TERRY MOSHER
What is wrong with our society that the gap between the wealthy few and the many poor get wider and wider each day? I was reading something the other day that in due time if this trend continues our society will implode from within, leading to a revolution.
I believe that.
Do you realize former President Bill Clinton has earned an estimated $106 million in speaking fees from 2001 to 2013. He earned $17 million in 73 speeches in 2012 and his 2004 book “My Life” earned him a $15 million advance. He has a net worth of $80 million.
Hillary, by contrast is worth just a measly $21.5 million (Barack Obama has a net worth of $12.2).
Former presidential contender Mitt Romney is estimated to have a net worth of $250 million, but many financial experts believe that is way too low. They think he is worth at least $1 billion with most of that probably hidden in overseas accounts.
I think it’s about time that a poor soul rises up with the help of true grass roots and becomes President. I don’t believe that can happen, but we do need somebody who really can close that gap between the rich and poor before it’s too late. Maybe it just can’t happen in this country anymore like it used to when James Garfield became perhaps the poorest man to rise to the presidency.
Garfield was assassinated 100 days into his presidency so we will never know what he would have done.
Harry Truman was the poorest modern President. He was so poor that he and his wife Bess were the first to receive Medicare after Lyndon Johnson signed it into law.
Maybe I’m all wrong. Maybe it doesn’t matter if one is poor or wealthy because a President can only do so much to overcome the wealthy racket that is Washington, D.C. Read Mark Leibovich’s book “Our Town” to get an understanding of what I’m saying.
We are all influenced by things that swirl around us and I’m not sure any well-intended new President can escape the things that go on in “Our Town.” I think I’m honest and have a deep empathy for the bottom half in our society and yet I can remember being influenced greatly by the things that went on in the two years I went on the Pac-8 Skywriters football tour in the mid-1970s.
Traveling by charter plane, having everything taken care of from baggage to hotel room to food and drink for nine straight days on each tour from Seattle to Pullman, Corvallis, Eugene, San Francisco and Los Angeles can have that effect on you. At least it did me, and the second year I went I was determined not to be swayed by the overwhelming sense of self you get.
But I was swayed once again even though I had the best intentions.
I’ve told this story many times before, but when I finally got home I was greeted warmly by my family. Then my wife said I had to take out the garbage. For maybe two seconds I thought – but did not say – “Who me?”
Then and only then did my feet finally touch the ground, and I knew I was no longer in fantasy land but back in reality of being the garbage-taker-outer.
I felt good years later when I had the chance to talk to some retired baseball stars who confided in me that they had a hard time adapting to having to carry their own luggage and worry about their own accommodations as they traveled in their new roles as broadcasters.
They were shocked as they fell from being these over-pampered baseball stars to regular guys sitting in a broadcast booth. They had gotten so used to being cared for they forgot how to do it for themselves.
So I felt better after talking to them.
That means the reality of some person rising from poor beginnings and rising to the top without changing his or her perception and becoming engrained in “Our Town” is probably impossible.
Bill Clinton rose from humble beginnings in Hope, Arkansas to get to the top. But like others, he is as much a part of “Our Town” as others who have had similar beginnings.
Obama came from a poor background, and now he’s worth millions and likely will make a lot more once he leaves office and drops into work as valued speaker on the gold train of talk.
I don’t think he has done much to raise the earning level of the poor. Of course, he has run into obstruction from Congress on just about anything he has offered.
So maybe we are doomed to, at some point, have a revolution in this country. I’ll probably be gone by then so I’ll miss the chance to help lead the charge. I hope I’m wrong, of course.
I would really like Elizabeth Warren to run for President because I think she is one who can not be influenced by “Our Town.” But she is afraid of being crushed by the Clinton Machine.
So we will have to wait.
Until then, God Bless.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.