Obama donor received a state grant

Los Angeles Times ^ | April 27, 2008 | Turbocat

[turbocat]

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.

[turbocat]

And, as you read the article, you will see the government grants began.

Searched and didn't see this posted.

[freeangel]

obama figured it was OK. After all, isn’t this partly how the clintons amassed their wealth?

[frankjr]

Maybe Patrick Fitzgerald should take a look into this.

[milwguy]

He just didn’t know anyone in the futures market like Hillary didm so he couldn’t make the money all at once, he had to stretch it out over a years time.

[milwguy]

“His letter on behalf of a table tennis company preceded the funding”

Whew. thank goodness it was table tennis and not bowling. Give the ‘37’ he bowled in Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago, if it was a bowling ball company, I would have really been suspicious.

[savedbygrace]

Obama, he be dirty, man.

[Malesherbes]

Just another “distraction” from HOPE (trade mark pending.)

[niteowl77]

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.

That is quite a "supplement." In fact, I'd have a lot of AUDACITY were I to HOPE for the OPPORTUNITY to pick up that kind of CHANGE.

Mr. niteowl77

[browardchad]

But, golly, Mr. O tells people in his gloriously hopeful speeches that he eschewed corporate law to become "a civil rights lawyer" (because, like, you know, he's for the downtrodden and exploited in evil capitalist Amerikkka).

How can this be? /sarc

[Enchante]

Michelle Obama: “we were having a tough time paying for the kids’ private dance lessons until some big bucks came through as a ‘retainer’ to Barack for meaningless legal advice.... OOPS, did I just say that in public?”

Both the retainer and the grant application sound really bogus, although this sort of crapola must go on all the time..... but Obambi wants to be President and had better be able to explain why he is not just another corrupt lobbyist, er, politician.

The tourism grant program may well have been abused compared to its stated purpose, unless they really brought in OVERNIGHT dollars at a level that would pay substantial lodging taxes etc. Notice they refer to merely an estimate of attendance at an event and not hotel occupancy.... attendance could be all ‘locals’ and not meeting the purpose of the tourism grant program:

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Unofficial estimates place 3,000 to 6,000 spectators in the 8,000-seat University of Illinois-Chicago arena during some table tennis events

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I notice they also use the most bogus form of stats for a cable “broadcast” — not referring to any actual ratings for how many real people watched, but merely the number of viewers potentially ‘reached’ — which means squat when there area hundreds of channels and more people are not watching any of them much of the time. Some 3 am “broadcasts” that no one watched would not constitute a good or proper use of state funds (even if it could be argued that any of the table tennis tournament was a good use of public funds, which is doubtful):

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He wrote the letter on behalf of a constituent” with a worthy cause, Gibbs said, noting that the contest was broadcast internationally, reaching as many as 200 million viewers in 156 countries.

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[Enchante]

Obama received over $100K for supposed ‘work’ that is less than obvious from a company that does a lot of business with the State of Illinois as well as the City of Chicago. In fact, depending upon the amounts of the various contracts of clients, it could easily turn out that a large proportion of their revenues come from public sources (or not, we don’t know yet) — but there certainly are plenty of state and city govt. agencies on the client list below:

http://www.eki-consulting.com/whyeki/Client%20List.shtml

Our clients are as diverse as our thinking.

We are privileged to serve as a trusted partner and advisor to industry leaders in finance, healthcare, government, retail, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, food and hospitality, technology, legal, and non-profit organizations.

Select client list

Commercial

Abbott Laboratories
Anexsys
Apogee Marketing
Bank One
Chicago Board of Trade
Corn Products
Deluxe Corporation
Earl L. Neal
FMC Corporation
Focal Communications
Hollister
LKQ
Morton’s of Chicago
Motorola
People’s Energy Home Services
Putman Media
Vibes Media
Wrigley

Government & Non-Profit

City of Chicago - Alderman Carothers
City of Chicago - Board of Ethics
City of Chicago - Department of Children and Youth Services
City of Chicago - Department of Environment
City of Chicago - Department of Innovation and Technology
City of Chicago - Department of Public Health
City of Chicago - Office of Emergency Management and Communications
Chicago Transit Authority
Cook County
Illinois Regional Transportation Authority
Museum of Science & Industry
National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation
Southern Illinois University
State of Illinois - Bureau of Tourism
State of Illinois - Department of Central Management Services
State of Illinois - Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
State of Illinois - Department of Human Services
State of Illinois - Department of Public Health
State of Illinois - Department of Revenue
State of Illinois - Department of Transportation
YMCA of Chicago
Youth Guidance

[4Liberty]

CORPORATE WELFARE. www.cagw.org call your office. HOPE MCCAIN USES THIS. THIS IS BOVINE-REFUSE. WHY IS THE GOVT [TAXPAYER] PAYING ...FOR ADVERTISING FOR TABLE TENNIS. WHAT A LOSER BAM BAM IS

“Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin [a table tennis company].... With support from Obama, ...the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to SUBSIDIZE its [table tennis] tournaments.”

[Freedumb]

After reading this article, I remembered that Chicago had some stupid table tennis event for an entire summer some years back. I immediately wondered if Obama’s sugar daddy in this story was tied up in that as well. Sure enough I found this, from EKI’s own website:

http://www.eki-consulting.com/APPS/EKIHP1.nsf/Content/C35A694201B7B18F86256B810076CBDE?OpenDocument

Also, I wonder if Barry was helpful in getting this little bit of city of Chicago business for EKI and Mr. Blackwell:
http://www.eki-consulting.com/APPS/EKIHP1.nsf/Content/1F9FCF8884E3559E86256B810076CBDD?OpenDocument