For the man (or woman) who has everything

There are a number of news reports from major newspaper blogs and independent bloggers documenting how wealthy U.S. Senators and Congressmen are.  Perhaps the best single source of such information is via Opensecrets.org, an independent watchdog, where you not only get a list of wealthiest congressmen and senators, but you can even look up via a PDF database the wealth of ANY congressman or senator.  Because this information is so available, I won't bother repeating that list.  While distressing in and of itself, I have more interesting election season food for thought.

I want to draw your attention to a list of the ten most expensive SELF-FUNDED candidates for U.S. Senator and U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.  The list, shown below, was also obtained from http://opensecrets.org/.  These are the most recent totals as of this writing, a few days before election day:

House Candidates

Flinn, George S Jr (R) (Tennessee District 08)	$3,500,000
Rigell, Scott (R) (Virginia District 02)	$2,424,364
DelBene, Suzan (D) (Washington District 08)	$2,284,033
Ganley, Tom (R) (Ohio District 13)	$2,213,417
Altschuler, Randy (R) (New York District 01)	$2,010,213
Hartman, Wink (R) (Kansas District 04)	$1,995,025
Doheny, Matt (R) (New York District 23)	$1,690,000
Iott, Rich (R) (Ohio District 09)	$1,673,100
D'Annunzio, Tim (R) (North Carolina District 08)	$1,397,445
Moise, Rudolph (D) (Florida District 17)	$1,386,540

Senate Candidates

McMahon, Linda (R) (Connecticut Senate)	$46,600,161
Greene, Jeff (D) (Florida Senate)	$23,788,077
Johnson, Ron (R) (Wisconsin Senate)	$8,238,465
Pagliuca, Steve (D) (Massachusetts Senate)	$7,590,643
Binnie, William H (R) (New Hampshire Senate)	$6,587,594
Fiorina, Carly (R) (California Senate)	$5,511,080
Raese, John R (R) (West Virginia Senate)	$2,358,240
Blumenthal, Richard (D) (Connecticut Senate)	$2,269,607
Lowden, Sue (R) (Nevada Senate)	$1,939,065
Malpass, David (R) (New York Senate)	$1,600,500

Again, the amount of money spent by these candidates is only what they decided to spend out of their own pocket, and yes, these are DEEP pockets.  WEALTHY pockets.  These totals do not include contributions from anyone else. 

I am not taking sides in any of these races.  There's no point.   But I will vote, because too many people suffered and died for me to not use the privilege to vote while we still have it.  I invite you to google each of these people on the list and read about what they did before deciding to run for public office.  For example:

• Linda McMahon, wife of Vince McMahon, majority owners of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the billion-dollar corporation, spent $15 million of her own money just to win the Republican nomination for Senator of Connecticut.  She now also spent an additional $46 million to win the seat on Election Day.  It's also of interest that her Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, a long-time Attorney General in Connecticut, is also on the list, spending $2 million of his own money.
• George Flinn is, among other things, the President of Flinn Broadcasting in Tennessee.  Flinn Broadcasting owns a network of radio stations, mostly in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi, but also in California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, and Missouri.  He, like Linda McMahon, has amassed substantial wealth.  However, while the leading out-of-pocket spender for a congressional seat, his $3.5 million did not win his party's nomination. 

I could go on and on, and you are free to look up any or all of these names on this list. 
Four things all of these people have in common: 

1. They are very wealthy, successful businesspeople.  Duh.
2. Because they are all successful businesspeople: they have a talent/skill for recognizing a good investment, and for knowing what expenses are worth the return on investment. None of them became wealthy throwing money around without a vision of how that investment would make them even more money and wealth in the long run. 
3. They felt it was worthwhile for them to spend millions of dollars to get elected.  
4. If they manage to get elected, their salary as a U.S. Senator or Representative will be $174,000 per year.

So, knowing these are all successful businesspeople, with good business sense, why would any of them think it good business sense to spend MILLIONS of their own money for a job which pays $174,000 per year?  It would typically take each of these candidates 10 years or more just to break even, not considering any expenses for getting re-elected (a Congressman's term is 2 years, a Senator's is 6 years).  I always thought that if you had to spend MORE to GET THE JOB than the job PAID, it was not financially worthwhile to get that job. You'd be better off to have no income versus losing money trying to get a job, any job. That's why working moms opt to become stay-at-home moms, because the cost of daycare is about equal to their salary.  So why do these savvy businesspeople think it's worthwhile to spend ten to fifty times the annual salary to get this job?

Clearly, these people are not running for public office for the paycheck --IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY.  Maybe they want to do something to help the average American in their district or state?  If you believe that, you should consider getting yourself into rehab asap.

These very wealthy people oddly have a huge DISADVANTAGE when it comes to trying to help the average American.  Specifically, they do not have a clue about your NEEDS, or your PROBLEMS, or how difficult it has become to live a middle-class life style, let alone understand the woes of the poor.  They don't have to shop for the best deals to save a few bucks, they hire someone to do that for them.  They don't cook, they don't clean their toilets, and they don't worry about their job being outsourced.  They don't worry about how they can afford to take care of their aging parents AND get their children through college.  They don't worry about their pension being stolen by the company they worked hard for. They don't worry about having to choose between eating human food AND paying for their prescription.  They don't worry about making the mortgage payment, or the car payment.  They don't worry about their neighbors having hard times and losing THEIR homes, which causes neighborhood housing values to fall, and with it, their nest egg breaks and spills into the gutter.  They don't worry about their credit rating.

These people can afford to put their kids in any school that will take them, they are not affected by public schools not having enough money to pay all the teachers or to keep all the schools open.  These people ALWAYS have much MORE money than month.  These people no longer have to work in the sense we do, in order to make money.  These people can afford to spend millions to get elected and then hesitate to give to the local homeless shelter.  These very wealthy people do not feel your pain any more than you or I feel the pain of a cockroach we shower with bug spray from a distance, and then walk away.  These very wealthy people live on a different plane of existence from you and I.  Your vote is more important to them than you ever will be, and once you've voted, your existence is of little consequence.  They no longer send their sons and daughters off to fight wars, because it has become the task of the "have-nots" to defend the American way of life for the "haves."

And such is the sad truth, they pretend to care, say a few "feel good" catch phrases, bashing what their (often) wealthy opponent has said or done, but never committing to do anything positive to help the average American.  For these people, getting elected is Job One.  The return on their investment is not in that $174,000 per year paycheck, nor in the satisfaction of having done something to improve the lives of average Americans.  The return on investment, their profit, what they get out of getting into that position of power is that they can pursue an agenda which best serves their own business enterprise.  Maybe it's a matter of "deregulation,"  or perhaps a "tax-incentive" for certain industries.  Maybe it's the influence they can now sell to "special interests" which may be several times their salary as a Senator or Congressman. 

So what do you get for the man (or woman) who has everything?  Sorry, it was a trick question... there's nothing you can give them.  What they want they are in the process of taking for themselves -- ever greater power combined with ever decreasing accountability. 

Health Care: I don't know what Jesus would do, BUT...

The health care debate is one of three non-personal attack issues in the upcoming elections November 2.  The other two are the the size of government/budget deficit, and jobs.  The health care debate makes me sick, and is just another example of how the wealthy seek to confuse the average voting American.  And when I say "average," I mean the bottom 80% of households in this country, who own a combined 7% of the wealth of this nation (remember, the top 1% of households own 43% of the wealth, the next top 19% of households own 50% of the wealth).  Almost everyone who is likely to read this blog are in the 80% group).

I'm not going to dive into the tar pit which has become the recent history of health care, I'll just say it wasn't supposed to be so complicated, but special interests such as the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry bought weak-minded and spineless people in Washington and made it as complex as string theory (if you don't know about string theory, google it, and good luck understanding it).

In the Bible, it is written that Jesus once said, ""If you had a sheep that fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn't you work to pull it out? Of course you would. And how much more valuable is a person than a sheep!"  (Matthew 12:11-12).  Now, in the USA, most of us do not have sheep, but we do have cars.  The law requires that EVERY car on the road have auto insurance, or else.  I'm not in a position to speak for Jesus, but I do have to wonder out loud, if we must have car insurance, shouldn't people be required to have health insurance?  How much more valuable is a human life than a car?

Almost all of us have stories about not having adequate or no health care, or at least we know others with such personal stories.  And unless you are among the very wealthy (i.e., in that top 20% of households), you need health insurance to be able to afford adequate health care, if you value your own life.

Any politician who says or implies that national health care is not needed, is inherently wasteful spending, or is a burden on the people, is a liar, and has their own greedy agenda which has nothing to do with treating people at least as well as the cars they use.  Do they think Jesus would agree with them?

The Rich and the Wealthy, Part 2

To put it in proper perspective, the path of income inequality during the last century is marked by two main events: a sharp fall in inequality beginning with the onset of the "New Deal" programs in the mid 1930's Depression, and an extended rise in inequality that began in the mid-1970s and accelerated in the 1980s. Income inequality today is about as large as it was prior to the Great Depression.


Now rest assured, there are those who will insist that the wide gap of income -- and the even wider gap in wealth -- between the top few percent and everybody else, is quite natural.  Those who don't like it "obviously" have issues of some sort with capitalism, free enterprise, mom, apple pie, and the American Way.  I personally have nothing against someone being rich or wealthy, even obscenely rich or obscenely wealthy.  They managed to climb the ladder of success, I applaud them.  The problem is that after they climb to the top, they are effectively pulling the ladder up behind them.

I'm going to lay out some general facts about income distribution in the USA:

• The top 10 percent of households, with average income of about $200,000, received 42 percent of all pretax money income in the late 1990s.
• The top 1 percent of households, averaging $800,000 of income, received 15 percent of all pretax money income.
• The bottom 90 percent of households shared the remaining 68 percent of all pretax income

Since many of us are "math challenged," look at it this way:  in terms of income, if there were 100 people in a room with 100 seats, and the number of seats represented each person's pre-tax income, ten people would have 42 seats, just one of those ten people would have 15 of those seats... and the other 90 people would have to sit in the remaining 68 seats.  Another way to comprehend the distribution is via a video of the L-Curve, which is less than 4 minutes long.

Now, if you think the distribution of income is bad, the distribution of wealth is even worse!  Some facts about wealth distribution in the USA, and I'm talking about financial wealth distribution, which excludes the primary residences of each household:

• The wealthiest 20 percent of households owned 93 percent of total wealth in 2007
• The wealthiest 1 percent of households owned 43 percent of total wealth in 2007
• The bottom 80 percent of households split the remaining 7 percent of total household wealth

Using the same allegory again:  in terms of wealth, if there were 100 people in a room with 100 seats, and the number of seats represented each person's wealth, twenty people would have 93 seats, and just one of those twenty people would have 43 of those seats... and the other 80 people would have to sit in the remaining 7 seats. 

Many of those holding public office on the state or national level (or trying to get elected to those high offices) would have you believe that by voting for them, and not their "opponent," all of us who "work hard" and "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" will join the privileged few (so don't raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, you're going to be one of them... do you want YOUR taxes to be increased?).


Fact, most people do not understand how much the wealth of this country is owned by a small segment of the population.  A recent article describes this in greater detail. Truth is in a perfect world, everyone in this country has the OPPORTUNITY to be among the privileged few... but if it was ever possible for most of us to get there, the privileged few wouldn't be so few in number today.  If you're not there now, your chances of getting there by old-fashioned hard work are only a little better than buying a winning a million dollar lotto ticket. 


Fact is, those in power, or trying to get in power, are for the most part already wealthy or have wealthy connections.  Their objective is NOT for you to be come wealthy or powerful, but instead to simply get your vote so as to maintain and increase their own wealth and power.   And if you think about it, the wealthy don't need to try to get more wealth... who would they get it from, except from their other wealthy friends? (Yes, the top 1 percent tend to hang around other top 1 percent people, not around the bottom 80 percent).  No, as I've already said, it's not about the money.  So, "what do you get the person who has everything?"  The answer is simple: power.  More specifically, power without accountability.  Why the answer is so simple, at least to me, I will attempt to explain in the next one or two entries.