Where are Obama state Senate files? Thrown out?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/643987,CST-NWS-sweet10.article

Where are Obama state Senate files?
POLITICS | They 'could have been thrown out,' says candidate calling for transparency

November 10, 2007
BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Columnist
JOHNSTON, Iowa -- White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) --whose staff has been deflecting questions about the whereabouts of his state Senate papers -- said Friday he was not certain whether they still exist.

Obama made the comment after I asked him, "Where is the stuff?"

The context for pressing Obama on his state papers is this: He is campaigning as a champion of government transparency and slamming chief rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) for not pushing the Clinton Library in Arkansas to speed up the release of papers from her tenure as first lady.

At a news conference, I asked Obama, "Do your state Senate papers still exist? If they do, just where are they? And would you ever intend to make them public to be responsive to some requests?

"Nobody has requested specific documents," Obama said.

However, the Chicago Tribune reported it has asked for documents from Obama's Springfield years and never received a response.

more...

:rofl:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/635462,CST-NWS-sweet05.article

Living in a glass house
POLITICS | Obama's push for Clinton to disclose her first lady papers raises questions about his own transparency

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On other fronts, the Obama transparency record is lacking.

• • An Obama spokesman, Ben Labolt, last week declined to say where Obama's records from his years in the Illinois State Senate are located. There is no law mandating the state to archive the records. The records from Obama's office -- if he kept them -- would potentially show appointments with lobbyists, policy memos, meetings, etc.

• • Obama has supported more earmark disclosure to bolster government transparency. Last June, Obama disclosed the earmarks he requested for Illinois and national interests. However, his office, after repeated requests since June, has yet to disclose earmarks Obama sought in 2006, before he was running for president.

• • Obama does list the names of hundreds of bundlers -- people committed to raising at least $50,000 for the campaign -- on his Web site. He brags about the disclosure on the stump.

But that's literally all Obama does, list a name. No cities or states, information that is available to his campaign. Some names are well known because the bundlers are celebrities or longtime activists. But it's a big country, and there are more than one Bob Clark and Lou Cohen. Just listing a name does lip service to meaningful disclosure.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, in a memo sent last week after the debate, said Obama is "setting a new standard of openness in campaign fund-raising." That's because the bar is very low.

• • Obama's campaign has refused to identify the biggest bundlers, people who are raising at least $200,000 for him and are given membership in his National Finance Council. Obama, as all major candidates, declines most of the time to disclose details about most fund-raising events.

• • During a town hall meeting last month in Dover, N.H., Obama pledged that he would post all meetings he would hold as president on the Internet. As a senator, Obama has never done that.

as well as his supporters who seem to have a double standard

How else would you know how screwed up they are?

but some will ignore that difference

to put all your records. Should he have just taken all his state senate records home knowing that he was going to run for President one day.

Maybe you missed this part of the article:

Obama has no legal obligation to archive his state papers.

"I was in the state Senate for eight years," Obama said. "I had one staff person, that was what was allocated. I don't have archivists in the state Senate. I don't have the Barack Obama state Senate library available to me, so we had a bunch of file cabinets. I do not have a whole bunch of records from those years. Now, if there are particular documents that you are interested in, then you should let us know."

Like I said, there is a big difference between State Senate and Presidential Records. You have a place (and staff) to place your records. You do not in the state senate.

That's why people never move all their possessions from one place to another when they move.
They just leave them behind or throw them away.

state senators' file? I believe such files are the property of the state, not the individual senator.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/09/457959.aspx

I'm not a Lynn Sweet fan at all, she does this kind of "gotcha" reporting on all the candidates.

My concern about Obama, is that my husband has every important piece of paper and photo from his 30 years in the Marine Corps, and yes, we've been able to haul them all over the country....we just had to rent/buy bigger houses after every tour.

How hard would it be to save important docs from a few years ?

Also, it does not appear O feels comfortable talking with reporters ? Should be an interesting interview with Timmy tommorrow....if he crosses the picket line.