"Whose side are you on?"

[sharedvalues]

"$400,000 for One Speech? For Ex-Presidents, It Is Now the Norm"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/opinion/400000-for-one-speech-for-ex-presidents-it-is-now-the-norm.html

This article captures my feelings on Obama's paid speeches.

Yes, it's his right to accept market rate.

But large fees from interest groups are not the standard Harry Truman lived up to, and accepting the fee reflects how the Democratic party has changed. This is not the standard Americans should hold their politicians to, especially progressive Americans.

Historically, the Democratic Party was the vehicle that pushed back against such trends and defended the interests of ordinary Americans. Under Franklin Roosevelt, Mr. Truman and later Lyndon Johnson, it did a creditable job of playing that role. But starting in the late 1970s, at just the moment when Gerald Ford broke with previous norms about appropriate behavior for a former president, the political tide began to shift in the direction of tax cuts, deregulation and privatization, a trend that accelerated decisively under Mr. Reagan. After years of generally ineffective resistance to these trends, a Democratic Party whose fortunes were decreasingly tied to labor and increasingly linked to highly educated professionals came to embrace, under both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama, a set of Republican economic policies on deregulation and corporate-friendly global trade deals. The result has been a disastrous decline in the fortunes of the Democratic Party, with just 28 percent of Americans in a recent poll saying that the party is “in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States.”

Mr. Obama’s decision to accept $400,000 from a Wall Street firm for one speech is not an aberration but a reflection of a greater tolerance of rampant inequality. Already, conservative forces untroubled by the growth of inequality are mocking Mr. Obama’s decision, with Fox Business gleefully reporting, “Obama’s $400,000 Cantor Speech Makes Him Wall Street’s Newest Fat Cat.” For Mr. Obama and the Democrats, the time has come to answer a question dear to the labor movement: Which side are you on?

[BainsBane]

1. Yes, the good old days of FDR

Who never had to earn a living because he was born into enormous wealth. Back when no laws restricted campaign finance so that a half of FDR's campaign financing came from Wall Street. Back to the days that Trump has revived, when dollar men, titans of industry, dominated cabinets but took only $1 salary because they were already so rich.

The Democratic party once stood for sommething. Once the party of slavery, for much of the 19th and 20th century it enforced Jim Crow, ensuring that "ordinary" white men prospered by relegating others to second-class citizenship and desperate poverty. Those were the days, when a man like Obama, born black and low-income, knew to stay in his place, to leave wealth and power to the right sort of people.

Back to the days of back-alley abortions, when married women couldn't own property, a man could rape his wife without fear of arrest, and government ensured that no man faced the injustice of competing with women. Men didn't need education or skills; they knew that being born white and middle-class guaranteed them comfort, while the majority were shut out completely.

Yes, the Democratic Party once stood for "ordinary" white men, meaning middle- to upper-middle class, never the working-class and never the poor. Back to the days of the Truman era, when the Democratic congress used the power of the federal government to break the back of unions through Taft-Hartley. Those were the good old days.

[JHan]

2. Historical context is a hell of a thing :)

[BainsBane]

3. A sociologist

Who wrote a book on the "Hidden History" of Ivy League admissions thinks he can school us on the history of the Democratic Party? I don't think so. His history sucks.

[JHan]

4. we just need to get things back to the way they were in the 50's yo

[GulfCoast66]

6. How dare you

Shit all over Sharedvalues (false) narrative

[stonecutter357]

5. can you make $400,000.00 to give a speech ? If not why not......

the alt left absolutely hate people with money.

[Vinca]

7. I'm a Democrat and if someone offered me $400,000 to give a speech I'd probably agree even

if it meant doing it naked while tap dancing. Good for Obama. I hope this is only the first of many instances he digs deep into the pockets of banksters.