Michelle Obama Picked a Peck of Wal-Mart Peppers

Sorry about the title, but I couldn't resist. One of the Democrats favorite whipping boys is the retail giant Wal-Mart, though it's not unusual for the candidates to have ties to the huge company. Hillary Clinton is a former director, don't forget.

Barack Obama is doing his part to bash Wal-Mart, while at the same time his wife Michelle is making a tidy sum as a director of a company whose main customer is....wait for it....Wal-Mart:

She (Michelle Obama) is taking a break from her main job, as a well-remunerated Chicago hospital executive, to campaign for her husband. But she has just been re-elected to the board of an Illinois food-processing company, a position she took up two years ago to gain experience of the private sector.

And the biggest customer for the pickles and peppers produced by Treehouse Foods is the retail giant Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and the bête noire of American liberals, including Sen Obama, for its employment practices, most notably its refusal to recognise trade unions.

As the Illinois senator prepared to join the presidential fray late last year, he threw his weight behind the union-backed campaign against Wal-Mart. He declared that there was a "moral responsibility to stand up and fight" the company and "force them to examine their own corporate values".

According to the couple's tax returns, Mrs Obama earned $51,200 (£25,700) for her work as a non-executive director on Treehouse's board last year, on top of the $271,618 salary she was paid as a vice-president of the University of Chicago Hospitals.

She also received 7,500 Treehouse stock options, worth a further $72,375, as she did the previous year, when she banked a $45,000 salary from the company.

The apparent contradiction between Sen Obama's political calculation to join the Wal-Mart-bashing lobby, and his wife's profitable role with a company that makes money from Wal-Mart, is being closely scrutinised by "opposition" research teams working for rival White House candidates, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are collecting information about Mrs Obama's Treehouse ties, anticipating that - in a country where "going dirty" is a political way of life - the link may provide valuable ammunition in the election campaign.

It's interesting that this story appears to have broken in the British press and not a U.S. outlet. The American mainstream media is not fond of pointing out Dem hypocrisy.

Will this be a big story? Of course not. The Obama's are Democrats. However, it is instructive of the type of people they are.