Honesty? Integrity? Nah, Just Wealth!
When it’s a question of how many millions a candidate is worth, I’m already wondering why the average American doesn’t just revolt right now. Democracy in a republic means we are represented by people like us, right? Sort of like a jury of one’s peers? Only in our country, it’s a guarantee since the times of the Founding Fathers that anyone with any hope of being elected must be wealthy. Let’s examine this more closely, shall we? This here calls for a TOP TEN LIST!
Top Ten Reasons Why Presidential Candidates Must Be Rich:
10
Need a lot of houses when ruling a large country (hotels can get expensive!)
9
Need to know a lot of lawyers and stockbrokers to handle lobbyists (must be able to “talk the talk,” eg, yeah baby, I can get you the contract but I’ll need a couple hundred thou donated to my campaign, sabby?)
8
Golf
7
Must be healthy, tall, fit, and possess endurance and stamina, therefore, must work out, preferably with personal trainer. No big beer belly, no big desk butt.
6
Can’t wear tacky clothes or shop at Ross. When lacking fitness, must be able to afford expensive suits to hide fat. (like Karl Rove) $500 loafers only, please.
5
Must be well educated. Can’t say “ain’t true, bruddah” or “ax me WTF.” Can’t throw down a big f-bomb when frustrated. Must say, “I take exception to your comment.” Can’t tell lowbrow jokes at state dinners, eg, “Your momma’s so fat she done fell down and broke her leg and GRAVY poured out!”
4
Must be able to afford dry cleaning. No dog hair or, uh, bodily fluids on clothes. (If Monica Lewinksy wasn’t so poor, we would never have known…)
3
Must be able to afford ghost writer for self-aggrandizing memoir.
2
Can’t have a real job, else no time to speechify and glory in the extreme self-love required of all candidates.
1
Must be able to afford nanny (no butt wiping in the White House!), driver (no Prius in the White House!), personal trainer (no chub, asthma, weak muscles in the White House!), cook (no bean-soaking, chicken de-skinning, potato mashing in the White House!), housecleaning army (no vacuuming, dusting, doing dishes, or mildew scouring in the White House!), and speechwriters (no inarticulate bumpkins or jackasses in the White House! Unless your GW, in which case we all scratch our heads and wonder how the heck anyone let that happen…). Oh yeah, and therapist (no crying, anxiety, nightmares, or irrational demands for protection from aliens while in the White House!)
Median income for the average American: about $48,000.
McCain’s income: $405,000.
Obama’s income: $4.2 million, with about $261,000 from salaries and the rest from book royalties.
Average American Family’s net worth $93,000.
Obama Family’s net worth $1 to 3 million.
McCain Family’s net worth $25 to 38 million.
Ralph Nader’s net worth $4 million.
Wow. Dudes. Even Nader.
The Failure of Our Democracy
Whee! A little lite reading for today!
With the elections approaching and the pressure mounting to select a Democratic nominee to stand against McCain, I’ve been considering our democracy, it’s processes, and it’s flaws. I won’t even start with the whole Electoral College bit, but will instead move straight into a little discussed aspect of our system: proportional representation. If you ask the average Joe on the street, they think we have it. We don’t.
I was all set to do the math and build a chart based on the number of seats each state currently holds in the House of Representatives proportionally compared to each state’s population when I stumbled on this gloriously complete version in Wikipedia.
If you live in Wyoming, you share one representative with 522,000 of your friendliest neighbors. If you live in Arizona, you share with 792,000 others. That’s just for the reps. Senate-wise, if you live in Wyoming you share one senator with roughly 250,000 cowboys. If you live in California, you share Feinstein with 18,276,000 people. That’s EIGHTEEN MILLION two hundred seventy six thousand people. Hmmm. I bet that’s not quite what the framers had in mind.
But we haven’t even gotten to the actual discussion of proportional representation. We live in a winner-take-all democracy. In other countries, they enjoy the penultimate form of democracy: proportional representation, aka coalition government. In the US, we sell to the highest bidder. The loser is not represented at all. Here’s a quote from an article in the Boston Review:
Polls show most Americans would like to see a third party electing candidates at every level of government, but only three of our nearly eight thousand state and congressional legislators were elected on a minor party ticket–all of them in Burlington, Vermont.
Buncha hippies! Those Vermont people are crazy! Yeah, crazy cool. I want to see a share of Green Party seats. And Libertarians. Yeah! More Libertarians!
Chaser:
courtesy of http://commonsenselogic.blogspot.com/
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