The Brandon Five

I'd run, but I have an aversion to being a complete leech on my fellow humans:

Congressional members net worth up 3669 percent

http://governmentgonewild.org/thelist

We will now return to your regularly scheduled fascination with Rupert Murdoch.

wistahpatsfan

Agree.
But the scum in Congress will never do anything to reverse this trend. They will never limit campaign contributions nor will they ever move to establish any kind of term limit. Their Owners would never allow it.

Edit: This would explain why so many are willing to expose themselves and their families to such public nightmares as political campaigns have become.

__________________

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

The Brandon Five

It makes sense when you consider the strong performance they have had over the past 10-12 years. Sovereign debt crisis FTW!

DarrylS

Your source is suspect, but in reality the investor class(which they are part of) has increased their wealth something like +700%.. the rich are getting richer, and to run for congress requires mucho cash behind you.

Time for real campaign finance reform..

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

The Brandon Five

Open Secrets is suspect? What source would you use?

DarrylS

Pronline news.. never heard of it.

Government gone wild?????

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

PatriotsReign

I agree with you last sentence...but...

Most rich will always get richer...there is nothing anyone can or should do to stop that...wouldn't you agree Darryl? (polititicians aside)

Because to stop the rich from getting richer, we'd have to implement salary caps or tax their earnings above "X-amount" at 90%+. That would make no sense at all.

__________________
"No one walking this earth knows what is truly righteous"

The Brandon Five

They are summarizing data from Open Secrets. Not sure what methodology they used...

Looking at the entire House and Senate, this is what I found.

Download the 2009 list:

http://www.opensecrets.org/db2dl/?q=...009&output=CSV

Find the House members (category = "H" and "S"). Calculate the average ($6,466,744.87).

Download the 2004 list:

http://www.opensecrets.org/db2dl/?q=...004&output=CSV

Find the House members (category = "H" and "S"). Calculate the average ($6,091,301.03).

So that's an increase of 6.2%. Yeah, I can't figure out where they came up with the 3,669% figure...although the average net worth of $6 million kind of sticks out, no?

Looking at the second link, I see that the top increase in wealth on that list is "Gutierrez, Luis V (D-Ill)" with an increase of precisely 3,669%. So maybe they were using the example of one congressman, but the title made it sounds like the overall average. My fault for not double-checking their work (the figures for Gutierrez do check out).

The Brandon Five

Over what time period? Where are you getting that data? National wealth has fallen significantly since 2007.