Friday, September 12, 2008

BARACK OBAMA

Obama Wants To Make 'Lack of Disclosure' an Issue

The Obama campaign wants to make an issue of secrecy and lack of disclosure:

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) plans to release 10 years of his tax returns on Friday morning, pressuring his Republican counterpart, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to do the same, Politico has learned.

...News reports from Alaska have said that Palin collected per-diem travel payments even when she was at home, and the Obama-Biden campaign wants reporters to see if she paid taxes on it.

McCain has disclosed little about his family finances. He files separately from his wife, Cindy, and has put out only his 2006 and 2007 returns. The campaign released her two-page tax for 2006, but not complete returns.

The Obama campaign calls this “a disappointingly low bar for disclosure.” Obama has released tax forms for each year beginning in 2000.

Just to review, the public cannot get access to paperwork related to grants to distributed by then-state-legislator Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren't available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm's clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won't release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he's never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor.

Then there was the effort against Stanley Kurtz for his effort to examine documents relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where William Ayers hired Obama to be board chairman.

Oh, and Biden has released his earmark requests for one year out of his 36 in the Senate.

But other than that, these guys are open books.

09/12 11:14 AMShare