The Barack Obama Stock Controversy

Barack Obama, who has made ethics a signature issue in his campaign for president, has once again been forced to answer for his own questionable behavior.  This according to the New York Times: Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.  One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu.  In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease.

Barack Obama Stock Controversy

This 'legislative push' included a bill sponsored by Obama urging the government to increase stockpiles of antiviral medicines.  Obama had set up a 'quasi' blind trust, which enabled him to exert some discretion over his investments in order to ensure there were no conflicts of interest with respect to his work on the Hill.  So much for that.  Additional concerns arise from the fact that Senator Obama received investment advice from one of his major financial backers.

Obama, with help from Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, amended a bill to increase by $3.8 billion the amount of government funds dedicated to fighting avian flu.  At the time, AVI BioPharma, one company in which Obama invested was developing a drug to treat the disease.  Moreover, Mr. Obama invested in a satellite company, Skyterra Communications, whose backers have raised more than $150,000 for Obama’s political committees.  (One of these individuals is also the subject of an FBI investigation involving public corruption in Albany, NY, the Times reports.)

This is the second time in the last few months that Obama, touted as a politician who floats above the culture of corruption, has found himself at the center of an ethics controversy.

You will recall late last year, Obama was involved in a shady land deal involving another of his political contributors, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was later indicted in an unrelated political corruption scandal.  After getting caught, Obama said the land deal was a mistake in judgment.  But how many more “mistakes in judgment” has Obama made that have yet to come to light?  And the American people have to be more than a little concerned with respect to the company Obama keeps (a lesson we learned from the Clintons who surrounded themselves with crooks and then proceeded to operate the most corrupt presidency in American history).

Obama has tried to distance himself from Hillary Clinton, his main competition for the Democratic nomination.  But as far as ethics is concerned, developments suggest he may be more like Hillary than he, or his backers, would care to admit.

Tom Fitton is President of Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan educational foundation that fights government corruption.