Remember Senator John Edwards (D-Prell)? Okay, probably not. He was the guy who lost the presidential election along with that other guy, you know…the one with the gray bouffant hairdo and obnoxious wife.
Anyway, before running on the Al Qaeda Proxy Candidate ticket, Senator Edwards ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He told voters that there are “Two Americas,” one with gold plated toilets, the other with no indoor plumbing, one that shops at Tiffany’s, the other that can’t afford to shop at Wal-Mart, etc. This clumsy quasi-Marxist theme didn’t play well, even with hard-core Democrats, who, if they believed in the death penalty, would limit its use to anyone making over $200,000 a year.
Nevertheless, without so much as a self-serving press release, John Edwards took a look at both Americas, and decided that the leather seats and martinis of Rich America looked better than the folding chairs and Pabst Blue Ribbon in Poor America. He’s joining a private investment group so he can “[develop] investment opportunities worldwide and strategic advice on global economic issues.”
Edwards was worth about $50 million when he ran for VP eleven months ago, so it’s not like he needs the money. The BusinessWeek article notes that other politicians have gone into the financial sector, but none of the examples they list had ever run on a haves vs. have-nots agenda before doing so.
Democrats say they’re for “social justice,” which is why far too many Catholics buy their rhetoric and vote for them. But that platitude translates into sordid things like racial set-asides and massive income transfers from working families to the often-undeserving elderly. And for all their talk about compassion for the “little guy,” when it comes to the littlest guys at all — babies in the womb — they have no compassion at all.
Bravo for John Edwards: he isn’t going to pretend to work for the wretched and the oppressed. He’s going to make buckets full of money and throw them on his pile. At least Jimmy Carter has done some demonstrably good things in his well-deserved retirement.
There are plenty of sleazy Republicans, too, but at least under their policies, we get to keep at least a little more of our money, and nobody ends up dead.
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I’m sorry, maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, but I firmly beleive all elderly people who aren’t rich deserve financial support from we working families. For goodness sake, they built the country you’re enjoying.
That sounded like rash ingratitude.
Excuse me, but if we are going to look at Edwards’ post-senate activities, then let’s look at all of them and then judge!
A) He has opened a Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity at the UNC, chapel Hill that is researching 21st century ways for alleviating poverty.
B) Second, he has initiated a non-profit organization called the Center for Promise and Opportunity through which he has launched a pilot program in North Carolina where 140 seniors at a high school in the poorest NC district will get to go to college for free in return for 10 hours of community service/work commitment.
C) He has launched an effort called Project Opportunity through which he has opened community service chapters at 10 colleges that will focus students to fight poverty related casues in their localities. For ex: predatory lending, etc….
So, please gimme a break… the guy is doing all he can do help out and do his share…. and what is wrong with being a consultant to an investment firm? How does that negate all his other work on poverty? Edwards has never said that we should take down all corporations, instead what he has done is favor gov’t programs that ask for corporate accountability and fairness. I don’t see how his move is inconsistent with that belief.
It all depends on where you draw the line, Cin. If a retiree has $600K in assets that generate $40K in income, should he be getting an additional $12K in subsidy on top of that? It’s not obviously just.
Cin, a family with only $20,000 in wages pays about $2,000 in Social Security taxes (including the “employer’s contribution,” which is an accounting fiction since that’s money the worker would have received.) Amplifying RC’s example, that money is going to tens of thousands of multi-millionaires who don’t need the money, because SS isn’t means-tested. I don’t have a problem with helping the truly needy, but middle-class welfare programs like SS need to be overhauled or scrapped.
Jackson is on Edwards’ payroll, I’m betting, so he probably won’t respond. Edwards apparently isn’t setting up any of these projects with his own money:
“Donations from individuals, companies and charitable foundations will pay the bill, said Edwards, who now runs a poverty center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He declined to say if he would spend any of his private fortune built during his career as a trial lawyer.”
It’s not exactly hypocritical to work for an investment firm after you spent a couple of years excoriating “the rich” for their heartlessness and theft, but it’s darn close. I don’t think the consulting itself is immoral — in fact, if anybody from an investment firm wants me to do consulting work at extortionate rates, my e-mail address follows this comment. But it’s hard to pose as a tribune of The Other America when you’re working for a bunch of Wall Street fatcats. (And I mean “fatcats” in the nicest possible way, because they are wonderful, caring, and gracious people.)
Speaking of FatCats – Steve’s old cat Mackie is up to an astounding 17 pounds, last I heard. He’s on a special diet so hopefully he’ll be getting back down to his fighting weight.
Remember Senator John Edwards (D-Prell)? … that other guy … with the gray bouffant hairdo and obnoxious wife.
What is it with the Hairdo Envy, Eric? Seen too many episodes of CHARLIE’S ANGELS lately?
There were a lot of hair jokes during his campaign. Laura Ingraham referred to him as Kerry’s “silky pony”, and Rush called him “the Breck Girl”.
Nah, I just think it’s envy … Eric has to have those ugly Jarhead-do’s and so can’t stand men who have $300 for touch-ups with Kristoff of Beverly Hills while holding up LAX airport. That’s my belief and I’m stickin’ with it.
My haircut costs $8 and I’m proud of it, what little of it there is.
And I believe that guy’s name was “Christophe.”
Cin – If you were to propose taking the Social Security from Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and another 98 of the richest hundred people in the US and using the savings to strengthen the system, the Democrats would howl against it while the Republicans would want to make the cutoff lower so that it was worth the Congress’ time. This is a real policy difference and has been long hashed out in US policy circles.
In my opinion, there is no obvious social justice benefit to a generalized, public old-age pension that has as bad a financial return as Social Security. Support the elderly poor, sure, we’re called to do that by Christ and it’s good public policy. We probably could afford to do so more generously if we had a targeted benefit than the current general system.
Social Security’s original age for being able to start getting benefits as the same as life expectancy at the time.
Means-test and index to life expectancy, that’s what I say.