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Michelle Obama

Kicking Patients to the Curb is Hard Work


Fred Dardick image

By —— Bio and Archives April 16, 2012

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As a footnote to the Hilary Rosen-Ann Romney affair, in which liberals are passionately arguing that women who stay at home, especially wealthy women, have zero intellectual capacity to understand the world in which we live--a modern take on the "why don't you just shut up and make me a sandwich" sexist philosophy--the President reminded Americans that Michelle "didn't have the luxury" of forgoing work to raise their kids. Since Obama brought it up, I thought now would be a great time to reexamine the First Lady's background and all the noble things she has accomplished working outside the home.
Michelle Obama is the daughter of Fraser Robinson III, a city of Chicago water plant employee, and stay at home mom Marian Robinson (so far no word from liberals on whether Mrs. Robinson should also keep her trap shut before pontificating on economic affairs). Michelle grew up in a south side of Chicago neighborhood that was plagued with issues common to the black community including drugs, violence and gangs. However, none of this affected the Robinson household in the least. While many neighborhood kids were left to fend for themselves, Michelle's parents made sure that both their children grew up in a loving and supportive home. Michelle has described her father, an influential Democratic precinct captain, as her most influential role model. Her mother, an excellent teacher, taught both Michelle and her brother Craig to read before they entered elementary school. Mr. Robinson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he was 30 and needed a cane to get around for much of his life, yet the disease never stopped him from working every day to support his family. Michelle once said of her father "he didn't complain--ever." His daughter on the other hand would complain - a lot.
When speaking about Princeton, her undergraduate alma mater, Michelle would often note with envy that her fellow students "drove BMWs". I don't think it ever occurred to her that BMW ownership is hardly common in America, even in the white community. She bemoaned the injustice of having to pay back her school loans at a time when she and her husband were making well over $250,000 a year and who could forget her statement during the 2008 Democratic primary that "for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country". After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1988, Michelle began her career as an attorney at the Chicago law firm Sydney and Austin. Too lazy to work the long hours necessary to succeed as a corporate lawyer and griping "about having to do the duties of a second-year associate while she was a second-year associate", she left the firm in 1991 to join up with her former boss Valerie Jarrett at the Chicago Mayor's office. Two years later, searching for "a career motivated by passion", she took the job of Executive Director of Public Allies in Chicago. Public Allies stated mission is to "inspire more citizens to believe in themselves" and encourage "lasting social change". In practice the organization is better described as "a boot camp for radicals who hate the military". According to the IBD Report, "when they're not protesting, they're staffing AIDS clinics, handing out condoms, bailing criminals out of jail and helping illegal aliens and the homeless obtain food stamps and other welfare." Not surprisingly Michelle has called her employment at Public Allies "the happiest time" of her life. When candidate Obama cryptically spoke of a civilian national security force "that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as our military, it is the Public Allies model of brainwashing kids community service he had in mind. In 1996 Michelle followed Valerie Jarrett to the University of Chicago where she helped found the Community Service Center. In 2002 she transferred to the University of Chicago Medical Center to take on the role of Executive Director of Community Affairs. It was her job to establish the Urban Health Initiative that would develop "partnerships" with local community health centers and "educate patients on the best use of the emergency room". Unfortunately for the local, predominantly black community the "best use of the emergency room" for them meant going somewhere else. It was Michelle's job to run the medical center's patient dumping scheme. The university had grown tired of caring for the huddled masses, so they hired Michelle to pawn off their patients on other community hospitals that have far less resources than the nationally recognized teaching institution. While other hospitals in the Chicago area average spending 2.1% of their operating budget on charity patients, during Michelle's tenure the University of Chicago Medical Center averaged a miserly 1.3%. Medicaid and uninsured patients who had the temerity to show up to the University of Chicago ER were given a "complementary" shuttle bus ride elsewhere and encouraged to never stop by again, courtesy of the local girl made good. When she wasn't betraying her own community, Michelle was cashing in on her husband's U.S. Senate seat. Soon after Obama won the election in 2005, Michelle was promoted to Vice President for Community and External Affairs. While her job responsibilities at the medical center stayed the same, she got a whole lot more money doing it. That year her salary rose from $121,910 to $316,962. Some say it was coincidence Michelle's income more than doubled the year her husband became a U.S. Senator, many more insist it was just another day in Chicago politics where family members of the powerful are rewarded with high paying, fake jobs by politically connected local businesses. During her six years at the University of Chicago Michelle was paid well over $1 million including $62,709 in 2008 while on leave supposedly for "unused vacation time plus the final payout from a supplemental executive retirement plan". While Michelle was publicly encouraging kids to "give up lucrative jobs in favor of community service", she also raked in the cash from a "plethora of community and corporate boards that pumped up her income to $500,000 in 2007" alone. Not bad pay for someone who once insisted she only wanted a "career motivated by passion and not just money". Her work was of such critical importance to the university that after she left, her position was eliminated for good.



Fred Dardick -- Bio and Archives | Comments

Fred Dardick got a BS in Biology at Boston University and MS in Biology at Stanford University before deciding that science bored him. He now runs a staffing company in Chicago where he is much happier now.


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