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Honor among thieves, American style

This morning as I perused the Times, I read this article about Hillary Clinton, who is currently following her husband’s career path and raking in big bucks on the lecture circuit. My immediate reaction was to condemn such fees as a transparent investment, a payment to assure favorable treatment if Hillary should in fact succeed Obama, both temporally and philosophically. But, sort of coincidentally, shorty after I read a post on Americablog, and realized that I was in fact wrong:

Ex–Obama Treasury Secretary and former official with the New York Fed, Tim Geithner, has arrived on Thank-You Street.

Geithner’s share of the legal DC bribery — $400,000 for just three speeches, with more to certainly come.

(via Legal bribery: Tim Geithner earns $400,000 for 3 speeches)

The post provides all the facts any reasonable person would need to conclude that Geithner is being paid for services rendered. I beg leave to add another proof: anyone can make the case that some people might actually want to pay to hear Bill Clinton; some might, if we stretch a point, want to pay to hear Hillary Clinton, but no one on earth would want to listen to little Timmy, unless they themselves were paid. And the likelihood is that both Bill and Hillary are now being rewarded for past services; for in the one case his time is past, and in another her future may not be anywhere near what some suppose.

But I come not to condemn those whose heels rest securely on our heads. I come to praise them. For in what other pack of criminals is such honorable behavior so widespread? Most bribe takers demand money up front, some few will accept it as due upon services rendered, but only in the USA can a bribe taker consider his payment to be, shall we say, as safe as money in a government guaranteed bank, be its promised payment date ever so far in the future. Truly, these folks are the most honorable of thieves and the most admirable of men (and women), for one man’s wink and another’s nod forms a mutual bond that neither would think of breaking. So Geithner could rest assured that though his time for true riches must needs be deferred, it most surely would come, and indeed it has, with only the skimpiest of fig leaves to hide the obscene goings on.

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