Edwards and “promise and opportunity”

So with Hillary busy trying to shut up Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the “vast right conspiracy”, maybe John Edwards will slip under the radar with this tasty treat;

Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Edwards himself, tax filings show.

Yeah, because every ambulance-chasing girl-lawyer needs her own charity.

While Edwards said the organization’s purpose was “making the eradication of poverty the cause of this generation,” its federal filings say it financed “retreats and seminars” with foreign policy experts on Iraq and national security issues. Unlike the scholarship charity, donations to it were not tax deductible, and, significantly, it did not have to disclose its donors — as political action committees and other political fund-raising vehicles do — and there were no limits on the size of individual donations.

[…]

Because the organization is not required to disclose its donors — and the campaign declined to do so — it is not clear whether those who gave money to it did so understanding that they were supporting Edwards’s political viability as much or more than they were giving money to combat poverty.

Sounds like the only poverty he was eradicating was his own. So when the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote this back in May, they didn’t realize what a great  country this really is;

Let us say right up front that it’s terrific that John Edwards lives in a country where he can lose an election and still land a $480,000 part-time job as a consultant to an investment firm that keeps its hedge funds in the Cayman Islands as a tax shelter for its clients. This truly is the land of opportunity.

In the Associated Press interview last May with Nedra Pickler;

Asked if he had to join a hedge fund to learn about financial markets, Edwards replied, “How else would I have done it?”

I guess the same way he funded the eradication of poverty.

Edwards thinks we’re idiots. He took a $1/2 million job with a hedge fund to learn about poverty, he started a 501c3 to eradicate poverty that basically paid his campaign expenses, he tried to explain to us how calling for an end to the war on Memorial Day was patriotic.

How stupid are we to allow this scumbucket to think he can be our President?

Category: Politics