Hillary Clinton just spoke, along with Republican presidential contender and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, at the National Urban League Conference.
She preceded Bush on stage and used the moment to seize his campaign slogan, "Right to Rise," and give it her own spin to attack the governor before he could speak.
According to Clinton, "I don't think you can credibly say everyone has a right to rise and then say you're for ... repealing Obamacare. People can't rise if they can't afford health care. They can't rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on. They can't rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education. And you cannot seriously talk about the right to rise and support laws that deny the right to vote."
She topped it all off by saying, "The opportunity gap that America is facing is not just about economic inequality, it is about racial inequality."
The AFL-CIO publishes an annual report called Executive PayWatch. According to the most recent report, in 2014 the average pay for a CEO at a Standard & Poor's 500 company was $13.5 million. At the same time, average take-home pay of nonsupervisory workers was $36,134. So on average, per the AFL-CIO, CEO earnings were 373 times greater than worker income.
Anyone can email companies and the Securities Exchange Commission through the AFL-CIO website to express their outrage at this presumed unfairness.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's newly released tax returns show that she and Bill earned $139.1 million between 2007 and 2014, an average of $17.4 million per year. In 2014, the power couple earned $20 million in speaker fees -- 553 times that aforementioned average worker salary, 50 percent greater than the CEO ratio.
Though some might believe that the Clintons' speeches are more valuable to the U.S. economy than the management of our largest corporations, it seems that even the AFL-CIO (which has poured millions into the Clinton Foundation) might be having second thoughts. So far Clinton hasn't won the endorsement of the huge and powerful union.
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Clearly, Mrs. Clinton knows something about rising in America.
But is there anything in her path to wealth that's relevant to the minority Americans whose interests the National Urban League allegedly represent?
Her message to the Urban League: No minority has a prayer without Clinton controlling your health care, your school, deciding what you should be paid, and protecting you from racism.
You, too, can have a career in politics and rake in $20 million in speaking fees by convincing half the country that their only path to a decent life is through you.
Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution notes four trends impeding upward mobility in America: family breakdown, declining work rates among males, failing public schools and increasing demand for higher education and skills.
These problems are uniformly made worse by the political world Hillary Clinton loves and gets rich in. The teachers unions that support her promote moral relativism in public schools and fight school choice. The work rate for young black males is under 50 percent, largely due to the minimum wage Hillary Clinton loves. The gross inefficiencies of government health care are emerging, and reports of increased premiums under Obamacare are widespread -- CBS Moneywatch reports several insurers proposing rate increases of 51 percent in 2016.
Despite left-wing rhetoric about voting discrimination, black voter turnout in the last presidential election exceeded white turnout.
And then there's Clinton's love affair with the nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, which receives $500 million in taxpayer funds and performs around 330,000 abortions annually. According to ProtectingBlackLife.org, which pulled data from the 2010 census, 78 percent of Planned Parenthood abortion factories are in minority neighborhoods. This speaks to Clinton's particular concern for black lives and black families.
Political power may have made Hillary Clinton rich. But it is making America, particularly minority America, poorer.
Here's a news flash for Republicans. Black America is not monolithic. The left-wing National Urban League may still buy Clinton's failed big-government utopia. But there are millions of churchgoing conservative black Christian Americans looking for real change.
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