Obama Presidential Center Shows Us Once Again How Socialism Really Works

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Socialism, as a generation or two of miseducated American schoolchildren can readily tell you, is all about fairness. It’s about the little guy getting his fair share instead of suffering the exploitation of greedy, top-hatted plutocrats who would stop at nothing to reduce him to wage slavery, or even outright slavery if they thought they could get away with it. Socialism, we’re told, is all about equity, closing the chasm between the rich and the poor. In reality, however, it’s simply exploitation in a different form, with everyone except the elites ending up impoverished. The Obama Presidential Center has just illustrated this anew.

Fox News reported Saturday that “the Obama Foundation is looking for 100 unpaid volunteers to work alongside the former president’s highly paid cronies at the $850 million Obama Presidential Center in Chicago when it opens in June.” These hapless marks, who will be known as “ambassadors,” will “greet and direct visitors around the campus and share information about exhibits at the 22-story museum tower, athletic center and Chicago Public Library branch, among other amenities.”

These exploited unpaid workers should simply be grateful for the experience of working at the presidential center dedicated to singing the praises of the left’s revered hero, Barack Hussein Obama. “Officials are pitching the no-paycheck gigs as rooted in former President Barack Obama’s legacy of civic engagement.” If they’re lucky, the man himself might grace them with his presence one day and shine his light upon them.

The members of the Great One’s inner circle, however, have more earthly rewards in view. “The recruitment campaign comes after Fox News Digital reported that the organization’s CEO, former top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, was paid $740,000 in 2024.” Well, surely you don’t expect a key element of the extraordinary success of the Obama presidency to work without adequate compensation, now, do you?

While Jarrett is raking in the simoleons, other, lesser lights, will be on the payroll as well: “Foundation officials told Fox News Digital the volunteers will complement about 300 full- and part-time employees at the long-delayed center.” Obama Foundation officials are claiming that this boondoggle and sinecure for Jarrett and other Obama cronies will be an economic powerhouse for the South Side of Chicago: the Obama Foundation is actually claiming that the Obama Presidential Center will be “a $3.1 billion economic catalyst for the Windy City’s South Side.”

Seriously, the Obama Presidential Center is unlikely to become a major tourist attraction.

Some hardcore leftists will make the trek to the crime-ridden South Side and dodge the bullets and the drug-addled beggars to pay homage to the great man and glory in all the ways in which he damaged the United States during his disastrous eight years in the Oval Office, but once a few visitors to the place are mugged or worse, the number of visitors is likely to drop severely.

Getting people to visit the place, however, isn’t really the point of the Obama Presidential Center. “Federal filings viewed by Fox News Digital show Jarrett made $740,000 in 2024, 2023 and 2022, while several former Obama White House officials have collected six-figure salaries as foundation executives.”

The gravy train is running on time: “Total salaries and benefits at the foundation climbed from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024 as staffing expanded to 337 employees and annual revenue reached nearly $210 million, according to the filings.”

Lots of people are getting in on the party: “Other former Obama administration officials have also earned substantial compensation at the foundation in past years, including former White House political director David Simas, who made more than $600,000 annually while leading the organization from 2017 to 2020, and Adewale Adeyemo, who later became Biden’s deputy Treasury secretary and made roughly $540,000 during his tenure. Several other senior leaders with Obama administration ties have earned between roughly $300,000 and $400,000 annually, according to tax filings.”

These people are raking in the dough while the “ambassadors” will do the real work for nothing. For socialists, this is not a bug; it’s a feature. Enjoying the perks that they deny to the masses is what the socialist elites do.

In practice, socialism and Marxism don’t really involve what leftist leaders such as Barack Obama say they mean, that is, actually spreading the wealth around. The wealth is spread around only to the ruling class. Socialism means that the wealth of those who have no political power is confiscated for the benefit of those who do have political power. That’s the way leftists always behave when they’re firmly ensconced in power.

In the old Soviet Union, while all the rhetoric was about how the workers had thrown off their oppressors and were now in charge, the common people were more impoverished than ever, as well as more powerless. Those who really had the political power, and were supposedly running this “dictatorship of the proletariat,” meanwhile, lived it up in sumptuous dachas and feasted on gourmet meals served on the finest china.

There is a famous photo of Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader in the 1960s and 1970s, on a luxury boat speeding across the water. The dictator of the proletariat is holding a beer and handing another one to one of the four women who are in the photo, along with two men besides Brezhnev. There was never a time while Leonid Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union that ordinary Soviet citizens could afford to buy a pleasure craft, or even to take a ride on one. But the guardians of socialism were different. The Soviet people were all equal, but some were more equal than others. The ruling class deserved its reward for all of its selfless efforts for The People, and so do the abundantly compensated employees of the Obama Presidential Center.