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President Obama in 2016.(Photo: Susan Walsh, AP)

Former president Barack Obamas decision to accept $400,000 for an upcoming Wall Street speech certainly has been noticed by partisans on the left and right. Liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, said she was "troubled,"while Fox Business used it to call Obama Wall Streets newest fat cat.

But should the rest of America care? In ordinary times, Obamas decision to cash in wouldnt be that comment-worthy. He has led a life of public service paying well below what he could have made in corporate law or as a business executive. Now, with bills to pay and girls to put through college, he wants to play a little financial catch-up. Most presidents since GeraldFord have opted to make a quick buck in ways that aren't available to mere mortals.

But these are not normal times. In a little over 100 days, President Trump has mired his administration in a Russian influence scandal, broken new ground in peddling falsehoods, offeredWhite House posts to shady characters,brought the nation closer to war withNorth Korea, threatened to sabotage trade relations with Americas two closest neighbors, displayed a general impatience for complex issues, allowed his White House to descend into petty infighting,and set a record for time spent on the golf course. Oh, and he informed the president of China that he was firing missiles at Syria "in lieu of after-dinner entertainment."

It doesnt take much imagination to see an understaffed administration with erratic, divided leadership lurching into a political crisis, or something worse. If that moment comes, America might find itneeds Obama as a voice of reason.

The former presidentran arelativelyscandal-free administration known for favoring cautious steps rather than brash moves. Despite political setbacks that cost the Democratic Party dearlyduring his tenure,nostalgic Americanspushed his approval ratings above 60% in polls taken as he left office.

Speaking fee doesn't change Obama: Opposing view

Obama is a smart man, smart enough to know when to do the normal ex-president thing of keeping his mouth shut, and when to step in to say that things are going terribly wrong. It'ssomething he mightneed to do.

While Obamas views wouldnt carry much weight with Trump loyalists, they would with centrists,independents and Never-Trump Republicans. Obama and former president George W. Bush could be the only leaders with the clout to grab national attention if Trump's erratic behavior goes too far.

But that can't happen if Obama's buck-raking speeches turn him into a symbol of everything about Washington that voters detest. Obama has already taken a $400,000 for an appearance before television advertisers, and now plans to address a health care conference sponsored by investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald. The two speeches are potent symbols of a political class disconnected from voters who struggle to afford the American dream for their children while earning in an entire year what Obama earns in 11minutes.

And for what? Unless there is something we don't know, the Obamas don't need the money. He and his wife, Michelle, have signed a deal for two books with a $65 million advance, a mind-boggling fortune to most Americans that will only add to the millions the Obamas earned for previous books.

Indeed, if there is a lesson to be learned from the presidential campaign that put Trump in the White House, it is that there are consequences when politicians appear to set aside the values they stood for in their public lives to capitalize on their years of service.

Most Americans agreed with Obama when he noted in2010, "At a certain point, you've earned enough money." Especiallyat such a precarious moment for America, he ought to consider taking his own advice.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by itsEditorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view a unique USA TODAY feature.

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Barack Obama, buck raker: Our view - USA TODAY

New York Times

A Long, Long Look at Obama's Life, Mostly Before the White House New York Times Rising Star, the voluminous 1,460-page biography of Barack Obama by David J. Garrow, is a dreary slog of a read: a bloated, tedious and given its highly intemperate epilogue ill-considered book that is in desperate need of editing, and way more ...

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A Long, Long Look at Obama's Life, Mostly Before the White House - New York Times

Well said, Jimmy, former President Barack Obama tweeted. | Getty

Former President Barack Obama took to Twitter on Tuesday afternoon to defend his signature legislative achievement, praising late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel for blasting Republicans efforts to weaken Affordable Care Act protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

The late-night host used his Monday night monologue to recount his newborn sons emergency surgery. The infant had a heart condition that would likely prevent him from getting health coverage or make his health costs insurmountable for many American families under the GOP health care repeal plan.

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Before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you would never be able to get health insurance because you were born with a pre-existing condition, Kimmel said.

No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child's life, a crying Kimmel added.

Well said, Jimmy. That's exactly why we fought so hard for the ACA, and why we need to protect it for kids like Billy. And congratulations! Obama tweeted Tuesday.

The latest iteration of the GOP repeal bill would allow states to waive protections for pre-existing conditions if they create high-risk pools or similar financial backstops to cover people with expensive medical conditions.

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But these high-risk pools, used by about three dozen red and blue states before the Affordable Care Act, were largely unsuccessful, leaving many people with cancer, diabetes and other expensive diseases with inadequate coverage, or none at all.

Obama last broke his silence on the ACA repeal effort in late March, when the House appeared poised to vote on a repeal package. The former president described Obamacare as a watershed moment in determining that health care is a right for everybody.

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Obama tweets praise for Kimmel's slam of GOP repeal bill - Politico

Specifically, states will be able to grant exemptions to schools experiencing hardship in meeting the 100% whole-grain-rich standard although, even with the changes, at least half of the grains offered in schools must be whole grains. Schools will no longer need to hit the strictest target (PDF) for lowering sodium in foods offered to students. And meal programs will be able to serve students 1% flavored milk instead of fat-free flavored milk.

The National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program are federally assisted meal programs that provide nutritionally balanced lunches for children each school day. Both programs are administered by the Department of Agriculture, though local schools set the prices for meals, offering a sliding scale to students based on family income, as required by federal regulations.

Perdue said that when kids don't eat, they don't get the nutrition they need, and this undermines "the intent of the program."

"A perfect example is in the South, where the schools want to serve grits," said Perdue, who worked as a veterinarian before serving as a Georgia state senator and governor. "But the whole grain variety has little black flakes in it, and the kids won't eat it. The school is compliant with the whole grain requirements, but no one is eating the grits."

Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut, said the argument that food is ending up in the trash "is not supported by the research. There have been studies, ours included, that have found plate waste has not increased."

"What I've studied is whether or not children are eating the lunches, and we found that they are," Schwartz said. "I think what people don't understand about plate waste is if kids are eating, let's say 70% of the fruits and vegetables that they're taking, that means 30% of those are getting thrown away."

Naturally, the volume of waste goes up when fruits and vegetables are added to every plate, she says, but consumption of this important food group has increased as well.

Perdue's proclamation, Schwartz believes, is "slowing down the progress but not completely undoing what's been done."

"My impression has been that the food companies and the school service professionals have been working extremely hard for the last five years to try and improve things and meet these standards," she said.

"The reformulations have been done, is my point. The companies that sell pizza crusts and buns or other grain products to schools, many of them have already reformulated, so they're whole-grain-rich."

Many changes are likely to continue. Although they might allow flexibility for local school districts, Perdue's adjustments to the nutritional requirements also take pressure off the food industry, Schwartz suggests.

"There's not that much that individual food service directors can do to change the sodium in the foods they serve, because they're getting them from companies," she said. "So I feel like this is more of a gift to companies to give them more time to make those changes."

Schwartz believes the impact on an individual child's diet will be small and amount to a slightly higher intake of saturated fat due to the higher fat content in flavored milk.

"But it's not a big jump. It's pretty small," she said. With regard to whole grains and sodium, she believes any gains made in the past will hold with no further improvements made.

"If this really helps, you know, food service directors have more flexibility and stay in the program and continue working towards improving the quality of the food they're serving, then that's OK with me," Schwartz said.

"So school lunch programs are critical for helping a child reach their nutrient goals throughout the day," she wrote in an email. "I'm fine with 1-percent (fat), flavored milk since all milk has important protein, calcium and (vitamin) D that growing kids need."

When it comes to loosening standards that regulate salt, which "has no nutrition benefit and can contribute to unhealthy diet as a whole," and those regulating grains, Altmann is a little less "fine."

"We already know that kids don't eat enough whole grains," she said. "Whole grains are important for growth and development, and I think that all of the grains kids eat should be whole grains whenever possible."

A new USDA report on the nutritional quality, cost and acceptability of school meals as well as student diets will become available by 2018.

"It will be important to assess how much difference these changes make," Schwartz said. "It could have been a whole lot worse from a nutrition standpoint."

See more here:
USDA shifts Obama-era school lunch guidelines - CNN

On April 12, 2017, former Boeing CEO Jim McNerney sat down in the West Wing with President Trump. Trump had, on the campaign trail, advocated abolishing the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that typically subsidizes $10 billion a year in Boeing exports.

On April 13, Trump announced he would fill out Ex-Im's board of directors, thus reviving the agency's ability to subsidize Boeing's overseas customers.

This was a replay from eight years earlier.

Candidate Barack Obama had called Ex-Im "little more than a slush fund for corporate welfare." Obama soon picked McNerney and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as his manufacturing czar and jobs czar, respectively. GE is arguably Ex-Im's No. 2 beneficiary. Obama quickly came around on the agency, and became Ex-Im's most important ally in Washington.

Access to the White House is extremely valuable for corporations, regardless of who the president is. Everyone in Washington knows this, and now two scholars have confirmed and quantified the profitability to companies of access to the White House.

In President Obama's most impressive act of transparency, he published, regularly throughout his tenure, his White House visitor logs. Jeffrey Brown and Jiekun Huang of the University of Illinois studied those logs from Obama's first month through the end of 2015, and found 2,286 White House meetings between Obama officials and executives of the companies included in the S&P 1,500.

The researchers found two notable things about the companies that made up these 2,286 meetings: That money helped the executives get in the door, and getting in the door helped them make money.

The first finding could be put this way: Access could be bought through campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures.

"We find that firms that contributed more to Obama's presidential election campaigns are more likely to have access to the White House. We also find that firms that spend more on lobbying, firms that receive more government contracts, larger firms, and firms with a greater market share are more likely to have access to influential federal officials."

Second, they found that access was profitable.

"Corporate executives' meetings with White House officials are followed by significant positive cumulative abnormal returns." That term, "cumulative abnormal returns," in this case basically means how much the stock in question outperformed the S&P 1500 index over the 10 days before and the 30 days after the meeting. "We also find that the result is driven mainly by meetings with the President and his top aides. We find insignificant CARs for canceled visits, suggesting that the actual incidence of the meetings matters for firm value."

Why would a meeting drive up the stock of a company? The authors posit three mechanisms: A meeting could secure a government contract, it could help line up regulatory relief, or it could simply provide inside information that is valuable to a company.

I would add many more ways access to government is profitable. For instance, Boeing's access to the Obama and Trump White Houses seem to have secured support for a subsidy program that has nothing to do with government contracts.

Also, regulatory relief isn't always what companies seek. Google had amazing access to the Obama White House. Google "Internet Evangelist" (definitely not a lobbyist) Vint Cerf served on an Obama board. Google's former top lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin was a top White House official on tech policy, and he traded emails with current Google lobbyists who were supporting the White House's push to further regulate the Internet in the name of net neutrality. Here, corporate access to Obama's White House advanced more regulation which would protect Google's current business model.

The researchers had another intriguing finding: "firms with access to the Obama administration experience significantly lower stock returns following the release of the election result than otherwise similar firms."

In other words, their investment in Democrats became a money loser when Trump took over.

For a cynic in Washington, or even just a close observer, there's no surprise in these conclusions. Of course money buys access, and of course access to politicians is valuable. But there's plenty to learn from this study.

First, some people actually believed that Obama had changed Washington and stopped the cash-for-influence game. This study doesn't compare Obama to other presidents, but it shows that the game was alive and well under Obama.

Second, it makes Obama's transparency in this one regard even more laudable. The visitor logs made this study possible and so it showed the country how Washington works. For this reason, especially since Trump has said he won't follow Obama's lead here, Congress should mandate regular and thorough reporting of White House Visitor Logs.

A final lesson: Since big business clearly has more access to government, then bigger government equals a bigger advantage for big business. If government played a smaller role in industry, access wouldn't be so valuable, and the playing field would be more level.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were both correct that the game is rigged in favor of the big guys. This new study helps us see how big government is the rigger.

Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.

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Study documents how profitable access to Obama's White House was - Washington Examiner