Vampires on the Potomac

Three Related Stories...

Two Americas: Now more than Ever

The income gap in America has been widening for decades and the modest three-year recovery did little to change that, according to new Census data.

The new data suggest that despite modest recoveries in many states, the middle class has been shrinking while households have been added in the lowest and highest income brackets. In many states and nationally, the highest income brackets saw more growth than the lowest, but households in the middle brackets continued to decline. (WaPo)

From one Branch of Government to Another

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will join the private equity firm Warburg Pincus. [...]

Geithner becomes the latest former administration official to head to a private equity firm, a common practice through many administrations. (The Hill)

D.C.: 1%'er Capital

The avalanche of cash that made Washington rich in the last decade has transformed the culture of a once staid capital and created a new wave of well-heeled insiders. [...]

During the past decade, the region added 21,000 households in the nation's top 1 percent. No other metro area came close.

The share of money the government spent on weapons and other hardware shrank as service contracts nearly tripled in value. At the peak in 2010, companies based in Rep. James Moran's congressional district in Northern Virginia reaped $43 billion in federal contracts — roughly as much as the state of Texas.

At the same time, big companies realized that a few million spent shaping legislation could produce windfall profits. They nearly doubled the cash they poured into the capital (StL Today)

Yet, despite all those 'entrepreneurs' and super-smart educated parasites attaching themselves to government's inner court, they can't even design a website...