I've taken a couple of whacks at Donald Trump in the course of writing this blog and now I'm going to have to take one at his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Obama's apparent decision to accept a fee of $400,000 from Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment banking and financial services firm, for making a speech at a healthcare conference this coming September is disgusting and disgraceful.
Why? This article from the Washington Post says it best.
But if you don't want to click on that link and read the whole thing, here's the nut: the Obama administration failed to prosecute a single person when major Wall Street firms caused a near total collapse of the U.S. economy in 2007, causing massive job losses and causing thousands of people to lose their homes. Contrast that, if you will, to what's happening to Volkswagen and some of its executives as a result of the emissions scandal.
VW is being forced to pay compensation to its customers and some of the company's executives have been charged with committing crimes.
Why did Obama protect Wall Street while the country suffered and is he now getting paid for doing so? According to the Washington Post article, that's what it looks like -- and it sets or reinforces a precedent that if future presidents also protect the moneyed elite while in office, they too, will be richly rewarded for so doing.
Well, one might say, after all, he's just human and let's face it, humans can rarely walk away from money sitting on a table. It's in their nature. Consider Hillary Clinton -- and the hypocrisy of her campaign for which she, at least, got an appropriate reward.
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