Obama donor received a state grant .Letter on behalf of a table tennis company preceded the funding

[ElsewheresDaughter]

April 27, 2008

WASHINGTON -- After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client -- a longtime political supporter.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell's firm that eventually totaled $112,000.

A few months after receiving 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.

Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments.

Obama's staff said the senator advocated only for the first year's grant -- which ended up being $20,000, not $50,000. The day after Obama wrote his letter urging the awarding of the state funds, Obama's U.S. Senate campaign received a $1,000 donation from Blackwell.

Obama's presidential campaign rejects any suggestion that there was a connection between the legal work, the campaign contribution and the help with the grant. "Any implication that Sen. Obama would risk an ethical breach in order to secure a small grant for a pingpong tournament is nuts," said David Axelrod, Obama's chief political advisor.

Image-conscious

Business relationships between lawmakers and people with government interests are not illegal or uncommon in Illinois or other states with a part-time Legislature, where lawmakers supplement their state salaries with income from the private sector.

But Obama portrays himself as a lawmaker dedicated to transparency and sensitive to even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Recently, Obama expressed regret over a property deal with Illinois power broker Tony Rezko after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. In an interview this spring with the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama said his regret was not just because the real estate and restaurant entrepreneur was under criminal scrutiny, but because he was "a contributor and someone doing business before the state."

Killerspin's owner, Blackwell, was a political supporter and friend as well. Both men lived on Chicago's South Side. Blackwell, a savvy and successful entrepreneur, was one of the first donors to Obama's early campaigns, including the state senator's failed bid for a congressional seat in 2000. In the presidential race he is credited on Obama's website with committing to raise $100,000 to $200,000 for Obama's campaign.

When Blackwell sought backing for his table tennis tournament in 2002, other politicians, including U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, offered support for the event. But Obama was the only one who provided a letter that became part of the initial application for state funds, state records show. In addition, he wrote a state Senate proclamation heralding the first tournament and an official letter that welcomed “table tennis friends” to the 2004 contest and thanked spectators for helping to "make Chicago the table tennis capital of this nation."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-killerspin27apr27,1,7266833.story?track=rss

[bowens43]

1. So? What's your point?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. That Obama is no messiah...he is more of the same...meet the new boss same as the old boss.

[mkultra]

4. Give it up. She lost.

[BlueIdaho]

2. I'm SHOCKED - shocked I say

to find out there is money in politics!!!!!!

Round up the usual suspects.

[americanstranger]

5. Got anything new?

This was covered last week, wasn't it?

- as

[redqueen]

6. Table tennis? HRC's in bed with weapons manufacturers...

and you're concerned with table tennis?

[Armstead]

7. Those table tennis balls can be deadly

[redqueen]

9. As deadly as cluster bombs?

I know HRC is okay with cluster bombs.

[rinsd]

11. She has taken $80K more from Defense industries than Obama this funding cycle

http://opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.asp?sec=D

She also appears to have not made the top 25 for Defense PAC contributions though she certainly could havfe received money from them

http://opensecrets.org/industries/pacrecips.asp?Ind=D&Cycle=2008

That said the table tennis issue is silly.

[redqueen]

12. Her outrageously hawkish comments,

approval of cluster bombs, hawkish record, etc. lead me to believe she is far less my type of candidate on military issues than that $80K difference would seem to indicate.

[Barack_America]

8. They dig and they dig. But they only come up with ping-pong tables...

For the whopping sum of $1,000. As if any politician is really going to jeopardize their political future for $1,000.

The LA Times could sue you for more for posting so much of this article.

:rofl:

P.S. Obama openly promoted support for African American businesses while he was in the IL Senate, so no shock that he would write on behalf of the Blackwells.

[blm]

10. Terrorists Bin Laden and AQ Khan free to do business after Clinton deep-sixed BCCI matters for Bush1

and Jackson Stephens.

But that doesn't seem to bother you ONE BIT.