The rich get richer: Meet your official U.S. of A. Congress!

Congressional net worth more than doubles since 1984
The net wealth of members of the U.S. House of Representatives has increased over the years, with net worth in 2009 more than double that of 1984, but American family wealth has been stagnant. While Republicans are somewhat wealthier than their Democratic counterparts, the gap between them two has narrowed considerably.

-- from washingtonpost.com (click to enlarge)

"The growing disparity between the representatives and the represented means that there is a greater distance between the economic experience of Americans and those of lawmakers."

from "Growing wealth widens distance between lawmakers and
constituents," by Peter Whoriskey, in today's Washington Post

by Ken

Let's repeat: "The growing disparity between the representatives and the represented means that there is a greater distance between the economic experience of Americans and those of lawmakers." Oh really? Ya think? Who knew?

Just as it's not exactly news to DWT readers that the U.S. economy has formally split into an elite on the top separated by a gap of historic proportions from the under-ranks (split between relatively comfortable strivers and those struggling to survive), it's not exactly news that our Congress has become a rich folks' conclave, with fewer and fewer exceptions. Goodness knows, Howie has been reporting on it regularly.

Still, it's nice when the infotainment noozemedia take note of either phenomenon. So it's a glass-half-full, glass-half-empty kind of deal when the Washington Post (inspired by the new Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan) suddenly discovers that members of the U.S. House of Representatives are by and large rollin' in dough.

Growing wealth widens distance between lawmakers and constituents

Gary Myers of Sebastian, Fla., rides along that city’s Riverview Park. Myers, who is retired, was a Republican member of the House, representing Pennsylvania from 1975 through 1978. The median net worth of a member of the House in 2009 was more than 2½ times greater than it was in 1984 -- $725,00 vs. $280,000 - when adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of financial disclosures. Meanwhile, the median net worth of Americans, as a whole, actually declined slightly over the same period.

By Peter Whoriskey

BUTLER, Pa. -- One day after his shift at the steel mill, Gary Myers drove home in his 10-year-old Pontiac and told his wife he was going to run for Congress.

The odds were long. At 34, ­Myers was the shift foreman at the "hot mill" of the Armco plant here. He had no political experience and little or no money, and he was a Republican in a district that tilted Democratic.

But standing in the dining room, still in his work clothes, he said he felt voters deserved a better choice.

Three years later, he won.

When Myers entered Congress, in 1975, it wasn’t nearly so unusual for a person with few assets besides a home to win and serve in Congress. Though lawmakers on Capitol Hill have long been more prosperous than other Americans, others of that time included a barber, a pipe fitter and a house painter. A handful had even organized into what was called the “Blue Collar Caucus.”

But the financial gap between Americans and their representatives in Congress has widened considerably since then, 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 more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity.

Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan.

The comparisons exclude home equity because it is not included in congressional reporting, and 1984 was chosen because it is the earliest year for which consistent wealth statistics are available.

The growing disparity between the representatives and the represented means that there is a greater distance between the economic experience of Americans and those of lawmakers.

“My mother and I used to joke we were like the Beverly Hillbillies when we rolled into McLean, and we really were,” said Michele ­Myers, the congressman’s daughter, now 46. “My dad was driving this awful lime-green Ford Maverick, and I bought my clothes at Kmart.”

Today, this area of Pennsylvania just north of Pittsburgh is represented in Congress by another Republican, Mike Kelly, a wealthy car dealer elected for the first time in 2010. Kelly, as it happens, grew up just a few houses down the street from the Myers family, in a larger brick home.Kelly’s dad owned the local Chevrolet-Cadillac dealership in Butler, and Kelly, an affable former football recruit to Notre Dame, had worked there since he was a kid. Three years after graduating from college, he married Victoria Phillips, an heir to the Phillips oil fortune. He eventually bought and took control of the family car business, and today, the net worth of Kelly and his wife runs in the millions of dollars, according to financial disclosure forms.

Both men refer to their personal life experiences in explaining their political outlook. . . .

You can go on and read the rest for yourself. I certainly plan to, when I have time. It goes on for quite a bit, I see, and there are bound to be piquant details along the way. But with regard to the basic story, we all know that, don't we?

Let me just add one more nugget. Now that we've established that "the growing disparity between the representatives and the represented means that there is a greater distance between the economic experience of Americans and those of lawmakers," and grasped that this could just possibly be reflected in those lawmakers', er, deliberations (for want of a better word), let's in effect allow the other shoe to drop.

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,” researchers Nolan McCar­ty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal wrote in a 2003 paper. “Remarkably, the trends of economic inequality and elite political polarization have moved almost in tandem for the past half-century.”

Yes, it's really "uncanny," and "remarkable." Okay, I'm being sarcastic. "Only to be expected" is the politest spin I can put on it. And note that that paper was written way back in 2003, before George W. Bush was reelected, more or less, and when the formal merger of the Right and the Republican Party was still in progress, with its newfound commitment to a public-discourse policy of All LIes, All the Time, and the Teabaggers were only a glimmering in the eyes of visionaries like the Koch brothers.

S THE AMERICAN PROSPECT'S "BALANCE SHEET" NOTES TODAY, THE POST PIECE LITERALLY TELLS ONLY HALF THE STORY

MR. ROCKEFELLER
GOES TO WASHINGTON

Congress' studied effort at ignoring the Occupy movement isn't that surprising when you take a look at legislators' tax returns: Many representatives sit comfortably in the 1 percent. Between 1984 and 2009, the median income of members of the House ballooned from $280,000 -- an already impressive figure -- to $725,000, according to the new Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan. An analysis of the study in The Washington Post did not include figures for the Senate. In comparison, the median income of an American family has slipped from $20,600 to $20,500 over the same time period. No wonder that Congress was squeamish about passing a millionaire surtax or signing on to support the protesters in Zuccotti Park.

This congressional income gap partly reflects how expensive it is to run a campaign: the price of a successful bid for a seat in the U.S. House has quadrupled to $1.4 million since 1976. Unless Congress takes another stab at campaign finance— -- or, at the risk of hurting themselves and their donors, takes measures against rampant income inequality -- the gulf between the governors and the governed isn't likely to change anytime soon.

LET ME VENTURE THAT THE PERSONAL-WEALTH
NUMBERS STILL TELL ONLY PART OF THE STORY

Because here's where the payoff comes from the right-wing elite's decades-long cultivation of a culture of ignorance, delusions, and lies. As a result, an increasingly unreachable chunk of the American population now devotes its political energies to giving figurative blowjobs to the 1% under the illusion that this serves its own and the country's interests. So among the Teabaggers, for example, while there are lots of economically comfortable lurkers, there are also lots of folks who are struggling and have, against all logic and sense, taken up arms with their oppressors.

Add to this the legions of the Crackpot Right who've signed on for the support the elites give them in their ideologically and religiously fueled crusades against sanity and decency, and you've got quite a coalition stormtrooping under the banner:

THE RICH GET RICHER
AND EVERYONE ELSE GETS FUCKED
#