As much as people want to blame the lobbyists,  corporate funding, or whatever, the fact of the matter is that our elected leaders are not of the people, they are of a different class (50% of the members of congress are millionaires)*. Are many of our leaders conscious parties within the class warfare they are currently enacting on the middle and working class? Maybe. Or is it that they live in an environment so far removed from the context of the average person’s life they cannot identify with us or our issues. For our senators and representatives, it must be incredibly difficult to fully comprehend the idea of living pay check to pay check or not being able to afford to go to the doctor, or how globalization and technology, while increasing their pay/worth, is drastically reducing our income and the number of jobs in America (and rest of the world)**.

Our leaders live in another world. Our lives will never directly cross paths with theirs. They live in gated communities (a physical and symbolic separation) far away from the trials and tribulations of the people.  When they do come down from their secure neighborhoods on the mountain, it is only to dine in expensive restaurants, take part in charity ball (i.e. expensive banquets), or campaign. They don’t understand the toll it takes on a single mother when they increase the cost of public transit and reduce the number of buses on the road, they don’t see how eliminating subsidized loans for graduate students will greatly increase the difficulty and deter Americans from becoming highly educated. They don’t see these issues because they don’t need the government programs and services we rely on everyday.

Let’s take a look at some of the richest members of congress… you tell me if you think they are able to represent your interests as citizen.

#12. Frank Lautenberg is a Senator from New Jersey. He is worth $76,886,611! He is the former Chairman and CEO of Automatic Data Processing, Inc, and has a degree in economics (not exactly a “science” of the people).***

#11. Senator Diane Feinstein from California. She has a net worth of $77,000,000. She graduated from Stanford University. She is currently married to an investment banker (Richard Blum the Chairman and President of Blum Capital, a company that has $4,500,000,000 in assets). ****

#10. Richard Blumenthal a senator from Connecticut. He is worth $94,000,000. He graduated from Harvard College, and eventually went to Yale for his law degree. He was a partner in both Cummings & Lockwood law firm, and Silver, Golub & Sandak  law firm.*****

#9. Senator Jay Rockefeller. His net worth is near $98,832,000. He graduated from Harvard. Much of his wealth was simply inherited and was in his birthright in the meritocracy that is America. He is married to the Sharon Percy the daughter of Senator Charles Percy, and she is the former CEO of a PBS News Station. He also comes from a long list of former government leaders/business leaders.

#8. Senator James Risch. The senator from Idaho is worth $109,034,000. He received his law degree from Idaho State University.

#7. Michael McCaul. The representative from Texas is worth $137,611,000. He received his law degree from St. Mary’s University. His wife is the daughter of Clear Channel’s Chairman, and the sister of Clear Channel’s CEO.

#6. Vernon Buchanan. He has a business degree from Cleary University and a MBA from the University of Detroit. He assisted in growing American Speedy Printing through franchising. He was involved in a lengthy dispute due to unethical business practices and was eventually forced to pay $1,500,000. He owns two reinsurance companies (both located overseas). He made a great deal of money from buying and selling automotive dealerships, and was involved in a strange lawsuit related to financing condo-hotel development.

He was also named one of the “Most Corrupt Members of Congress” by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

#5. Herbert Kohl. The senator from Wisconsin is worth $160,302,000. He has an MBA from Harvard. He, like Rockefeller,  gained his position in society from inheriting a great deal of wealth from the businesses his parents owned. He also worked as a real estate and stock market investor, before starting his own company. He also owns the Milwaukee Bucks.

#4. Jared Polis. The representative from Colorado is worth $160,909,000. He received his B.A. from Princeton University. He and his parents sold the family business (an online greeting card company) for $780,000,000 in 1999. He has been able to start a variety of companies.

* Bakunin God and the State. “…is also true of all constituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal suffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years’ time of a body of politicians, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy. “

**Apple only has 46,000 full-time employees while the company recently had 75 billion in liquid assets. For such a large amount of liquid assests and the amount of capital the company controls this is dismally small number of employees, especially when the majority (26,000) of these are Apple Store employees. Or look at GM which had 811,000 employees in 1980 and around 2005 it only had 311,000 employees. Also see the NY TIMES article on Apple

*** While it can be noted that Sen. Lautenberg was not born rich, he did come of age during a very different stage within American’s economic history.

**** The San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post have called attention to her role as a law maker to help her husband’s company.

***** I have to admit I do agree with many of the stands he’s taken as senator.

Rather than acting as “social mobility escalators” for the “more talented” members of ethnic/racial minorities and the white working and middle classes, the educational system has a strong tendency to reproduce the existing social order by devaluing the cultural capital of dominated groups. By judging, classifying, and tracking students from dominated class fractions on the basis of the alien standards of the dominant, schools perpetuate the extant status hierarchy. Moreover, the educational system insures that its reproductive practices will be misrecognized because it makes its judgments on what appear to be “objective” and “meritocratic” criteria. It is only rarely recognized that said criteria reflect the (arbitrary) cultural capital of the dominant.  –Douglas E. Allen, and Paul F. Anderson

Well, Kellogg’s vice president of nutrition, Lisa Sutherland, responded to the recent ‘finding’ by saying, “Honey Smacks are not marketed to kids and are seldom eaten by them.”

I wonder if she believes her own lies or is simply lacking any business ethics? Even worse as a representative of the company she is showing us all that Kellogg’s corporate ideology is simply based off the pursuit of profit, lies, and unethical behavior. Not to mention, they think of their customers and the American public as idiots (this is probably not just Kellogg’s but corporate culture in general).

Does she really believe we can’t see that Dig ‘Em the cartoon frog mascot is trying to appeal to children? Or, that cereals with toy prizes in them are being marketed to children (just a like a Happy Meal is marketed to children)? Or that we can’t tell their commercials that are set within a 2nd grade classroom and have main characters that are roughly ten-years-old are is a ploy to appeal to children?

Seriously, the sugar is one thing, but her statement (her bold face lie, really) and her confidence that we, the public, are too stupid to realize she is lying to us is the most disgusting part of the whole article. How can we trust anything that comes out of this company, when one of their top level executives can’t even tell the truth when it is obvious she is lying?

“We finally said, ‘We’re getting burnt, and we gotta do something about it.’ We gotta start our own companies, quit making boards and wheels and money for other people so they can put our names on them and we can promote them with our activity” — Tony Alva

“There is an attempt made within skateboarding to inaugurate a separate circuit of capital which exists entirely within skaters, skaters buying from other skaters, who in turn reinvest in skateboarding” — Iain Borden (2001)

“The proletarian is helpless; left to himself, he cannot live a single day. The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death. It offers him the means of living, but only for an “equivalent”, for his work. It even lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority.

Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests! A fine “equivalent” valued at pleasure by the bourgeoisie! And if one proletarian is such a fool as to starve rather than agree to the “equitable” propositions of the bourgeoisie, his “natural superiors”, another is easily found in his place; there are proletarians enough in the world, and not all so insane as to prefer dying to living.”

–Engels

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