[Peace-discuss] "Obama paid $600,000 for a single speech"

[C G Estabrook]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/20/obam-j20.html

"WAIT! WHAT? The guy who was gonna roll up his sleeves and wear comfortable boots to join workers on their picket lines? The guy who went to Flint numerous times to assure the poisoned children of Flint that he would fix things? The guy who went to Standing Rock to support the rights of Indigenous People against Big Oil? The guy who said NO to the Banks and Wall Streets and instead bailed out countless economically suffering Americans and helped them keep their homes? The guy who refused to appoint a former Monsanto VP to head the FDA?The guy who refused to have a homophobic white preacher deliver the prayer at the first inauguration? The guy who turned down the Nobel Peace Prize because he could not accept and be a warmongering murderer of millions? THAT GUY?" ~ Sidney Danz

Locally, he split (and essentially destroyed) the local anti-war movement even before he became president.

From almost 15 years ago:<https://www.counterpunch.org/…/illinois-anti-warriors-and-…/>.
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"His administration oversaw the largest redistribution of wealth in history from the bottom to the top one percent, spearheading the attack on the living standards of teachers and autoworkers.
Under Obama’s watch the stock markets soared as the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 149 percent. Meanwhile, the “war on terror” in the Middle East was expanded with Obama becoming the first president to spend every day of his two terms at war, much to the delight of the military-industrial complex.

"As the wars raged on and the financial oligarchs fattened themselves off the ever-increasing mountain of wealth being concentrated at the top of society, real wages stagnated and an unprecedented opioid overdose crisis spun out of control. Rising numbers of “deaths of despair” during Obama’s tenure, particularly among the working class, resulted in a decline in life expectancy unprecedented in the modern era…”

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