Dick Tuck
Board Troll
- Aug 29, 2009
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Realty check for our intellectually bankrupt and willfully ignorant neocon/teabagger punditry and bloggers:
On Jan. 9, 2009, the University of Chicago Medical Center officially announced that Michelle Obama had resigned from her post as vice president for community and external affairs to join her husband, then-President-elect Barack Obama, in the White House as the new first lady of the United States.
Michelle Obama had been promoted in 2005 to vice president for community and external affairs after three years as the executive director for community affairs. Its true, as the e-mail (and National Review column) says, that she received a sizable pay raise that year. She went from earning $121,910 in 2004 as an executive director at the hospital to making $316,962 in 2005 as a vice president, according to tax returns filed by the Obamas for those years. But the suggestion made by the emails author and not made by the National Review that she was being paid more than $300,000 for a "20 hour a week job" is not true.
University of Chicago Medical Center spokesman John Easton said Mrs. Obama didnt reduce her work schedule from full time to part time until 2007 when it became clear that her husband would run for president. "As she reduced her hours, beginning early in 2007, her salary decreased proportionately," Easton told us in an e-mail. "She switched to half time shortly before her husband formally announced his campaign, then to 20% later that year and to 0% in 2008."
In fact, Mrs. Obamas income in 2006, a year after her promotion, had decreased to $273,618. And for 2007 (the year she actually started working part-time), her income was $103,633, according to the couples tax return for that year. She took an "unpaid leave of absence to work on her husbands presidential campaign" in 2008, but still received $62,709 from the hospital. However, Easton noted that her final reported salary "consists of accumulated but unused vacation time plus the final payout from a supplemental executive retirement plan."
Easton said the nearly $317,000 figure is "misleading" anyway because it includes more than just her salary. He said the figure "also includes a performance bonus, a one-time signing bonus (she had other, competing offers at the time), and a one-time mandatory payout from a terminated retirement plan." This is reflected in the fact that her 2006 earnings were less than in 2005.
Second, the column implies that her "networking" was what caused her then-senator husband to request a "$1 million earmark for the UC Medical Center" back in 2006. But thats unsubstantiated also. He did request the funds for the "construction of a new hospital pavilion" at the University of Chicago, but both Obama and hospital officials denied that the request was influenced by his wifes position. And during the campaign, Obamas aides were quick to point out that the request was one of many projects that the former senator made in 2005 and 2006 that were killed by Congress.
FactCheck.org : Michelle Obamas Salary
How can that be, if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?" Its true that after her departure, the hospital did not fill the position of vice president for community and external affairs.
She did at one time make $300k. Ok so the story was off by dollar figures, but she made $100k for nothing? AND they didnt fill the position? Why not? It's amazing that you find no issue with this. Liberals complain about this stuff all the time. Conservatives dont really care, if it's a private business.
You have proof? Or do you just rely on the lying OP?