The Trouble With Washington.

       Here are some interesting statistics I picked up from an editorial by Tom Friedman and one of the commenters in the New York Times today. Did you know that in Washington, Congress worked a total of 126 days in 2013? Now an average worker, after two weeks off for vacation works 250 days. So Congress works, on average, half time. Yep that would amount to a twenty hour week. But compensation, on average, for our folks in Washington is $250,000 per year. That works out to about $248 per hour.
       Now I don't mean to complain, but I just wonder why they begrudge an increase in the minimum wage for some of our poorest citizens, to $10.10 and hour. Congress is only making 24.55 times as much. And ya know it wouldn't be so bad if they were actually working for us during those 126 days they supposedly worked for us. But then when you consider that most of the time they spent voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act or shutting down the government or trying to defund agencies. And my guess is that about half that time was spent raising money for reelection time. Which means they were actually doing the job for which they were elected about 30 days a year.
       When you look at it that way, then they were earning about $1042 per hour. Now that puts them in the rhelm of Fortune 500 company CEOs., but they only work about a fourth as many hours. And if you think Fortune 500 company CEOs have golden parachutes, consider these guys have healthcare for life, a huge pension plan and offers from the companies, banks and Wall Street who they were overseeing, for millions $$$. Or at the very least a big job with big paychecks as lobbyists.
       And do ya want to know what the strangest thing is? The strangest thing is we keep electing them to keep doing the same thing, which is......what? Not much, that's what. Now I know, I know, if you're a Republican you're gonna take exception to what I said about wasting time on some of my examples. So okay, in fairness, the Democrats spend just as much time arguing against anything the Republicans do that might be construed as being useful to Americans. And they keep getting elected too. And in less than four weeks, nearly all will get reelected. So I ask you, is that dumb or what?