IBD: Babylon on the Potomac

As the president discusses "income inequality," Investor's Business Daily editors put that inequality into sharp perspective:

As of New Year's Eve, Washington's wastrels have overspent $17.2 trillion of your money. In their deficit-spending orgy, many have gotten filthy rich, developing a taste for diamonds.

Last month we noted the latest Census Bureau data reveal that four of the five richest communities in America are now in Washington — not Manhattan or Silicon Valley or any other business hub derided by class warriors as cauldrons of greed.

In fact, the nation's wealthiest denizens live in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Va., just outside the capital, with $121,250 in median income. ...

Here's another stomach-turning factoid: Beltway contractors based in Democrat Rep. Jim Moran's small Northern Virginia district recently reaped $43 billion in annual federal contracts — roughly as much as the entire state of Texas.

These are the real beneficiaries of President Obama's economic stimulus. All this cash sloshing around Washington has created a permanent class of well-heeled insiders who are even more out of touch with average Americans than the pols of old.

In the past decade, the Beltway added 21,000 households in the nation's top 1%. No other area comes close. Forget Stamford or the Upper East Side, this is where the real One Percenters live.

They're not rapacious Wall Street titans. They're politicians and bureaucrats, contractors and lobbyists, all feeding at the same public trough.

And you're paying their lucrative salaries and benefits. You're funding their lavish lifestyles. ...

What does it say about a nation when its seat of government is also its seat of wealth, when its richest citizens work for government?

It says that nation will soon bankrupt itself.

Strassel: Washington Power Grab

"This past year will be remembered for many things," writes WSJ's Kim Strassel, "but let 2013 be hailed mainly for this: It was the year that the genius of George Orwell's Animal Farm became clear in America."

Strassel gives examples of  Washington DC's Orwellian behaviors, including:

• Congress and its staff wrote/passed Obamacare "in the name of equalizing health care. Yet it was Congress and its staffers who got special dispensation to keep a generous health subside—when no other Americans did."
• In April, the IRS was outed for targeting conservative political groups. The Obama administration in December issued new rules that will institutionalize this silencing of conservative free speech under the guise of regulating 501(c)(4) organizations. Unions, which file under a different IRS nonprofit category, will continue unmolested.
• Congressional Democrats advanced measures in 2013 to pile new taxes on fossil fuel companies. This, as the Energy Department continued to absorb the losses of Solyndra, A123 Systems, and other taxpayer-funded green-energy firms, some of which are owned by political donors to Mr. Obama.
• The EPA this summer conducted an armed raid of a mining facility in Alaska, over putative violations of the Clean Water Act. The Federal Trade Commission harassed a nonprofit representing piano teachers, over ginned up antitrust violations. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began cracking down on small, family farms, operations meant to be exempt from that agency's regulation. By contrast, the administration has yet to announce a single prosecution of a single individual at the IRS. Mr. Obama explained in December that IRS employees were simply victims of a "difficult law to interpret." Maybe like the Clean Water Act, or antitrust laws, or OSHA rules? Maybe not.
• While the federal government exempted crony wind companies from consequences of the many bald eagle deaths they cause, Maryland's government went into "full vice squad mode" over the killing of two bald eagles.

Strassel concludes:

There's plenty more, but you get the picture. In "Animal Farm" George Orwell set out to show how power inevitably corrupts, no matter how noble the intention. A group of animals initially centralize control over the farm to ensure that "All animals are equal." Yet the novel ends with the barnyard commandants—high on their righteousness—reducing the commandments to just one: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Indeed, in ObamaWorld, many millionaires, health-care buyers, energy companies, subprime dealers, political groups, and bird killers are more equal than others. Our new elite is ever more defined by who has the best pull with the administration. So long as government grows, so too will this government-created inequality.

Why Washington DC is SO Out-of-Touch

Sweet Ride. Uber D.C.'s Rachel Holt
in one of her company's digitally
dispatched luxury sedans. Some
riders use them to get groceries.
(Time magazine)

Describing the über-Washingtonian lifestyle of exotic cocktails, 25 to 30 course dinners, and luxury rides, Andrew Ferguson draws a stark contrast between the affluence of the nation's capital and the country it governs. His Time magazine article, Bubble on the Potomac, is well worth a full read (subscription required), but here are some excerpts:

[The Passenger Bar's] motto? "God save the district." The sentiment is easy to understand, for these are good times in Washington and the seven counties that surround it. Even as the nation struggles, the capital has prospered, making it a magnet for young hipsters but leaving its residents with only a tentative understanding of how the rest of the country lives.