Corporate CEO's Average is $15.2 Million a Year? 
Pitts explained that the U.S. president's salary is $400,000 a year while a member of Congress makes $169,300 per year. Pitts added his own view of the salary difference, "If that's the going rate, if that's what is earned by the best and the brightest, who can be shocked that paying a tiny fraction of that often saddles us with the dumb and dumbest?"
He quoted a letter written by former Congressman Randy Cunningham of California to a reporter whose work helped send him to jail for taking $2.4 million in bribes. This letter had been earlier excerpted by Rolling Stone Magazine:
"Each time you print it hurts my family and now I have lost them Along with Everything I have worked for during my 64 years of life. I am human not an Animal to keep whiping. I made some decissions Ill be sorry for the rest of my life. ... As truth will come out and you will find out how liablest you have & will be."
However, Cunningham had to have some skill at math if he counted the $2.4 million in bribe money that he pocketed from his misdeeds.
Obviously he was no spelling bee winner, was he?
Congressman Randy Cunningham was the former Chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism. Pitts pointed out that "his writing would embarrass a smart seventh grader."
The salary a member of Congress makes, $169,300 a year, often represents nothing more than a stepping stone to much greater economic returns.
With years of dealing with lobbyists of major corporations, many members of Congress in effect graduate to new economic heights when they retire, becoming corporate lobbyists.
There are more corporate lobbyists in Washington than members of Congress.
Lobbyists earn excellent incomes plying the halls of Congress to make certain that congressional members are well informed regarding the needs of big business.
Some critics of lobbyist tactics insist that campaign contributions and golf trips to Scotland, where big business seminars are sometimes held, are tantamount to bribes.
Such lucrative offerings to members of Congress taint the entire American system of government.
With it now costing on an average a million dollars or more to run a political campaign, accepting money from questionable sources is a temptation.
During this Republican administration the U.S. national debt is greater than all the national debts combined since America was founded as a nation.
The staggering national debt will shortly be $10 trillion. Meanwhile 2 ½ million U.S. homes face foreclosure.
The Iraq War rages on longer than any other U.S. war in history.
The rich get richer while the homeless and hungry grow poorer.
KEYWORDS: Randy Cunningham, Leonard Pitts Jr., Washington Lobbyists, U.S. CEO Salaries
Sign up for a Complimentary Member Account... Join the community! It's fast. And it'll allow you to take advantage of all this site's great features!
| < Senator McCain, Will You Return Money from the Bigoted Preachers? | Overpopulation is the Earth's Number One Problem > |
