Dellums Profits Handsomely From Government Service

I recently put in a call to Rep Barbara Lee’s office asking for information about how much Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums receives as a congressional pension. Doesn’t a citizen have a right to ask this kind of question? Well, from the response you might have thought I was talking to someone in the Bush administration. Though the guy was friendly enough, he didn’t seem to want to help and when I pushed he said he would pass it along and someone would get back to me. Did they? No. – Well, so much for sunshine, openness and all the other hypocritical crap put out by progressives.

According to an article by Matier & Ross in the San Francisco Chronicle, they contacted the congressional office handling the retirement payments for ex-congresspeople and they were told that this information was not available to the public. It’s a personnel matter. Well, who do they work for? Who elects them? Apparently, Dellums pulls in over $107,000 per year in congressional retirement pay along with who knows how much in other perks and benefits. With his new salary increase from the City Council of Oakland, he is now pulling in over $287,000 not including all of his benefits which I’m sure are generous. He is double dipping. When you add up his lobbying work after his congressional career and now this, Dellums has done quite well financially from government service. Recently I realized that when politicians talk about joining government to “serve”, they don't mean to “serve” the public but to “serve” themselves. Many of them have done that so well.

While I consider myself a progressive, I sometimes am astounded at the hypocrisy and self serving of the liberal, “progressive” democrats. Like with Dellums, everyone just loves Bill Clinton, a man who, during the primary campaigns of 1992, flew back to Arkansas to preside as governor over the execution of a brain damaged African American man who didn’t even understand what was happening to him. Yes, so much for American liberals and progressives.