No Recession In Washington D.C.

While most Americans are trolling for bargain price Christmas presents, many federal employees are doing their holiday shopping at designer boutiques. Federal employees making $100.000 or more has jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the first 18 months of the recession. Civilian employees at the defense department earning $150,000 or more has increased from 1,868 in December 2007, to 10,100 in June 2009. It seems the federal employee is exempt from the fallout of a nation wide economic slow down. The congressional leadership is content hiring more and paying more for public service work, while this president and his pay czar continue to limit executive pay in the private sector at firms that received bailout money. If I'm not mistaken all federal employees are paid through federal receipts directly from the tax paying public.

Here's something that proves the gall of federal hiring and compensation. At the start of the recession the transportation department only had one employee earning a salary of $170,000 or more. 18 months later 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000. The growth in federal employee pay has pushed the average federal workers salary to $71,206, while the average private sector worker earns $41,331. The growth of federal hiring as well as compensation do not compute with an economic slow down that has many private sector workers struggling to make ends meet. You would think in an era of exploding budget deficits and declining tax receipts, that fed hiring and compensation would be first on the chopping block. Not so in the new era of government. Washington DC is a flush with designer suits and Italian loafers darting in and out of traffic. limousines linger, waiting to transport blackberry listening bureaucrats, to luncheon dates and meetings with other fortunate sons of Washington elites.

As a continuing sucking sound of taxpayer money from flyover country settles auspiciously over the Potomac, the civil servant lives a life of privilege and accommodation, while the real public servant, the single mom working two jobs and spending her nights worrying about tomorrows bills lives in anxiety, and trepidation. While the construction worker watches his livelihood smothered because of policies attributed directly to Washington luminaries, endangering his very existence, the elites attend their Georgetown cocktail parties, and laugh, as they wonder how the other half lives.

Those in government live for the invite to those famous Obama White House parties, where they're served $100.00 a pound imported Japanese steak, and drink vodka martinis, while listening to Earth Wind and Fire, or Stevie Wonder. The supporters of this avarice spend evenings helping their children with homework or watching their basketball games and wrestling matches, packing snacks instead of eating out.

What has happened to cause such a disconnect of these bureaucratic privileged from the average American? Why are we allowing this to continue? When will we stop the excess and madness? If you think this is bad now, just wait and see what will happen if Obama care is signed into law. Right now the third highest employer in the world is Great Britain 's public run health care system. They are third only to the Chinese Army and India's railroad. Great Britain has a population of 61 million. What would the hiring practices be of a government run health system serving over 300 million people. Critical mass will be reached, to the point that federal employment or those who benefit directly from federal largess start to crowd out the private sector. Soon you run into a point of no return, where voters vote only their own best interest, and government to them becomes just that.

We are living the very nightmare the founders warned of. Government becoming too large and too arrogant to understand their place as servants to the public. Remember, that the egalitarian utopia preached by the new elites, was talked about in that classic George Orwell book, "Animal Farm." Remember the quote, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
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