ANOTHER HOPEFULLY USEFUL REPEAT | 2008-04-21
Someone on Stormfront repeated the old line, "Why would somebody spent millions to get a 400,000 a year job?"
So I intrtroduced them to reality again:
I worked on Capitol Hill for a number of years and I never knew a congressman, outside of those who went straight to prison, who did not at least double his income when he left congress. One of my old buddies was congressman with a safe seat but he had to quit because he couldn't afford it.
When Richard Nixon lost the presidential election of 1960 he took a job with a legal firm in California that paid 930,000 1960 dollars a year, versus the presidential pay of 150,000, but he deeply regretted losing.
I sat with a guy who was making over 500,000 1981 dollars in a bar in DC and he was literally CRYING because he couldn't get a presidential appointment to a job paying under 100,000.
Some people want money. Others, especially people WITH money, want POWER. I was a recognized and PAID expert on power. If you could just buy power, I would be a LOT richer than I am.
The jobs I held in DC would have paid five to ten times as much in the private sector, but that is strictly theoretical. Anybody who can dedicate the one life he gets on this planet to selling farbric softener DESERVES ten times the money. I could never have done it.
You go to New York or California for money. In DC, the name of the game is power.
And no, you can't just buy power. Power is a different game altogether.
It's sort of like what Marilyn Monroe said in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" to the father of a rich guy she wanted to marry: "A woman shouldn't marry a man just because he's rich any more than a man should marry a woman for her looks. But, my goodness, it HELPS!"
Almost everybody who gets elected or appointed could get a lot more money doing something else. But if you spend your life in the power game, you find that they are very different. Bill Gates did not marry the most beautiful girl in the world or the richest.
Different goals mean entirely different methods.