I love Bordman. He does an opinion piece each week. Like Robert Scheer, he's a
product of the Vietnam anti-war movement. Innitially, I saw a headline or heard
a short snippet about Obama's $400,000 speech and I thought, "No wonder he was
so supportive of Hillary. He's doing exactly what she's been doing. These
corporate Democrats represent themselves as a people's party and then they
shamelessly make millions based on having held office". So I was really happy
to read an article that expressed my outrage at Obama and the rest of them.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2017 10:44 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: jamesjarvis98 <jamesjarvis98@xxxxxxxxx>; Matthew <mcblack@xxxxxxxxx>;
footballmania <footballmania@xxxxxxxxx>; delores selset <dselset@xxxxxxx>;
Jennifer Ford <dandjford88@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace of Wealth
As I began reading this article, I thought, "Here is an example of a No News
Article. I mean, who cares what the Obama's do with the rest of their lives,
or how richly they are rewarded for playing patsy to their Billionaire Masters?
The only difference between the Obama's and all their predecessors, including
Gentleman Jimmy Carter, is the color of their skins. It is the reward for
being Faithful to the Establishment.
But the article did pick up toward the end, and is well worth wading through
the padding(after all, Boardman does need to crank out words in an effort to
make his living).
But I personally feel that time needs to be spent on how Barack Obama and those
who "graced" the Office of the Leader of the World'
Mightiest Empire came to be such War Lords and Murderers. Like Donald Trump
and Bushes I and II, and Bill Clinton, and the Mighty Mouth, Ronald Reagan,
Ford and Nixon and beyond, Barack Obama is simply a product of our American
Empire's Capitalist System.
Capitalism, like Cancer, depends upon growth and expansion. A fast moving
cancer never stops to allow its Host to rebuild before continuing to grow. Nor
does Capitalism. Capitalism long term goals are short term profits. Never put
off until tomorrow what you can grab today, is the driving motto.
So we working class folk came to this place in our history through our own
weaknesses. We bought into the Capitalists belief that wealth is the sign of
success, and great wealth is the sign of genius. We accepted the belief that
we can expand forever. Even understanding that our Planet Earth has certain
hard and fast limits, we go forward as if there is no tomorrow...and that may
well be our future. We have become Consumers, not Workers. Everything in
today's world is "sponsored" and we must buy buy buy in order to keep our hopes
alive.
We even vote into office the very people who will defend the Capitalists right
to fleece us. I turned on the Mariner, Angels game last night and the first
words over the TV speakers welcomed us to the name of the Corporation that paid
to have the right to call this baseball stadium by their name. And it was said
over and over.
Constant advertising for pennies cost per mention. And that is where our
genius is being focused. New improved methods of getting your name in front of
the suckers, and new improved gadgets to replace the beads and shiny bobbles we
used to bribe the Natives who were blocking our expansion back on Manhattan
Island. And just like a flock of pigeons, we peck away at the shiny toys,
desiring to keep pace with modern technology and dine on the dwindling
resources of Planet Earth.
No, Barack Obama is not the problem, anymore than is Donald Trump.
Even Capitalism is not the root of the problem. The problem we must solve, if
we care to survive, is our own foolish, herd-like mentality that causes us to
believe that we can rape and abuse this Planet Earth forever. If we can't come
to our senses soon, then our Ship of Fools will be dashed upon the cruel rocks
of oblivion.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/3/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Barack Obama. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
Faint Praise for Barack Obama's Embrace of Wealth By William Boardman,
Reader Supported News
03 May 17
If the Obamas aren’t living the American Dream, then who is?
Now they are offering the man $400,000 for making just one 60-minute
speech (and another $400,000 for a 90-minute speech). That $400,000 is
more than twice the average net worth of most Americans at their
wealthiest ($194,226 in 2011, mostly in the worth of a home). A Credit
Suisse survey in 2014 put Americans’ average net worth at “a whopping
$301,000,” still well below what rich people will pay for a one hour
speech by a former president.
Even Obama’s annual pension is more than what most Americans own (his
pension is $205,700 plus roughly $150,000 in perks). Speaking at a
rate of
$400,000 per hour translates to $16 million for a forty-hour work
week; even if the speech takes a day to prepare, that’s still $2
million a week. An annual household income of $450,000 puts you in the
top one percent. It takes an income of almost $150,000 to be in the
top ten percent. Most Americans don’t even dream of a payday in the
millions.
Why shouldn’t he go for it? That $400,000 speech is almost as much as
his taxable income in 2015 ($436,035, from publicly released tax
returns). In 2015, the Obamas paid $81,472 in federal income tax, more than
Americans’
average annual household income of $55,775). Citizen Obama is already
way richer than 90% of his fellow citizens (and almost all Kenyans
probably), so why shouldn’t he try to increase that gap between
himself and the hoi-polloi? At the same time why shouldn’t he be
trying to narrow the much more gigantic gap between himself and his
mega-rich play-pals, like Richard Branson (net worth over $5 Billion)
or David Geffen (net worth over $7 Billion). Barack and Michelle Obama
together have a net worth of only $24 million or so, up from a mere $8
million when he became president. Or to put it in perspective, when he
became president, Obama was already in the top one percent of
wealthiest Americans.
None of this is meant to suggest that the Obamas are doing anything
wrong in the way they are living their post-White House lives, insofar
as we know.
At
least he’s not crying poor the way Hillary “dead broke” Clinton did
when departing Pennsylvania Avenue. Nor has he been smarmily coy like
then-Presidential multi-millionaire Bush telling The New York Times
that, in retirement, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the
ol’ coffers.”
In fairness, it should go without saying that, in the White House,
President Obama was probably, on balance, preferable to his most
recent predecessors, and is still a notch above the current incumbent.
That said, Obama’s presidency was mostly an ineffectual limp rag of
minimal horror that looks good mainly in contrast to the glaringly
worse high crimes and misdemeanors of others. There’s no good reason
he shouldn’t cash in in the same ways his less worthy predecessors
have. Obama fits quite comfortably into the cliché of useless,
self-regarding ex-presidential lifestyle to which the only recent
arguable exception is Jimmy Carter.
Responding to Obama’s acceptance of the traditional emoluments of
out-of-office, the flusterings of the twitterati have often portrayed
themselves as shocked, shocked to find that there’s post-presidential
enrichment going on (but they express that shock with none of the
patent irony of Captain Renault in Casablanca). The moral fatuity of
these nattering nabobs of nonsense is nothing new, it has long been
the ruling class’s farcical manner of flattering itself that it has
actual principles beyond just having more. The last few minutes of a
Bill Maher clip illustrate the dominant mind bubble, where only
billionaire Nick Hanauer reveals any sense of the greater good,
wishing Obama had spent time building houses for Habitat for Humanity
and identifying wealth disparity as tearing the country apart. The
three show biz millionaires at the table don’t even acknowledge either
point.
But then there’s Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, both of whom
seem to be running for president in 2020.
Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts and former Harvard
Law School professor, said on SiriusXM, referring to news of Obama’s
$400,000 speaking fee:
I was troubled by that … One of the things I talk about in the book
[This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class]
is the influence of money. I describe it as a snake that slithers
through Washington and that it shows up in so many different ways here
in Washington…. There's more of us than there is of them. And we've
got to use our voices and our votes and fight back.
Warren’s use of “us” is rather elastic, since she and her husband have
a net worth of roughly $8.75 million, enough to be at the bottom of
the top one per cent by wealth. The couple’s annual income of roughly
$950,000 is well within the top one percent. She received an advance
of $525,000 for her book, This Fight Is Our Fight.
Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and former congressman,
told
CNN:
Look, Barack Obama is a friend of mine, and I think he and his family
represented us for eight years with dignity and intelligence. But I
think at a time when we have so much income and wealth inequality ...
I think it just does not look good…. It's not a good idea, and I'm
sorry President Obama made that choice.
Sanders is not among the top one per cent in wealth or income. He and
his wife have a net worth of roughly $1.6 million, putting them
comfortably within the top ten percent. The couple’s joint income of
$205,271 in 2014 is also well within the top ten percent. For all of
that, Sanders does in fact “remain one of the poorer members of the
United States Senate.”
The point of all this has nothing to do with hypocrisy, which may or
may not exist in any of these examples. What’s truly “troubling,” what
really “does not look good,” is that, in retrospect, Obama now appears
the consummate huckster, a man whose gulls remain full of admiration
for the man they fail to realize has fleeced them from beginning to
end with empty eloquence. And now the dark joke is that those who
benefitted most from all that empty eloquence are willing to pay
handsomely to hear more of it.
THAT should be troubling, yet few seem troubled by it.
And that’s all you really need to know to understand why we’re where
we are now, no longer with a charm shark but with an unabashed con man
as leader of the free world: the richest president in our history, a
user and abuser who is richer than all prior presidents combined, a
man whose wealth was not built on actual slavery like Washington’s,
but close enough by treating people like slaves without even the
obligation to feed or house them.
The idealized Obama would have – might have – led the resistance to
President Trump. But then the idealized Obama might have led the
resistance to Obamacare in favor of single payer, might have led the
resistance to the Honduran military coup in favor of democracy, might
have led the resistance to Saudi genocide in Yemen in favor of human
rights. In 2009, President Obama said, “I did not run for office to be
helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street,” although he
managed to do as much. Obama’s campaign included the notion that Wall
Street fat cats should pay their fair share in taxes. That hasn’t
happened, but at least some of those cats are paying a fair share to
him.
And that’s all fine and good and ironic and amusing and unimportant.
What matters is what he does – and what Warren does, and what Sanders
does, and what the rest of our real and would-be leaders do, where
they stake their futures. Recently Obama spoke reflectively [video]
about his own
future: “What is the most important thing I can do for my next job,
and what I’m convinced of, is that although there are all kinds of
issues that I care about, and all kinds of issues that I intend to
work on, the single most important thing I can do is to help in any
way I can prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the
baton and take their own crack at changing the world.”
Really? The single most important thing is to kick the can down the road?
When the house is on fire, the single most important thing is to call
an architect?
Just as the Bush presidency set the conditions for Obama to become
president, so did the Obama presidency set the conditions that have
produced President Trump. Obama entered the White House with the wind
at his back, with Democrats in the majority in Congress, with the
country ready for hope and change and serious leadership. The result,
eight years later, is not pretty. Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.
Or maybe it’s worse.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
