I'm not sure Hillary Clinton actually understands the concept of "dead broke"

I realize that this makes me a sexist, misogynist all-around-bad-person, but I don't think Hillary Clinton knows what the fuck she's talking about when  she refers to being "dead broke," at least not based on the situation she discussed with Diane Sawyer in their recent interview:



Let's look at this. Please. As Ace points out, the Clintons were pretty solid in the 1 percent even after they left the White House, between her Senate salary and Bill's presidential pension (not to mention his pension from Arkansas from his bazillion terms as governor):

She was also making $186,600 as a US Senator.
Bill was pulling down $200K in pension as an ex-President (that's just cash and doesn't include office staff, protection, etc).

OK, so we're looking at nearly $400,000 in annual salary -- roughly 10 times the national media household income at the time. Dead broke? Um, maybe not. As the December 16, 2000 New York Times noted:

Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed last night to sell Simon & Schuster a memoir of her years as first lady, for the near-record advance of about $8 million.
The deal ends a frantic weeklong bidding war that provoked widespread curiosity about just what she planned to write. Mrs. Clinton had told publishers she planned to discuss her feelings about the scandals of her husband's administration as well as her thoughts about women's changing roles in the world.

Granted, 8 million doesn't go as far as it used to, but it wasn't all the family reeled in that year, even if we ignore the $400,000 in salary they had coming. Not even close:

Former President Clinton has agreed to write his memoirs for Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher announced Monday, in perhaps the biggest deal ever for a nonfiction work.
Terms were not immediately disclosed, but the New York Times reported on its Web site that the 42nd president agreed to an advance of more than $10 million. The book is expected to be out in 2003.
That figure could be just the tip of the iceberg. The Washington Post reports the former president has received dozens of inquiries from international publishers who hope to buy foreign rights to the book.

OK, so we're up to $18.4 million or so in income for 2001, "when we left the White House."  What awful expenses did they have to cover?

According to Clinton, she and her husband, who has made over $100 million since leaving the White House, “struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education, you know, it was not easy.”
But, as Clinton’s story goes, the two hard-working, middle-class millionaires somehow managed to put food on the table in their multiple houses, even though they “had to make double the money, because of, obviously, taxes, and then pay off the debts and get us houses and take care of family members.”

 Yeah, I can see her clipping coupons just to make it. Chelsea fucking graduated in 2001 -- the Clintons had to cover exactly one semester of her education post-White House, which I have to believe they could do with the money they had coming in. Even if they also paid for her post-graduate education, during which Chelsea was employed and fully capable of paying her own way.

As for the other debts? Most of that was legal bills because Bill couldn't keep his dick in his pants and then felt the need to fight the resulting sexual harassment allegations for nearly five years before settling. Of course, he had the help of a legal defense fund that raised more than $8 million from generous Democrats. Weird how Hillary never mentions that.

Despite all these hardships, Hillary and Bill somehow managed to "piece together the resources for mortgages for houses." Plural. You know, I don't think a lot of people will buy her story of hardship, even if they don't follow the links.

It's hard out here for a contract attorney

Might still be hard out here for a pimp, too, but it is damn sure getting nothing but ugly in the temp attorney market. Here's a recent posting on The Posse List:

[An agency I have worked for] is staffing a JD document review to begin next Monday, April 28th 2014.
If you are available and interested, please see the details below:
*Start date: Monday, April 28th 2014
*Duration: Approximately 1-2 weeks
*Location: Downtown, DC
*Pay Rate: $24.00/hr
*Hours: 40 hours per week, no OT currently
*Requirements: Qualified candidates will have previous document review experience and be available to work with no scheduling conflicts for the next 1-2 weeks.
If you are interested and meet the qualifications, please respond with your resume in WORD format to [the email address for an agency I have worked for] and reference "JD" in the subject line.

I almost didn't post on this, but then I thought, what the hell. The awful rate, the brevity, the lack of overtime and the fact that no bar membership is required ("JD project" means you only need to have graduated from law school; you don't need to have passed a bar exam anywhere) add up to make this a pathetic project. I am sure they had no trouble staffing it. Too many people are sitting at home hoping for a gig, any gig, to come along, so I know they won't pass this up. And yeah, I am laying eyes on the people who are on this project, and I don't think many of them are JD-only. Hard times, people.

More signs of bad times in Temp Town

I got an email a week ago (sorry for the delay, kids, but I work for a living) from The Posse List advertising the following project:

We are staffing a review starting Monday 11/11/13. Need resumes & responses ASAP. Details:*Pay rate $30/hour; overtime possible*Estimated duration: one month*Must be DC barred with privilege review & log experience*In DC near MetroPlease send resume ASAP to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and include any time/days off needed in the next month.  Please note MONDAY in the subject line. Thank you. 

 Anybody see anything wrong here? Pay seems to be in line with the market (in other words, low). Short project with vague possibility of overtime -- standard. Listing posted on a Friday for a start the following Monday, forcing folks to really scramble to a) get their resume in and 2) rearrange their lives for the following month or so on the uncertain possibility that they might get put to work for a while on this project. And, yeah, it probably will only last two weeks.

Wait a minute -- let's revisit that pay issue. They want DC barred, but won't pay more for it? Sure, most veteran temps are DC-barred these days since the 2005 DC Court of Appeals advisory opinion that suggested contract attorneys must be members of the DC Bar. It isn't binding, but most law firms try to stick to it, and DC bar-required projects since then have usually offered a little more money than any-jurisdiction-bar projects. Not always, but usually.

And they want privilege review and privilege log experience? No offense, but most temps I know are not qualified to do privilege reviews or privilege logs. Those are skills and expertise that are acquired through experience and study, not mere graduation from law school. Most junior associates I have worked with don't know enough to do good privilege review or create a privilege log -- yet those are the morons usually put in charge of such things. Nonetheless, this requirement purports to seek people with above-average skills and experience, yet offers to pay them what is at best market rate for regular document review? Fuck that.

You want to know what's really sad? They probably were able to staff the project with a bunch of desperate people who were afraid of facing the holidays unemployed. Maybe some of them fudged on their privilege experience to help them land the gig. These are not good times in Temp Town.