tuscl

OT: I wonder if this means anything or has any effect ?

Papi_Chulo
Miami, FL (or the nearest big-booty club)
Thursday, January 9, 2014 8:52 PM
Millionaires now have the majority in Congress Do you need to be rich to get elected to Congress? Or does getting elected to Congress make you rich? Whatever the cause and effect, Congress is now officially the land of millionaires. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a majority—268 of the 534 members of Congress—had an average net worth in 2012 of $1 million or more, marking the first time millionaires held a majority in Congress. The previous year, only 257 members had millionaire status. The median net worth for the lawmakers who were in Congress as of the May 2013 filing was $1,008,767, up from the previous year's $966,000. Of course Congress—and especially the Senate—has long been a wealthy club. But millionaires have always been in the minority. The Center for Responsive Politics said that this is a "watershed" moment and shows how removed Congress has become from the concerns of most, nonmillionaire Americans. "Despite the fact that polls show how dissatisfied Americans are with Congress overall, there's been no change in our appetite to elect affluent politicians to represent our concerns in Washington," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the center. "Of course, it's undeniable that in our electoral system, candidates need access to wealth to run financially viable campaigns, and the most successful fundraisers are politicians who swim in those circles to begin with." For all of Congress, Democrats are richer than Republicans. Congressional Democrats had a median net worth of $1.04 million, while congressional Republicans had a median net worth of almost exactly $1 million. In both cases, the figures are up from the previous year, when the numbers were $990,000 and $907,000, respectively. The Senate is much richer than the House. The median net worth for all senators increased to $2.7 million from $2.5 million. In the Senate, Republicans are richer than Democrats. Senate Democrats reported a median net worth of $1.7 million (a decline from 2011's $2.4 million), compared with Senate Republicans, at $2.9 million (an increase from $2.5 million). [view link]

31 comments

  • gawker
    •
    10 years ago
    When John Kerry left the Senate to become Secretary of State, the average must have dropped. As well as his "old" Yankee money, his wife Theresa Heinz Kerry is worth close to a billion.
  • mmdv26
    •
    10 years ago
    "...it's undeniable that in our electoral system, candidates need access to wealth to run financially viable campaigns, and the most successful fundraisers are politicians who swim in those circles to begin with." I think there is a lot of truth in this statement.
  • StripReviewer
    •
    10 years ago
    I'm surprised it's not closer to 100%.
  • sharkhunter
    •
    10 years ago
    Of course you have to be rich to get elected to any state office that I am aware of especially congress. I believe I read it takes at least $25,000 to get your name just on the ballot in each of several states to run for certain offices. That is just to get your name on the ballot. Who knows how much it takes to pay the secret organization that rigs all the electronic voting booths to make you a winner. I say it is probably rigged because there is no hardcopy verification. Well if you rig it enough to kill off primary candidates, you are often left with a choice between two people or not much of a choice at all. Running campaigns can cost millions of dollars. Either you have to be rich or know someone who is.
  • farmerart
    •
    10 years ago
    Think about this for a moment. Who do you want to make the laws governing society?........ A homeless, brokeass illiterate? A meth head stripper? Or......A business owner, professional, tradesman accomplished enough to build himself or herself a comfortable net worth?
  • Dougster
    •
    10 years ago
    Means they are out of touch with biter, underemployed janitor types like the jestie-girl. But that is probably a good thing.
  • DandyDan
    •
    10 years ago
    Like it says, Congress has always been a club of the wealthy. Inflation just finally got to the point where there are more millionaires than nonmillionaires. A million is just a random number.
  • Dougster
    •
    10 years ago
    And you'll notice how smoothly the nomination of Janet Yellen despite what you might expect from those who loudly trumpet their capitalist/free market ideals. At the end of the day, they are aware of which goose (gander) lays the golden egg.
  • jackslash
    •
    10 years ago
    The problem with millionaire and billionaire politicians is that they cannot relate to most Americans. Look at Bloomberg (worth at least $25 billion) and his opposition to ordinary citizens having guns to protect themselves.
  • crazyjoe
    •
    10 years ago
    One day there will be broke trillionairs
  • georgmicrodong
    •
    10 years ago
    @farmerart: If they were in fact business or tradesmen who'd built their fortunes through hard work, and intelligent work, I'd absolutely agree. Many of them, however, do not fall I to that category.
  • Clubber
    •
    10 years ago
    fa, gmd replied EXACTLY what I was getting ready to type. A perfect example Ted Kennedy. Nothing more need be said.
  • SlickSpic
    •
    10 years ago
    @Clubber-You beat me to it. I hope you enjoy my Asian Dodger Gal.
  • mikeya02
    •
    10 years ago
    @clubber And then there's Obama with his awesome non accomplishments, A "C" student in college I heard. @Slic I like all your Dodger girls....lets play two!
  • skibum609
    •
    10 years ago
    Gawker -- John Kerry doesn't come from money and I say this as a constituent of that despicable bag of jizz. Old family name, but not monied. The increase in millionaires is due to the Fed. pumping money into the system and artificially inflating the market. I would like to point out that when this nation was created it was considered a public duty for the rich to serve in politics. The positions were unpaid and the average person was someone working 70 hours a week to live. The theory was the rich didn't have to work that hard and therefore had time to donate to the public by serving in politics for free. The worst offender imo is Nancy Pelosi who's husband made all his millions on Government contracts.
  • Tiredtraveler
    •
    10 years ago
    Many of those asshole go to congress to get rich.
  • mjx01
    •
    10 years ago
    @farmerart: valid point, but here in the US most of the elite ruling class got there by cronyism and being whores to their lobbyists, not by being a successful capitalist. Congress being exempt from insider trading laws sure helps Pelosi and many others.
  • Clubber
    •
    10 years ago
    Slick, I do!
  • likes2look
    •
    10 years ago
    A few meth head strippers would make CSPAN more interesting! On a more serious note, people just trying to get by month to month don't have a lot of spare time to run for office.
  • sofaking87
    •
    10 years ago
    I like that democrats have more money then republicans, lol!
  • ilbbaicnl
    •
    10 years ago
    If you are successful in politics, I think you would have to try very hard NOT to be rich. Because you definitely have to KNOW rich people to succeed in politics, and get then to donate to your campaign. Your rich friends are bound to hook you up with chances to make high-return investments. Remember Whitewater.
  • farmerart
    •
    10 years ago
    There is such a hate for politicians on this discussion board from all you American guys. I freely admit that I know virtually nothing about the cut-and-thrust of American politics. I do know a bit about Canadian politics. My business is entwined with government agencies much more than I would prefer. I have never encountered a corrupt government official, just various levels of professionalism and competence. I have known many elected politicians during my life. Some were total blustering buffoons. Some were careful and wise with their approach to social problems. My local Member of Parliament back in the 1970s was a hard charging businessman whom I think might have become Canada's Prime Minister if he hadn't died of a heart attack at a very young age. I had great respect for that guy. Canada's current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is a deadly smart character and a crafty politician with a clear agenda that he is pursuing. Unfortunately, he has never held a job in the private sector (currently he is in his 50s). He just does not understand how an economy really works. Prior to Harper Canada had 15 years of excellent competent government management of the national economy. Harper's Tories are unwinding all of that - government debt is rising, much of the productive economy is in the doldrums, unemployment has risen during the Conservative tenure. There is an old adage in Canadian politics - 'Tory times are tough times'. Canada is not experiencing tough times but things should be so much better than they are. Harper had an economic sweet platter handed to him by the previous government and he has done nothing with the goodies handed to him, just pissed them away. I shudder to think what Harper would have done if he had inherited a poisoned chalice like Obama was bequeathed by Bush II.
  • georgmicrodong
    •
    10 years ago
    @farmerat: "I have never encountered a corrupt government official," That you *know* of. :) I'm betting you have, s/he just wasn't sure whether *you* were corrupt enough to try the bribe. Does the "Tory" party in Canada correspond to anything on the American political spectrum? And I'm not just talking about the two mainstream parties.
  • Dougster
    •
    10 years ago
    I wonder if Canada peaked out. Housing bubble because they had to keep rates low to keep their dollar for getting too strong. Now it's starting to weaken, but can they risk raising rates as oil prices fall? And those Canadian employment numbers on Friday! I did some checking and it looks like the TSX had less than half the return of the S&P last year!
  • zipman68
    •
    10 years ago
    @GMD... Tories are the conservatives and my impression is that Harper is surprisingly similar from a policy standpoint to the US Republicans. Certainly the impression I got from chatting with people on my last trip to Canada (though I wasn't sure how much the folks I was talking to knew of US politics).
  • zipman68
    •
    10 years ago
    I'm not worried by millionaires in Congress per se. I am worried about the influence of money on US politics. We may be coming to the end of a system with a separate president and legislature (more accurately, a separate president with real power). Some political scientists suspect presidential systems are unstable and tend to become authoritarian but the US has largely been the exception. A prime minister -- especially one in a system with some sort of proportional representation -- has a mandate to get his or her agenda through but knows that if things really go south he can get a vote of no confidence and be out (and typically ousted as leader of his or her party). None of this perpetual gridlock like that in recent US history. A PM taking a lot of extraconstitutional authority that gets caught is also likely going to be out. Of course, PMs can game the system by calling elections when they are popular. But if they really fuck up they are ultimately out. The permanent campaign that has arisen in the US is just fueling the need for money and encouraging corruption. The reality is that just being a millionaire is nowhere near enough to make you independent of donors, even for congress. The shorter campaigns of parliamentary systems limits this corrupting influence.
  • Alucard
    •
    10 years ago
    You're intelligent Papi. What do you really think?
  • farmerart
    •
    10 years ago
    @georgmicrodong, The Conservative Party of Canada (commonly called the Tories) has no exact equivalent in national US politics. Broadly you could say that the Tories are Canada's Republicans and the Liberal Party of Canada is Canada's Democratic Party. This analogy is not exact. For example: the far left of the US Democratic Party would not fit in the Liberal Party. Canada has its own socialist party called the New Democratic Party; it would be the natural home for left wing Democrats. The Tea Party would belong to Canada's Tories but they would not have the same influence that they wield in the Republican Party. Canada's political parties are very much under the control of the party leader. Remember that Canada has a parliamentary system of government, not republican. The Prime Minister of the day must regularly submit to questions from the opposition parties in the House of Commons. Whenever an explosive issue is in play, or perhaps a scandal, Question Period is high drama and comic entertainment at the same time. Currently, there are five different parties with representation in the House of Commons - the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, the Greens, and a Quebec independence party. When no party has a majority in the House of Commons politics in Canada becomes even more interesting. Politicians are then forced to work together to avoid submitting themselves to another election. IMO, some of Canada's best governments have been minority governments (viz. Pearson, Chretien) and some of the very worst have been those governments with an overwhelming majority (viz. Diefenbaker, Mulroney, Trudeau).
  • ilbbaicnl
    •
    10 years ago
    @art the US constitution is Democracy 1.0 so yeah, many warts. The US founders hoped to force party-less, consensus politics. Post-slavery, it's worked OK because Americans traditionally don't get so emotional about politics. Our problems now are not really political. Most white people in the US are split into two groups, the urban hipsters and the rural traditionalists, with suburbanites being divided between the two. The hipsters have a very condescending attitude towards the traditionalists, and the traditionalists are tired of if. Wealthy extremists are using the traditionalist backlash (tea party). But, with the government shutdown, the traditionalists are wising up to the hidden agenda of the Koch types. Eventually I think the traditionalists are going to wise up to it that many Blacks and most Latinos and Asians are really traditionalists too, and they just need to show them a more welcoming attitude. Then the Republican Party will get stronger by leaps and bounds.
  • ilbbaicnl
    •
    10 years ago
    @art was everyone in Canada ROFL when we had our big scandal when someone shouted "you lie!" at Obama when he addressed the Congress? Has the Parliament ever had a question period when somebody DIDN'T shout that a the PM?
  • georgmicrodong
    •
    10 years ago
    @farmerart: Thanks for that explanation. I admit that I am somewhat lax in being up to date with the world political scene, even those folks to whom I used to live next door. I feel like I have my hands full trying to understand *our* politics. Of course, it *is* somewhat simpler in the U.S., since neither major party really has a different goal from the other, i.e. controlling my life, they just pursue different means to that end. I think the Founders tried to avoid a parliamentary system because they felt that a more democratic system would more easily lead to the "tyranny of the majority", and that a more indirect republican form of government would manage to avoid that. Sadly, they appear to have been incorrect in the long run.
You must be a member to leave a comment.Join Now
Got something to say?
Start your own discussion