The Obama Foundation is under fire for seeking up to 100 unpaid volunteers for the new Obama Presidential Center while CEO Valerie Jarrett earned $740,000 last year. Critics argue the move contradicts the foundation’s civic ideals and raises ethical concerns about nonprofit governance and executive pay. The foundation defends the program as part of its mission, noting it will also employ hundreds of paid staff..
.Volunteer drive sparks outrage over executive pay
The Obama Foundation’s plan to enlist 75–100 unpaid volunteers for the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center has triggered a wave of criticism. Social media backlash intensified after reports revealed CEO Valerie Jarrett earned about $740,000 in 2024, prompting accusations that the foundation’s request for free labor clashes with its stated values. Critics argue the optics undermine the center’s civic engagement message, especially given its high executive compensation levels.
Why the volunteer program is drawing legal and ethical fire
While U.S. nonprofits often depend on volunteers, pairing unpaid roles with high executive salaries has raised governance and transparency concerns. Analysts point to rules under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, requiring that resources serve the public and executive pay be reasonable. Watchdogs warn that politically connected nonprofits, especially those with multiple former administration officials in senior roles, face heightened scrutiny over fiduciary responsibility and com
The Obama Foundation maintains that the volunteer program is consistent with Barack Obama’s long-standing emphasis on community service. Officials stress that the center will also employ hundreds of paid workers and that volunteers will enhance the visitor experience by guiding tours and explaining exhibits. The foundation projects the center will generate $3.1 billion in economic activity over the next decade and support thousands of jobs. The Kenya Times.
The foundation’s workforce and payroll have expanded dramatically as the $850 million center nears completion. Salaries and benefits rose from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024, with several former Obama administration officials in senior roles earning between $300,000 and $400,000 annually. Critics, including nonprofit watchdogs, warn of potential nepotism and call for greater transparency in hiring and compensation decisions.
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For your information:
Valerie Jarrett (born November 14, 1956, Shīrāz, Iran) is an American lawyer, businesswoman, and politician who was a senior adviser (2009–17) to U.S. Pres. Barack Obama.Bowman was born in Iran and spent much of her childhood traveling abroad, as her father was a physician who assisted developing countries in establishing health care systems. In 1963 her family settled in Chicago. (Bowman’s grandfather Robert Taylor was the first African American head of the Chicago Housing Authority.) She later attended Stanford University (A.B., 1978) and the University of Michigan Law School (J.D., 1981). In 1983 she married William Robert Jarrett, a physician; the couple divorced in 1988.
Working in corporate and real estate law until 1987, Jarrett moved into politics when she became deputy counselor for finance and development in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. After Washington’s death, Jarrett remained with the mayor’s office and accepted several positions in the administration of his successor, Richard M. Daley. She served as Daley’s deputy chief of staff and later as a planning commissioner. Jarrett was also chair of the Chicago Transit Authority from 1995 to 2003, and she served as chairman of the board for the Chicago Stock Exchange from 2004 to 2007. Beginning in 1995, she was executive vice president of the Habitat Company, a property management firm responsible for overseeing portions of Chicago’s public housing system. Jarrett became CEO of the company in 2007.
Jarrett was long associated with Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, whom she had hired as an assistant in 1991 while working for Daley. Jarrett developed an ongoing personal and professional relationship with the couple. She served as the finance chair of Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign and was treasurer of his political action committee. During Obama’s presidential campaign, Jarrett mediated between Obama and members of the African American community who were concerned about the implications of his candidacy, and she also served as an envoy to those who had supported Obama’s primary rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. After Obama’s election in November 2008, she served as cochair of his transition team. Later that month it was announced that Jarrett had been appointed senior adviser to Obama.
Google WordPress has to stop interfering with this blog. This is war and Google WordPress is interfering with sending out important information. Time for them to be called on the carpet.
Back then, Obama operated on the basis of conciliation and caution. Today, Trump is all about confrontation and assertion.
We don’t know how Trump’s military operation in Iran will turn out. There are a number of ways to see it going sideways or falling short of its goals.
But there’s no doubt that Trump’s vision of the Middle East — with Israel and the Arab states putting their enmity behind them, while the Iranian regime is much reduced or eliminated — is more in keeping with US interests than Obama’s.
The Obama theory was that Iran could be made into a responsible regional player if the nuclear issue were set aside, and if the United States forged a balance of power between Sunni powers in the region and Shia Iran.
The 2015 Iran nuclear deal (or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) restricted Iranian nuclear activity, while allowing the regime to sit on the cusp of a nuclear weapon and giving it major sanctions relief.
The Obama administration literally sent pallets of cash to Tehran, and the relaxation of sanctions gave the regime more running room to build up its missile arsenal and terrorist proxies around the region.
Trump 1.0 disrupted this model by tearing up the nuclear agreement and creating a “maximum pressure” campaign to squeeze the regime financially.
The campaign had kneecapped Iranian oil revenue and significantly depleted the regime’s foreign reserves when Joe Biden came into office in 2020, hoping to revive the Obama strategy.
Before Oct. 7, Iranian power had reached a high-water mark. Its proxies dotted the region, from Gaza to Lebanon to Iraq to Syria to Yemen.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the United States’ airstrikes on Iran:
It was working with US adversaries China and Russia. It was partaking of regional leadership, just as Obama had imagined, but not as a moderate force.
Iran wielded its proxies as instruments of an Islamic radicalism threatening to Israel and US interests.
In retrospect, Oct. 7 looks to be for Islamic extremists what Pearl Harbor was for the Japanese — a brilliant, if awful, tactical success that carried within it the seeds of strategic defeat.
The strike was a signal that we weren’t going to trust or verify — we were going to try to blow up and bury as much of the Iranian nuclear program as possible.
Operation Epic Fury is the second act. It seeks to destroy more of Iran’s nuclear program and is going after the foundations of Iranian power that Obama left unaddressed in the nuclear deal — namely, the Iranian missile program and other elements of its military.
The campaign is the very opposite of the JCPOA, in its means (military action rather than diplomacy) and its ends.
If it achieves maximal success, there won’t be any Iranian regime to deal with any longer; if it falls short of that, Iranian power and influence will nonetheless have been dealt grievous blows rather than being accommodated or enhanced.
The hope is that if the Islamic Republic falls during or after the war, or is defanged, it will open the way to build on the Abraham Accords.
That first-term Trump initiative rejected the conventional wisdom that the United States had to distance itself from Israel to make peace in the region.601
Instead, the US could embrace Israel in a way that was anathema to Obama, and bring together the Jewish state with its Gulf allies, while marginalizing Iran.
Much depends on successfully prosecuting Operation Epic Fury, but there’s no doubt that what Trump is trying to achieve would be better for the peace and security of the region than the policy pursued by one of the least worthy Nobel Peace Prize winners in history.
kommonsentsjane 