OK, Republicans, attack Hillary as an out-of-touch elitist and run one of your populist, of-the-people candidates against her.
A few suggestions:
Paul Ryan, whose family got rich doing business with governments, and who collected Social Security but wants to privatize it (and Medicare) for others, and who wants to increase spending on the military industrial complex and cut corporate taxes, eliminate capital gains and estate taxes, but won’t say how he could do this while also balancing the budget;
Jeb Bush, a son and brother of a US president and grandson of a US Senator, who as governor said he had a “devious plan” to subvert the will of the people who voted in a class-size amendment referendum, was never required to pay back a loan he got to purchase an office building, whose dealings with a slew of companies have ended in bankruptcies or scandals, and whose maze of shell companies has made him judgement-proof;
Chris Christie, whose warm, people-affirming demeanor was best typified by his telling a constituent to “sit down and shut up,” who is notorious for hectoring and bullying school teachers, and whose handling of hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster aid for Sandy victims remains a mystery.
So, by all means, GOP, fight the system! Power to the people!
It’s a stretch to say that the speaking fees are not paid for by student debt. Yes, the fee itself was paid for out of a fund created by a donor. But that donor could have been pressed to donate to something more useful. Even if he insisted on funding speakers, that fund could have went to hire 50 visiting professors instead of one hot ticket.
Even if you assume that the donation was earmarked for a Clinton speech and that the money would have been completely withheld if she did not speak, student money could have still been used. The donation itself was probably solicited by an administrator making well into the six figures, paid for by students and justified because the administrator ‘brings in the money,’ despite the fact that the money brought in is earmarked for waste.
There is only so much charitable money going to universities, and administrators do a poor job funneling it to useful endeavors. It is not enough to point to a private donor and justify waste because it does not come from general funds. Money is fungible and waste is waste regardless of the funding source.
Thank you for your concern trolling! We flighty libruls gots no idees who we gives ar money 'ta. We need a wingnut to comes in n’d stratn us’ns out.
As for your gratuitous slander of Rev. Sharpton, I think it says more about you than about Rev. Sharpton. Inasmuch as Rev. Sharpton has undergone intense financial scrutiny from everyone from the IRS to the local red-meat wingnuts and nothing of any substance of wrong-doing has been found, it appears that your racist thinking is showing.
Remember when Hillary spoke of “the vast right-wing conspiracy”? Even as a lefty, I thought that might have been slightly exaggerated at the time. Now of course I see it as the absolute truth that it is.
The only one doing any stretching here is your thinking process. It is stretching in ways that make the carnival contortionist look positively arthritic. Trying to say that the, at most, $500.00 that the university spends on an administrator who calls her agent who the books the engagement and sends the list of conditions to a secretary who is making, at most, $45,000.00/yr as somehow excessive really has no argument and is truly a concern troll. Go back to Red State and troll them, please.
“Hillary Clinton’s speaking fee at UNLV is more than 4 times what the average Nevadan makes in a year," Republican National Committee spokesman Jahan Wilcox said of that report. "With tuition rates set to spike by 17 percent at UNLV, it’s sad that Hillary Clinton thinks she’s so broke that it’s necessary to slap them with a $225,000 speaking fee.”
It was billed to a charity, which means there’s no line to draw from tuition to speaking fees. None. I could almost guarantee it. Why isn’t TPM checking on the accuracy of this accusation and the alleged “link”?
Look at any school budget. Administrator pay is off the charts, and it is always justified by saying that the star administrators bring in the big bucks. Yet much of the big bucks is waste – a Clinton speech that gets the donor a 10 minute private conversation, an unneeded field or building with the donor’s name plastered on it. Administrators are judged by the total dollars they bring it, not the quality of those dollars.
It used to be different. Wealthy people paid high taxes which went to fund schools, which then spent the money wisely. Now wealthy people hardly pay any taxes, spend a fraction of the money saved on high profile donations, which schools spend poorly because they have to listen to the donors wishes and make sure their names are placed prominently on campus or in a flagship event’s program.
My point stands – whether or not they are funded by private donations, wasteful spending by universities draws money away from more useful endeavors. The Democratic party standard bearer should not be a part of this problem. This is one of many reasons to support a more liberal alternative to Clinton.
Others include wanting a GOP POTUS to be sworn in in January 2017.
Gotta take this one with the lumps, man. She’s it, like it or not. Handing the GOP 4 years to fuck the middle-class into non-existence and secure their plutocratic agenda as their defense against demographic shifts is not an option.
…and how much does serial-moron Sarah Palin charge to spew incomprehensible word-salad all over her right-wing adoring audiences?
One is a former “Half-term Governor/Drunken Brawler/Reads “All of them”/Drinks Big Gulps/CONSTITOOSHANOL RITES!!!” of a state with only 740,000 people, the other was First Lady for 8 years, a Senator for 8 years, and Secretary of State for 4.
So, not the same thing I guess. My bad. Hillary is clearly not worth a single penny as a speaker.
“Vast right wing conspiracy”, in addition to being the absolute truth, has turned out to be a vast understatement. At the time she said that, the conspiracy machine was just out of the architectural drawings stage. I thought at the time that it was more than a bit of political hyperbole. I was wrong.
The right wing machine is on a path to accomplish what no foreign power or terrorist threat could ever do; destroy the full faith and credit of the United States, bring effective governance to a halt, encourage racism, ethnic and religious demonization through fear of “the other” and weaken the health care and social safety nets…the fabrics on which our nation’s compassion for its citizens are woven.
At the present time does anyone see any significant, sustained counter force to the advances of the right wing? There are areas of resistance in certain states, cause for hope to be sure. But, on the national stage what is there beyond rhetoric and a few metaphorical fingers in the dyke?
Republicans complained about censorship by the left when there were objections to the University of Minnesota paying that level of speaking fee to Condoleeza Rice. It was the same sort of circumstance in that a donor earmarked the money and it might not have been available for any other purpose. That said, for universities to pay those fees is insane. They should be taking the heat, not the speakers, unless the speakers pocketed the money. Even then, I would think if the identity of the speaker were unknown, Republicans would think the speaker was just being smart to take the big payday.
Still, someone with political ambitions should be aware that if it takes that much explanation, it won’t pass the smell test.
$300k seems to be within the range of what prominent individuals command. Go check out some of the larger speakers bureaus sites. I remember back in the late 90’s after Gen. Powell went back into civilian life. He was commanding $80-100k per speech.
