I believe that Bill Clinton was an excellent president, that we were lucky to have him, and that there are thousands of gazillionaires who are less deserving of their wealth than he is. Furthermore, I don’t want to hear another of Cokie’s stories about how Tip O’Neill got married in a hand-me-down tux and had the reception in the parish rec room.
All of that said, I too find it disturbing how quickly former political leaders become fabulously wealthy (Counterpunch via James Wolcott):
Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.
The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them. Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office?
How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office? Who was Blair really serving?
These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked.
In the article on the death of the American middle-class John cited, Ed Luce writes:
Then there are those, such as Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist and Nobel prize winner, who blame it on politics….
The incomes of the super-wealthy have skyrocketed while those of the middle-class have stagnated. Meanwhile, many political (and media) elites have joined the ranks of the super-wealthy. Coincidence?
Update. The $3 million figure may be garbage. I still agree with the main point of the Counterpunch piece, though.
Chyron HR
Writing best-selling books? And, in Hillary’s case, being a high-powered attorney? Just some guesses.
asdf
It’s hard to think trying to listen to the poker game and this big chicken sandwich combo commercial at the same time. What was I going to say?
Oh, I’ve thought since I was a kid (and that was long ago) that the rich run this country. Jesus, curly fries? It’s 9 o’clock in the morning. Someone’s gone all in on Big Slick. Oh, the curly fries are seasoned. That makes all the difference. All in!
azlib
Doesn’t surprise me at all. Our elites have lost any sense of the “common good”. Bill Clinton was a good President. His heart is in the right place and unlike selfish people like Grover Norquist, he at least is putting energy into charitable work. Still it does seem excessive to spend $3M on a wedding. Given the current deep recession, the political optics are all wrong.
DougJ
@Chyron HR:
That doesn’t get too far towards $100 million.
demo woman
The cost of the wedding was wildly exaggerated by the same paper that brought you the ninja shooting monkeys. I did not link to the article but did it mention Sarah’s reward for running a crappy campaign?
The point is correct though. In our country we reward and idolize politicians.
ronathan richardson
Bill writes books and gives speeches. People like to read and hear him so they pay him lots of money to do so. He’d have to be a recluse to avoid getting this money thrown at him. And he puts most of it towards running his foundation.
My issue is with the idiots that decide to pay 60k to hear Nick Kristof talk about poor people, and all the other event planning douches that create the demand for BS celebrity with their luxury events.
Michael D.
I am not normally a Michael Moore fan, but “Capitalism” is spot on. If it was done by anyone but Michael Moore, people would take it seriously and there would be revolution.
There will be a revolution in this country as soon as people begin to realize that everything Doug just wrote in this post is more important than American Fucking Idol.
bemused
I agree it is unsettling how wealthy so many of our legislators become. However, a nitpicky question: is it true that Chelsea’s wedding cost $3 million? I thought I read that was false. I suppose it could have been more as well as less than $3 million but I always wonder how the cost of weddings of any presidents’ children can be proven as fact when it’s private money, not public.
Brien Jackson
@DougJ:
No, but take the book money and the speaking fees and put them in some sound investments and it starts to add up pretty quick.
Comrade Jake
I don’t know, I can get pretty worked up and angry about the disappearance of the American middle class.
But Bill Clinton’s exceptional wealth? Not so much really.
fraught
Wait til we hear what Chuck Todd’s daughter’s wedding is going to cost in 15 years.
Brien Jackson
@azlib:
Right, giving caterers, decorators, musicians, servers, and whoever else was involved in the thing business to a collective tune of $3 million is just horrible when the economy is starved for aggregate demand.
DougJ
@bemused:
The figures I can find are all in the $2-$3 million range.
New Yorker
Regardless of what it costs, I don’t care to hear any more about Chelsea’s fucking wedding.
Nothing against the Clintons and certainly nothing against Chelsea who seems a perfectly fine human being, but I’ve always seen Chelsea’s life vs. mine as an indicator of how bad things have become for those of us who weren’t born to super rich and/or super powerful families. Chelsea and I are the same age, we both went to “elite” colleges….and then things diverged. Her parents had the influence to get her whatever she wanted/needed career-wise. My parents….didn’t, and I’ve been stuck battling the awful economy/job market this country has been suffering through for the last decade.
El Cid
On this:
No. Not coincidence. Providence.
The producers are once again getting their just rewards for the blessings they bring to Earth, while the parasite majority finally learns its proper humility once more.
asdf
Take the fellow who ran for the state senate when I was kid. He’s rich now. Funny how that happens.
Comrade Jake
So, where did all this private money spent by the Clintons on Chelsea’s wedding go, exactly? Didn’t a good percentage of it get pumped into the local community? And the problem would be, what, exactly?
mattt
Can we give credit that at least part of Clinton’s success is due to merit? He’s a very sharp guy with legendary work habits and multitasking skills. He probably would have done very well financially if he’d never been president.
Myles SG
@New Yorker: As much as I would like to say, “yes, you are right,” quite honestly, if you went to a college of the same calibre as Chelsea did (and if you weren’t dumb enough to take the first low-prestige job that came your way), something’s horribly wrong, perhaps not on the part of society, when you’re stuck viscerally “battling the awful economy/job market.”
You realize that there’s such a thing as the alumni network, and you are supposed to used it, right?
Also, if I recall, she became a consultant for McKinsey or something. McKinsey was literally handing out job offers to everybody who had two legs and wasn’t stone-cold retarded on Ivy League campuses in those days.
demo woman
@DougJ: The news reported that a Clinton spokesman said six figures.
Brachiator
Well, kinda. That is, the elites are better able to deal with structural changes in the economy since they are able, almost by definition, to write the laws to make sure that they are least impacted.
It’s not a zero sum game. That is, the wealth is not just a big pile of money and other assets that potentially belong to everyone. The super-wealthy have not stolen the money of the middle class.
For example, does the net worth of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet really take money out of your pocket? I don’t think so.
Does the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing capacity to China and other countries reduce the number of jobs and the amount of wages available to US workers? Hell, yeah.
Some of the wealthiest corporate weasels have earned their money in financial services, harder to outsource and easy to game, as with hedge fund managers who managed to get most of their income taxed at capital gains rates.
And doesn’t Princess Chelsea work for a hedge fund?
Now, the subprime mess was definitely an example of a segment of the corporate elite directly stealing from the middle and lower classes. But otherwise, life is more complicated.
Myles SG
For my part, I am agnostic about the whole thing. There’s certainly nothing wrong morally with having a lavish wedding for your daughter, especially given that Bill Clinton was well known to be a fairly devoted father (refusing to leave DC when Chelsea was taking her exams). And it’s good for the economy, too.
But at the same time, the details are all wrong. The venue is one of those Gilded Age robber baron sort of places; it’s not so much the luxury that seems excessive as much as the unrestrained exposition of wealth that seems in bad taste. Personally I would have preferred a more New England, toned-down, yet still very luxurious affair, perhaps one held in a Maine resort or even at the NYYC. But this is certainly reaching Gilded Age levels of extroversion.
Mnemosyne
@Myles SG:
Depends on when New Yorker graduated. I graduated from USC (Southern California, not South Carolina) during the first Bush recession and people were wearing graduation caps with “Will Work For Food” on them. I ended up as a clerk at Crown Books for almost a year after graduation.
Someone I work with graduated from UCSB (Santa Barbara) and finally found a job 11 months after graduating. It is much, much, much tougher out there than you seem to think.
DougJ
@demo woman:
Oh, I couldn’t find that on my google search.
Emma
Bill Clinton earned his damn money after he left the Presidency. He was paid more than 10 million dollars for his first book — and it paid off for his publishers. He’s paid terrific money for speaking engagements. He gets money for sitting on boards and for consulting deals. See here. Whether it’s obscene or not, that’s what people think he’s worth.
It’s interesting. I don’t remember anyone bitching about Bush’s daughter’s wedding and what it cost.
Amanda in the South Bay
Maybe if Clinton truly was an exceptional president I wouldn’t mind, bu a disasterous first term, followed by doubling down on school uniforms and v chip? And at least a tiny bit of blame for giving Gore such a rich inheritence and not blowing W out of the water on election day 2000.
But of course he earned it. Rich liberals are never douchebags who always earn their dough, while the opposite is true of Republicans
Polish the Guillotines
Only slightly off topic:
DougJ wins again with a spot-on title. Not only is it a cool Elvis Costello song, the song was on the soundtrack to Americathon. Not a great movie, but the plot is apropos:
Just substitute “the Chinese” for “wealthy Native Americans” and we’re right on target.
asdf
The Bush girls, let me say this – they turned out OK.
I grew up in Texas and we all had fake ID’s. We drank and fell down. We had some fun.
The Bush girls turned out just fine.
Starfish
@Brien Jackson: Take the book money, speaking fees, and superior knowledge of tax loopholes for the wealthy, and then you really have something. Investing in general is no longer sound because there seem to be a lot of unsound things that are not getting reformed out of the system. More politicians would be keen on reforming such things if they had to work with the system that everyone else has to work with.
Why were hedge funds that are not accountable to anyone allowed to exist in the first place? Is someone who happens to have a lot of money a savvy investor just because they happen to have a lot of money? Are the hedge funds really helping them or could they blow up, or can anyone really know if there is no real transparency into a lot of them? And how do we know that the hedge funds and dark pools are not trading on insider information? And why oh why are 401ks that are supposed to give us the opportunity to potentially make better than market returns sometimes limited by the employer to only contain a few mutual funds and potentially the company’s own stocks? Shouldn’t these be reformed to do what everyone was saying they would do namely give more opportunities to allow you to get above average returns?
New Yorker
@Myles SG:
Uh, no. They were doing that in 1999 and 2000, but by 2001 and 2002 (when I graduated) nobody was coming to campus to recruit. Perhaps that’s because recruiters see Cornell as a step below Stanford, but I don’t know.
Either way, I took the first well-paying job I found, but it sure as hell wasn’t with McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or wherever.
The real problem is that I decided to go to grad school in the fall of 07 and then had the global economy implode just as I was going to graduate and look for a job. I’ve had recent interviews and things are better than they were a year ago, but I’m still not fully employed yet.
Bob
There is, quite obviously, an entire system of perfectly legal payoffs for politicians and journalists, laundered through “speaking fees” and “lobbying positions” and positions for spouses, and so forth. This is how they rapidly become wealthy once they leave office, or even while they are still working as “journalists” and commentators. If you play ball you are taken care of – and we’re talking big money, where else in the world can you launder a $100,000 payoff as a “speaking fee” – the more influence you have the better you are taken care of, provided that you deliver. My favorite example (though I don’t mean to single him out in particular, it just stands out so perfectly) is Rahm Emanuel. He leaves politics after Clinton and proceeds to make $18 million in 2.5 years in the financial services industry. Does he know anything at all about finance? (No). So why do you think he was hired, and paid, and why do you think he was so “successful” at landing accounts for his firm? Because he threatened to break their noses, in that trademark Emanuel style? I don’t think so. And now they’ve invested their money, and their payoff is the President’s right-hand-man in their pocket. (Of course, nothing compared to the investment payoff in W.) Business is good.
jharp
The $3,000,000 figure is bullshit.
New Yorker
And again, I’d like to stress that I am not holding any of this against the Clintons and especially not against Chelsea, but the symbolism of where one ends up when you’re the daughter of the President vs. when you’re the son of an NYPD detective lieutenant bothers me a bit.
cat48
Bubba makes lotsa money just giving speeches:
Winson Smith
The Clinton’s house in New York is the first home they ever owned. They sure turned their fortunes around quickly, that’s for sure.
demo woman
@DougJ: It was on one of the morning shows yesterday. Since I don’t have cable it had to be a network show. The 3-5 million amount took hold so the Clinton’s would have to buy air time if they wanted to correct it. Truth be told 999,999.00 will buy a nice wedding.
Zuzu's Petals
I am truly disgusted by the cluck-clucking over the made-up cost of Chelsea’s wedding. Talk about faux outrage over something that is in every way nobody’s business.
Southern Beale
First of all:
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20406627,00.html
“No $3 Million Wedding for Chelsea – and Other Rumors Put to Rest”
Wedding cost estimated in 6 figures, not 7 … hundreds of thousands of dollars not millions.
Second of all, I think the media’s fascination with this fictitious “$3 million wedding” is just more Clinton Derangement Syndrome. I don’t fucking give a shit how much it cost. I don’t recall anyone having hissy fits or questioning how much Jenna Tonic’s wedding cost. Why is this an issue suddenly for Chelsea Clinton? Give me a fucking break.
I tell you what: when YOUR only daughter gets married, and you are the former president of the United States and the current Secretary of State of the United States, you can by God spend as much as you want on the wedding.
Jesus fuck people. Get a clue.
Person of Choler
Bill was indeed a good President. He felt no need to strangle the economy and load us into a rocket-powered bus on the freeway to serfdom. Rather, he was content to wile away the days with a babe, a cigar, and a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the oval office door.
Kiril
“Hillary Clinton answered longstanding calls from critics and political rivals by releasing her tax returns late Friday.
The New York senator made public the joint returns she and former President Bill Clinton filed for the years 2000 through 2006 — plus a summary of their income for tax year 2007, their most lucrative to date.
The two made more than $20 million between them in the most recent tax year, and a total of more than $109.2 million during the period beginning in 2000.
Most of the income came from the former president’s speeches ($51.85 million) and from the sale of his two books ($29.6 million). Hillary Clinton’s own book, Living History, has earned her more than $10 million. Proceeds from her earlier book, It Takes a Village were donated to charity.
The rest of the couple’s income was from official salaries and from lucrative partnerships in which Bill Clinton participates.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89397707
Myles SG
@New Yorker: Well, I mean, it sucks obviously. But as I suspected, you took the “first well-paying job,” which I think I don’t have to explain to you is an enormous mistake. Once you start on the wrong foot, it’s a lot harder to change things (or so was the story of my life), and especially so if you weren’t born with a silver spoon like Chelsea Clinton.
Cornell is a couple of notches below Stanford, it’s true; but it’s not that far behind. And it’s certainly part of the American plutocracy. So honestly, the only thing you can do is hang out a the Cornell Club a bit more. Were you in a frat at Cornell? It tends to improve things a lot if you were. People who don’t know about how this sort of thing works think that they are wasting valuable time they could be using to pump up their GPA’s, but honestly once you are an Ivy Leaguer GPA’s are for chumps.
To be perfectly (and brutally) honest with you, it’s not so much that society and hiring opportunities are inherently biased against a Cornell-alum-son-of-a-NYPD-lieutenant, it is that the son-of-a-NYPD-lieutenant tends to carry certain cultural habits and ways of thinking about one’s career (for example, taking well-paying but relatively lower-prestige jobs) that are somewhat damaging in the more rarified Ivy Leaguer circles. Or as Bordieu said, “cultural capital”.
Brien Jackson
@Myles SG:
Because obviously what you wanted for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding matters to…someone, I’m sure.
Brachiator
@Kiril:
This is one of the standard ways in which former presidents, senators and top congress people are rewarded. They don’t do much in these partnerships, which are structured to pass through income and credits, a kind of additional pension for services rendered.
Allison W.
They earned it, they get to spend it anyway they want. Would I spend $3 million on a wedding? maybe not. Give me Clinton’s income and my perspective might change. Plus its their only child.
I am not down with the rich scaling back in a recession so as not to look insensitive. If they earned it, let them do what they want. Now, if they came running to the government for help – then yes they should watch how they spend their money (ahem Goldman Sachs).
New Yorker
@Myles SG:
Yeah, I was in a fraternity, but the guys from my house are mostly engineers or lawyers, which doesn’t really help an MBA like me. I suppose my “mistake” was joining a house with guys I liked instead of a house with connections at Goldman Sachs.
I’m well aware of this. My father didn’t graduate from college (and my mother did, but became a teacher), and we as a family just didn’t know that good grades weren’t going to be enough to land a good career. That being said, I am working the alumni connections at both Cornell and my business school (Baruch College in Manhattan) and I’ve been getting interviews of late because of this networking I’ve been doing. I suppose it’s only a matter of time before I get a job offer.
Still, it didn’t help that I entered the workforce in the worst decade for job creation since the 1930s. I’ve got friends from Cornell who have dealt with very similar shit to what I’ve gone through.
JC
Bill Clinton’s passage of Nafta did more to hurt the middle class then anything Bush ever did. Every gain our labor unions made was undone with the stroke of a pen. And he and Hillary pushed hard for it. Bill Clinton is a corporate whore.
Bill Clinton Supported Blanche Lincoln
Bill Clinton started extraordinary rendition.
And for those of you that think adultery doesn’t matter, pull your head out of your ass.
If any politician is willing to get up every day and lie to the person he’s supposed to love most, then why wouldn’t he lie to the voters? Fuck anybody that says adultery doesn’t matter.
The Clinton’s are multi-millionaires and they want the public to retire Hillary’s debt?
The Clinton’s may be a thousand times better then Bush, but it will be a cold day in hell before I call him a great man.
He left with a surplus cause now we can send all our labor down to Mexico.
Bill Clinton will always be a self centered prick. He may have been 1,000 times more intelligent then Bush which makes him the true monster. He knew it fuck people over and did it for campaign contributions.
He passed NAFTA to satisfy his corporate donors and he will never be forgiven for that. Not only did he not veto it, he fucking campaigned for it.
And he recently admitted to fucking farming in third world countries over. He forced our agriculture on them to the point they can’t grow their own food.
Bill Clinton will forever be an asshole.
DougJ
@Brachiator:
Yes, which adds an on-the-take vibe to the whole thing, no?
Brien Jackson
@JC:
Anti-NAFTA insanity really knows no bounds does it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Myles SG: Shouldn’t you be tormenting people with your striver/snob schtick over at Yglesias’s place
Myles SG
@New Yorker: OK, no offense intended, but why on earth did you take a MBA at Baruch? In some circles it’s probably considered worse than having no MBA at all (there’s this “gentlemanly” air to the bankers with no graduate degrees and only a simple A.B. from Harvard or Williams or whatever).
I am just curious, that’s all. I know people who have been unable to get into prestige MBA programs; they usually do another sort of degree conferring a same level of prestige. And MBA networking isn’t as determinative as one thinks if one’ve already been to an elite college.
leo
@Emma:
Yeah, major question of timing here. As Southern Beale says, more ‘Clinton Derangement Syndrome’. Amazing that DougJ fell for it.
Corner Stone
@New Yorker: Myles SG is concern trolling you.
Cat Lady
I remember Eric Alterman mentioning that Peter Jennings left a 50 million dollar estate. That a fucking news reader, a soshulist Canadian to boot, who was on air for 22 minutes 5 days a week, was able to amass that kind of cash is the real crime in this country. I also remember Malcolm Gladwell’s analysis of Jennings’ unconscious response to “reporting” on Reagan. Another coincidence?
Bill Clinton at least has earned his money. He’s worked hard for it.
Since I’m also planning a daughter’s wedding in an urban location on a very limited budget for 150 people, the $3 million number doesn’t shock me at all. Weddings are a ridiculously complicated and expensive affair.
Southern Beale
I was not aware that Bill Clinton was our first rich president. Thanks for clueing me in.
TD
Forget the wedding, go to the man’s library in Little Rock. THAT disturbs me (this is coming from someone who also supports him).
Cacti
I can’t get too worked up about Bill and Hill dropping a lot of money on the wedding of their only child. I think most parents would do the same for their kid, given the resources.
The point about how much former political leaders make AFTER leaving office is a fair point.
A former POTUS receives a publicly-funded $196,700 annual pension for life, with periodic adjustments for inflation, plus an annual allowance for support staff, office space, and travel. More than enough to live comfortably until their dying day.
All of this is set by Former Presidents Act, which was established to prevent a former POTUS from engaging “in business or [an] occupation which would demean the office he has held or capitalize upon it in any way deemed improper.”
In view of this, a former POTUS racking up a nine-figure personal fortune seems a bit tawdry.
Malron
We’re still trying to figure out what happened to 96% of the billions budgeted for Iraq reconstruction BUT ONOEZ BILL AND HILL SPENT THREE MILLY ON A WEDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111
Its funny how the fiscally responsible deficit peacocks weren’t running around with an abacus when conservatives were running things. Which reminds me: has anyone seen the figures on how much the Bush daughter’s wedding cost last year? I’m guessing it was twice as much…
New Yorker
@Myles SG:
First of all, I’m not looking to be a banker. I went to get the MBA because (silly me!) I wanted a better understanding of the business world I was operating in (marketing) and I wanted to not be pigeon-holed as a telecom direct marketing guy, which is what I was doing in my previous job.
Also, Columbia and NYU didn’t admit me to their programs.
I just don’t think you’ve got a grasp of just how terrible the career opportunities have been for anyone born after about 1978. I’ve got a close friend from Cornell from a more affluent background that me (his father is a Stanford MBA) who has dealt with multiple-month long bouts of unemployment on several occasions and terrible jobs. Another friend (again, from more money than me) graduated from NYU and said the joke for anyone not on the Stern investment-banking track was that NYU stood for “Now You’re Unemployed”.
So I guess the lesson is either be an investment banker or be a serf, which I think I already knew based on what’s happened to this economy over the last 2 years.
DougJ
@Cat Lady:
Interesting point.
fitzwili
I am glad money is being pumped into the local economy rather than being sat on because it wouldn’t be seemly.
I certainly don’t think your criticism is coming from this angle but there are quite a few people who are pressing that old reliable” the Clintons are “new money tacky” button. Isn’t this just an example of upward ability rather than entrenched hereditary elitism:poor boy and middle class girl go on to be the President and Secretary of State respectively. Their wealth is derived through their accomplishments rather than inheritance.
Now Chelsea’s story will be another matter, but she is not footing the bill for this wedding.
Josh
DougJ, Do you know who Paul Craig Roberts is? Buchananesque Reagan Administration official, Christian supremacist, columnist for Lew Rockwell and VDare, who shares Cockburn’s view that hate crimes laws give minorities unfair advantages. If he says something that seems attractive to a Left sensibility, I’d generally suggest double-checking its accuracy.
Select PRC columns:
Christianity versus Communism
Save the white heterosexual able-bodied males
The Cultural Marxists are taking over
Brachiator
@DougJ:
Oh, yeah. It’s an old and honored Anglo-American institution.
@Southern Beale:
Clinton is hardly the first. But let’s consider the ways in which the corporate elites blend political influence and “public service,” using the example of Walter Annenberg (via Wiki).
And of course, Reagan’s later life was made comfortable, as is Clinton’s, because of his cultivation of the corporate elites.
Cat Lady
@DougJ:
I just think all of the newsreaders are vastly overpaid considering how they’re not even really relevant anymore. What does Diane Sawyer “do” that any on air news person couldn’t do from any third tier media market in the country? They read a script, mention a couple of other reporters’ names, and then sign off. It’s a pretty good gig if you can get it.
I can’t get worked up, at all, about the Clintons.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I see no shortage of missing the point in the comments.
The article asks a rhetorical question; where did a man who has done almost nothing but be a politician and ex-politician his whole life get tens of millions of dollars? I’m sure the author is fully aware that a few minutes on Google will tell us all about the books and speaking fees.
So, who is handing out speaking fees such that they can add up to $65 million in less than a decade? Hint: it’s not your local PTA.
The article is not a hit job on Bill Clinton, he’s just a proximate example the author is using to make a deeper point.
Cacti
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
And again, he’s pocketing that on top of the nearly $200,000 public pension he receives every year.
Emma
Bruce: No. Sorry. It is a hit job. The proximate point is that, as someone said upstairs, working class guy and middle-class girl play by the American rules of the game and work their way to money. BUT because it is Bill Clinton, there has to be something to tut-tut at. And there’s a nice serving of “politicians play the game, oh-my-god” to make it more palatable.
And all sorts of people hand out speaking fees, from corporate groups to large charities that want to attract people who will shell out money to hear Bill Clinton but won’t to hear “expert-genius-of-the-week” no matter how good they are at what they do. If you’ve heard the expression “it takes money to make money”, multiply that by a thousand in charity work.
Corner Stone
The “$3M wedding” talking point is the new “Pelosi’s Plane”.
Corner Stone
On a reverse of the Politician becomes rich saga, what about the emerging trend of Ultra Rich becomes Politician that is happening across the US?
Zuzu's Petals
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
I don’t have a clue what this means.
It seems that successfully running the country for eight years, among other things, calls for no special executive, intellectual, or other skills that would make his insights valuable to others.
Brachiator
@Emma:
I think that Clinton was a near-great president, have no big problem with him riding the post-presidential gravy train, but you have to acknowledge that it is a gravy train, and that here it is standard practices for top tier politicians.
But Clinton could have followed the path of a Jimmy Carter. He chose not to.
And after a certain point, if you have no problem with the Big Dog getting big bucks for his speechifying and for his lucrative partnerships, then you probably should reconsider your position if you ever knock Sarah Palin for doing the same damn thing, even though she is the probably the dumbest and luckiest pseudo-politician craptastic hack on the planet.
Zuzu's Petals
@Emma:
Not only is it a hit job, it’s a lazy one at that. Aside from all the bad information (guest list, cost), it’s fully of cliched and superficial arguments: Chelsea’s wedding cake cost eleventy-billion dollars, but the local food pantry has to cut back ! ! !
Insert any example of someone doing/enjoying something that costs money and contrast with another example of someone – preferably more worthwhile – going without money. Instant Counterpunch article.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Emma:
It’s a hit job on the “oligarchs” (author’s term). The Clintons are certainly part of this group and you should ask yourself why you get so upset by this fact being blandly pointed out.
Jade Jordan
The Bill Clinton was a good President meme drives me crazy. It is clear that Dems love Bill Clinton. It is also clear that his presidency is why we are where we are today.
Repealing Glass Stegall, keeping Greenspan, appointing Rubin, getting rid of Brooksley Born is why we are in financial crisis.
NAFTA was a disaster because it was done hastily without protections for workers or the environment and shifted jobs to slave worker states. Ross Perot foretold of the giant sucking sound of jobs leaving the country that has come to pass. In return we receive toxic products.
Welfare reform was based on jobs being available. Now that they are not, people are unable to get help when they need it most.
Bill Clinton’s continued carpet bombing of Iraq made conditions favorable for the war on Iraq.
Bill Clinton’s refusal to campaign in Arkansas for Gore gave us Bush and yes I think it was on purpose to clear the path for Hillary after a republican 1 term president.
DADT wars are still being fought because of Bill.
I think history will move past the love of his personality and document the atrocities of his presidency.
That said I don’t care about his private life one bit.
Stillwater
Was it a Mexican PRI member? a US Senator? – I can’t remember – who said if you don’t make a boatload of money being a poltician, yer doin it rong.
Emma
Brachiator: Go back through my comments and see if I bitch about Palin making money anywhere. Palin is a grifter of epic proportions, and she’s found a way to make her talent pay. If people are idiot enough to want to spend money to listen to her, that’s their lookout.
And the whole thing “he could have been Jimmy Carter and didn’t” doesn’t impress me. Jimmy Carter has done, God knows, a great deal of good in his life. So has Bill Clinton in his own way. If the only good person in liberals’ eyes is one who takes Jimmy carter as a model, you’re all going to spend your life giving vinegary looks to 90% of the population.
Kiril
@JC: Bill Clinton’s passage of Nafta did more to hurt the middle class then anything Bush ever did. Every gain our labor unions made was undone with the stroke of a pen.
President Clinton presided over the only period of time in which median income increased in my entire adult life.
Zuzu's Petals
@Brachiator:
Just off the top of my head:
Jimmy Carter had a family business and personal wealth when he took office. He did not leave office with $12 million in legal fees to pay off, nor a prospective presidential campaign for his wife to help finance.
In addition, Carter has received income from several books and speaking fees over the years.
Like Carter, Clinton established a foundation that has done enormous good, and like Carter he spends a lot of time working for its success.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Zuzu’s Petals:
No shit. The tribal instincts kicked in when you saw “Clinton” and the actual point of the column was forever banished from your cranium.
Emma
Bruce: Perhaps you should ask yourself why the author’s righteousness only kicks in when Bill Clinton is concerned. Show me where he/she moaned and bitched about Republican millionaire spending and I’ll start to consider his point.
What I am seeing, and I am sorry for, is the immediate acceptance here that Clinton must be some sort of criminal who acts against the interests of the working class because he earns money and spends it as he sees fit. Of course, I should have remembered Clinton Derangement Symptom was not only a disease of the right.
Amanda in the South Bay
Maybe if I didn’t get shit on by rich upper middle class liberals everyday I’d be more open to the proposition that rich liberals are better philanthropists and more deserving of their money than rich conservatives. In sure if I was the lone liberal in small town America I’d think differently.
What were the positive benefits of Clinton’s presidency? Tons of warmed up centrism and defending blow jobs ( aren’t we the hip sex positive crowd now) against Republicans.
Crusty Dem
@TD:
And of course, Clinton does more “whoring out” on behalf of his library than he does for his own wealth:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?pagewanted=all
I don’t fault the many for soliciting for his library, but this is ridiculous, and if he’s doing anything like this for personal gain in his “private partnerships”, it’s more than a mild concern. Write your books, give speeches and get rich, but don’t sell yourself out to provide oligarchs access to dictators. That’s way over the line.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: On a reverse of the Politician becomes rich saga, what about the emerging trend of Ultra Rich becomes Politician that is happening across the US?
Conspiracy theory, clearly. A conspiracy of the wealthy to buy themselves all the seats in Congress.
Zuzu's Petals
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
And the minute you saw “I don’t have a clue what this means” you took a cheap shot while ignoring the point of my comment.
Emma
Amanda: A country with no deficit, a rising median income, actual successes against terrorists using policing methods…. no, nothing there.
And how the hell has it come to this? Defending Bill Clinton against liberals? Me, who didn’t like him much in the first place?
burnspbesq
@JC:
The statute of limitation on your Clinton-hating has expired. Give it a rest.
slag
Yeah. But the price of toaster ovens has come down significantly so we’re all evensies.
@Emma:
I thought we all already did that. No? Just me, then. OK.
burnspbesq
@Cat Lady:
Why is that a crime? ABC made tons of money selling advertising on the evening news because it delivered eyeballs to advertisers. The program delivered eyeballs to advertisers at least in part because of Jennings. He created value – why shouldn’t he get a taste?
DougJ
@Emma:
Why? Does every single piece about everything have to say “oh, and the other party does it too”?
For me, it’s a given that Republicans like Bush are members of an oligarchy. I don’t see the point of even bringing it up.
Amanda in the South Bay
Emma-or ineffectual cruise missile strikes on African aspirin factories, the neo liberal de regulation bug as others have mentioned, signing DOMA and DADT into law, and not being able to keep his dick in his pants, so that all those serious pundits and newspaper op Ed pages suggested we needed a return to mature adulthood in 2000?
And please, let’s not get started with his disasterous first term, helped out by the Republican’s anemic candidate in 1996
I don’t like defending him as a salt of the earth type just because the GOP has a problem with blow jobs. And if the Clinton legacy really was awesome, Gore shouldve trounced Bush in the election without the supremes stealing the election.
trollhattan
Whatever the Clintons spent on the wedding was a small price to pay for her having spent life in a fishbowl. From what little I know of her it seems they actually raised a fine young lady. Numerous of other presidential kids, not so much.
Yes, it’s a nutty amount but…so fracking what?
Corner Stone
@Stillwater:
Taken from their viewpoint, it’s really the most efficient end goal.
That way they cut out the middleman. They no longer will have to bribe the elected official to do what they and their cohort want, they will be that elected official.
Bob In Pacifica
Bracchiator @ 60, Moe Annenberg and his son Walter were running the mob’s nationwide wire service back in the forties. I know they were implicated in a murder and Moe went to jail in a deal that kept Walter out (although I don’t recall what charges Moe copped to that sent him to jail). Walter laundered all that money in legitimate business ventures (not unlike the Kennedys’ bootleg money) and at some point began palling with Reagan (who was ratting out pinkos in Hollywood while being a spokesman for a CIA-backed program, the Crusade For Freedom, to get Nazis out of Europe and into the US. Say hello to the von Spakovsky Family!).
Clinton during his years got through lots of anti-worker trade deals (GATT, NAFTA, etc.), signed Gramm-Leach-et al, signed DADT and DOMA, pushed through regressive welfare legislation and regressive drug legislation (not surprising considering the CIA dump runs into Mena).
It’s a small world at the top, and once a politician has toiled for Big Money he is rewarded.
BOHICA.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Emma:
Meaning you missed the commentary on several other celebrities and Tony Blair.
Meaning if you’d read Paul Craig Roberts before you’d know that he’s been railing against the larger political class for quite some time and is not particularly a Clinton obsessive.
As Doug pointed out this point is so silly as to not even merit refutation.
Emma
DougJ: Jesus, don’t tell me you’re that naive. How often have we discussed the media narrative in this blog?
If the only message that gets out there is that Bill Clinton (who represents “liberals” in the eyes of a large number of the population) is some sort of criminal/stooge/patsy of the rich because he makes money instead of living (as all liberals should properly do, natch) a monk with a non-existant energy footprint, what kind of narrative is it building? Do I need to remind you of the stupidest narrative ever, that Republicans were better at defense and the economy? It took a massive disaster under a Republican president for people even to start considering that it might not be true!
It’s the message, it’s the message, it’s the message.
eemom
Hey New Yorker, I’m a lot older than you but I’m another middle class NYC kid who went to an “elitist” school. Don’t listen to the tripe that smug-ass wannabe snob is feeding you.
My Dad graduated from Baruch in 1955, back when it was a big deal for a middle class kid to get a college degree at all.
Just hang in there and do your best — things will work out.
Maybe not much comfort, but it is much, much worse to be unemployed in your 40s and 50s than in your 20s.
Emma
B ruce: I know who he is. He’s the man who wrote this:
Feminists, liberals, and naive American flag-wavers will say that what is written here is utter rot, that Americans are in Afghanistan to bring women’s rights and birth control to Afghan women and to bring freedom, democracy and progress to Afghanistan, even if it means leveling every village, town and house in the country. We, “the indispensable people,” are only there to do good, because we care so much for the Afghan people who live in a country that most Americans can’t find on a map. 3/01/10.
This is bulls–t of the greatest liquidity. Show me a feminist or a liberal who said any such thing. I’m not going to trust the viewpoint of someone who lies about me and mine in that fashion.
Enrique
It is exasperating that the left ever defends Clinton. “Great,” “near-great,” and “excellent” to describe such achievements as, among other things: the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which is just one of the ways Bill Clinton was assaulting the Bill of Rights long before W. came to power.
Zuzu's Petals
@DougJ:
I think Clinton was merely the most convenient example. Heck, his other example was Tony Blair, who isn’t even American.
Truthfully, it doesn’t seem to be a very well-reasoned piece. First, his entire premise of the $3 million wedding is wrong; the outrage falls a little flat when one considers they only spent in the hundreds of thousands.
Then he asks who Clinton and Tony Blair “were serving” to earn the income they did after leaving office. Hard to tell whether he just thinks it’s unseemly on their part, or that they were literally serving other masters during their terms in office. Of course in Clinton’s part, we have a pretty good idea how he got his money, as he and Hillary released their records through 2008…so I guess we could figure it from there.
Then he rants about Americans going without food while the government invests in wars etc. Okay, not an invalid point, but what’s it got to do with the first part of the article?
After running off some rather implausible figures (22% unemployment? 17% of Americans on welfare just to stay alive?), he gives us a truly idiotic conclusion:
Seriously, he thinks Bill Clinton’s book sales etc. made him a mega-billionaire? And it somehow reflects a failure of the government?
Brachiator
@Emma:
Sorry. I did not intend to direct my comments here directly to you. When I post comments, I am not just often responding to a particular individual’s thoughts, but also to Balloon Juicers in general. But there was unnecessary sloppiness on my part here.
I’ve noted before that I admire much of Bill Clinton’s achievements. And I deeply enjoyed watching Clinton’s approval rating improve as the Republicans tried to pile on with the impeachment BS. It was a true Road Runner Wile E. Coyote moment as the GOP continued to be frustrated while The Big Dog effortlessly scooted out of their clutches.
But ultimately, I think that Clinton is overrated and that Carter is underrated in some ways. And the Clintons decided to sign onto the Establishment in a way that old Jimmy never did. They are entitled to do so. They will never be as much a part of the group as say, the Bushes. But still…
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Cry me a river. The Republicans piled on with bullshit on the Clintons. But Big Bill, a junky man with junky appetites, gave them one of the clubs that they gladly used to beat him over the head with. And do you really want to say that Clinton’s reaching out to corporate interests is OK because he had to feed his wife’s presidential ambitions? Especially when they later asked Obama to help them retire their campaign debt.
Yep. Fair point. I don’t have a problem with this for anyone in or out of public office.
Another fair point, although I am not quite sure that Clinton’s foundations have yet done enormous good.
eemom
@Amanda in the South Bay:
heh. You know, it’s a funny thing — I spent so much time in the 90s fuming about the Republicans and The Great Blowjob Impeachment that it wasn’t until about the mid 00’s that I realized what a breathtakingly irresponsible asshole Clinton was.
Rumor has it he was the first to call John Edwards after Rielle-gate broke. “How’d you get caught?” he asked.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Point? What point? The only “point” you made was that you think Clinton was a swell President, and since that wasn’t what the original article was about there was no “point” to be taken seriously.
It pains me, truly, that a writer pointed out that the Clintons are part of a political class that seems increasingly disconnected from the masses in difficult times, and that you think pointing this out is “cliched” and “superficial”. It must be difficult for you that not everybody worships the same tribal chieftain that you do and that their mentioning of the poor and middle classes strikes you as trite. It must be unbearable that a writer spent 25% of one column out of hundreds he’s written speaking in unflattering terms about the Clintons. But do try to cope.
Stillwater
@Emma: If the only message that gets out there is that Bill Clinton …
There is no ‘out there’ there. DougJ is posting to a very localized community of left-leaning, pro-Dem (and very erudite) voter citizens. This is a topic worthy of discussion from our pov.
What I’ve been waiting for is some ass kicking Taibbization of Doug’s having gotten the numbers wrong in making his broader point! Now, that ought to get out to a wider audience.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Emma:
By the way, I meant to mention, but forgot, that I fully expect the quote mining of old Roberts material to begin in earnest now. Childish and a deflection from the actual point, but not unexpected.
Corner Stone
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.): I posted this link the other day, and feel it’s relevant again here:
Your Senator Is (Probably) a Millionaire
Who’s interest do we think they are serving? In either party?
Zuzu's Petals
@Brachiator:
Fair points too.
Although I meant to just point out the contrast with Carter’s situation when I mentioned Hillary’s presidential ambitions, not comment on the choices they made in supporting them. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Brien Jackson
@Jade Jordan:
Interestingly, not one of those really has much to do with the financial crisis.
valdivia
I have to echo the point made by Emma before: did anyone bitch about Bush’d daughter’s wedding?
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson: In your opinion, what was the underpinning cause(s) of the financial crisis?
Joy
@Zuzu’s Petals: Thank you so much. Couldn’t have said it better.
maus
I could see it being 3 million counting all the security detail.
@valdivia: Republicans earn money, Democrats steal it because they are lazy.
JohnR
Meanwhile, on Yahoo news:
“As spending by wealthy weakens, so does U.S. economy”.
You can spot a fucking AP news story a mile off. Jesus Christ.
DougJ
@Stillwater:
I should have written that it cost $26 trillion, then.
Zuzu's Petals
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
You ignore the fact that I was responding to YOUR comment.
A comment in which you (1) dismissed someone who successfully ran that country for eight years as “someone who has done almost nothing but be a politician and ex-politician his whole life” and (2) expressed bewilderment that such a person could possess experience and insights that could earn him tens of millions of dollars in book sales and speaking fees.
Which is just silly.
Sure, the sources of his speaking fees are open to criticism…though at least they are disclosed. (And at least until recently, only about 20% of his speaking engagements were for personal income.) But wondering why people would pay to hear or read what a former President has to say is just… well, silly.
Finally, I would find the same fault with your comment if GWB were the person in question. Although I would probably leave out the word “successfully” when saying he ran the country for eight years.
Lysana
@eemom:
You call it rumor and claim it’s proof he’s an asshole. CDS in action much?
Brien Jackson
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
So, in order to bash Clinton, you’re embracing the same logic that makes people believe that the government needs to cut spending in response to a recession. Interesting.
Emma
Bruce: I didn’t realize you were a purveyor of the same sort of liquidity. I fully expect the quote mining to begin? Baloney. You read what I wrote and decided you would deflect the issue once again. Nicely done, sit.
eemom
@Lysana:
no, I didn’t mean THAT was proof he was an asshole. That was just an anecdote I thought was funny.
He was an asshole for getting a blow job from an intern in the Oval Office because that was a really irresponsible thing for the President of the United States to do. Or do you disagree with that?
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
General irresponsibility more than anything, but, to just pick out one of thse bete-noirs, repealing Glass-Stegall might have been a mistake, but amongst the firms who were hit the worst, 2 (Bear and Lehman) were pure investment banks and another (AIG) was an insurance company, so Glass-Stegall didn’t apply to them to begin with.
Zuzu's Petals
@maus:
Good point. But the original $3 million meme was about the wedding costs alone.
Nick
@Michael D.:
I’ve been trying to rise this anger in my middle class friends (which is funny considering I come from a rich family) and the response I get is “That’s just life and you’re jealous because you’re not them and if you worked harder, you’d be them”
America gets fucked in the ass by the dildo of the rich and they love it. They love it for the same reason High School Freshmen sit back and take abuse from Seniors. The same reason men and women go through hazing to get into fraternities and sororities. Because one day, they think they’ll be able to strap that dildo on and do the same thing.
Maude
I have been harping on the Clinton’s $109 million for a long time. No one is worth that. No one. It is not money made honestly. I don’t care what president made that obscene amount of money in such a short time after leaving office, as the saying goes, it ain’t right.
Read about Harry Truman. He is now thought of as a good president. The only way Clinton is like Truman, is that the buck really did stop with him, after 2001, that is.
Not all of the royalties from It Takes a Village went to charity. You can look it up, but I seem to remember it was about 15%.
If it were Bush making that amount of $, people here would be howling.
If I made that kind of money, I wouldn’t trust me.
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson:
I would have to say fraud more than irresponsibility.
Brien Jackson
@Corner Stone:
Nah, the main underlying problem was a lot of bad decisions hedged with the idea that housing prices would go up forever. There was certainly some fraud going on in places, and a lot of moving parts that are interesting enough on their own, but so far as the big picture goes, this is the real driving factor. Once the real estate values holding the whole thing up started going down, everyone was fucked.
Brien Jackson
@Maude:
Based on what?
Corner Stone
@Brien Jackson:
People in investment banks designed tranches guaranteed to fail. Then sold derivatives off them.
How is that not fraud?
mai naem
@Zuzu’s Petals: Jimmy Carter’s income is derived from book, his Navy pension and his presidential pension. He certainly wasn’t super wealthy when he took office. From what I remember the peanut farm suffered at times. And Clinton caused his own stupid legal bills. If he hadn’t screwed around he wouldn’t have had the legal bills. BTW taxpayers paid out quite a bit of the legal bills too. And yes, I believe Gore would have won in 2000 if it hadn’t been for Clinton not keeping his pants zipped. I am absolutely schizophrenic on Clinton because he did so much less than he could have. Talk about a massive lost opportunity. WTF was he thinking when he repealed Glass Steagal.? Understandably he pretty much looked out only for himself. It was under him that the Dems lost the House. Lastly, he then goes on to support Blanche Lincoln. It’s time like that that I want to flip off the Big Dawg. BTW, he looks really old in the wedding picture walking Chelsea down the aisle.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: People in investment banks designed tranches guaranteed to fail. Then sold derivatives off them. How is that not fraud?
Agreed. (Lengthy rant ensues.) My opinion (fwiw) is that Countrywide began the whole downward spiral by financing people in the sub-prime category with offers of ARMs and zero-down mortgages with the express purpose of bundling and selling these high-risk investments to unknowing institutional investors. While the front end deception to grant financing to people who ought not qualify for a mortgage may have only been sleazy and deceptive (as opposed to outright illegal), knowingly selling those MBS and the resulting derivatives as prime – when they weren’t – was fraud.
But it was successful fraud. What began as a clever deception by COuntrywide quickly developed into an industry-wide practice when others saw the low-risk/high-reward structure of the scam (sign people up, bundle the mortgages, sell them off). The ensuing debacle flowed from this, as big institutional investors quickly began to realize their exposure. Further shenanigans ensued, this time at the level of investment bankers trying to limit their exposure by buying CDOs against their MBS investments, or in the form of outright fraud, by finding investors to by what the ‘market maker’ knew was crap, while they went short on it. And once the whole thing started to unravel, the game was to figure out how to leverage the government to come out of it intact, or even stronger. Goldman obv. won on that score.
Re: the belief that this whole thing resulted from a the mistaken belief that housing prices would continue to go up, I say: show me a model under which this phenomenon (unlimited price increase in a market) has ever been predicted or explained. There could be no model which predicts, or explains, this – it is counter to the principles of supply and demand upon which the model will be based. And this is particularly true given the realities of the decades-long flat spending power of the middle class.
It was a charade.
Zuzu's Petals
@mai naem:
Again, I wasn’t opining on why the Clintons incurred legal debts, just noting that they had them.
FLRealist
Chelsea and Marc’s wedding cost less than a million dollars. Approximately 400 guests were invited. They had to rent the facility big enough to handle that size crowd plus be able to handle the security.
Jenna Bush’s wedding cost around $100,000 and had less than 200 guests. One big advantage they had was the wedding was held on President Bush’s ranch, so no rental fees.
My wedding cost $5000 in 1991, with 175 guests.
Each wedding was what the couple wanted and what the parents were willing to pay.
I have better things to do than worry about the Clintons’ wealth, or the Bushes, or anybody else’s, for that matter. As long as it is legally obtained, what does it matter if it comes from writing books, giving speeches or cleaning houses?
shep
@Brachiator:
Yes the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who devoted their lives to public service (whatever you think of it), is a hedge fund manager. And she just married an ex-Goldman Sachs investment banker. Bill discovered that you can’t beat ’em, even as the “most powerful politician on earth,” and probably advised his daughter accordingly.
Zuzu's Petals
@shep:
I thought she just received her Master’s in public health.
Wile E. Quixote
@Enrique:
I know, that’s how I feel when the left talks about how great FDR was. I mean Jesus Christ, the man threw 140,000 people into concentration camps and largely ignored the plight of European Jews trying to escape from Nazi Germany before the Holocaust and then ignored their plight during the Holocaust. What a total piece of shit! He was obviously no better than Hitler.
Wile E. Quixote
@Amanda in the South Bay:
The Clinton legacy wasn’t awesome but it was pretty good. Al Gore failed not because of Clinton but because he was such a shitty campaigner and he made the mistake of putting fucking Joe Lieberman on the ticket. If Gore had taken just one of the states that Clinton had taken in 1996 he would have won the election, Florida be damned and it’s not as if he fought that hard in Florida either or did much to bitch about Bush v. Gore afterwards. Gore sucked as a campaigner and Gore lost. Don’t blame that on Bill Clinton or on Ralph Nader.
Zuzu's Petals
@Wile E. Quixote:
I don’t blame it on Ralph Nader, but I do blame Florida Nader voters.
eemom
@Wile E. Quixote:
um….what’s your point there WEQ? I mean obviously “no better than Hitler” is ridiculous, but those things you mention are not negligible.
Cat Lady
@burnspbesq:
Because they were looting their news division to support their info/entertainment stars. While Jennings was being paid his king’s ransom, ABC was gutting their bureaus and firing 300-400 reporters and photojournalists. Was it Jennings fault they wanted to throw money at him? Of course not. But he was their useful idiot.
Wile E. Quixote
@eemom:
The things I mention are always forgotten by the left who idolize FDR. On the whole I think FDR was a pretty good president. Yes, he did bad things, the internment of the Japanese Americans, caving into anti-semites on Jewish immigration, appointing Breckinridge Long and thinking he could manipulate Joseph Stalin when in reality Stalin was manipulating him. So you have people who will condemn Bill Clinton for DADT and DoMA, and both of those things pissed me off, and say that his presidency was a failure because of it but who idolize FDR, who did much worse things than DoMA or DADT or the V-Chip. And don’t even get me started on the morons who condemn Clinton as a DINO but idolize JFK.
eemom
@Wile E. Quixote:
ok, that makes sense. Fair ’nuff.
btw, thanks for your righteous rant at “eric” yesterday. You clearly know your shit about e-discovery.
Wile E. Quixote
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Well that’s more convenient than thinking. Personally I blame the voters in Florida who voted for the Natural Law party. If they had voted for Gore instead of John Hagelin then Gore would have taken the state, and don’t even get me started on the Socialist Wankers. Those fuckers tipped the state to Bush. If they had voted for Gore instead of wasting their votes on a useless third party Gore would have won the election by 600 votes. Bastards, each and every one of them. Don’t they know that Al Gore owned their votes?
Wile E. Quixote
@eemom:
Yeah, it was interesting stuff to learn about. The company I worked for had been sued in a patent dispute so for e-discovery purposes we had to make a complete set of backups of all of the corporate servers and store those until the lawsuit was resolved. This was in 2006. The suit was resolved in 2009 and I finally got cleared to shut the old backup system down, destroy the tapes and get rid of the equipment, which made me happy because it was consuming rack space. I got the go ahead to shut the system down on Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning I logged in and discovered that all of the disks that stored the backup catalog data had failed that morning. I told my boss about it and we laughed because we were both aware that if it had happened a week before it would have been a serious brown trouser moment.
mclaren
People still hammer on Bill Cinton. Not clear why. When he left office this country had a sizable surplus. Name the last time that happened. He made some efforts to reduce our useless corrupt military-industrial complex. He tried to push through health care reform and got smacked down hard for it by the Repubs. He worked hard for reform in lots of areas, from DADT to government transparency. When Clinton inherited that Somalia quagmire from Bush 41, he wisely got the hell out (unlike Obama in Iraq and Somalia. Mark my words, American forces will not have drawn down signficantly in either Iraq or Afghanistan by the end of Obama’s 2nd term in 2016. Bill Clinton would never have made a mistake that stupid.) Then there’s the entire corruption-in-government thing. As in, there wasn’t any.
Ronald Reagan had more than 200 people indicted or resigned to avoid indictment. He ran the most corrupt administration in American history…until the drunk-driving C student, that is. Reagan’s Attorney General Ed Meese got indicted, convicted, and thrown in prison. Anyone remember that? By the end of Reagan’s criminal spree, it got so bad they were putting people up for nomination with the exclamation, “Sure he’s qualified — our nominee hasn’t been indicted yet!” Bill Clinton ran a whistle-clean administration. Zero corruption. None. Not one person indicted. Starr investigated Whitewater for years and found nothing. Incidentally, Barack Obama has also run one of the cleanest administrations in American history…just like Jimmy Carter. No bribes, no kickbacks, no thieving, no scams, no ripoffs, no people taking bags of cash in the West Wing like Spiro Agnew or getting rich from kickbacks to their former corporate buddies, like Dick Cheney.
Then we have that little issue of Bill Clinton ending the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo without a single American casualty. Zero. None. Not one American soldier killed. Then Clinton did something even better — he left. He didn’t stay in Kosovo with U.S. troops for another 10 years. Compare with Obama. Clinton used the U.S. military properly — namely, by not using it. Run by incompetent cowards and staffed by rapists and gang members, the American military is so incompetent and so top-heavy with ovepriced weapons that don’t work, the only way the American military really works well is if you don’t use it. When people start shooting at us, get the hell out of whatever foreign country we blundered into. That works. And Bill Clinton was smart enough to figure it out, unlike Barack.
The William Jefferson Clinton Foundation happens to be one of the best-run humanitarian foundations in America. It runs like a Swiss watch. Most of the money it collects goes to the causes it supports like eradicating HIV in third world countries and fighting global warming and funding sustainable energy development, not to administration fees. People have underestimated Clinton’s excellence as an ex-President too.
To some extent Bill Clinton lucked out. He happened to become president during one of the biggest tech booms in the last 40 years, and he left just before the bottom fell out of the dot-com bubble. So Clinton got a big economic boost from the internet bubble. Still, let’s face facts: if a Republican had sat in the Oval Office during the internet boom, all that money would’ve been pissed away on tax cuts for the rich.
About the worst you can say of Bill Clinton is that his director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, was a shitheel and an incompetent who should’ve been indicted as accessory to murder, gross incompetence, and stupidity.
Clinton blew it with NAFTA. That hurt working people bad. Look at at the statistics: Clinton and company promised a million new American jobs from NAFTA and instead they lost 750,000 jobs. But you can’t blame Clinton for globalization, because it was driven by low oil prices and the growth of the internet. Offshoring was happening with or without NAFTA. Yes, NAFTA was a disaster for American jobs and for Mexican workers…but without a treaty the same trends were running inexorably forward regardless.
Clinton has a lot more to answer for in signing Gramm-Leach-Bliley than Glass-Steagall. But both were bad. Still, Clinton merely signed both bills — they were sent up by a fanatical far-right Republican congress run by that wacko Newt Gingrich. Clinton should’ve vetoed both bills. But if that’s the worst you can come up with to criticize him…well, that’s a pretty damn good track record, isn’t it?
Elie
@mclaren:
Agree
That said, I wish that in some respects his daughter, who clearly and understandably just wanted to have her wedding her way, had a little more of an eye to this… but I don’t hold it against her and celebrate her beauty and the wedding event…
We are in such a hard hard place. So little wiggle room anymore and time IS running out… The facade of the American century has melted off, revealing the fragility of our character right now. Weren’t we supposed to be made of sterner stuff? Didnt we believe in taking care of our own and in justice, even when it hurt?
We are creepy, whinny, scared majorities of haves (whether by strictly financial, educationally or class metrics). We are so lost, that one just wants to take a “time out”, send us all to our corners to think. To think… something that has become a luxury that we must take time to afford, somehow..
Naw, I loved looking at Chelsea’s beautiful day and gown and how happy she looks, how important on a very intimate, personal way, this was for her parents. I begrudge them not one whit of this.
But please Lord if possible, can we seek our souls again, can we seek truth beyond the self serving rationales that we put out there to justify our greed and selfishness. Can we again be born to the nobility of something greater — again?
Katie5
@Brien Jackson: I saw Clinton speak at a climate change meeting. I was amazed at his grasp of the subject and his ability to field questions as well as link them to current events in the city in which he was speaking. I attend several of these events where speakers command similar fees as Clinton. Clinton’s was the best I’ve ever seen. One can argue with the content of his talks but, as an invited speaker, he definitely warrants the fees. I know he does a lot of these speaking engagements and the fees can add up.
Paris
The Clinton’s can spend whatever they want on Chelsea’s wedding. Clinton was not a great president and history will bear that out. Is there any major tragedy today that he doesn’t have to trot out and apologize for? (financial meltdown, Haiti, NAFTA leading to increased immigration from Mexico). He definitely was not as bad as any Republican but the third way dems were corporatist whores and we’re all the worse for it.
Honus
@New Yorker: I graduated with honors from the University of Virginia in 1977. There were no job offers. I went to work as a laborer on a construction site for 4.50/hr. Gasoline was 1.75/gal (it was the first big oil shock from the Iranian embargo); the home mortgage interest rate was 18%. It was the coldest winter in the mid-atlantic since Valley Forge. I couldn’t afford a 200 gallon tank of heating oil (minimum for them come and fill; heating oil was also like 1.50 /gal) so I’d buy a 5 gallon can of diesel fuel and pour it in the tank which would run the furnace through the night. It was pretty much like that for the next 5 years. I’m 55 and a lawyer now but I still can’t relax unless I have a couple of cords of firewood cut and stacked by Halloween.
I’m not complaining, just giving a little perspective.
Honus
Quick- name the last president prior to Clinton that came from a single-parent working-class background?
General Stuck
@Honus: Nixon?
New Yorker
@eemom:
I’m quite happy with my Baruch education. The full-time honors MBA program had a lot of very smart people (smarter than a cross-section of Cornell undergrads, IMHO).
@Honus:
Oh, I realize that things could be a lot worse. I have no mortgage, no kids, only a small amount of debt from loans from business school, and some financial support from my father that makes a big difference. I’m not in dire straits by any means.
There’s just the frustration factor stemming from the fact that I’m 30 years old and I still haven’t been able to get my professional life on track.
Zuzu's Petals
@Wile E. Quixote:
Not bastards, just short-sighted and stupid. In my opinion, anyway.
Zuzu's Petals
@Honus:
Ford?
db
DougJ,
While I normally yell, “Amen!” to most things you write, I have to remain seated on this one.
I agree with the general point of your post (i.e., politicians becoming fat cats after leaving office), you (or others, for that matter) never bring up how much the Mevinsky’s might be throwing in the pot. Is it half? Is it all?
Rather than put it all on the Clintons, how about let’s recognize we’re talking about two families of politicos here and that one of those families has been really well-connected to Wall Street firms.
chaseyourtail
I think the Clintons think of themselves as royalty (in the literal sense). That photo of Bill walking Chelsea down the aisle sealed it for me.
Elie
@chaseyourtail:
That photo —
was it his real feeling, the quivering jaw of loving his daughter? Of holding her arm through his and having his fingers clasped over hers —
Or false sentimentality from a former and still powerful leader of the world…
or both
liberal
@mclaren:
While his fiscal policy was a lot saner than Bush’s, that surplus was partly the byproduct of the tech bubble.
liberal
@Wile E. Quixote:
How did Stalin “manipulate” FDR?
FDR’s main goal, AFAICT, was winning the war. Given that the vast majority of German casualties were inflicted by the Soviets, not the Western allies, which saved a lot of American blood, I don’t see what the manipulation was.
Resident Firebagger
@Jade Jordan:
Add the 1996 Telecommunications Act to this list of atrocities. At its core, the Telecommunications Act handed corporations our public airwaves and network bandwidth. Back then the legislation was positioned as Al Gore’s baby.
The amount of Clinton love on the left blogosphere is sickening, but not surprising. Not the way you folks cheer on the
second ClintonObama administration.All that said, I’m thinking that the $3 million figure is probably wedding expenses plus Secret Service expenses for protecting our betters.
As for Paul Craig Roberts, I liken him a bit to Ron Paul. Not that they share the same views — but each occasionally makes a good point.
chaseyourtail
@Elie: Actually, it was the opulent look of it all. It reminded me of Diana walking down the aisle at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Chelsea did look beautiful though.
Elie
@chaseyourtail:
It WAS opulent — the only thing that saved it for me was Bill’s face — and his hands over hers…
Lihtox
Famous people can make money simply by being famous, because ordinary people like to interact with famous people and are willing to spend money to do so. And unlike starlets, former Presidents are actually interesting, knowing a lot about the backstage workings of our government– even if they aren’t willing to talk about much of it, people will pay money to hang around them just in case they let something slip.
So the fact that former Presidents are wealthy is rather obvious. There is undoubtedly political hanky-panky involved as well, but politics aren’t necessary to explain the income.
chaseyourtail
@Elie: I hear ya…that was touching. Chelsea is truly their pride and joy.
Zuzu's Petals
@chaseyourtail:
Did you know that Clinton just presided over the wedding of Rep. Anthony Weiner (Jewish) and Hillary aide Huma Abedin (Muslim)?
Wow. Just wow.
chaseyourtail
@Zuzu’s Petals: Yes, lots of nuptials going on this month. Weiner does seem to be extremely pro-Israel though. I imagine he and Huma will have many spirited dinner conversations on the subject of Israel and the Palestinians.
bob h
let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.
Given the torture he had to endure during impeachment, I hope the figure is true.