Kevin Drum
writes about something we already knew, but it's always interesting to read the details:
Looking for Mr. Smith? Don't look in Congress. Adjusting for inflation, and not counting home equity, members of Congress are more distant from their constituents than ever before:
The financial gap between Americans and their representatives in Congress has widened considerably since [the 70s], according to an analysis of financial disclosures by The Washington Post. Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House has risen 2½ times, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, rising from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the median sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.
It just costs too much to run for Congress today for anyone who's not fairly well off to do it. And that's no coincidence. As income inequality goes up, campaign funding from rich donors also goes up — partly because the rich have more money and partly because they're more motivated to use that money to influence the political process in order to protect their wealth. ...
A bit more from the Post article:
About a decade ago, academics studying the effect of income inequality on politics noticed a striking fact: The growth of income inequality has tracked very closely with measures of political polarization, which has been gauged using the average difference between the liberal/conservative scores for Republican and Democratic members of the House. The scores come from a database widely used by academics.
“The proximity of these trends is uncanny,” according to a 2003 paper by researchers Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal. “Remarkably, the trends of economic inequality and elite political polarization have moved almost in tandem for the past half-century.”
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
Good thing Saddam was captured, dealing a crippling blow to the Iraqi resistance and guaranteeing a joyful victory in the War on Terror yadda, yadda, yadda...
A roadside bomb killed one soldier and wounded another when it detonated by a convoy near Baquba, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, early on Friday, and a second soldier was killed trying to defuse a bomb outside the town, Captain Jefferson Wolfe said.
Two other U.S. soldiers were killed in a mortar attack on a U.S. camp near Baquba on Thursday, extending the biggest spate of guerrilla activity in and around the Iraqi capital since U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein earlier this month.
The deaths bring to 210 the number of U.S. killed-in-action since Washington declared an end to major combat on May 1, a figure that boosts pressure on the U.S. administration as it mounts its campaign for the 2004 presidential election.
For anyone that's counting, that's 12 soldiers who have been killed since Monday. A tragic waste courtesy of
George Bush.
But don't worry. It's no skin of his back.
It's not his kids dying this holiday season.
Tweet of the Day:
(Here's the photo.)
High Impact Posts are here. Top Comments are here.