John Edwards Asks Students to Do Something About Poverty...

Like write him a $55,000 check:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who recently proposed an educational policy that urged "every financial barrier" be removed for American kids who want to go to college, has been going to college himself -- as a high paid speaker, his financial records show.

The candidate charged a whopping $55,000 to speak at to a crowd of 1,787 the taxpayer-funded University of California at Davis on Jan. 9, 2006 last year, Joe Martin, the public relations officer for the campus' Mondavi Center confirmed Monday.

That amount -- which comes to about $31 a person in the audience -- included Edwards' travel and airfare, and was the highest speaking fee in the nine appearances he made before colleges and universities last year, according to his financial records.

The earnings -- though made before Edwards was a declared Democratic presidential candidate -- could hand ammunition to his competition for the Democratic presidential nomination. The candidate -- who was then the head of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina -- chose to speak on "Poverty, the great moral issue facing America," as his $55,000 topic at UC Davis.

If they covered his travel expenses, okay, I can understand that. If he wasn't a multimillionaire, I can understand wanting to be paid for his time. But Edwards is obscenely rich from his work as an ambulance chaser. It isn't like he needs the money.

Greed is an awful thing. But there is something worse. And that's a Democrat who talks about "two Americas," one rich, one poor, who thinks he should be paid $55,000 to come and speak for an hour.