Let Them Eat Grilled Cheese! Retired Gen. Wesley Clark Gets Paid a Quarter-Mil for Flogging Food Trucks to Vets

Was it really so long ago that Gen. Wesley Clark
was, for a millisecond at least, the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner?
Last time I paid attention to the co-architect
of America’s war to detach Kosovo from Serbia, he was busy making
one of the
craziest arguments yet in favor of bombing Syria. But it turns
out the blue-eyed former general has been leveraging his military
career to make bank in the private sector, through a series of
increasingly bizarre stunts.

First came Clark’s involvement in
the ethanol business. Then came a chairmanship of a Canadian
energy company desperate to wheedle foreign coal-mining contract
in–wait for it!–Kosovo.
After a detour into a reality TV show called
Stars Earn Stripes, now Clark is…well, you try to figure
it out:

Yes, that’s right: Your next big
penny stock is a company shelling out at least $240,000 a
year (with various warrants and lucrative performance bonuses)
to a mediagenic pitchman who can turn the untested field of
food-truck
franchising into a heartwarming if hard-to-follow story about
Helping Our Vets. (Sample
vagueness: “The company has 14 of its own trucks in California,
Arizona and Texas, and is looking to offer the first 100 franchised
trucks to veterans. Franchising fees are $25,000, but Lee and Clark
say the company will subsidize them if vets qualify to own a truck
but can’t afford it.”)

Best of luck to the vets and food trucks, anyway. As for Clark,
he’ll certainly need it if he’s going to get anywhere near that
goal of topping off his military career with a
cool $40 million.

(Thanks to O’Leary for the tip.)