dakota53 wrote:
Chicago put him there, wonder what the pay back will be? There is always payback in Chicago. Maybe he'll get us the Olyimpics that Daley is dying for!
the pay back has already started.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama tried to direct more than $3 million in taxpayer funds to a Chicago museum whose chairman is one of the Illinois senator's largest campaign fundraisers.

Mr. Obama has twice since fiscal 2006 sought to have taxpayers foot the bill for a new theater projector and other equipment at the Adler Planetarium on the Lake Michigan waterfront. Neither of the requests, which totaled $3.3 million, was approved by Congress, the museum said.

The planetarium's chairman, then and still, is Frank Clark, chief executive of ComEd, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Energy. He has pledged to raise more than $200,000 for Mr. Obama's run for the White House.

Moreover, the Adler Planetarium is represented by the lobbying firm National Group LLP, co-founded by William Oldaker, who helped launch Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s political action committee in 2005. Mr. Oldaker, a partner with the Delaware Democrat's son in another Washington lobbying and law firm, is no longer involved with Mr. Biden's PAC, Unite Our States.

Obama campaign aides said the requests for the Adler were among several worthwhile projects supported over the years by the senator on behalf of universities, hospitals and other nonprofit institutions in his home state.

...

Two years earlier, Mr. Obama sought $300,000 for the Adler in another unsuccessful earmark request.

But with Mr. Clark also serving as a big Obama fundraiser, the Adler request also is the sort spending proposal that invites scrutiny from Republicans scouring Mr. Obama's earmarks for political fodder in the presidential campaign.

"His earmark requests benefiting projects tied to friends and contributors is further proof that Obama's 'change' slogan is just words and nothing more," Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz said of the Adler request.

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Though neither of Mr. Obama's spending requests won approval in Congress, the Adler still has managed to secure more than $1.2 million in other earmarks in recent years.

Since 2005, the museum has paid more than a quarter-million dollars to National Group to lobby Congress.

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Senator Barack Obama on Thursday released a list of $740 million in earmarked spending requests that he had made over the last three years

The list included $1 million for a hospital where Mr. Obama's wife works.

[March 14, 2008] Mr. Obama's presidential campaign also said that only about $220 million worth of his requests had been approved by Congress. And among those that had been killed were his request in 2006 for $1 million for an expansion of the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Mr. Obama's wife, Michelle, is a vice president.

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Based on the release by his campaign, Mr. Obama was able to obtain only about $3 out of every $10 he requested.

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The winning requests included more than $10 million for a military arsenal in Rock Island, Ill., to several million dollars for research on soybean disease and livestock genes at the University of Illinois and $100,000 for after-school clubs and sports programs at the Chicago Jesuit Academy.

The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a pavilion that could increase its capacity for treating patients by one-third.

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In other cases, Mr. Obama's requests benefited political supporters.

His campaign's list said the senator had secured $1.3 million of an $8 million request in 2006 for a high-explosive technology program for the Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The list said the program was overseen by General Dynamics.

One of Mr. Obama's top supporters, James S. Crown, serves on the board of General Dynamics, a military contractor. Mr. Crown is a member of Mr. Obama's national finance committee.

Mr. Obama also secured $750,000 of a $3 million request for renovation of a space center named for Mr. Crown's grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

In addition to the University of Illinois, Mr. Obama secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Emil Jones Jr., the president of the Illinois State Senate and an early and powerful political benefactor of Mr. Obama's, has been a dogged champion of Chicago State, and one of Senator Obama's closest friends. A Chicago businessman, James Reynolds, sits on its board.

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when 900 years you reach,
image image image
look as good you will not