Is America a great country or what?
Where else can you work as a “public servant” most of your life and cash in to the tune of tens of millions of dollars when you “retire”?
Michelle Obama, wife of former president Barack Obama, is in the midst of a book tour to sell her autobiography Becoming. It’s a sur- fire best seller and the book tour itself will net her millions. She also gets $225,000 a pop in speaking fees.
Combine that with the cash being raked in by her husband and a strong case can be made that the former first couple should be placed at the front of the line when the redistributionist policies they so fervently support become law.
Forbes estimated the couple made $20.5 million in salaries and book royalties between 2005 — when Obama became a federal senator and they first arrived in Washington — and 2016. They are now worth more than $135 million.
And that figure does not include the cash they are raking in for public speaking.
In October 2017, Michelle Obama was a keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women, a non-profit that promotes education and networking.
Obama did an on-stage interview with Hollywood producer and writer Shonda Rhimes in Philadelphia for an audience of 12,000.
The New York-based Harry Walker Agency Inc., which books both Obamas for speaking gigs, billed the Pennsylvania Conference for Women $225,000 in 2017, according to the non-profit’s most recent tax filings.
Barack Obama currently rakes in $400,000 per speech, and earned at least $1.2 million for three talks to Wall Street firms in 2017. The fees come on top of his $207,800 annual presidential pension, which he began receiving as soon as he left office.
The Obamas; net worth before he became president was estimated at $1.3 million — mostly from the sales of his autobiography and royalties. Remember, this guy was a “public interest” lawyer and a state senator before running for the US Senate in 2004.
And now? The power couple is now worth well north of $20 million with some estimates going as high as $40 million.
The champions of “cashing in” are, of course, the Clintons, whose net worth rose from about $500,000 prior to Bill taking office to a whopping estimated $240 million today.
It isn’t so much that these Democratic ex-presidents are making money hand over fist. This is America and more power to them. The problem is that they advocate policies that prevent the creation of wealth so that other Americans — not blessed with the opportunity to be president — can’t follow in their footsteps.
Yes, they are hypocrites. And they’re the worst kind of hypocrites. They are cynical hypocrites because they are fully aware of the disconnect between their own fabulous wealth and the wealth-killing policies they have promoted.
How can they sleep at night?
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