Obama: Here come the shadowy ads
Posted: Friday, August 22, 2008 9:14 AM by Mark Murray
An conservative group, the American Issues Project, announced it will be airing TV ads highlighting Obama’s (tenuous) ties to former ‘60s radical William Ayers, the New York Times writes. “One of [the group’s] founders, Ed Failor Jr., is the executive vice president of Iowans for Tax Relief and worked for Senator McCain’s Iowa campaign committee in 2007, before leaving that summer, when Mr. McCain pared back operations. Records show Mr. Failor’s firm earned $50,000 from the McCain campaign. A spokesman, Christian Pinkston, said Mr. Failor had not coordinated with the campaign, adding, ‘He has not been with the campaign since July of 2007.’”
More: “(Mr. Pinkston’s firm, the Pinkston Group, had worked for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran advertisements against Senator John Kerry when he ran for president in 2004.)”
And: “Fox News Channel said Thursday night that it would not accept the advertisement amid questions about its legality. That raised the possibility that other stations and networks could have similar issues, but Mr. Pinkston said he was confident the advertisement would have healthy exposure in the two states. CNN also said it turned the group down, citing a ban on negative advertisements from outside groups during the party conventions.”
In a lengthy front-page piece, the Washington Post reports on the University of Chicago Medical Center where Michelle Obama worked as an executive, noting that an initiative at the center “provides a window into the close relationship between the Obamas, their associates at the University of Chicago and Axelrod, the strategist most central to Barack Obama's rise. It also illustrates how that circle, and particularly Michelle, dealt with an intractable social problem that confronts many urban areas: How much care should large, nonprofit hospitals offer the poor in return for tax-exempt status?”
Republicans highlight this excerpt from the story: “Center executives said the initiative, on which they spent $2 million last year, could be a national model. Critics, however, describe the program as an attempt to ensure that the hospital retains only affluent patients with insurance… Edward Novak, president of Chicago's Sacred Heart Hospital, declined to discuss the center's initiative in particular but dismissed as ‘bull’ attempts to justify such programs as good for patients. ‘What they're really saying is, “Don't use our emergency room because it will cost us money, and we don't want the public-aid population,”’ Novak said.”
