Too bad the rest of don't get to play, we just get to front the money, take the loss and never the win.

yep...

i don't seem to recall anyone taking such good care of the ole stickman...

"here you go, stickman. have a couple million and a 'retreat' in southern Italy."

"oh! thank you, so much. this is so just in order to maintain my lifestyle. see you next month."

"have a pleasant trip. when you get back, we will raise your salary and provide you more company shares."

"i should hope so. it's the least you could do for all the hard work i do out on the golf course."

:D

Hey guys, this is the tip of the iceberg. This is what is in the public domain. What else is there?

Oh...it is a tangled web indeed...

Thank you, Steve. It is comforting to know that I'm not the only one who sees these things. I've been writing about them, for 20 months. Those people that make the promises all work for the same people, and that isn't us. Being caught and trapped in the snare of the debt game is a terrible thing. We have to see that paper in our pockets for what it is, an indentured servitude contract.

You really don't want to start adding up the wages of your political administration. When compared to similar posts in the private sector most are 10-20% over paid and some are paid 100% more than the private sector.
These aren't our elected officials but their lackeys who often make more than the official... on paper.

In the US the President makes $400,000/year totaling $1.6 million a term and if he's a 2 term it would be $3.2 million plus the perks of being a retired President which in all honesty are over $1 million per year even at $5 million a year in combined retirement benefits our president would have to survive his office by more than 50 years to recoup half of the over $500 million Obama has spent campaigning for this term.

That's just topical, every election in the US costs far more than the office pays which leads me to wonder, "Where's the Beef?" No one would pay more than a job is worth to get it, that's the root of our troubles in healthcare it's far too expensive to become a doctor in this nation and as they tried to recoup their expenses they began a vortex of spiraling rate increases "industry" wide for anything anyone thought they could get away with.

So my question is why would an honest Congressman with no post term benefits to speak of spend over $2 million(the lowest campaign figures I found were over $3 million but, I'm not the best researcher so I padded my margin) to earn less than $800,000? the only answer I can come up with is he/she wouldn't if they were honest and if they aren't honest why do we keep voting for them.

Daddy always said, "follow the paper trail and you'll find where the dog does his dirt" and it's true if something stinks there's usually a trail of money leading right to it.

I mention this in your blog because, I'm sure that Parliament is about as corrupt as our Congress and I thought you'd appreciate the numbers.

So, the job costs more than it pays, thus the longer the politician is in office the poorer they become: the only politician I can think of who meets this criterion is Thomas Jefferson.

Actually almost every one of the founder's went bankrupt building and financing this nation's birth. This tradition of selfless devotion to one's duty was evident up to our Civil War not necessarily the norm but, evident. I know of no recent politician who's gone broke on behalf of his nation, (there is that African guy who has made millions several times over but, keeps giving it all to his people, kudos to him) no they get richer from their corrupt deals & of course all that money isn't the candidate's but it's still ludicrous that this past election cycle profited the media in excess of $2 billion dollars just in fees for commercials and print ads. The point is that the money isn't that of the candidate nor do citizens contribute billions to campaigns corporations however do supply millions in soft money and, corporations through their "donations" buy influence and that is tantamount to treason and conspiracy (treason by the elected official and conspiracy by both). It just makes me ashamed that my fellow Americans don't see it or care or aren't still smart enough to figure it out. I don't know which but it's gotta be one of those.

The thing that galls me the most about this is that if they are so careless as to spend more than the job pays to get the job, then why would they ever need a salary increase... if the money matters to them just don't run seems to be the answer.

To extrapolate a little further, just for a bit of fun you understand, if no structure or political system thus far implemented by humans to effectively govern the vast numbers of people now getting around due to the persuasive power of Power to corrupt, then possibly it's not our lack of ingenuity to design and administer systems that is the issue. Rather, it may be the incongruence of Freedom and effective administration due to the workload any administration must deal. Even the brutal Chinese regime is having problems. I wonder if Globalisation, Transnationalism and late capitalism are really the final signature to human redundancy? Just a passing thought mind you, nothing really serious considered or anything.

You have a very good point and it's the foundation of the Devolution argument. When we get to the point that our nations are too large the tribal contractive impulse is triggered and people will start gathering in small groups claiming fiefdoms and becoming separatists, this is the current state of affairs as I see it so I wonder about the story of Babel. Some people think that we've been this far and even further in civilization once or several times before and each time we blow ourselves back to the stone age... it wouldn't surprise me if it were true as it seems we're about to do it again any day. My belief is that true democracy in the vision of Jefferson where the power is held at the community level and the more removed the government the less power it has. This seems the only way to give people the control in their own lives that they crave and still keep us all on the same page in regards to war and rights. All the signs are there people are willing to kill over football games (American style & soccer) this isn't that different than the ancient Greeks gathering up small armies and seasonally attacking their neighbors not to obliterate them but for "sport". Like hunting a deer when you can easily go to the store and buy some beef, you may eat the deer but you didn't hunt it because you were hungry you did it because you enjoy the hunt and you eat him out of respect for your prey so that he didn't die in vain or for some foolish trophy. About capitalism, capitalism is great when pursued by an individual, communism is great when agreed upon by a community, but neither work when they get too big, capitalist corporations have unfair advantages over the individual capitalist, a communist nation tends forget the rights of it's citizenry as the distance between policy and the body politic is to great for reasonable accountability. Democracy akin to that displayed in the 1st Nation with independent tribes collecting to discuss the bigger issues, vent complaints, and contributing to commonly desired projects but, otherwise generally running themselves seems to be the most natural way of government and the least likely to trigger these destructive urges that come from being overwhelmed by the global community. As I said it seems we are this very day doing to ourselves what is credited to God in the story of the Tower of Babel. Nations ripping themselves apart carving smaller & smaller political divides, most major nations a week away from civil war at any moment just based on food supplies, and every urban area flush with gangs creating "new" dialects to hide from the society in which they live. So did God destroy the Tower and vary the tongues or is that just another human trait which we're so ashamed of that we blame it on a Deity.
The answer seems to be the more authority we cede to our governments the less content we are in our persons so we should, as the founders suggested we should, cede very little to our states less to our nation and none to foreign powers. Or start picking out loin cloths and mastering our glottal grunts as it seems to me an either or type of deal.
Just a little fun continuing your fun thought.

desinq - a good passing thought though....freedom entails good and evil parallel. or maybe reality just ain't set up for a truly 'just' application of government. [?]

there is nothing going on in the world today, vise-a-vie banks, governments, public funds, and corruption, that hasn't happened before.

It's true that most of the corruption that is present today has occurred at previous points in history but, it's also true that it's usually an indicator that a "Tipping Point" has been reached.

eh...that presupposes that there are certain 'magnitudes' by-which certain events will inevitably happen...i.e. once X number of people in the population are being persecuted added to Y as the number of dollars being shunted off for ill-gotten gains, divided by Z number of starving people we arrive at revolution [iteration the Z prime]....

this sounds like prophesizing and attempt at discerning a pattern towards excess and decadence, which Carneiro tried to put forward in The Muse....

i don't think there's a set frequency by which "tipping points" happen, things just happen....if people wanna revolt they do, if they don't they don't.

afganistan has been a warlords paradise since time-immemorial, yet we'd be hard pressed to say, any tipping points will lead towards this or that outcome there, or any other place.

Afghanistan doesn't have the western concept of individual freedom that we have, they still labor under the concept of fealty: that the weak owe the powerful their obedience. I trace a fundamental difference in the Eastern & Western concept of rights and individuality back to the Greeks and Persians this hasn't changed substantially in the past 3000 years. I don't suppose any given numbers but rather that as the phrase "tipping point" suggests when a society loses it's balance between the powerful & the populace it is doomed if it exists in the west. I don't consider it prophecy just good odds supported by the many revolutions of western history.

indeed. the supposition then needs to be framed arounce the West as the standard.

:P the article was about the corruption of the bail outs of US & GB banks so it was already framed :P LoL