Is Edwards Using UNC To Pad His Political Resume?

So, do you suppose it was John Edwards' delivery of his "Two Americas" speech that made him qualified to serve as Director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC-Chapel Hill? I can't say that UNC's decision to make Edwards a university professor was the biggest waste of NC tax dollars I have ever heard of, but I can't help but wonder whether it can be considered a campaign contribution? What, Edwards isn't currently running a campaign? Give me a break.

Tom Ashcraft shares my opinion that the UNC post is purely political:

What is going on here is as clear as the blue sky over Chapel Hill on a spring day. Edwards is likely to run for president again in 2008. He's out of office and needs a platform in which to stay visible and have a patina of respectability.

The liberal faculty and staff at UNC like Edwards and the way he savages Republicans. While earning high, tax-paid salaries themselves and often teaching only a few hours a week, they appreciate a candidate who will say, as Edwards does, "There are two Americas, one privileged, the other burdened, one America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks."

It's not surprising that law school Dean Gene Nichol, an outspoken liberal himself, apparently approached Edwards about a university post shortly after his November election defeat. UNC Chancellor James Moeser, as quoted by The Raleigh News & Observer, gave this spin: "We've tried to keep this on an academic footing, and he [Edwards] will have his own political life off the campus."

There is nothing wrong with studying poverty or even with a politician becoming a professor. The problem here is that one of the nation's best state universities, presumably dedicated to scholarship and academics, is allowing itself to be used for transparently partisan purposes by one of the country's most demagogic politicians.

As a 2004 Heritage Foundation study concluded, there are two Americas, but the opposite of Edwards' phony baloney rhetoric. The top fifth of U.S. households (income above $84,000) "remain perennial targets of class-warfare enmity. These families, however, perform a third of all labor in the economy. They contain the best educated and most productive workers, and they provide a disproportionate share of the investment needed to create jobs and spur economic growth. ... Far from shirking the tax burden, these families pay 82.5 percent of total federal income taxes and two-thirds of federal taxes overall. By contrast, the bottom quintile pays 1.1 percent of total federal taxes."

While studying poverty, Professor Edwards will be providing a good example of how to avoid it in housing. According to The Daily Tar Heel, the Edwardses have "bought land near Chapel Hill valued at $1,137,845 and plan to move to the area this spring."

Read the whole thing.