Clintons Amazing Speakers

Hillary Clinton released her tax returns to try and show how big a chunk of her income she pays in taxes because she’s a decent American. More shocking than her lack of rich person tax shelters was the revelation that in the past three years she’s taken in $22 million in private speaking fees, while Bill’s pulled in another $16 million. It’s hard to put that in context, but for the sake of analogy, assume you just found out the barista with the nose ring at your local Starbuck’s is taking home $500,000 a year. She must be really fucking good at making coffee.

Ex-Presidents and famous people often sign up for the speaking tour at some sweet fee per speech. Sometimes the cash is donated to a personal charity or undertaken pro bono to raise money for a social cause. Sometimes it’s kept for personal gain. And sometimes it’s ten times what anybody else in the business makes in a stellar year. You can’t even audit that shit. They’re paying the full boat in simple income taxes. After Capone, the mob learned to make sure their 1040’s were all super kosher. Don’t give Johnny Law an easy way to hang you.

Hillary Clinton is a shrill picayune who occasionally collapses in mind if not body. Bill Clinton looks ninety and has long ago stopped remembering his favorite Presidential moments. Does he come out and take a seat on a stool with a cigar in his mouth and tell funny anecdotes like Cosby?

There’s nothing wrong with turning a buck in capitalism. It’s encouraged. You are supposed to do it without promising to give away shit other people not yourself paid for with their work. You can look at the Clintons two ways. One, shady schemers who will figuratively or literally put two in the back of the head of whatever gets in their way, and two, maybe you do want mobsters running shit. They take their cut, but they make the trash trucks come on time. All the good heroes are dead. We never really had great Presidents and your prom date wasn’t nearly as good looking as you’d like to remember.

_{Photo credit: Splash News}