For many voters, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee , is the embodiment of much that is wrong with the Democratic establishment. She was accused of working to rig the primaries for Hillary Clinton and repeatedly lying to the public. Given that history, one would think that Wasserman Schultz would avoid any questions that remotely deal with ethics or honesty or influence peddling. However, that is not how Washington works. Wasserman Schultz’s supporters enthusiastically re-elected her and most folks in Washington view voters as having the attention span of a Golden Retriever. Thus, Wasserman Schultz was trotted out on CNN to assure the public that President Obama receiving obscene amounts of money from Wall Street interests is none of their business.
For Sanders supporters, Wasserman Schultz was a primary target for allegations of special dealing and dishonesty. Given that history, they are unlikely to be happy with Wasserman Schultz effectively telling both Senators Sanders and Warren to shut up about massive payments going to the Obamas by Wall Street firms and other powerful groups. During the campaign, Wasserman Schultz also fended off calls for Clinton to release the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street firms and bankers.
Many of us raised objections over how Obama quickly collected almost a half of million dollars (in fees and likely travel expenses) for a single speech from powerful interests. Under our current system, we have all of these bribery and influence peddling laws in place. However, if Wall Street or lobbyists give a former president half a million dollars for less than one hour of speaking soon after leaving office, it is entirely acceptable from a legal standpoint.
There is obviously a serious concern over the corruptive impact of such speeches — the very issue that crippled the campaign of Hillary Clinton who has to this day refused to release the speeches that she gave to Wall Street investors for huge speaking fees.
Wasserman Schultz however told CNN “It is none of anyone’s business what someone who is a member of the private sector decides to accept in terms of compensation.” Thus, according to the Wasserman Schultz book of ethics and good government, it is a matter of “MYOB” for citizens who should not be interested at all if a president immediately collects hundreds of thousands of dollars from people who seek to influence federal officials and policies.
In a line that sums by the approach of Democratic leadership supporting the Clinton campaign, Wasserman Schultz declared “With all due respect to anyone who chooses to comment publicly on what Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or anyone earns as a member of the private sector, it’s just, like, MYOB – it’s none of your business.”
Well, at least she admitted that politics is now a simple matter of business.
Obama is no longer President so he can make whatever the market will bear, I notice you are somewhat hesitate to spend a lot of ink on Trump who presently resides part time at 1600 Pennsylvania. He is the one you should be exposing (oh yeah, you work for “Fox fake”).
Just what is it you fancy he was selling for $400,000?
dss – he is selling influence before and after office, for deeds while in office.
It’s been suggested that Goldman Sachs was a conduit for some other party and that this is a payoff from that other party for a regulatory or contracting decision. I’m not sure how you could enforce such a quid pro quo, though.
To some extent, this sort of thing I figure is driven by principal-agent problems (i.e. management appropriating other people’s money) and a starf****er impulse that I’ll just never understand. A past employer collected a fat donation from a third party to host Bilge Clinton. It was nearly a decade after he’d left office. What was in it for the donor or my employer is a matter of conjecture.
Going after one without going after the other is largely why both can get away with it. Tribalism.
I often wonder why the Leftist MM resurrects these discredited zombies like DWS and the more infamous Donna Brazile to talk about their party. Do they think we forget? Jokes on them. We don’t. You judge a group by the folks they select to lead them. Yeesh!
What’s really remarkable about D.W. Schultz is the same thing that is remarkable about Obama which is the same thing that is remarkable about Hillary which is the same thing that is remarkable about Trump. It’s not how different any of them are, but how exactly the same. Style has shades, but their substance is identical.
Look at Trump’s complete sell out on trade deals. He is now all for the ISDS component (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) which was already part of NAFTA only the newer version will be the previous ISDS on steroids. It will be almost identical to the ISDS that was packed into the secret Obama trade deals that were narrowly defeated largely by last minute public awareness campaigns prior to and during the recent election.
For those not familiar with this sell out, it gives Corporations power over national governments by removing the right of governments to settle disputes with corporations from signatory nation states by their own courts and replaces that with arbitration panels made up by the very corporations that are suing the government for infringement of their profits, even their future projected profits. So, if a tobacco company hears of a pending advertising restriction on it’s products, such as a label saying Smoking can cause Cancer, it can sue the offending nation state for projected profits. The panel that will determine the outcome of the suit will be populated by the corporations. They can be lawyers but don’t have to be. The only qualification required is the ability to say, “You LOOSE” to the nation state. And the predictable outcome of these kangaroo panels is binding. Judges are selected for temporary periods from the pool of panel members themselves – believe it or not – and so they “rotate” duties. As stated, none of these panelists are elected nor do any tax payers have any control over them in any way. They are selected by the corporations and serve until the corporations determine otherwise. Talk about the cards being stacked in their favor.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/05/trump-mocks-voters.html#more-67492
Like Kerry, or any politician for that matter, Trump was against it, before he was all for it and by the merest of coincidences, the against it period was during Trump’s campaign and the for it part is now that he no longer needs any votes. I imagine Trump had a harrowing period where he had to fight between his better half or sell out to his more avaricious half. The epic battle must certainly have raged inside him, back and forth, back and forth, for at least a tenth of a second.
BTW, control of nation states by international corporations is essentially the same thing as international fascism. The only missing component is authoritarianism and many would argue that that is hardly missing anymore.
Thanks for the recycled talking points. It’s been an education.
As I said elsewhere, the moment you glom on to someone’s thread, (like a virus), with things like, “Nothing to see here folks…, move along…”, it’s obvious that comment is raising a serious issue. Otherwise, you wouldn’t bother any more than any other reptile of the type that sheds its skin.
In this case Trump is breaking a serious campaign promise about trade deals as the link meticulously describes. But then you wouldn’t know since you never read the links you pretend to know about.
The man who could not be bothered to look up the term ‘Bertrand oligopoly’ and understand what it means fancies I think he has an understanding of esoteric provisions of trade deals consequent to his own research.
My suggestion is that you quit recycling paragraph upon paragraph of material from your favorite sorosphere sites and write what you know and can succinctly demonstrate. Of course, that would incorporate an implicit admission that you seldom know what you’re blabbling about, which you might find a very difficult thing to do.
Your use of the term Bertrand oligopoly was one more of your typical attempts to superimpose a shallow explanation for an economic reality that simply doesn’t fit anything but your slavish loyalty to the .01% It doesn’t now, nor did it ever fit the economic model of US Air Lines which is that of a classic monopoly.
As I pointed out, the preconditions for the Bertrand model are absence of collusion and strict adherence to the model of cost + small profit; both of which are repeatedly and thoroughly broken by US airlines. The most recent example is the obviously false claims that high energy costs are driving their relentless reduction in customer comforts, right to the point of safety. Unbound profits (not cost + small profit) are the only logical explanation. And the only reason they can get away with it is because they have a solid monopoly on long distance travel in the US as any research on the net will overwhelmingly support.
Your gibberish that the consumer in any way shape or form “elects” to be so mistreated for cost savings is just that; gibberish designed to impress but where under a shallow surface, there is no there, there. This has taken several decades for the airlines to implement, and consumers have been forced into the relationship bit by bit with no serious choice in the matter or they would have rebelled long ago as they are simply not that sick, like you, as to pretzel themselves and their loved ones for a few bucks.
As I pointed out, the preconditions for the Bertrand model are absence of collusion and strict adherence to the model of cost + small profit; both of which are repeatedly and thoroughly broken by US airlines.
No, those are not a precondition. The market structure does not allow for stable collusion absent a formal cartel.
I would add, that I’ve given a perfectly reasonable explanation of why a Bertrand oligopoly doesn’t fit. You, on the other hand, and as usual, have given no such succinct or cohesive argument, nor any supporting links, for why it does.
You don’t understand what one is or how it works.
I have no clue why your hobbies include shooting your mouth off about subjects with which you’re unfamiliar. Why not quit giving people the idea that ‘progressive’ is a synonym for ‘jack-wagon’.
You’re dodging the point, Toads.
Make your case Toad; a succinct cohesive argument please, and not circular gibberish like, The market structure does not allow for stable collusion absent a formal cartel.
A formal cartel IS collusion by definition so you are saying, the market structure does not allow for a stable collusion unless there is collusion. Idiot. It’s like all of your crap; it presupposes itself to exist. So obviously it falls apart upon scratching the surface.
Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. Instead, prove you are right. Supporting links please, and not to some fascist den of malware hackers. Well established links one can verify before visiting.
BB – whaat? Now Trump is for ISDS? That is truly scary.
Autumn, the link points to an excellent article by Eric Zuesse on Washington’s Blog and yes, it now appears certain that Trump is in the “for” camp.
Oh, it is my business, they represent shareholders, and I’m going to bring it right back to them by never voting democrat again. That is within my power, and I will use it to marginalize the DNC as much as possible. The recent FCC debacles shows that the GOP is just as suspect, but the dems have taken disenguousness to unbefore seen heights on this earth. Never again, and I have a great many voting years to go.
I am waiting for someone to ask Sean Spicer, flat-out:
“Has Donald Trump personally, or the Trump organization, or individuals within the White House received ANY payments, loans, or investments from Vlad Putin, or the Russian Government, or any Russian oligarchs, or any Russian banks? Yes or no?”
Compared to this, anything Obama or Hillary get for speaking fees is less than pocket change.
Or substitute:
“Has Hillary or Bill Clinton, or anyone from the campaign, or anyone on their payroll, personally, or the Clinton Foundation, or individuals within the Clinton orbit received ANY payments, loans, or investments from Vlad Putin, or the Russian Government, or any Russian oligarchs, or any Russian banks? Yes or no?”
No, they were too busy making this stuff up!
The Clintons don’t have any financial empire that needs external financing, the way Trump does.
Huh!? Are you suggesting the Clinton’s financial empire was not financed through external sources? Or that their external sources of financing was simply different than Trump’s?
How were they different?
Trump was born to wealth, privilege, and any and every connection necessary to develop real estate, unlike the Clintons or Obama. He did nothing original and absolutely nothing from scratch. He has a mediocre education, an over sized ego, an endless supply of lies and BS, and absolutely no class. His father underwrote his first project to the tune of $70mil. That is over $20mil in profit and administrative fees for Donny boy. He was born with a silver spoon jammed in every orifice. The only business Trump has succeeded at is pandering to the mega rich. Trump employes thousands in the service industry at minimum wages for billions of profit from people like him. Trump has done absolutely nothing for the average citizen, except not pay them, bilk taxes, etc. The idiot Trump has gone bankrupt six times. Everything here up until this is nothing compared to how despicable Trump is. Read some newspapers.
The size of Trump’s ego is in direct and neck and neck competition with his idiocy, ability to lie, corruption, and his generally disgusting self. The one unique accomplishment Trump has risen, or descended, to is to be able to dupe tens of millions of Americans into voting for him. That will be his legacy. It will also be the legacy of those that got duped. No one gets any vaseline.
issac – Trump has a degree in econ from Wharton, where he transferred from Fordham, because it had a real estate program. You really need a grip on reality.
Paul
Bush, another born with a silver spoon in every orifice, a failure in business and a C- student has a degree from Yale, where he was captain of the cheerleaders. Like Trump he would never get within sight of Yale or Wharton without being able to bribe with an endowment, etc. Trump has a ‘last year’ degree from Wharton. Last Year Degrees are offered by most top universities so the student can say he or she has a Harvard, etc degree. They are not equivalent to a full degree. The bulk of his degree is a worthless degree in real estate. He grew up in real estate. He knows real estate. He had and has bottomless financing, connections, etc. He accomplished nothing on his own. Trump failed at everything else he tried. It looks like you will be one of his legacy. Like he said in his book, ‘The Art of the Deal’, which he didn’t write, not being able to put a coherent sentence together on paper as well as orally, “you sell the illusion not the building”. So, as a dupe, bought into the illusion, how does it feel? You don’t get any vaseline either, just because you believe. It doesn’t work that way.
issac – you still have to fulfill the requirements for the degree. So he took those at Fordham, a recognized excellent university and moved to Wharton for his final year to specialize in real estate. He met their requirements to enter and he completed the requirements to graduate.
BTW, Bush got better grades than Kerry and had a higher IQ score on his draft physical.
Paul
The bottom line is that Trump presents himself as a self made man and he is the polar opposite. There is the quantity of lies and the quality and Trump excels, beyond the capabilities of all others, at both. Trump is the biggest liar who lies, even when telling the truth would work. The reason, after so many lies, the dupes cannot recognize the truth.
Your fixation on Vaseline makes me believe you are hoarding it for your own use issac. Does your shipment come standard with Canadian citizenship?
The Clilntons have a foundation worth approx. 250 million dollars. Just in terms of influence alone, that is a financial empire by any standard.
And the “financing” comes from “external” sources.
No, but the Russians certainly helped the Clintons and their friends build their own financial empires.
She’s pulling a Trump. Trump stands by keeping his private business life, taxes, etc out of the public view. Trump hires and includes family in his Presidency. What Trump does is infinitely more deplorable in the vein of this argument than what the Clintons or Obama do. The ego that gets someone to these positions carries with it a lot of ‘holier than thou’ stuff. At the end of the day, throughout both parties, it comes down to who is the least evil, corrupt, liar, etc., not whether or not someone is. Compare and contrast and it is obvious that America got the short end of the stick and there will be no vaseline.
What’s really going on here is that Wasserman is being given a political “car” wash by repeated appearances. Someone as seedy as her remains useful to a party as corrupt as the Dems (or the Repubs for that matter).
There was a time when her performance during the primaries would have cost her career. Now, she just needs to appear on multiple news and opinion pieces and everyone’s mind is washed squeaky clean. They forget it ever happened.
It’s a kissing cousin to the technique of making a lie true by repeating it ad infinitum which is exactly what they are doing with Russiagate.
Oddly, however, I don’t think having her “reputation” wash get conflated with one for Obama by her is going to work for both of them. Too obvious.
People know damn well what half million dollar speaking fees are: political corruption. I think that part of the gig will largely back-fire though it is little skin off Obama’s nose. Rather, it will have more of a negative effect on the Dem party and on the main stream media and even then mostly on those people already aware of the problem. Dems who are still loyal after all this, like their brethren Repubs, will swallow virtually anything.
Obama spent eight years selling his constituency, as well as the American people, down the river. Nothing, least of all a little public opinion, is going to stop him now from collecting what’s his.
The real joke is on those who imagine Trump is any different – other than more vulgar and not even able to wait until he gets out of office. 🙂 .
BB – I like that anaology – a car wash. The Cult Dims are either ignorant don’t care. However all the Independents who rallied behind Tim Canova will not forgive Barak for endorsing her
Hi Autumn, great link as usual! A very interesting point made by one who suggests “Actually, you could probably make more of a case that HIllary and Comey have a more cozy relationship, no?” 3:47/8:41 He then goes on to point out supporting evidence for such a theory. But it leaves one scratching their heads nevertheless. While Comey probably did NOT cost Hillary the election, his last effort hardly helped her out.
Anyway, these guys are great!
“While Comey probably did NOT cost Hillary the election, his last effort hardly helped her out.”
There was absolutely NO shade of lipstick that was going to …ahem… help her out.
I agree with you Olly. Hillary was and is odious by any measure. My own feelings about Comey are the more he says the merrier.
But facts are facts. I met several people who when they heard Comey’s second address, “Well maybe there are grounds for indictment after all.”, they simply threw in the towel on her. That it almost certainly didn’t matter at that point is somewhat beside the point. It remains right or wrong depending on POV and probably some of both regardless of it.
Other than the fact that Hillary is human (allegedly), I have just about zero sympathy for her. What she has done to others, to hundreds of thousands in fact, makes Carl Rove look like a Sunday School wanna-be.
I have family members that would have elected her to run her presidency from prison. That being said, I believe the only way Trump was going to win was to have him go head-to-head against Hillary Clinton or Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera. And I’m not sure she would have prevailed over El Chapo either. 🙂
It may have already been mentioned here, but it was just announced that Comey has been
fired.
Right. Speak of the devil. Professor Turley’s next post is on that very subject.
BB – unfortunately LTMB has shut down their site – they really kept me sane during the primaries. Will and Mike are still missed – I see various comments on Tim Black and other shows asking where they are. maybe they’ll come back.
Yes. Regrettable indeed Autumn. Hopefully no foul play.
Clearly, the Dems think that Debbie has more use and plan to re-package her. Given Macron’s recent election, I’m fearful they may be right. French attitudes are more and more mimicking the propaganda saturated ones in the US and I think they are truly scared stiff by Trump on the one hand, and what they have been told to believe about Brexit on the other.
You’re kidding me? The fake free market advocates (some racist but not as bad as yesterdays board with lady wearing the hajib) ) get in a tizzy anytime a non-conservative earns money. personally, not a fan of Wall street (worked there for a number of years), nor of Obama’s fee, but this is the same system contards trumpet as being a bastion of the free market (remember 2008?).
the fascinating part is the attempt at distraction:
1. whilst we find out the incompetent Trump lied for crooked Michael Flynn (somehow fired weeks after seemingly honest Sally Yates). Flynn is a traitor, Trump hires the absolute worst people and possibly also should be impeached as a traitor.
2. also whilst republicans/conservatives/liebertarians attempt to commit mass murder with an incredibly one sided tax cut masquerading as a health care bill. Think about it. If the genocidal religious christian right gets their way, they’ll kill more Americans in any single year, then all of the muslim terrorists in all the years put together (including 9-11).
But instead of traitors, illegal foreign payments, Chinese trademarks secured by crooked Trump for not calling a country a currency manipulator, the mass murder of Americans to benefit the rich, etc….. this board whines ad nauseum about Obama. Beyond Sad!
2. also whilst republicans/conservatives/liebertarians attempt to commit mass murder with an incredibly one sided tax cut masquerading as a health care bill.
Other people in the dayroom want to use the computer. Time for your thioridizine.
Wow! That lame reply was the best you could do? I understand that supporters of mass murder struggle to argue facts.
Harry Truman was the last Democrat. He is the last man to be elected president and not have a college degree, and he is the last ex president that when he died he did not die a wealthy man because of the office he held. He was the last working class man to make it to the White House.
There was no presidential pension when he retired, and Harry was quite cash-strapped for a time. Among other things, he sold off the family farm (it is a shopping center now). The thing that really saved him was the cash advance he got towards writing his memoirs. He had several lucrative offers to shill for commercial products, but he turned those down as demeaning the office of the President. There is a wonderful book called “Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure,” which describes HST’s decision to take a car trip cross-country with Bess, after he left office. No Secret Service entourage, no helicopters or limousines or airplanes. Just Harry and Bess in a Chrysler sedan. He figured he could travel unnoticed…. A charming book.
His family was declasse bourgeois / agrarian, not working class. He had a high school diploma, characteristic of perhaps 15% of his cohort, if that (his brother left school at 12). Herbert Hoover grew up with his uncle, a blacksmith. Ronald Reagan’s father was an impecunious salesman and retail merchant. Richard Nixon’s father was a greengrocer (after an unsuccessful attempt as a fruit grower). All of these men were petit bourgeois, strictly speaking. Andrew Johnson was the last president from the wage-earning stratum and Abraham Lincoln was the last from an agrarian household poor enough to be called ‘peasant’.
Farmers don’t work ?
‘Working class’ refers to the wage earning element, rather than salaried employees or small business.
I think that Jimmy Carter and (with the exception of the Frost interviews) Richard Nixon eschewed buck-raking. Every other president who has departed office in the last 40-odd years has been a practitioner, thought the Bushes have been a good deal more circumspect about it than Gerald Ford or the Clintons.
The experience of Jackie Onassis (who schlepped around Manhattan without any security detail from 1975 until her death in 1994) and the Nixons (who relinquished their security detail in 1986) strongly suggest that Secret Service protection should last no more than 12 years for a former president and his household.
Also, the presidential libraries are an embarrassment. Build a modular records center in Kansas City and move the archives of all the ‘presidential libraries’ there. As for the plant, equipment, and exhibits, deed them over to the county governments in question and fuhgeddabout it. Going forward, presidents should retain ownership only of diaries and commonplace books written in their own hand. Everything else belongs to the National Archives.
While we’re on the subject, a federal law regulating inter-state contracts for honoraria between philanthropies and others (especially lapsed public employees) would be advisable. The maximum could be tied to personal income per capita and the number of employees an institution has and adjusted each year. You’d get $22,000 for addressing an audience at Ohio State this year, and a modest increment in addition next year.
It ought to bother people that investment banks hire politicos with no background in business or finance (see Wasserstein-Perella and Rahm Emmanuel).
We could cut back the security detail appended to sitting presidents if we would quit willy nilly broadcasting their movements in advance. Compare the detail Ronald Reagan had to that Margaret Thatcher or Menachem Begin had.
Jonathan Turley again demonstrates his innumeracy. 400,000 is only 80% of half a million, not “almost” half a million. And then he froths on about half a million, leading the reader even further astray.
Are all lawyers so misleading?
” 400,000 is only 80% of half a million, not “almost” half a million.”
Why sure. Everybody knows the definition of ‘almost’.
What’s the difference in the figures, your missing the point.
Try settling a bill at 80% of the invoice and claiming that is “almost” the whole amount.
Two 20 dollar bills is not the same as 5 ten dollar bills, not even “almost”.
Correct: “Two 20 dollar bills is not the same as 5 ten dollar bills, not even “almost”.”
But you started the conversation in regard to numeracy.
Numeracy is not about making precise calculations. Numeracy is the skill set that allows one to quickly grasp the implications of numeric data without actually making the calculation. Numeracy relies on skills like rounding, order of magnitude estimates, reasonableness checks, the ability to take several numeric quantities, visualize a tend line, and draw an inference or make an estimate.
One of the problems, today, is that many cannot do simple calculations in their head to determine if numbers are reasonable in context, and from that, whether conclusions are likely supported by the numeric data.
Numeracy is important because many conversations move so fast that it is impractical or impossible to keep up with a calculator or spread sheet.
Further, it is unusual that a conclusion or policy would depend on a single value. Conclusions about numeric data and policies are frequently robust in the sense that they stand over a range, sometimes over a very broad range, of values.
Sometimes, all you need to know, in order to reach a sound conclusion, is that the result lies in a range between $400,000 and $500,000. Later a careful calculation can be made to find the precise value – which will not change the conclusion – in our hypothetical.
So which context are we discussing ‘400,000 is almost 500,000’. Are we talking about equality – in which case 400,000 is certainly not 500,000.
Or are we talking about numeracy? In which the political implications of accepting $400,000 or $500,000 for less than an hours work are hardly different at all.
It seems to me that there is no real political difference whether a recent, former president accepts $500,000 for less than an hours work or $400,000 for less than an hours work.
Does anyone really want to ague the proposition that taking $400,000 was perfectly OK but there would have been real trouble if the fee were $500,000. I think not.
Spot on, from start to finish.
David Benson – all lawyers round up and use the new math if it helps their case. 🙂 It is Lawyer 101.
Right. 101 == 200!
He’s done two at $400,000 each.
And he has many more to come before he gets to 250 million. He’ll get there.
This is a blog, not a legal document. Your pedantry is much more annoying. It’s called ‘inference’. I can be a good pedant, too.
David Benson: That Mr. Turley is being misleading is a personal attack in an attempt to redirect the theme of his post, i.e., politicians are avoiding “these bribery and influence peddling laws” through a loophole, and that loophole needs a cork in it.
So, in answer to your question, at least you, counsel, are being as misleading as you allege Mr. Turley is.
By the way, for the idiots that think Obama’s a Muslim terrorist for taking $400K, in the 2.5 years after George W. Bush left office in January, 2009, he made “about” $15M in speaking fees, at $100K to $150K a pop, and he’s the guy who he thinks we can coexist peacefully with fish.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/05/20/4685/after-skipping-ground-zero-event-obama-bush-made-three-paid-speeches
I am so glad you brought up your point.
As for Obama as a Muslim, I don’t think that likely. His antisemitism arises from his twenty year membership in a Black Protestant Church which was pretty up from about being anti-Jewish. Unfortunately this is not all that uncommon amongst certain Black congregations & matches the higher levels of antisemitism within the Black community.
Your principal contention is crap. Bush is not involved with politics. I don’t care how much money Obama makes as long as he is out of politics. Instead he seems to be choosing the disgusting, disrespectful path hewn by the Clintons of degrading the office of the president through partisan and mercenary conduct. There was a time when presidents honored the office by returning home after serving. I guess why do that when you can masturbate your ego in public and become wealthy while doing so.
By the way, for the idiots that think Obama’s a Muslim terrorist for taking $400K, in the 2.5 years after George W. Bush left office in January, 2009, he made “about” $15M in speaking fees, at $100K to $150K a pop, and he’s the guy who he thinks we can coexist peacefully with fish.
Bush addresses non-public fora and his contracts with the agencies hiring him are generally confidential. Public Integrity is making the numbers up.
$400k is just the fee itself. As Professor Turley notes above, there are undoubtedly extravagant travel expenses paid also. Did you ever see Hillary’s demands to GS for first class travel, private cars, 5 star lodgings, for her and her staff in addition to her fee? It was astonishing.
I bet she demands ONLY green M&M’s. Lots of them as well!
What with your utterly idiotic comment, I almost wish you would go jump off a bridge..
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Why would she not be so dismissive of any calls for ethics when she and other crooks like her in the DNC were permitted to get away with anything. I easily foresee the time when she leaves office and she too commands big payola speaking fees from her political investors.
Remember, the federal Democrat party is all for working, honest, everyday people.
As long as individual voters support this sleaze blindly, we can expect more to come.
“As long as individual voters support this sleaze blindly, we can expect more to come.”
Now don’t blame the individual, blame the system.
So long as we pay our elected officials a measly coupla-hundred thou a year we can expect they will take necessary steps to keep a roof over their families head.
Remember, they could be stuffing envelops filled with money down their paints instead of doing an honest half hours work for almost half a million – oops, I mean 80% of half a million.
The Trump clan has found away around this problem. They and their oligarch pals are running their empire out of the White House. The cash is flowing in and ethics violations are piling.
All this happening while he is ACTUALLY still in office. Perhaps people should be upset about that.
My party’s corruption’s fine, thank you very much. It’s yours where my righteous indignation is so richly warranted (not to mention so satisfying. 🙂 )
By taking that large fee, I think Obama is just emphasizing that he will never run for office again.
I think the question is who is the greater problem and threat all these phoney politicians or the Marxist press that supports them and those who elect them?
No matter what he does it’s OK with the press, the Dems and the “safe spacers”.
There are no Marxists anymore.
Remember that Karl Marx himself even said that he was not a Marxist.
I think more people are criticizing Obama for doing the same thing Hillary did because of his race. As a nominative black man, he is not supposed to suck up to Wall Street. This is one of the few actual, genuine incidents of racism against a black man that I have seen in the last few years.
Now, as to the absolute morality of the thing, sure Obama is cashing in on favors done, and favors yet to be done. Just like the Clintons.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeek, I always like your posts but I want to correct you this guy was never and will never be “black”. He was and is bi-racial, a malatto, he’s as much white as he is black. Maybe more white considering who raised him.
Check.
In other slang, he is an oreo.
Once went out to Sunset State Beach to dig Pismo clams…
Squeeky – Barack is bi-racial, he only threw his white family that raised him under the bus when he thought it would do him some good. Then he became black.
Worse, I think he even passed himself off as an African in his youthful days, because that was a lot more exotic than just being another half black American kid. I think that is how “born in Kenya” got onto his author’s blurb. Then, he decided to play it straight for political reasons. But that is just a SUSPICION.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
He’s not playing it straight. He’s the issue of Honolulu’s haolie society, with a dollop of exotica from his years in Indonesia. (If you’ve seen the video of him attempting to speak Malay, you’ll see Indonesia did not make much of an impression on him). He’d have had scant opportunity to rub shoulders with blacks until he enrolled at Occidental College. (The section of LA that the college is in is 25% black as we speak, but LA has seen so much demographic churn it could of have been entirely different in 1979; it’s an affluent neighborhood of the sort that attracts homosexuals, so it’s a reasonable wager that the resident blacks are fairly unobtrusive). Gov. Bagojevich, a child of Chicago who’d shines shoes as a youngster, once said “I’m blacker than Obama”. A status-anxious striver like Michelle Robinson was quite unlike the milieux of his upbrininging or his previous flames.
Do you consider Trump to be white or orange or is he white pretending to be orange?
Are you willing to admit this is an inane question, or will you be honest and admit that it incorporates a farrago of stupidity?
This has nothing to do with his race. It has to do with him stating that he would go away as Bush did only to “come out of the woods” as Hillary has! The whole kit and kaboodle are liars! None of them have an ounce of credibility.
Down in New Orleans, as I understand it, one drop of black blood is enough to make somebody “black.”
Not just in New Orleans, but almost everywhere. IIRC, in Louisiana it used to be a law, but it seems to be sort of a de facto standard in everyday life, too. I don’t know why, but it just seems to be the way people think, black and white alike. Look at Elizabeth Warren. She thinks she’s a dang redskin.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
But she might have just one drop of redskin blood …..
CNN/Clinton News Network giving this lady a forum reminds me of Bill “Sexual Predator” O’Reilly interviewing “journalist” Geraldo “I Bed Rich Women” Rivera a couple times a week.
He get’s paid off finally for past favors which is somewhat the same as double dipping except for the timing. but when you think about it. Gettinig paid for what? What did he do for those Wall Street firms back then to get paid for it now. Perhaps thats the part of his other wide lacklustre legacy …except…hmmmmm someone had to have the money to lend to the US that he arranged to borrow. Enouogh to add up to eight or nine trillion in debt. $400,000 is all they paid him for brokering the loans? Chicken feed.. But im line with the rest of his leg no see.
“, Wasserman Schultz was trotted out to assure the public that President Obama receiving obscene amounts of money from Wall Street interests is none of their busines”
It seems to me that the sources of income of any one who offers political leadership is the legitimate interest of all citizens.
Clearly Obama intends to involve himself in the political future of the US.
It is perfectly reasonable for all of us to question his income and his associates – as we should anyone one, in or out of office, who attempts to influence the political direction of the country.
How much money does it take to be “obscene” ? Just curious.
In Obama’s case probably 100,000 for the folks here…..
Gee, I’d be obscene for a whole lot less !
Well … how much are you spending?
It is our business. We have every right to judge Obama for taking $400k for a Wall St. speech….and he did it not long after he joined the lifestyles of the 1 percent and spent a couple weeks on a billionaire’s yacht with celebrities, a month at an exclusive resort in French Polynesia, a week staying at Richard Branson’s private exclusive Carribean island, and on and on it goes. Obama is a fraud and a hypocrite of the first degree. He needs to be called out on it often and loudly because we know his sycophantic media friends will never do it. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a disgrace who, like her pal Hillary Clinton has NO shame and no integrity. She should have been voted out this past election Ever notice how every time she talks she sounds like she is sucking up all the extra saliva in her mouth? How she ever got this far in politics is a mystery. DWS is a mess. The less she talks, the better.
Speaking of hypocrisy, here’s the icing for the cake. Just learned that Obama has received the “Profiles in Courage” Award from the Kennedy foundation of the same name. Goes right along with his Nobel Peace Price. What a joke!
Right….let’s give him another award for doing nothing but successfully exploiting race to elevate himself to untouchable, messiah-like status. Have you seen the plans for his Temple of Obama-worship Monument being built in Chicago?
There’s a fine line between courage and audacity; the former suggests virtuous action. “The Courage of Hope” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Not even audacity, but hubris!
The Democratic Party is completely amoral. They have no moral compass. That was seen in the release of emails of the DNC during the primary between Sanders and Clinton. Look, a squirrel.
How much does Trump owe the Russians?
A lot less than the Clinton foundation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html
I find it very hard to believe that the Clintons have personally profited as much or more than the Trumps. The Trumps must have received hundreds of millions of dollars to fund their various casino and resort developments all over the world. And evidently much or most of this has come from Russian-connected sources. These casino and resort projects will funnel their profits into the pockets of Donald J. Trump, and not any sort of charitable organization. The Clinton foundation is established to undertake medical and charitable work in underdeveloped parts of the world.
And evidently much or most of this has come from Russian-connected sources.
In this country, bank loan portfolios, publicly traded equity, outstanding corporate bond issues, private equity, commercial paper, and finance company assets are roughly $30 tn in value and yet this talking point seems so plausible to you that you elected to convey it from Media Matters to the rest of us for our edification.
It seems there are at least two questions:
How much have either Clinton or Trump families profited from political office
Does Trump’s indebtedness leave him vulnerable to outside influence?
Oh but Trump is the president. One would think he would play by different rules than ordinary citizens. Does he ever need to come clean and release his taxes.
Trump is hiding the amount that he owes the Russian oligarchs. Clintons do not hold public office so who cares. Presidents are accountable to the American people or at least they should be.
I still think Russia has Trump by the fuzzy ones, with payback to be at a time convenient to Russia.
My Golden Retriever was smarter and prettier than this dumb bimbo.
“Wasserman” in Deutsch (German) means that she is a waterman. She carries the water. You pronounce Wasserman with a V. Vasserman.
I have a Golden Retriever and I wish voters had half his attention span.
I don’t think she is dumb, but she is pretty crafty and calculating.