The contrariness of Edwards

[Jillian]

Edwards charges $55,000 to speak to UC Davis students about poverty

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who recently proposed an educational policy that urged "every financial barrier" be removed for American kids who want to go to college, has been going to college himself -- as a high paid speaker, his financial records show.

The candidate charged a whopping $55,000 to speak at to a crowd of 1,787 the taxpayer-funded University of California at Davis on Jan. 9, 2006 last year, Joe Martin, the public relations officer for the campus' Mondavi Center confirmed Monday.


That amount -- which comes to about $31 a person in the audience -- included Edwards' travel and airfare, and was the highest speaking fee in the nine appearances he made before colleges and universities last year, according to his financial records.

That could cause both parents and students to note some irony here: UC Davis -- like the rest of the public University of California system -- will get hit this year by a 7 percent tuition increase that likely hits many of the kids his speeches are aimed at helping.

We wondered if this is Edwards' going speaking rate, and how come he didn't offer to do it gratis for a college, particularly a public institution.




In 2006, records show Edwards made more than $285,000 speaking to nine colleges and universities, charging between $16,000 and Davis' $55,000 for his talks. They ranged from the $12,000 he got on Jan. 10, 2006 from Gonzaga University Law School in Spokane, Wash., to the $40,000 he banked from the University of Texas Pan American Foundation on May 22, 2006. Other schools that have paid Edwards to speak before he was a declared presidential candidate: Hunter College in New York ($35,000), Mount Union College in Ohio ($16,00) and Vanderbilt University in Nashville ($40,000).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=16809

[surfermaw]

1. More power to him, he pulled himself by the bootstraps

what about Bush, Clinton, Reagan and the list goes on.

[SoFlaJet]

2. We can expect

a whole lot more of these kinds of threads from the Clinton camp after Edwards wins in Iowa next week-watch...

[sallyseven]

4. Clinton Camp/ Prove it.

[SoFlaJet]

6. Why should I have to?

every time an anti-Clinton response or thread is posted here it is automatically assumed it's from an Obama supporter-with NO PROOF...grow up

[saracat]

3. But the millions of dollars Clinton charges doesn't bother you?

But then he can squirrel his money away in the Caymans while not paying the taxes and not returing the tax break he claims not to need.Now we know why he doesn't need it. He doesn't give the money back though! These are the usual fees a Speakers bureau charges. You moght check into what he does with the money, like his book profits went to charity!

[bobbolink]

24. BINGO!!! ALL these "charges" against Edwards leave out the fact that ALL the candidates

receive and spend the same money. (EXcept the corporate support, of course.....)

First the ignore you.

Then they laugh at you.

Then they fight you.

Then you win.


I would say we're entering the fight stage.

:hi: :grouphug: :hi:

[elizm]

5. He was campaigning even then...and getting paid for it. nt

[Donnachaidh]

8. and Clinton wasn't?

:rofl:

[elizm]

17. Hey, I agree with you on Clinton. No argument from me there. I'm no fan of Hillary. nt

[OHdem10]

7. This is GOP talking points: Tells one a lot about whoever

is behind these old posts. This information has been out there
forever.

[jenmito]

9. Why, whenever "inconvenient facts" about a candidate are posted the poster is accused of using GOP

talking points??? The facts are the facts. Not all of us support Edwards. There's nothing wrong with pointing out what we feel is wrong with him or any OTHER candidate.

[bobbolink]

25. Sometimes the truth hurts.

[Beaverhausen]

10. Colleges have big budgets for speakers

If I was on a faster computer I could search for an article regarding the fact that Edwards was paid on the par or less than most speakers at this school.

Also, I believe Edwards donates money raised from these speeches to the poverty action center he started in North Carolina.

[supernova]

12. That was my next question

was this fee, even though JE wasn't a candidate at the time, unusual for what the school paid speakers.

It appears that JE's fee was roughly the same as other speakers the school invited.

[Beaverhausen]

13. Info about the Mondavi Center- where the speech was held

The Mondavi Center has been paying for speakers and performers since 2002. They are not raising funds for poverty.

According to its web site the mission is: "Mondavi Center explores the full range of the performing arts, from the traditional to the innovative, and from diverse cultures and disciplines through presentation, education, public service, and research.

As part of the UC Davis mission as a land grant university, Mondavi Center provides outstanding cultural programming, support for the University's academic departments, and a professional laboratory to train students in the performing arts.

Mondavi Center is committed to maintaining state-of-the art, world-class performance facilities and providing the highest quality experience for both artists and audiences.

Our mandate is to maintain a balance between our regional responsibility, fiscal responsibility, artistic integrity, and the educational mission of the University of California." Perhaps looking at the web site would give people a better idea of what it's about: http://www.mondaviarts.org/

[supernova]

11. Dishonest OP

Edwards wasn't a candidate at the time of the speech. From the article:

He said UC Davis' Mondavi Center paid Edwards because at the time "he wasn't a (presidential) candidate and from our point of view, he was a speaker of interest that people in the community were clearly interested in ... we feel it's our mission to present those speakers."

[1corona4u]

14. You didn't read the article, did you....

the OP simply posted it, she did not write it. Therefore, the OP is not dishonest.

[supernova]

15. You didn't read the OP either

She's trying to imply that JE, as a candidate, is taking huge speaker's fees by using an article about a speech he gave as a non candidate to support that notion.

If she were totally honest about it, she would have included the excerpt I so easily found. But she didn't.

[Jillian]

16. What about this?

John Edwards is right. There are two Americas: one for the rich and another for everyone else. He lives in the former and campaigns in the latter, and sometimes he forgets where he is.


Edwards also did something else that undercuts his populist message: About the same time he was opening his poverty think tank Edwards became a paid adviser to a New York-based hedge fund, Fortress Investment Group.

As The Washington Post reported last week, it was “an unusual choice of employment for Edwards, who for years has decried offshore tax shelters as part of his broader campaign to reduce inequality.”

While Fortress was incorporated in Delaware, the Post said, “its hedge funds were incorporated in the Cayman Islands, enabling its partners and foreign investors to defer or avoid paying U.S. taxes.”

By the time Edwards left the hedge fund last year, the Post reported, he had received more than $167,000 in donations from Fortress employees and executives for his 2008 presidential campaign. In his speeches, Edwards often decries the “two different economies in this country: one for wealthy insiders and then one for everybody else.”

Again, what was Edwards thinking? He didn’t need the money, and surely he must have known how it would look for a populist presidential candidate to be involved with hedge funds, a controversial segment of the investment market that attracts wealthy insiders looking for outsized returns and tax havens.

A campaign spokeswoman told the Post that Edwards still believes offshore tax shelters are wrong and that as president he would end them.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070504/OPINION04/205040380/-1/opinion

[cali]

20. I have long found this aspect of Edwards both troubling and

hypocritical. And if he's the nominee, the repukes will have a field day with it, while Edwards is impotent to fight back.

[last1standing]

18. Hit and run flamebait.

When this poster shows no respect for Democratic candidates or DU, how can anyone respect the poster?

[Jillian]

19. Just because I question the sincerity of Edwards does not mean I don't

respect Obama or Biden or Kucinich or Dodd or even Gravel.

[PurityOfEssence]

21. Just goes to show: if you don't make an issue out of poverty, you can fleece as you please.

Thou shalt not talk about poverty; it's poisonous.

The Reagan years showed us all too well how easy it is to strike fear into the working poor and middle class by talking about poverty; it's the same thing they did with affirmative action: scare them into thinking it's going to directly hurt them to help the useless layabouts.

Hillary's haircuts, nice lifestyle, houses and other habits of wealth aren't an issue since she doesn't make a big deal about the poor.

Sadly, this is simply human nature. Had Edwards focused more on foreign policy and the environment, he wouldn't be taken to task so much for this.

Similarly, if Kucinich was a family-values, religiously-alligned nationalist, he'd be taken to account for being a twice-divorced Catholic who's now married to a much-younger foreigner. He's not taken to task for this because none of this runs contrary to his stated goals. (He SHOULDN'T be, either; these are personal issues and I don't see that any of this reflects badly on him. This isn't meant as a swipe at him, just an example; I like the guy.)

This is precisely why Obama takes so much heat (unfortunately only here) for the McClurkin affair: it flies in the face of his primary rallying point of being inclusive.

So it's understandable that Edwards gets snarky hits for this, and he should be very careful about things like this since it's obvious that the "haves" want to hang him from the first available yardarm and their manic preoccupation is money.

[Armstead]

22. I don;t condone it -- But I will defend it

Sure John Edwards has some inconsistencies and even hypocricies.

But is the point that only those who are poor can address issues of poverty and class?

Look at Ted Kennedy. He lives a luxurious life, but he is also the most ardent advocate for the porr and middle class in the Senate -- and has been for decades.

I guess the Clinton's lavish lifestyle, big book fees, Bill's big speakers fees are okay.

[Jim Sagle]

23. That's "our" Bill!

[frazzled]

26. You guys are totally missing the point

(1) Certainly the wealthy can address issues of poverty and classs. The question is whether they should be paid to do so.
(2) Hillary Clinton is not at issue here: she was not giving paid lectures on anything, to my knowledge.

Look, my husband has been paying speaker's fees to people for many decades (not in the area of politics, but rather in the arts). When an invited guest is very wealthy or famous, however, he does not even offer a fee, only transportation expenses, fine accommodations, and the best dinners he can get someone to host, privately or publicly. He has never had such a person ask for a fee.

Now, ex-politicians do go on the speaking circuit, and they do command large fees .. . that is S.O.P. And Edwards was legally and technically able to accept such fees because he was not officially at that time a candidate. He declared Dec. 28, 2006 ... but we knew all year he was going to run. So technically, the fee was okay ... morally and ethically, it was highly questionable. A way to raise funds for a campaign, one supposes ... unless he can tell us he donated the money from the engagement to a poverty-related nonprofit.

John Edwards is not just a wealthy man. He is a mega-wealthy man. He can turn down fees. Or he can publically donate those fees. Neither of those things do we know to be the fact. It's unseemly, at best.