Posted on 03/08/2007 11:18:00 AM PST by Ellesu
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama got more than an education when he attended Harvard Law School in the late 1980s. He also got a healthy stack of parking tickets, most of which he never paid.
The Illinois Senator shelled out $375 in January -- two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign -- to finally pay for 15 outstanding parking tickets and their associated late fees.
The story was first reported Wednesday by The Somerville News.
Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, mostly for parking in a bus stop, parking without a resident permit and failing to pay the meter, records from the Cambridge Traffic, Parking and Transportation office show.
He incurred $140 in fines and $260 in late fees in Cambridge in all, but he paid $25 for two of the tickets in February 1990.
Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, dismissed the tickets as not relevant.
"He didn't owe that much and what he did owe, he paid," Psaki said on Wednesday. "Many people have parking tickets and late fees. All the parking tickets and late fees were paid in full."
administrative snafu
Have to agree. Bush was a drunk. I don't care about these tickets or bush's college days.
Must have been bothering his conscience after all these years, huh.
2 weeks before he runs he pays the tickets, why wait?
I wonder if he did not have a resident parking permit because his car was not registered in the local town and therefor not eligible for a resident parking permit? Was he trying to save insurance by registering out of state?
In case anyone missed it earlier, it has also been discovered that the form RNC chairman Ken Mehlman (the gay Log Cabin Republican who once ran GWB's campaign and is now working for Rudy Giuliani) and Barack Hussein Obama were classmates at Harvard Law School.
I give him a pass because he's so gosh darned articulate.
Outstanding character shown here. After all other people also are scoff laws. I certainly want him as my president.
"Have to agree. Bush was a drunk"
Bush was not a drunk.
I wonder what religion he identified himself as belonging to back in his college days. Schools routinely asked that question.
I spent a weekend in Boston once and ended up with three parking tickets all because of the lack of signs. So sue me--I didn't walk a block from my car to see if there was a sign that you couldn't park there on alternate Thursdays because of stree cleaning.
If Cambridge is anything like Boston, I don't blame Obama one bit for getting a few tickets. Liberal havens inevitably have local governments that use every means possible to get money out of people.
President Bush has one drunk driving arrest in his twenties. He paid the fine at that time and never had a repeat incident. How does that compare in any way to this?
I wonder what else Hillary's smear team is going to find.
Did you pay the fines?
Sure- we ALL take 17 years to pay tickets...
Sure we do....
I don't blame him for getting the tickets, he never intended to pay the fines, until he decided to run for president.
So hard to stay "clean"...
Like a true liberal. Paying their fair share only when forced to.
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