This is a short and fascinating video clip in which Congressman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez questions a panel of lobbyists about the ethics rules that govern members of Congress and that make it legal to accept donations from industry, own stock in those industries, and get very rich.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Brilliant, refreshing, clear andwell-funded campaign to discredit her.
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Laura,
The Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation has on its Board an NEA member, Rebecca Pringle, and, an AFT member, Mary Cathryn Rickler. Rhetorically, why would they elect a Pahara Fellow to chair the board. The Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education, Karen Symms Gallagher, is the first Dean of Education that the Gates-funded Pahara can claim as a Fellow.
In Sept., Gates and Arnold funded a Bipartisan Policy Center session on the “changing landscape ” of higher ed. The only panel representative from a university was the former Kaplan, now Purdue Global. Purdue faculty are fighting against the destruction of quality education at public universities.
Teachers who don’t help themselves can’t expect AOC to help them?
The AFT was the 2nd largest contributor to DFER candidate Rep. Susan Davis.
BTW, the infamous Candice McQueen is also on the CAEP Board.
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Having a little trouble translating this. I looked up Pahara– I think I get that– but what does this part mean: “Teachers who don’t help themselves can’t expect AOC to help them?”.
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Thanks for the question, Bethree 3
When teachers have a voice on boards, they should feel compelled to use them. It is THEIR obligation.
If teachers (AFT and NEA) failed to use their voice to stop the election of a Pahara Fellow as CAEP chair, a group that presumably makes decisions about the criteria colleges must meet to be accredited e.g. Relay, what conclusion can be drawn? If teachers want mandated credentials that reflect professionalism then, accreditation for the colleges where teachers are taught, is where it happens.
The founder of Pahara also founded TFA, New Schools Venture Fund and Bellwether. Gates funds those entities.
Diane founded NPE. The odds that Gates, Arnold, Fordham, DFER etc. will donate to NPE are zero.
Analogy- AOC/Diane get a chance to select the head of a Democratic Committee. They won’t choose someone they surmise is a DINO.
When I looked at Symms’ USC bio last week, it didn’t include Pahara. Odd that- Pahara boasted about her Fellow status which I inferred meant they saw it as a real coup for the organization.
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I LOVE AOC!!! Not only does she reveal what’s going on, but she does it so that anyone/everyone can understand (no double speak or speaking with forked tongue). I wish every American would listen to this video clip and understand that most politicians (both Dem & Rep) are self serving and have no interest in serving the voting constituents that elected them. Good gosh!…..I’ve been acutely aware of this since the Bill Clinton era and it’s taken this long for someone to finally start asking the right questions to expose the truth. The people answering the questions were squirming in their chairs and it was a delight to see.
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AOC asks EXCELLENT questions and nails it.
An aside, but important info.
Today I received something from Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Here are the categories.
I did notice there is one for PUBLIC Education. Ya think the DEMS are finally “getting” that the DFERS are wrong? I sure hope so.
Here’s one of the questions:
With President Trump in the White House and a Republican majority in the Senate, what issues are you most worried about right now? (Check all that apply.)
Access to affordable health care
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference
The future of the Supreme Court
Medicare and Medicaid
Public education
Climate change and the environment
Women’s reproductive health
Immigrant rights
Economic security
Anything else
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Take out: “Here is ONE of the questions”. What I wrote is misleading; I wrote too fast and didn’t reread. So sorry.
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Good GAWD. I need coffee. Meant DELETE “Here are the categories.”
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Congressional representatives often have these enormous spikes in Net Worth during the time that they serve in Congress. They come into the job with a Net Worth of 200K, earn 174K a year, but somehow, miraculously, a decade later, are worth many millions.
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And they put Martha Stewart in jail for insider trading. Members of Congress routinely do this.
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Exactly
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Cory Booker’s wealth accumulation comes to mind.
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The typical member of the U.S. Congress is worth $1.03 million.
The net worth of a typical member of Congress has grown 20% since 2007. During those same years, the net worth of the typical American household dropped 35%.
In 2007 the typical senator or representative had a net worth of $803,000. By 2010 that number had grown to $1 million. At the same time, the net worth of U.S. families dropped from $126,000 to $77,000.
— Tom Gerencer, MoneyNation, 2015
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Great video clip, but if the typical member of Congress really has a net worth of $1.03 million, then fortunately the number of really bad guys in Congress may not be that great! In many major metropolitan areas of the U.S., anyone who owns a single home and has some retirement savings is worth that much.
That said we clearly need better ethics and campaign finance regulations, but this is not “new news.” Alexandria does a great job of illustrating the point though.
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Having a net worth of $1 million doesn’t make people immune to graft and self dealing. They want to be worth $2 million. Look at Trump. Heclaims to be a billionaire but he is driven by greed.
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No argument there. I am in complete agreement with the points made by AOC.
My point, however, is simply that if corruption was truly rampant in Congress, one would expect a much higher net worth figure. When the “typical” figure is $1.03 million, that usually means that half of the members are worth less than that.
Note that in his post just prior to stating the $1.03 million number, Bob referred to members of Congress as being worth “millions,” and then probably found to his own surprise when he took the time to look up the number that they barely made his threshold ($1.03 million = “millions” ??).
As we all know from Trump, making outrageous sounding political statements is great fun, but facts can be pesky little critters…
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David, that’s an average. Congress contains many members who haven’t been there long and have yet to get on the gravy train. Many of the longest-serving have become fabulously wealthy.
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Of course. My point is simply to not overhype the situation. No doubt that there are some bad guys in Congress and the campaign finance laws, etc., need to be overhauled. I have been a member of Public Citizen and Common Cause for years precisely because of this reason.
However, I was actually pleasantly surprised by your $1.03 million figure because, had your rhetoric matched reality, I would have expected the number to be much higher than it actually is.
As I said to Diane, an average (depending upon whether it is a median or mean) may indicate that half of the members are worth less than that number. If $1.03 million is a mean and there are a smaller number of high net worth people tailing off to the right end of the distribution, then the median is probably below $1 million.
While this may make them liable to temptation, I usually find that many people are actually decent in real life and not the monsters that popular culture/media makes us all suspect.
If we have learned anything recently, it should be that our politics needs to be informed by facts, not hysteria.
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That figure is from 2015. Here, a list, from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_members_of_the_United_States_Congress_by_wealth
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Very interesting! I am a Democrat, and was a bit dismayed to see that 6 of the top 10 are from my party. I was even more surprised to see that Nancy Pelosi tops the list. This is Wikipedia though. Are you sure this isn’t “fake news ?”
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Here is the reference from Wikipedia. I think using more reliable sources is in order.
https://www.rollcall.com/wealth-of-congress
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The sources, there, are credited, and this is a common practice on Wikipedia–to footnote the sources so that one can go to them. BTW, a study in Nature a few years ago concluded that Wikipedia was as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and various other studies have concurred. In all cases, one needs not to rely on some single source.
https://www.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html
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This is probably true for non-controversial topics, and I use Wikipedia myself frequently (plus contribute a small amount of money to them each year as a thank you). However, I would be very careful with anything found there on a hot button issue.
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Understood, and that is my usual practice. Worth noting, David. Thank you.
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You’re welcome! Have a great day!
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PS – I read your blog article “What Makes Humans Human?” a few months back and found it extremely interesting. Forwarded the link to several of my friends. Thanks for writing it! Got to run now.
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Thank you, David.
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It looks like that figure from that news report was considerably underestimated. Here, from OpenSecrets, org:
https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances
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Interesting that Pelosi shows up as worth $100 million on OpenSecrets but does not make the list on Roll Call… the data is clearly inconsistent…
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Anyway, I have to get back to work. This is the kind of problem that I am personally trying to make a difference on in my local community regarding the outrageous AP course burden that kids are undertaking:
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Thanks for the links, David!
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David,
The politicians leave office and become wealthy by selling their influence.
I’d like to know how much, if anything, Tom Daschle, George Miller and McKeon take from the BiPartisan Policy Center. IMO, it is a conflict of interest for Daschle (1) to chair the board at CAP, which media quote as the liberal voice, while the Gates-funded think tank promotes privatized K-12 and (2) lend his name as a Democrat to BPC which received sponsorship from Gates for its session on changing landscapes in higher ed, inviting the former Kaplan, now Purdue Global, as the only university represented on the panel.
If the same billionaires fund both, Daschle’s CAP and BPC influence, how does the public and media know what the voice from the left really is?
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In millions of dollars. Source: “Wealth of Congress,” Roll Call. 2016 figures.
1 Rep. Nancy Pelosi Democratic California 400.3
2 Sen. Rick Scott Republican Florida 285
2 Rep. Greg Gianforte Republican Montana 135.7
3 Rep. Jared Polis Democratic Colorado 122.6
4 Rep. David Trott Republican Michigan 119.1
5 Rep. Michael McCaul Republican Texas 113
6 Rep. John Delaney Democratic Maryland 92.6
7 Sen. Mark Warner Democratic Virginia 90.2
8 Rep. Vern Buchanan Republican Florida 73.9
9 Sen. Richard Blumenthal Democratic Connecticut 70
10 Sen. Dianne Feinstein Democratic California 58.5
11 Rep. Tom Rooney Republican Florida 55.3
12 Rep. Trey Hollingsworth Republican Indiana 50.1
13 Rep. Chris Collins Republican New York 43.5
14 Rep. Diane Black Republican Tennessee 38
15 Rep. Paul Mitchell Republican Michigan 37.7
16 Rep. James Renacci Republican Ohio 34.4
17 Rep. Scott Peters Democratic California 32
18 Rep. Don Beyer Democratic Virginia 31.2
19 Rep. Tom MacArthur Republican New Jersey 30
20 Rep. Suzan DelBene Democratic Washington 28.4
21 Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen Republican New Jersey 28
22 Rep. Roger Williams Republican Texas 27.7
23 Rep. Ro Khanna Democratic California 27
24 Sen. Claire McCaskill Democratic Missouri 26.9
25 Sen. Bob Corker Republican Tennessee 23.1
26 Rep. Francis Rooney Republican Florida 22.6
27 Rep. Joseph Kennedy III Democratic Massachusetts 18.7
28 Rep. Ralph Norman Republican South Carolina 18.3
29 Sen. John Hoeven Republican North Dakota 17.9
30 Rep. Nancy Pelosi Democratic California 16
31 Sen. David Perdue Republican Georgia 15.8
32 Sen. Jim Risch Republican Idaho 15.6
33 Rep. Brad Schneider Democratic Illinois 14.9
34 Rep. Buddy Carter Republican Georgia 13.2
35 Rep. Lloyd Doggett Democratic Texas 13.1
36 Rep. Jim Cooper Democratic Tennessee 12.3
37 Rep. Rick Allen Republican Georgia 11.7
38 Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner Republican Wisconsin 11.1
39 Rep. Fred Upton Republican Michigan 11
40 Rep. Nita M. Lowey Democratic New York 10.9
41 Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney Democratic New York 10.8
42 Sen. Mitch McConnell Republican Kentucky 10.4
43 Rep. Mike Kelly Republican Pennsylvania 10.4
44 Sen. Ron Johnson Republican Wisconsin 10.4
45 Rep. Rod Blum Republican Iowa 10.2
46 Sen. Johnny Isakson Republican Georgia 9.7
47 Rep. Bill Foster Democratic Illinois 9.3
48 Sen. Rob Portman Republican Ohio 8.6
49 Rep. Steve Pearce Republican New Mexico 7.5
50 Sen. Steve Daines Republican Montana 6.9
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How can Pelosi be #1 and #30?
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That number 1 figure seems to be an error. Not sure how that got there. Here, 2018 figures for the wealthiest and for all from RollCall: https://www.rollcall.com/news/hawkings/congress-richer-ever-mostly-top.
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David was right to call me on using numbers copied from Wikipedia, clearly. I figured that that was OK because the source, RollCall, was given on the Wikipedia page. But clearly, that Wikipedia list was not correct. An updated list, from RollCall, gives Pelosi at number 30. Here’s what happens, sometimes, with Wikipedia: Someone goes onto it and makes a crazy edit, like the one showing Pelosi worth 400 million, and it takes a while for someone to catch the error and correct it. My apologies.
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Here, the RollCall numbers with profiles on the members’ sources of wealth and major liabilities. http://www.rollcall.com/wealth-of-congress
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Our money driven politics require legislators to spend almost as much time fund raising as doing their job. All that money is often a “quid pro quo” arrangement. That is one reason that charter schools have become so entrenched, and we cannot get a straight answer out of many Democrats. The billionaires want to transfer a public asset into private pockets. Representatives are afraid of the charter lobby. Even she who cannot be named had to backtrack after making a positive statement about public schools while campaigning in South Carolina.
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Someone who “owns” a single family home, even in a metro area, is hardly likely to be worth > $1 million. For the vast majority of people who “own” houses, they are heavily financed. Even if the house is worth $500,000+, the people who “own” it probably don’t even own half of that.
Please don’t confuse ordinary middle class people (the few who are left) with the obscene wealth of Congresscritters.
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My point was that greed is not slowed by having money. Very likely those with the most money are the greediest.
He who dies with the most toys, wins.
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I’m not confusing the two. People in Congress are obviously above average in net worth as Bob noted, but at $1.03 million in net worth that does not qualify as “obscene wealth,” at least in my mind. The infamous 1% undoubtedly have much more than that.
If progressives use that kind of rhetoric and start using figures like a net worth of $1 million as an “obscene wealth” standard, I can guarantee you that they will alienate many people who consider themselves middle class, including retirees who have paid off their mortgages, and wind up ensuring that we will get four more years of Trump. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot…
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You made a solid slew of great points.
Net worth is not how much cash you have on hand. Net worth includes everything you own.
For instance, my former wife (we are still friends and meet at last once a week for lunch or dinner) owns a home worth about a million. She paid it off years ago but she lives on a frugal budget because she doesn’t want to borrow on the house out of fear that she will run through what savings she has before she dies. She even neglects expensive repairs on the house, because spending too much each month eats through her retirement income in her savings account. She can’t afford to throw away that money and go into debt and risk losing her house.
she doesn’t have enough money to live off of to throw away on those without going into debt.
On paper, she is a millionaire. In reality, she isn’t a millionaire when it comes to how much actual cash she has on hand to spend.
Net worth is everything you own that is paid off. Seldom does net worth mean a huge amount of cash ready to spend.
The only way to spend the money a house is worth is to borrow on the house and then that lowers your net worth.
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Exactly, Lloyd. I live on the San Francisco peninsula and there are a lot of older people here in a similar situation. They are millionaires on paper, but their houses fall into disrepair because the tremendous housing inflation here has also dramatically raised the cost of contractors and repairs. Yes, they could sell and move elsewhere but this is their home and many have multigenerational families here.
A million dollars “ain’t what it used to be,” but I don’t expect a young teacher living on a friend’s couch and dealing with student debt to have much sympathy for their dilemma either.
However, that doesn’t mean progressives have to adopt political positions that will piss such people off unnecessarily. The more that I read in the news lately, the more concerned I am becoming that the Democratic party will overplay its hand and end up saddling us with four more years of Trump.
Reality is more complicated than political sound bites portray it.
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When I retired from teaching after 30 years in 2005, I took a 40-percent pay cut and started out with about $48k a year in retirement earnings. The CalSTRS retirement package includes a 2-percent annual cost of living increase. In August 2019 I will have been retired for 14 years. In about six years, I will have earned, before taxes, about one million from the CalSTRS retirement fund.
Does that make me a millionaire?
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The point isn’t the amount of the wealth.
The point is under what conditions that wealth is accumulated.
When elected officials can write laws from which they themselves will substantially profit, they are skirting conflict of interest and ethics.
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Politics in the United States have become very, very dirty. Lots of Dark Money. Lots of self-dealing legislation. And this is true on both sides of the aisle. Consider healthcare. We know that average healthcare costs in the United States are TWICE what they are among the 38 OECD countries, almost all of which have universal, single-payer systems, and that health outcomes in those countries–longevity, infant mortality, incidence of all the diseases of affluence such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease–are much better. Why are our costs so much higher and our outcomes so much lower? Because TRILLIONS are siphoned off our healthcare dollars each year to fatten the accounts of the bosses of the RICO operations that deliver healthcare in the United States–the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the hospital consortia, and so on. But despite the clear evidence, the existence proofs, of these other countries’ superior–less costly and more effective–systems, we haven’t been able to get our Congress and Senate to formulate a universal, single-payer plan. Why? Well, we have a lot of congresspeople and senators who are on the gravy train–who benefit personally from those RICO operations.
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You betcha!!!!! Health care was privatized years ago and the public doesn’t even know it. Hospitals are run by CEO’s and CFO’s and NOT by physicians. Insurance companies (run by CEO’s and CFO’s) dictate what services will be covered…… NOT physicians. Insurance companies decide what pharmaceuticals will be offered with a plan….NOT physicians. Insurance Companies decide what diagnostic test can be ordered….NOT physicians. Most patients don’t understand that the medical staff providing services are just the low men on the totem pole trying to provide an ethical/moral service while trying to earn a living just like everyone else. There is enough money for Universal Healthcare, but the rich cannot be satisfied…..they like their money, but more than anything, they like their control. It needs to end and I’m glad that AOC is willing to expose it.
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Something that particularly bothers me about healthcare economics: “regular” doctors seem to be on a long slide, income-wise. Back in the day, GP’s were driving Corvettes & living in mini-mansions; that wasn’t good. But I have watched all my primary docs’ practices shrink to nearly-nothing over the last 20 yrs. My local GP is last man standing in what was, 25 yrs ago, a 6-doc internal practice. And the only way he makes it work is that he’s also a gastroenterologist & spends 1/2 the week at the hosp doing procedures; as a GP/ internist he’s shrunk his clientele to those [like us] he’s long served & doesn’t take new people. And his GP hrs are short: if you’ve got an acute pbm, they peel you off to their recommended clinics [Medi-Merge etc].
This is probly OK medically: his recommended clinics share med info w/him & are like adjuncts to his practice. But from my POV, I’m spending the same [or more] annually on health insurance, yet now sitting on line for hrs w/Obamacare patients when I’m suddenly too ill to wait a week until he can see me.
Who’s eating up all the dough that used to support local GP’s?
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According to the Medscape Physician Compensation Report, in 2018, the average primary care physician was earning $223,000, the average specialist $329,900.
https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2018-compensation-overview-6009667#2
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US News and World Report gives the median physician income in the US in 2017 at $192,930.
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Ofc, most people don’t start their careers with 200K in student loans.
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I guess I meant, where’s the dough going that used to support local GP practices . My internist is not a flashy type; it’s a family biz [his wife is the office mgr]. I bumped into them at the local bank one Sat in red-check flannel shirt & dungarees [she wore a sweat suit]. He takes Medicare patients. Maybe his partners found him too cheap & found greener practices… But seriously, where they go is to the mega-medical center near the regional hospital in the next town. So it seems to be about spreading costs across bigger practices.
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Our political system is money driven rather than issue driven. That is one reason why so many billionaires and those that front for corporations can run. We should learn from the Danes. Their election system was recently ranked first in the world for democratic participation while the US was ranked 47th. Although their system is not perfect, it is far more democratic. Campaign money comes from the state and the campaign season is three weeks long. Here candidates campaign almost as long as they serve. Everyone gets the same amount of money to launch their campaign. Politics is not only for the super-wealthy. Denmark has an 85% voter participation rate. Our rate is about 60% in presidential races and about 40% in the midterms. We need to work to get the money out of politics. https://www.thelocal.dk/20161111/what-the-us-could-learn-from-denmark-about-elections
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Thank you, retired teacher.
Our politicians and the BIG $$$$$ don’t want the way America does elections to change.
We need to get rid of “Citizens United.” There’s nothing united about “Citizens United.” It’s more like CORPORATIONS and POLITICIANS United to maintain total control and rig elections via big money.
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“Our political system is money driven rather than issue driven.”
I disagree. Political systems are always driven by the issues most important to the power/ money calling the shots. Our problem is, the voters/ taxpayers no longer call the shots. Our political system is driven by the issues important to the corporate interests in the driver’s seat. Through dereg since ’80’s, they now hog the country’s assets, which allows them to buy elections & policy.
Agree that the goal has to be a system such as the Danish one you describe. How to get there? Perhaps by voting in more folks like AOC– scaring the hell out of them w/a 180 toward socialism. That might bring them back around to compromise, i.e., regulated capitalism which supports public goods/ thriving middle class.
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Wow. The vote I cast for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez may be the only one I didn’t squander in 40 years of participation in the American electoral contest. I’m sorry I don’t live in her district anymore.
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I think we will see AOC for many years to come. She is fairly insulated in her district which gives her the freedom to speak her mind and not be beholden to special interests. She is not wasting any time.
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AOC is incredible! I want 535 more of her in Congress, a hundred in the Senate and fifty living in state governors’ mansions. Oh, and in a few years, another AOC in the White House.
How about nine AOC’s sitting on the Supreme Court.
Boy, I hope she resists being corrupted. The pressure to be corrupted once elected must be HUGE!
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Agreed. More like her. And Bernie.
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AOC’s enemies aren’t limited to neoliberal and Republican politicians, nor to America’s wealthiest. She will be targeted for attack by the bi-partisan lobbying groups. They make big money creating wins for corporations and the wealthy by eliminating the voice from the left.
The bipartisan Podesta Group, which had a Republican CEO is defunct (revenues- $27.4 mil.). However, the same Republican CEO has introduced another bi-partisan lobbying firm, Cogent Strategies. Then, there’s BiPartisan Policy Center (revenues $20 mil.) founded by Tom Daschle, who is speculated to have made $2.7 mil., before declaring as a lobbyist. He’s also CAP board chair. CAP was founded by John Podesta.
Not surprisingly, BPC decided Gates and Arnold could be tapped for funds to get political decisions in favor of privatized higher ed. Speculating, DFER’s Democratic politician Rep. Susan Davis will help. By creating the pretense of political unity for privatization, the bi-partisan lobbying groups make big bucks for their clients and themselves.
Investigative journalist, Ken Silverstein, at the Safra Center for Ethics covered BPC’s “bipartisan” influence in taking natural gas decision making from the government in a win for its client, America’s National Gas Alliance and Hewlett Foundation.(July 9,2013)
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This video is not fascinating but astonishing. Our suspicion, no, our conspiracy theory about how the government operates is simply confirmed in 5 minutes. And this is just the federal government. State governments are multiple times more corrupt.
Summarizing in one sentence: Our so-called “flexible” and “free” system is, in reality, simply permissive.
Laws should never assume that people are good, that people act in good will.
Coincidentally, the main reason why the idea of communism, as Marx and Engels dreamed it up, is not viable is the same as the reason why the laws guiding the US government create an unsustainable system: they assume, people are good and will act reasonably by default.
Few people consider robbing a bank, but many will take the money if it’s left unguarded, all over the place.
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