Clinton, Biden called out for ‘plutocratic populism’

Victor Davis Hanson, a scholar at the Hoover Institute and also a policy adviser for our related entity, the Leadership Project for America Foundation, has some tough words over at National Review Online for leftist politicians who rake in big bucks while decrying the wealthy (Plutocratic Populism Pays). Here's part of Hanson's critique of Hillary Clinton:

In mid-October, Hillary Clinton gave a short lecture at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas bewailing the crushing costs of a university education. “Higher education,” Clinton thundered, “shouldn’t be a privilege for those able to afford it.”

One reason tuition and student indebtedness have soared — UNLV’s tuition is set to go up by 17 percent next year — is that universities pay exorbitant fees to multimillionaire speakers like Hillary Clinton. College foundations sprout up to raise money for perks that might not pass transparent university budgeting. Clinton — or her own foundation — reportedly charged a university foundation $225,000 for a talk lasting less than an hour. For that sum, she could have paid the tuition of over 320 cash-strapped UNLV students. Is there a Clinton Tuition Fund, to which Hillary contributes a portion of her honoraria to exempt herself from the ramifications of her own accusations?

And here is part of Hanson's take on Joe Biden:

Recently Vice President Joe Biden hit the campaign trail, blasting “corporate profits” and “guys running hedge funds in New York.” According to populist Biden, big-money speculators bear much of the blame for rising “income inequality.”

Aside from the fact that Barack Obama and Joe Biden raised more cash from Wall Street than any other presidential ticket in history — they were once Goldman Sachs’s largest recipients — the Biden family is knee-deep in corporate and hedge-fund lucre. Biden’s son Hunter was a top official for a hedge fund — which was co-founded by the senior Biden’s brother James. Biden’s other son, Beau, has been a corporate lawyer in between political stints. The populist Biden family is a synonym for elite crony capitalism and “guys running hedge funds in New York.”

Ouch.