Bill Clinton's Very Expensive Pearls of Wisdom

Bill Clinton spoke to an Edmonton audience of almost 2,000 people on June 20,2008. While I was not one of the lucky few who paid between $200 and $500 to listen to Bill, the Edmonton Journal's report of the event provided us all with some of the golden nuggets. Bill apparently urged his audience "to strive to work for the public interest and eliminate inequality in the world". He also spoke about "global warming" and how fighting global warming provided us with "the biggest economic opportunity since the world mobilized in preparation for the Second World War".

Boy, was he ever right! Yahoo News of Jan. 27, 2009 gave us some details of the financial documents just filed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to the documents, Bill Clinton earned $6 million in speaking fees in 2008. And guess which speech made him the most money? That's right - the Edmonton one! The former President was paid $525,000 for that talk - "the most for any single event that year". I do not know how long the speech lasted. Let's assume one hour. That would mean that Clinton received $8750.00 for ever minute he stood up before his Edmonton audience talking about inequality and how there was money to be made from fighting global warming.

Some of you may not know too much about Edmonton. It has been my home for 36 years and I love it. It was Wayne Gretzky who was responsible for putting it on the world map initially. But it also has some other things going for it. It is the capital of the oil rich Province of Alberta, the gateway to the oil sands of Northern Alberta, the home of the world's largest shopping mall, as well as one of Canada's largest and most research intensive universities, the University of Alberta.

It now has the honour of being the best place in the world to get paid to deliver a speech.