The Obama Shrine — Brought to You by Wall Street

With his presidential library, former President Obama is unveiling an oligarch-funded shrine to himself amid everyone in America being fleeced by oligarchs. It’s a perfect bookend of a presidency that bailed out its Wall Street donors who were throwing millions of Americans out of their homes (and no, the bailouts were not “paid back”).

Obama says he wants his $850 million Obama Presidential Center, slated to open in June, “to put my presidency in context” — and in a sense, that’s what the shrine does. Its sponsor list is context for a presidency that promised hope and change and then used a massive electoral mandate to deliver more of the same. Indeed, the list is a who’s who of the winners of the Obama era: tech moguls, financial giants, telecom behemoths, a health insurance giant, and other bold-faced names of the oligarchy.

Of course, that kind of donor list is now-standard fare for presidential foundations, but the timing of Obama’s celebration of his shrine seems especially tone-deaf: this is a moment when most Americans can’t afford anything, in part, because of the oligarchs that were enriched during his presidential tenure.

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