Posted on 02/29/2008 7:54:58 AM PST by SE Mom
I have a new story today about Michelle Obama's visit to Zanesville, Ohio, where she met with a group of women at a local day care center. According to the U.S. Census, Muskingum County, where Zanesville is located, had a median household income of $37,192 in 2004, below both the Ohio and national averages. Just 12.2 percent of adults in the county have a bachelor's degree or higher, also well below the state and national averages. About 20 percent don't have a high school degree. Nevertheless, Mrs. Obama urged them to foreswear lucrative professions like corporate law or hedge fund management and go into the helping industry, even if the sacrifice is great:
-As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids,” she says.
“Barack and I were in that position,” she continues. “The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago, we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.” A former attorney with the white-shoe Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin, Obama explains that she and her husband made the choice to give up lucrative jobs in favor of community service. “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”
What she doesn’t mention is that the helping industry has treated her pretty well. In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office. And that does not count the money Mrs. Obama receives from serving on corporate boards. She would have been O.K. even without Jack’s magic beans.
Mrs. Obama also bemoaned the amount of money she has to spend — nearly one-third of the median household income in Zanesville — on piano, dance, and other lessons for her two children. But she was grateful for the concern her husband's supporters have shown for her. "Everywhere I go, no matter what, the women in the audience, their first question for me is, 'How on earth are you managing it, how are you keeping it all together?'" she told the women.
02/29 08:19 AM
White-shoe Chicago firm?
Why am I getting the feeling that our next president may be wearing sneakers?
We would have to get TWO corporate jobs to pay for Obama’s spending programs.
Do as I say, not as I do.
Atlas Shrugged, Mrs. ORacist...Atlas Shrugged.
John Galt coming soon to the United States if somehow, in gross stupidity, the American public elects your affirmative action asses as America’s first couple.
Please note my tagline.
>>Doesn’t MO earn a 6-figure income as an attorney?
She quit her job in January. She was VP of “community relations” for University of Chicago hospitals.
If she were an attorney, she would have actually had to work.
Really, she may be worse than Hillary.
typical altruism by the commies and their liberal sypathizers
Both Obama’s seem to be feeling rather invincible at the moment and are saying incredibly stupid things without fear of reprisal.
This will not last. There will be a day of political reckoning.
I think she is indeed- worse than Hillary. Hillary is a partisan Democrat, a decided liberal.
Michelle Obama is a socialist.
You can steal more money with a briefcase than a gun. You can steal even more when you get elected.
hmm looks like two empty suits not just one!
It’s becoming a toss up as to which witch I would rather keep out of the WH. Michele O or Hillary.
That is, in a nutshell, what this political persuasion hopes is all that we understand about the economy and how to succeed. If you become successful, it is because of some kind of luck or magic. So don't even try.
She fails to mention that "corporate America" is what marketed and sold those books for Sen. Obama.
Mrs. Obama's presidential slogan: "The world needs ditch-diggers, too."
This chick is every bit the nutjob that Tar-ay-zza Kerry was.
Straight out Socialist/Communist rhetoric Time for the Bill Cosbys to react ...
That’s just a coincidence, I’m sure.
I guess I'll just look at my 401(k) that I've/and my company have been contributing and sigh. Silly me, I don't want to be a "slave" to the man in my golden years (that are 24+ years off).
Dang corporate America... dang capitalism.
[sarcasm on] Mrs. B.H.O., when am I going to get my government supplied cheese, milk, and bread? Trajan88 needs govt. welfare. [sarcasm off]
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