Want some cheese with that whine?

“We spend between the two kids, on extra-curricular activities outside the
classroom, we’re spending about $10,000 a year on piano and dance and sports
supplements. And do you know what summer camp costs?” (1)

“The
salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you are in your
40’s, paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids”
(1)

“We have become a nation of struggling folks, who are barely
making it every day. Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my
lifetime. The life that I’m talking about that most people are living has gotten
progressively worse since I was a little girl. We’re a country that’s just down
right mean” (2)

These comments come from Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s wife Michelle. Actually her income is 10 times the median income in the county of Ohio where she made those remarks. Michelle’s income was $316,962 two years ago when her husband was elected to the US senate. She also receives an undisclosed amount from sitting on the boards of six corporations. Add her salary to the dismal salary of her husband Barack of a mere $169,300 as senator and add his two best selling book royalties, and you can see why she is so upset. (dripping in sarcasm) She went on to say; “You are looking at a couple that’s just a few years out of debt, see because we went to good schools and didn’t have any trust funds.” It seems to me that they both took this path by choice, (to Princeton and Harvard), and now that she has her education behind her, she has chosen to bash the very system that has allowed her to make $300k per year. I think the underlying question here is ……whom does she blame for this debt she was in? The government? America as a whole? It sort of goes back to the same idea Kevin Bryant was talking about in an earlier blog. Everyone wants the benefits of a prosperous society, but they don’t want to accept the cost of that prosperity. Michelle seems to be not only out of touch with society, but it’s doubtful that not many Americans will share the empathy she demands.





(1) Comments made to a women’s group in Zanesville, OH before the primary
(2) Comments made at Pee Dee Union Baptist Church in Cheraw, SC