Speaking of John Edwards

When I read this I didn't think it was really worthy of making news. After all, many retired politicians/Presidents/Generals and others charge fees to deliver speeches. Some of these people make a living doing so.

John Edwards has an example to teach University of California at Davis students how to avoid poverty — charge $55,000 for a speech.

That's how much the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate negotiated for his fee to speak to 1,787 people at the taxpayer-funded school in January 2006, according to financial disclosures.

According to Joe Martin, the public relations officer for UC Davis' Mondavi Center, the fee for a speech entitled, "Poverty, the Great Moral issue Facing America," was worth it to school officials.

Martin told The San Francisco Chronicle that the 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."

John Edwards isn't retired. He's an active candidate for President of the USA. Edwards is capitalizing on the perceived poverty (which I question) in America and he's making good money doing so. He is a hypocrite, as are all the paid speakers of all political parties who use the plight of "poor" or "disadvantaged" as topic for their talks. I can't think of too many people who don't align themselves with the Party of the People, Democrats, who DO poor-people pep talks though. And I can't think of too many graduating college age kids who can see the hypocrisy in all this.