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@optonline.net> 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.
>
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