Derek Willis highlights a paper being published this month in The Journal of Politics which attempts to put a dollar value on the advantage that incumbents have over challengers.

“Using elections for the House of Representatives from 1980 to 2006 and for state legislatures from 1990 to 2010, the authors focused on races where either a Republican or a Democrat very narrowly won election. They then looked at the winner’s fund-raising in the next election. On average, a candidate for national office would get a boost of $500,000 in contributions in the next election.”

“At least eight universities, including four public institutions, have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hillary Rodham Clinton to speak on their campuses over the past year, sparking a backlash from some student groups and teachers at a time of austerity in higher education,” the Washington Post reports.

The Washington Post shows how Bill and Hillary Clinton’s biggest source of income has been speaking fees and how Bill has brought in more than $100 million since leaving the White House.

Hillary Clinton defended the millions of dollars she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have earned giving paid speeches since leaving public office in an interview with ABC News.

Said Clinton: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt. We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.”

She added: “Bill has worked really hard — and it’s been amazing to me — he’s worked very hard. First of all, we had to pay off all our debts, which was, you know, he 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.”

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) “isn’t sold on allowing Nevada to become the first state to permit betting on the presidential and other federal elections,” the Las Vegas Sun reports.

Said Sandoval: “As I think through it, unless I’m convinced otherwise, it is not something I would support.”

Since leaving the State Department, Hillary Clinton “has made more than 90 speeches and notable appearances. Her hosts have included private equity firms, investment banks, nonprofit galas, trade association conventions, and a slew of colleges and universities,” Mother Jones reports.

“At least two-dozen of those were paid speeches. With her usual fee of $200,000 a speech, Clinton has banked close to $5 million for her speeches and appearances in the last 15 months.”

Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has a new job as a visiting professor at Liberty University where he has given lectures on constitutional law and state government, the AP reports.

McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, are currently awaiting trial on federal corruption charges.

Hillary Clinton “embarks on a whirlwind speaking tour of the West Coast this week that, while potentially lucrative, also looks a lot like a campaign-style swing,” ABC News reports.

“From Tuesday through Friday, Clinton will barnstorm three states, making five appearances at corporate events and business conventions covering an array of topics from health care to scrap metal recycling. But the frenzied schedule is a small price to pay for the potential upside. With her personal speaking fees reportedly averaging $200,000 per engagement, Clinton could haul in as much as $1 million in the four-day period.”

First Read notes the winners of the Supreme Court decision abolishing aggregate campaign finance limits are the wealthy and political parties but the biggest winners “are the political consultants and the entire industry of American politics.”

“The loser from yesterday’s decision, however, is the individual campaign. With the power of Super PACs (thanks Citizens United) and now the increased bank accounts of the parties (thanks McCutcheon), individual campaigns are going to have less power than they’ve had in a long, long time. An individual campaign has so little control now over its own message and the issues it wants to focus on; it’s all going to be dictated more and more by the outside groups and the billionaires.”

Matt Bai: “I’ve never met David and Charles Koch, the conservative billionaires who have apparently set out to acquire our democracy, much as you or I might hope to purchase a timeshare. When I think of them, which isn’t all that often, I tend to picture Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow, who played industrialists called the ‘Motch’ brothers in a recent comedy called The Campaign, and whose main goal in the film was to relocate a Chinese sweatshop to North Carolina.”

“But after taking a closer look at how they’re spending this small part of their fortune, here’s what I do know about the infamous Koch brothers: They are very, very smart when it comes to political investing. And the real problem for irate liberals is that their most avid contributors aren’t.”

Former Washington Post managing editor Robert Kaiser writes that he isn’t going to miss Washington.

“Why? Because for me, the fun has drained out of the game. So has the substance. I used to get excited about the big issues we covered — civil rights, women’s liberation, the fate of the country’s great cities, the end of the Cold War. I loved the politicians who brought those issues to life, from Everett McKinley Dirksen and Howard Baker (Dirksen’s son-in-law, curiously) to Russell B. Long and Edmund Muskie, from Bob Dole to George Mitchell — all people who knew and cared a great deal about governing. Watching them at work was exhilarating. Watching their successors, today’s senators and representatives, is just depressing.”

New York Times: “From its inception in 1973, the Heritage Foundation has provided the blueprint for the Republican Party’s ideas in Washington. In doing so, it has proved to be the most durable organization of its kind.”

“But under Mr. DeMint, a South Carolinian who gave up his Senate seat last year to take the helm, Heritage has shifted. Long known as an incubator for policy ideas and the embodiment of the party establishment, it has become more of a political organization feeding off the rising populism of the Tea Party movement.”

Lee Aitken: “Did this torrent of money–raised and spent under the new rules of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision–make anyone rich? Did it create new financial incentives that changed the way the game is played or altered the political discourse? Has it, as some argue, bankrolled the polarization of America?”

“These legitimate questions are difficult to answer under current disclosure laws. And the U.S. press has been oddly complacent about that fact, continuing a tradition that puts the financial gains of political operatives–who are great sources and valued customers of the big media companies–off limits. The presumption seems to be that these men and women are motivated by ideology and personal loyalty, their payoff, if any, just a happy coincidence and a private matter.”

Boston Globe: “In a sterile office building a few miles from the White House, Mitt Romney’s old campaign manager has a new mission: foiling Democratic candidates across the country.”

“Republicans say that Matt Rhoades’s fledgling political group, America Rising, is attempting to build the party’s most sophisticated, modern, and centralized opposition research effort ever. It is key to the GOP’s hopes of resurrecting itself after the soul-crushing presidential defeat of 2012.”

“But what’s most notable about American Rising is this: It is the first high-profile political combat organization to rely heavily on a for-profit company, rather than operating as a nonprofit group, exploiting increasingly lax campaign finance laws to maximum advantage.”

“At editorial meetings in Bloomberg L.P.’s headquarters this week, Michael Bloomberg gave clear signs that he would not be taking a hands-off approach as he returned to his old company,” the New York Times reports.

“Just two week’s removed from City Hall, and in his first days back at the media giant that he owns and that carries his name, Mr. Bloomberg surprised many employees by showing up at all of the 7:30 a.m. meetings where the day’s big journalistic decisions are made.”

The Atlantic profiles GOP consultant Frank Luntz, noting that “politics hasn’t been his principal business for some time: He still advises his friends here and there, but he no longer has any ongoing political contracts. (Corporations and television networks, not politicians, are his main sources of income.)”

“Luntz would also like to break into Hollywood as a consultant, but he can’t get his calls returned. He can’t figure it out. He thinks it must be a partisan thing. In every other industry, he says, 90 percent of his presentations result in a contract. But in entertainment, he pitches and pitches and pitches (he wouldn’t tell me which studios or shows) and things seem to go well, but then there’s some excuse. Not this time. Not the right project.”

Daily Beast: “If the torrent of 50th anniversary articles, symposia, blog posts, TV documentaries and docudramas, historical reenactments, new books, and reissues has left you aghast at the bottomless self-involvement of your elders, please keep in mind that the deluge this month is nothing compared to the steady rain that fell on us almost every month between 1963 and 1967.”

“Remembering JFK became an industry in those years. The double murder of a U.S. president and his suspected assassin–within 48 hours of each other–multiplied expon-entially the number of angles that journalists, historians, self-appointed gumshoes, and total crackpots could pursue. The light that bounced off those shattering events, somehow mirroring each other, has many of us still trying to see straight and fit the pieces together in a logical pattern.”

Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, one of the architects of the federal government’s rescue of the financial system, is joining private-equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC, the Wall Street Journal reports.