Monday, May 21, 2007

John Edwards Drops Poverty Knowledge, For Money

In the wake of John Edwards working at a hedge fund to learn about poverty, it's being reported that he took that knowledge and shared it with a group of UC Davis students, for which he charged $44,000. SFGate.com Politics Blog purports that it was $55,000 and was paid by the "tax-payer funded" University of California at Davis. As a proud graduate of a UC school, tax-payer money pays for a minority of UC budgets (I'm sure this fact is somewhere on wikipedia.org) so I say it was tuition that paid for his lecture. Parents, do you know what your hard-earned pesos are going towards? Now, the LA Times is reporting the $44,000 figure for a UC Davis appearance which is probably the correct number as the LA Times is the LA Times and the hippies at SFGate.com love to inflate numbers like this. Also, the LA Times article specifies that while John Edwards "learned about poverty" at Fortress Investment Group, he earned $480,000. The funny thing about all this is unlike the angry hippie chick at SFGate.com, I actually don't give a fuck if Edwards gets paid to talk about Thai massage at UC Davis, more power to him. My only point is that Edwards has gotta give up on this bullshit spin. You can't tell people that you worked at a hedge fund to learn about poverty without insulting their intelligence and making them think you're an asshole. Mr. Edwards, grow a pair. Tell people you're out to earn an honest buck just like the next guy and being more fortunate than others empowers you to help the needy more than others. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? Anyway, here's both articles:

Edwards, Giuliani report multimillion-dollar incomes for 2006
Edwards charges $55,000 to speak to UC Davis students about poverty

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