raise her husband, then US Senator Barack Obama, gave her employer a $1 million earmark gratis?
Hey if someone were to give me $1 million a year in free federal money I wouldn't mind kicking back $300k to his wife.
If that's the way things are done in Washington.
If her employer believed, for whatever reason, that it was worth its money to give Michelle Obama a large raise, what exactly is the problem?
Quid pro quo, people.
I know at a certain East coast hospital this is the case. VPs make over double what directors do. Like I said, anecdotal, but it doesn't strike me as unusual.
Bribes are ok if they take the form of a cushy job for the wife. Thanks for confirming what happened.
No hope that anything will change, I guess.
The person in question is the spouse of a government official, which is not exactly a free market situation.
It is your position, then, that there is no pay disparity between a black woman executive and her peers, contrary to all other available evidence?
To paraphrase: "How pretty, the sky. What color is it in your world?"
No, it is not (quite) my contention "that bribery through employment of politicians' spouses at outrageous prices is ok as long as it is transparent."
It is my contention that if it is transparent, then the voters can act upon the information as they see fit.
Further, I contend that there is no real alternative to having enforcement come from the voters, because we will not accept government agents telling political spouses where they can work and at what salary.
Finally, I contend that because in the real world the choice right now is between Obama and Clinton's wife, and not between Obama and Caesar's wife, we cannot decide to vote against Obama (or any one person) because we have learned that he is imperfect in this or any other way, without first comparing his imperfection to that of his opponent(s).
Her husband's political career actually makes Michelle Obama more qualified. We might pretend otherwise but much of Ms Obama's job is likely going out and doing meet and greets with various community and business leaders. Maybe she is soliciting donations or encouraging the community to accept some change in policy but in either case if people are impressed by who she is that reflects well on the university and aids it's goals. The powerful alderman or influential businessman may not have time to listen to some random university VP but they probably will make time to listen to the wife of a senator.
Sure, the university also wants to make sure their interests are represented in the legislative process. Employing people who are close to that process is a good way to do this. This doesn't imply anything like a quid pro quo or that U of C got money in return for employing Obama's wife. The issue is much more subtle than this. U of C benefits from any whiff they get from Ms. Obama of where the political winds are blowing. Also by placing Ms. Obama high into the management structure they encourage her to see things from their point of view. Lower level employees may not understand or empathize with the motivations of the institution but if you see yourself as helping to set an institutions course you are likely to view it's aims as righteous and polices as worthwhile. The value to U of C in having someone who honestly believes in them close to those who make the law is immeasurable. No one is exchanging money for favors or paying off Ms. Obama to support them but U of C does ensure that legislators are a bit more likely to hear their side of the story.
Is it troubling that this effectively amounts to the fact that money buys you political influence? Sure, but there is really nothing that can be done about this either by Ms. Obama nor by legislation or ethics rules. It is unavoidable that the friends and relatives of a politician will have a disproportionate impact on their views and votes and they will work somewhere. Wherever Ms. Obama choose to work would gain some advantage with her employment and any promotion she got from this point out is likely to be totally unaffected by knowledge of her husband. Unless we want to demand all the friends and relatives of politicians quit any jobs they have I don't see what we can do about it. At least Ms. Obama stayed where she had chosen to work before rather than taking a lucrative employment offer from some other institution that surely would have come.
Really I don't see any difference between doing this and the practice of universities to hire big name presidents who can probably use their contacts to get an appointment to talk with the senator.
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