Okay here’s a source I was able to open:
After actually being able to read the allegation I would be 100% behind Congress opening an investigation into this!!!
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Here’s another good article on this, which give some historical contest to this corruption:
From the link:
The “commercialized former presidency,” as the writer Thomas DeFrank called it, began in the late 1970s, at the dawn of the neoliberal age, when Gerald Ford took positions on corporate boards and hit the paid speaker circuit following his brief stint as an unelected President of the United States.
“[E]very former president should go visit his grave in Grand Rapids and thank him for ensuring that they will be instant zillionaires,” said DeFrank, who wrote a biography of Ford.
And most former presidents followed suit. Before his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease, Ronald Reagan accepted multimillion-dollar speaking engagements from Japanese corporations. Corporations paid top dollar to George H.W. Bush for speeches and he took a paid honorary position at a Canadian mining company.
Bill Clinton took the commercialized post-presidency even further by making more than $100 million from paid speeches since 2001. And while George W. Bush, hampered by his deep unpopularity, did not pull in the same kind of money as Clinton, he took in $15 million in speaking fees in his first three years out of office.
After leaving office in 2017, Barack Obama hit the speaking circuit and charged $400,000 per speech. He and his wife, Michelle Obama, also created a media production company and signed a multi-year deal with Netflix to produce scripted and unscripted programming for an undisclosed amount.
“Let’s not make it one-sided” he says…to the poster who stopped this thread from being one-sided.
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Career politicians suck. All of them.
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Excellent display of conservative hypocrisy. This is an issue with both sides of the aisle
I started a thread on this a while back. This is one of those issues where both-siderism bears out:
My thesis is this: the public overwhelmingly supports legislation to stop this, both R and D; but because there’s such broad agreement, it won’t happen. There’s no percentage in it; everything has to be zero-sum to create effective theater, raise money, and placate the base.
It’s funny: it’s one of the things (along with a real infrastructure bill) that Trump could have pushed for that was bipartisan, pragmatic, and supportable. He could have jammed up the Democrats. But bipartisan agreement now is almost entirely toxic. So in a roundabout way, we’re getting the government we deserve.
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I agree. Please start a thread and show everyone how it should be done.
That seems contradictory.
I agree this is a problem that transcends the political divide.
Drain the swamp should apply to all politicians but alas it came to mean to get rid of everyone who did not toe the party line.
But lets not pretend its a new issue. Its a human issue and all governments around the world suffers from it but that does not mean wr should not stop it.
This issue is one of the reasons I support term limits.
I have gone back and forth on term limits but now firmly in the camp for them. I would like to see the Presidents term changed to a single 6 year term. This way they can focus on the job without the distractions of re-election at the end of four years.
Six years is long enough for a President to work the agenda they were elected to office for. It will make them (in theory) more effective.
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LOL, and I must subscribe to the NYT to read your story. And you people complain about the $20 to see how corrupt our election was.
Is it your opinion that the Trump family did not undergo a 4-5 year long rectal exam during the time kushner’s father in law was president?
If there was anything other than smoke here I’m sure the genius level thinkers on the left would have found it.
Or is this simply a case of “Biden and family are a bunch of lying dirtbags and I voted for him so I must deflect to trump”?
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There are other sources.
Nope… I am saying that the Trump supporters don’t care about the same exact thing that they all of a sudden care about with Biden.
Seems like a bad idea to give the most powerful position no reason to care about getting re-elected.
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This was all looked into…did you post a NY Times link. They don’t exactly have a stellar history of accuracy or honesty re: the Trump administration.
Now. You defended hiding hunter’s laptop from the voters in October of 2020…you and your fellow smartest guy in the room leftists were convinced it was all Rudy Rudy Rudy Russia Russia Russia…
Give us all a damn break. This is so transparent…I would expect better from the smartest guy on the board. Your boy Biden and his family are being exposed as the poster children for corruption that they truly are. How’d Joe get so rich on 147k a year?How’d Hunter get so rich without any marketable skills other than making really bad porn videos? How much did 10% held by H for the big guy add up to? How much influence do the Chinese and other foreign governments hunter was in bed with now hold over the Biden family? Since Hunter is trash how much potentially blackmailable material is being held in China? Since it’s obvious Joe lied about knowing nothing about hunters overseas business dealings what else has he lied about.
I guess if I had championed and voted for Biden I’d want to deflect to Trump too.
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That is definitely a fair point but how much time and money is wasted by presidents running for re-election.
Me too…I’ve settled on yes we need to term limit these people. It would an interesting thread.
I’m good with president’s serving two terms…
The House and a senate definitely need to be term limited. This idea of the congressman who dies in office after 40 years isn’t doing us any good at all.
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These need to be temporary positions! Do we really want to see and hear people like AOC or MTG, year after year after year?
