Saturday, January 20, 2018

How Do Members Of Congress Get So Rich While They're In Congress (A Full Time Job)?

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Ken Calvert

There are some really, really wealthy members of Congress, most of them-- though not all-- crooks. 7 House members are ungodly rich:
Darrell Issa (R-CA)- stealing cars & the starting a car alarm company-- $330,050,015
Jared Polis (D-CO)- internet entrepreneur-- $313,556,22
John Delaney (New Dem-MD)- bankster-- $232,816,089
David Trott (R-MI)- foreclosure and eviction king-- $177,149,145
Vernon Buchanan (R-FL)- used car salesman, offshore insurance and charter jets-- $115,534,558
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- married an investment banker-- $100,643,521
Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)- says he was a humble pigeon cage cleaner before he married an heiress-- $95,569,028
They were rich before they got to Congress and some may have used their offices to increase their wealth, none of them are in the Open Secrets list of members of Congress with the mega-increases of wealth for the decade from 2005-2015. That list indicates that 8 House members became very wealthy while they were in Congress, each of them increasing their net worth by over a 1,000%. The worst is a notorious crook, Ken Calvert from California's Inland Empire. His district is one of the reddest in the state and he's likely to be one of the last Republicans left in the California congressional delegation, which will probably shrink by half this year. Calvert knows there's no accountability headed his way. The district (CA-42) starts in the suburbs west of Riverside and goes from Eastvale, Norco and Corona. south past Lake Elsinore through Menifee and Murrieta to the suburbs north of Temecula. Obama lost the district both times he ran, 55-44% against McCain and 57-41% to Romney. Trump beat Hillary 53.4% to 41.4% and the PVI stands at R+9. Calvert has never been in a competitive reelection. His opponents have never raised, if anything, more than a fraction of what he has and the best they do, generally, is just over 40% of the vote. This cycle there are 3 Democrats vying to take him on, Julia Peacock, Norman Quintero and Thomas Price. As of the Sept. 30 FEC reporting deadline Peacock had raised $23,060 and neither Quintero nor Price had raised the $5,000 that triggers a report. Calvert has a $962,663 warchest. Hde isn't worried.

Calvert had a 4900% increase in net worth since he 2005. At that time he was in debt (around $100,000) and now his net worth is $4,800,003. So how did he get so rich? Well, Calvert graduated from San Diego State in 1975 and managed his family's restaurant, the Jolly Fox, in Corona before becoming a real estate agent and starting his own realty company, Ken Calvert Real Properties. He was elected to Congress in 1992. He is thought to use his perch on the powerful House Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior and Environment to enrich himself. He is notorious for frequently using taxpayer money to build highways to worthless land he owned to increase its value. That's why he's a multimillionaire today.

There are at least 4 other congressional criminals who became millionaires while in Congress. You can see their net worth in 2005 followed by their net worth in 2015
Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)-- $267,511--> $12,193,002
David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)-- $81,537--> $2,523,001
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)-- $83,001--> $1,687,509
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)-- $175,505--> $3,547,506
In 2015, CNN made the point that "the typical American family is still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, but Congress is getting wealthier every year. The median net worth of lawmakers was just over $1 million in 2013, or 18 times the wealth of the typical American household, according to new research released Monday by the Center for Responsive Politics. And while Americans' median wealth is down 43% since 2007, Congress members' net worth has jumped 28%."

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4 Comments:

At 9:55 PM, Anonymous ap215 said...

Good work Howie.

 
At 2:24 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

How? A lot of political phone sex, a lot of Happy Talk, and kneeling positions when together in person.

Oh - providing a couple of tax cuts never hurts, does it Paul Ryan?

 
At 4:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Again asking a question already answered... for centuries. Who remembers "tepot dome"?

The contemporary (legal) means are to benefit from insider data gained from those whom you are supposed to be regulating... and then really cash in after they retire and go into lobbying... or giving talks to goldman-sachs. The illegal means is simple, as it always has been... fraud.

Again. why waste the space here? Or if you do.. why not include the democraps who are also guilty (and not the idiots who got caught -- blogojovitch?). Tom Daschle anyone?

 
At 9:59 PM, Anonymous ejf said...

I'd like to know where Collin Peterson got his cash. I used to live in his district. Full of meat packing plants, farmers and lots of the reddest Repubs you could imagine. School districts are broke, roads are barely kept up. Where's his money?

 

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