Scientific Proof That An Elitist American Political Class Now Exists

Article by Bruno Korschek

Many Americans have always suspected that an elitist, royalty-like political class has been evolving in America for a long time. There had been some fragmentary, indirect evidence pointing to the existence of this class of royalty:

- People in this class seem to always vote themselves better pay levels, better retirement plans, better health care coverage, and far more personal and financial perks than what was available to every other American.

- These people tended to enjoy these perks even though they always seemed to be “on recess,” i.e. they spend a lot of time on vacation.

- And finally, these people never to seem to be accountable for their failings or even take responsibility for their failures. Major issues confronting regular Americans never seem to be resolved, or even seriously addressed, by people in this royalty-like political class. The lost war on drugs, failing public schools, leaky borders, etc. have been with us forever without ever coming close to being taken care of.

However, we finally have quantitative proof that we have evolved into two groups of people in this country, those that are affiliated with the American political class and the rest of us. Every day, the Gallup polling organization surveys Americans of all income levels on whether they think economic conditions are good or bad and whether things are getting better or worse.

They take their results and convert the survey answers into an Economic Confidence Index for each state and the District of Columbia. A negative value of the index indicates that people are generally pessimistic about the economy. A positive index value indicates most people are generally optimistic about the economy.

The latest results are quite unbelievable. Americans in EVERY one of the fifty states have negative index values. In other words, wherever you live in the country, your neighbors and other state residents are in a negative mood about the economic conditions in their lives. North, south, east, or west, high population states, low population states, red states, blue states, America is generally in a sour mood when it comes to the economy.

Which is not surprising for most Americans. Unemployment is persistently high at around 9%, or the equivalent of 14 million Americans. Another 9 million Americans are underemployed or have stopped looking for employment. Economic life is not good around the country.

Except…if you are a member of the political class living in the District Of Columbia area. DC was the only area in the country that had a positive index value. Fifty states are negative and the location where the American political class is located has a positive view of economic conditions. Which is probably not too surprising since according to an article in the September 5, 2011 issue of St. Petersburg Times, the government’s Bureau Of Economic Analysis estimates that the average per capita income in DC is ,011 while the national average is ,584.

And this disconnect is even worse than described above. While the national unemployment rate is around 9%, the unemployment rate in the DC area is 10.8%. So why the economic optimism in DC in light of this significantly higher unemployment rate?

Simple: the survey only included people who are currently employed. Thus, those that have jobs are much happier and optimistic in DC than those with jobs around the country, in every state. The negativity of unemplopyment does not come into play in this index. Even those with jobs around the country think things are economically bad except those with jobs in DC, the political class and those that directly benefit from the political class.

Talk about being disconnected from the reality of today’s world. The whole country thinks the economy stinks except by those in charge of managing, and hopefully, optimizing economic conditions:

- If those in charge do not see, feel, and understand the hard economic times, how are they expected to put any sense of urgency on the matter?

- How likely are they do to the hard, serious work of deeply understanding the root causes of our economic plight when they do not feel the pain?

- How likely are they to do the heavy thinking to develop the right solutions to these root causes, solutions that might require serious leadership traits and sacrifice when they do not feel the pain?

Given our politicians’ less then sterling management of economic concerns so far, it is unlikely that the self-satisfied politicians in Washington will execute the difficult, in-depth work to fix the country’s economic distress.

Does this seem like a classic “let them eat cake” moment? Has our political class become so enriched and isolated that the analogy to Marie Antoinette and the pompous French royal class from several centuries ago are so obvious? When you are perceived to be closer to Marie Antoinette than Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill or other great leaders from history, you are truly evolving, or devolving, into a pampered, isolated form of useless political royalty.

These findings alone prove we quickly need impose term limits on all Federally elected politicians. We need people in Washington that understand the true economic situation throughout the country, not what they want to see from Washington. People that are refreshed on a regular basis so that the disconnect between reality and Washington, as measured by this Gallup index, never happens again.

Missteps, Mistakes, and Just Plain Misses From the American Political Class

Article by Bruno Korschek

One depressing aspect of following the exploits of the American political class is that you rarely get to experience bold steps, great government programs, and direct resolutions of problems. Instead, it seems we are constantly overwhelmed with their missteps, mistakes, and misses on major issues facing Americans. Consider:

- The October 14, 2011 issue of The Week contained a story about the failed Federal government program on mortgage support and relief for struggling homeowners. The program has been a failure since it started last year:

* Although funded with a billion dollars to help unemployed homeowners with their underwater mortgages, the program closed after a year with only half of its budget spent. Imagine that: a government program that did not spend all of its budget, you know that it must have been a bad program.

* The article claims that the program was plagued by poor administration and onerous qualifying rules and guidelines.Because of the strict eligibility guidelines, less than half of the intended 30,000 recipients received half under the program.

* A Dallas consumer credit counseling center helped more than 1,000 homeowners file the necessary paperwork, only to see about 80% of the needy homeowners get rejected by the program’s strict income guidelines, i.e. in order to get government help for mortgage relief as a result of the homeowners did not having a job, they needed to adhere to strong income requirements, which they could not because they often did not have a job.

Thus, a program that was supposed to help tens of thousands of homeowners probably ended up helping out only thousands of homeowners while there are millions of American homes in foreclosure. Is this a misstep, a mistake, a miss or all three?

- An article in the September 21, 2011 issue of The Week talked about the potential for defrauding the Federal government via scams from the for-profit colleges and schools:

* There are 2,000 for-profit colleges in the country which serve 12% of all American students involved in higher education today, up from 3% ten years ago.

* Critics contend that these colleges mislead applicants about loan costs, overstate the post graduation salaries, target the homeless and disabled veterans to increase enrollment, and provide dubious educations and degrees that do not lead to better paying jobs and careers.

* As an example, they cite the University of Phoenix, the market leader, which graduates less than 9% of its students in six years.

* Bridgepoint Education posted a 6 million profit last year from its 78,000 students despite the fact that 84% of its students drop out within two years of enrolling, the school has 1,700 recruiters but only one job placement person on staff, and according to Senator Tom Harkin, the school is “an absolute scam.”

* Many students report worthless degrees with mountains of student loan debt after attending these for-profit institutions.

* The largest for-for profit company has annual revenue of almost five billion dollars and the CEO of another leading for-profit education company took down an annual salary of million, sixty times more than what the president of Harvard University made.

Why should the American taxpayer care about this seemingly shoddy education performance and experience? According to the article, about 75% of the revenue for these companies running the for-profit schools comes from the Federal government via grants and loans. At Bridgepoint Education, 87% of their revenue comes from the Federal government.

A recent Congressional committee report stated that “Some for-profit schools are efficient government-subsidy collectors first and educational institutions second.” Some critics claim that the for-profits intentionally target poor and minority students for the express purpose of leveraging their status to get Federal government aid money, which has grown from .6 billion in 2000 to billion today.

As a result, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan: “Millions of low income students are borrowing heavily to attend for-profit colleges and too many of them are dropping out, failing to to get a job, and leaving the taxpayers with the bill. In the meantime, many of the for-profit colleges are getting rich off of Federal grants and support.

Although the article points out that the Federal government is finally starting to crackdown on the fraud and waste in the program, citing the recent suit against Education Management Corporation which is accused of fraudulently charging the Federal government for billion for student aid over the years, one always has to wonder 1) why it took so long to do the right thing and crack down on the fraud and 2) how much taxpayer money has been wasted over the years and how much will continue to be wasted in the future?

At billion a year, this inefficient and ineffective program could fund more than half of Obama’s jobs program every year. It is the one government program that might do a worse job at creating jobs than Obama’s job proposal, wasting money on students that rarely get educated and never get job placed successfully. Missteps, mistakes, or misses?

- According to an April, 2007 Newsweek article by Fareed Zakara, as reviewed under Step 25 in “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” China and India were scheduled to open up more than 800 coal burning power plants between 2007 and 2011. This comes out to about 160 plants new coal plants per year, three per week, coming on line.

The article estimates that just these new coal plants, not existing coal plants in China and India, will dump 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year. Certainly a cause for concern regardless of whether or not you believe in man made global warming. 2.5 billion TONS is a lot of air pollution.

So what is the political class doing about it? Apparently nothing since they are preoccupied with what American asthma sufferers put into the lungs to be able to breath. According to an article in the Weekly Standard on September 23, 2011, the Obama administration banned the current set of asthma relief inhalers that most asthma sufferers use, as of January, 2012. The reason? An international treaty that seeks to reduce the amount of chlorofluorocarbons released into the air in an attempt to protect the ozone layer.

But these asthma inhalers do not release chlorofluorocarbons into the air, they are released into a person’s lungs so that they can breathe easier. However, the Federal government is banning them and forcing Americans to use a different type of inhaler which will cost anywhere from 50% more to three times as much per inhaler.

Let’s see, focus on getting the Chinese and Indian governments to reduce the incremental 2.5 billion TONS of pollutants their new power plants will put into the atmosphere every year or make Americans pay more for different medical relief from asthma for the medicine they shoot into their lungs, not the air, different medical relief that may not work as well? What is the better priority and better use of government resources? A misstep, mistake or miss on the part of the political class and Federal government?

- According to an article in Fortune magazine, that was summarized in the October 14, 2011 issue of The Week magazine, prices for prime Midwest farmland have risen 17% on average over the past year as a result of rising food prices and the growth of the corn ethanol market. Thus, tell us again why American taxpayers still pay American farm interests tens of billions of dollars every year in farm subsidies, subsidies that mostly go to big agriculture corporations and not family farmers? Missteps, mistakes or misses when it comes to wasting taxpayer money via corporate welfare?

- The last misstep, mistake, or miss comes from a recent Associated Press news article. The U.S. Senate has voted to block an Obama administration proposal that would limit potatoes in school lunches. It seems that the administration is worried about too many kids eating too many French fries at lunch time in our schools, wanting to restrict schools to two servings a week of potatoes and other starchy vegetables.

The U.S. Senate actually took formal government time and resources and voted to accept an amendment by Republican Sen. Susan Collins that would block the government from putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches. Collins is from Maine, a potato-growing state.

14 million Americans unemployed, national debt fast approaching TRILLION, pubic schools in this country still undereducating our kids on average, leaky borders, three foreign military conflicts underway, no national energy policy, health care costs up 9% on a year over year basis, the country as divided as ever, a President who would rather politically campaign than actually execute his Presidential duties, the economy on the verge of another recession, etc. Do our Senators really believe that the great potato debate should take precedence and attention over dozens of other more important and more pressing issues facing the majority of Americans today? Misstep, mistake, a miss or just plain pathetic?

You look at these constant, unrelenting misses, in whatever form they appear, and you begin to see the need to impose term limits on all Federally elected positions. The current crop of politicians has been in office for so long that they no longer understand the reality of the average American’s world.

This is a world and a reality where unemployment issues should be handled before potato issues, a world where wasting taxpayer dollars on fraudulent schools, bad mortgage programs, and agriculture corporate welfare should take precedence over potato issues, a world where we properly set balances and priorities so that American asthma suffers do not suffer, both medically and financially, when India and China are doing far more harm to the world’s environment. Term limits now, less misses later.