Obama's Machine Millionaires

Pay cuts no sacrifice

By STEVE RHODES

Updated 1:18 PM CST, Tue, Jul 28, 2009

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"For many of the Chicagoans serving in the White House, their new high-powered jobs have also come with a sizable pay cut," the Tribune reports.

All together now: Waaaaaah!

Many of the Chicagoans serving in the White House are already stinking rich.

And they'll only be there a couple years at most, if history is any guide.

And then they'll get even richer.

So don't cry for them.

David Axelrod, for example, "collected a 2008 salary of roughly $1.5 million from two political consulting firms in Chicago that he sold before moving to the White House," the paper reports.

Let's face it: unless he pulls an MC Hammer (or an Eddy Curry), Axelrod is set for life.

And Desiree Rogers?

"Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary, also took a significant pay cut from what she was making at Allstate Insurance Co., where she was working on a financial social networking program before leaving for Washington," the Tribune reports. "She now earns $113,000 a year."

Left out? The $1.8 million Rogers made in the first half of 2008 as CEO of Peoples Gas, which we all know is a supremely well-managed enterprise.

Valerie Jarrett?

"Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, resigned her position as chief executive of Habitat Co., one of the Midwest's largest property-management firms, to move to the White House."

Jarrett made more than a million bucks last year from that job and various board seats and even, at least as of April, was still drawing a paycheck from the CTA, where she was the mayor's hand-picked chairwoman for eight years of that supremely well-managed enterprise.

And don't even get started with Rahm Emanuel.

The Tribune reported it last spring: "President Barack Obama's Team Virtually All Chicago Millionaires."

(And they are all loyal Daleyites.)

Working in the White House is hardly a sacrifice for these folks; it's the least they can do.

Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.