Self-interested Power Deepening Vacuum in USA’s Public Good

Disconnect from the

Population

the Body Politic

If a person charged with government responsibilities is irresponsible; if focused entirely on image and posture on social and traditional media, on power, position and pandering to whatever (or whoever) applauds his antics or funds his position…

Evidence 

Multi-Millionaire Members of US House and Senate (2024 update)

Rick Scott (Florida): $327.35M Vern Buchanan (Florida): $249.36M Nancy Pelosi (California): $247.79M Mitt Romney (Utah) $245.34M Darrell Issa (California): $215.29M	Mark Warner (Virginia): $195.20M Daniel Goldman (New York): $177.81M Pete Ricketts (Nebraska): $162.33M Suzan Delbene Washington): $125.61M Don Beyer (Virginia): $113.59M	Jay Obernolte (California): $97.89M	Mark E. Green Tennessee): $80.66M
David Trone (Maryland): $77.41M Kevin Hern (Oklahoma): $76.91M Roger Williams (Texas): $75.30M Sara Jacobs(California): $73.03M	Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma): $63.81M John Rose (Tennessee): $61.73M Ralph Norman (South Carolina): $60.10M	John Hoeven (North Carolina): $59.61M Scott Peters (California): $55.93M Bill Hagerty (Tennessee): $55.73M James E. Risch (Idaho): $54.07M Ron Johnson (Wisconsin): $54.00M Jamaal Bowman (New York): $50.01M	Mitch McConnell (Kentucky): $48.16M Kathy Manning (North Carolina): $47.97M Dean Phillips (Minnesota): $45.99M Josh Gottheimer (New Jersey): $45.96M James Baird (Indiana): $45.93M

Source: Spokesman Review Spokane, Washington, Further Review “Congressional Millionaires” “The Top 30” (chart) “the 30 richest people on Capitol Hill … as ranked by financial data aggregator Quiver Quantitative” by Charles Apple, October 2, 2024, https://www.spokesman.com/further-review/congressional-millionaires/

Evidence 

Multi-millionaire US Presidents (42nd thru– 46th-47th) before and after term in office (figures vary depending on source)

William Jefferson (var. Blythe III) Clinton [b. Hope, Arkansas] 42nd US President BEFORE: $1.3M AFTER (estimates vary): $120–241M	George Walker Bush [b. New Haven, Connecticut] 43rd US President BEFORE: $20M  AFTER: $40M	Barack Hussein Obama II (once known in Indonesia as “Barry Soetoro”) [b. Honolulu, Hawaii] 44th US President BEFORE: $1.3M AFTER: $70M
Donald John Trump [b. New York, New York] 45th US President BEFORE: $2.3B AFTER: $3.7B	Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. [b. Scranton, Pennsylvania] 46th US President BEFORE: $8–9M AFTER: $10M	Donald John Trump [b. New York, New York] 47th US President BEFORE: $3.7B LATER: 6.5B

Source: Smyth, Jenny October 26, 2025, “US Presidents Before and After Net Worth” (Updated 2025). 2025 Cine Net Worth https://www.cinenetworth.com/us-presidents-before-and-after-net-worth/ [Ranges & Variability: Data on Modern presidents such as Clinton and Trump “have wide-ranging estimates — reflecting divergent reporting across sources”] Cine Net Worth https://www.cinenetworth.com/about-us/

If a person charged with government responsibilities is irresponsible; if focused entirely on image and posture on social and traditional media, on power, position and pandering to whatever (or whoever) applauds his antics or funds his position…

Evidence 

Waste, Fraud, Abuse

US Federal Budget Fiscal years 2001-2022

$8 TRILLION

US Wars (violent aggression against foreign countries) are “funded largely through debt” thus “obscuring the true costs of war by pushing financial obligations to future generations.” Past wars were funded “through increased taxes or the sale of war bonds.” Increased public debt drives up “interest rates economy-wide, which can hamper business investments and make life more expensive for individuals and families.”

Since early October 2023 $31.35 – $33.77 BILLION

 

Fiscal years 2025-2029 (House Resolution 1)

$156 BILLION for Pentagon and military related programs

 

Fiscal year 2026 Pentagon and military-related spending

13 percent increase over Fiscal year 2025

Pushes ‘national defense’ spending beyond $1 TRILLION mark

 Years 2020 through 2024

$771 BILLION in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms:

1. Lockheed Martin ($313 billion)
2. RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion)
3. Boeing ($115 billion)
4. General Dynamics ($116 billion)
5. Northrop Grumman ($81 billion)

Contrary Washington inmates and partners' round-the-clock propaganda about external threats to Americans (notice, they never mention the internal threats), the United States of America (via successive congresses and administrations) spends more than double the amount the People’s Republic of China spends on military spending, “even after accounting for differences in labor costs and purchasing power.” And though “Western strategists have a long tradition of over-inflating Russia as a military threat …, the Russian defense budget amounts to less than one-tenth of the US defense budget.”

Instructive COMPARISONS 

• $8 Trillion Military Spending
• $356 billion total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget (excluding military aid)

• 5 jobs per $1 million U.S. military spending (incl direct jobs and jobs in private industry supply chain)
• 13 jobs created for every $1 million US Education spending (nearly 3 times as much employment) Source: Cost of War Project Brown University (June 2025 page update) https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/economic/us-federal-budget

If a person charged with government responsibilities is irresponsible; if focused entirely on image and posture on social and traditional media, on power, position and pandering to whatever (or whoever) applauds his antics or funds his position…

Frivolity

Trump Administration Proposed Change of Cabinet Level Department of Defense to War Department

$2 Billion (2025 estimate)

Bahney, Jennifer Bowers September 5, 2025, “Trump’s Plan to Rename DOD to Department of War ‘Would Likely Cost Billions’: Report” Mediaite, https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/trumps-plan-to-rename-dod-to-department-of-war-would-likely-cost-billions-report/h-isnt-even-official-will-cost-2-billion/

Walker, Chris November 14, 2025, “Department of War” Name Change, Which Isn’t Even Official, Will Cost $2 Billion” “The move prioritizes ‘political theater over responsible governance,’ a group of Democrats said in a statement” Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/department-of-war-name-change-whic

Trump Administration Proposed Construction White House Golden Ballroom

$200–$300 million (2025 estimate)

Factually November 14, 2025 “Who is paying for the new ballroom at the White House?”
Checked on: “The White House’s new ballroom project—announced as privately financed and estimated at roughly $200–$300 million—has been funded by President Trump himself plus a long list of corporate and wealthy individual donors, including major tech, defense and finance firms; the White House released a donor list after initially saying fundraising would be private Reporting shows specific corporate names (Amazon, Apple, Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Lockheed, Palantir and others) and individual donors (e.g., Stephen Schwarzman, Miriam Adelson, the Winklevosses).” “Exact dollar amounts per donor are often not disclosed and some contributions were reported as coming via settlements or intermediary entities.” https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/who-is-paying-for-white-house-ballroom-57b9be

 

Ultimate Evidence 

Neglect of public Good

Evidence of Abandonment by Power
Public officials’ Priorities, Policies, and Practices:

Poverty in the United States of America

Compared with other Countries Around the World, the United States of America “has the highest poverty rate among the world’s 26 most developed countries.” [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data]

On a scale economists categorize as “‘relative child poverty,’” the United States of America “ranks second behind the United Mexican States (Mexico)” [United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) data]. Relative child poverty refers to a household in which “the income is less than half of the national median.”

The United States of America’s most poverty-stricken regions are those where US Federal officials’ policies offshored or otherwise destroyed the main source of domestic commerce and exchange, livelihood, income—agriculture, farming, raising livestock. States of the United States of America with the highest poverty rates (based on a three-year average, 2020-2022), highest percentage of population living below poverty line (states listed alphabetically) are:

Alabama 14.8 percent	Arkansas 15.9 percent	Kentucky 15.8 percent	Louisiana 16.9 percent	Mississippi 17.8 percent
New Mexico 18.2 percent	North Carolina and South Carolina tied each ast13.3 percent	Oklahoma 15.8 percent	Texas 13.7 percent	West Virginia 15.6 percent

Fay, Bill December 21, 2023 (update) “Poverty in the United States.” Debt.org. https://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/poverty-united-states/
https://www.debt.org/

Home of the Nation’s Capital the Poverty Rates (2023 data) are these:

• Throughout the District of Columbia 14.0 percent

· Among non-high school graduates: 34.3 percent

· Among Disabled Residents: 30.2 percent

· Among Residents with income below poverty line: 14.0 percent

· Among High school graduates: 9.8 percent

Source: City-Data.com https://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Washington-District-of-Columbia.html

Drug Problem 

Not unrelated to poverty are problems of drug addiction and drug trafficking interwoven with unemployment and unemployability, essential schooling, marketable skills and training.

US States (including District of Columbia) with greatest (legal and illegal) Drug Addiction Problem (Ten States beginning with highest: #1- #10)

#1 New Mexico	#2 West Virginia	#3 Nevada	#4 Alaska	#5: Washington, DC
#6 Oklahoma	#7 Missouri	#8 Colorado	#9 Louisiana	#10 Arkansas

Source Kesslen, Ben May 13, 2025 “The 10 states with the biggest drug problems in America
Residents in some states are particularly struggling with substance use disorders” Quartz https://qz.com/us-states-by-drug-addiction-1851779223#the-10-states-with-the-biggest-drug-problems-in-america
About Quartz: https://qz.com/about

 Questions of Causation and Interwoven factors and conditions

 Though there are few easily available studies correlating substantive work with drug problems (addiction and trafficking or dealing), there have been some studies that have published findings showing a decisive link between unemployment or unemployability and drug trafficking or drug dealing. In a 2019 study, authors Kayode Emmanuel Adeniyi, Rosemary Eneji, and John Okpa made the following conclusion:

 “There was a highly significant direct relationship between lack of employability skills and drug trafficking, which suggests that “in the face of an increasing unemployment rate, job seekers who lack employability skills easily go into trafficking in illicit drugs for survival.” Moreover, “There was a significant association between lack of entrepreneurial skills and drug trafficking, suggesting that job seekers who lack entrepreneurial skills are more prone to trade in illicit drugs as a means of sustaining themselves from the pains of hardship. They are often recruited as agents, couriers, traffickers and peddlers by drug barons.”

Adeniyi, Emmanuel Kayode and Rosemary I. Eneji, John Thompson Okpa 2019 “Unemployment and Drug Trafficking Among Suspects in Custody of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Cross River State Command, Nigeria” National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria Doi:10.19044/esj.2019.v15n19p191 URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.19044/esj.2019.v15n19p191
https://files.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/236412431.pdf


Other studies by sources outside the United States of America have published similar findings.

Though the relationship between poverty and crime (including drug abuse and trafficking) is complex, studies have shown that poverty and unemployment are major contributing factors to drug trafficking. In some cases, individuals turn to drug trafficking as a means of survival when they are unable to find legitimate employment. It has been estimated that 10 to 15 percent “of all drug trafficking is motivated by poverty and unemployment.”

Human problems tend to feed on themselves and conditions become cyclical. “Without the knowledge and skills required for well-compensated work in the modern workplace, each succeeding generation of undereducated adults merely replaces the one before it without achieving any upward mobility or escape from poverty.” People having more advanced education have a greater chance of “achieving a secure economic future.” People who are “impoverished … tend to have less education, more health problems, less access to nutritionally adequate food;” and they “are more likely to live in high-crime areas.”

Contributing to the cycle of impoverishment and drug problems (abuse and trafficking) are demand, politics, gang activity, and addiction. The want for the last often results in trafficking. The cycle of addiction and trafficking is a significant issue: “addiction to drugs can lead individuals to traffic drugs to support their habits.”

Drug trafficking is also driven by high demand. Reports have shown that in the United States of America there is “a strong market for traffickers” with an estimated “16 million people” having “used cocaine in their lifetime.” “High demand for illicit drugs drives trafficking networks.” Another factor driving drug trafficking is the quality or caliber of governance. Corrupt officials—while often making a show of conducting drug raids or launching wars on drugs—tend to exacerbate the issue by habitually “allowing traffickers to bypass legal constraints and evade law enforcement.”

In the complex mix of trafficking and social conditions and corrupt governance is gang activity, which may also be a function of inadequate support and work or substantive employment.

As gangs, reportedly, use drug trafficking as a primary source of income, they also commit “violence and intimidation” (not unlike the USA’s entrenched mob element, its hegemonic culture and character of entitlement) to gain, maintain and control territories; and obtain, sustain and increase profits. As estimated “5 to 10 percent of drug trafficking” has been traced to “gang-related activity.” Particularly in the United States of America, drug trafficking “contributes to violent crimes.” Historical data, extending to the late 1990s, have shown an estimated 5 percent of murders in the United States are related to the drug trade. Source JOUAV Blog July 25, 2024, “Drug Trafficking: Definition, Types, and Causes”
Category: blog JOUAV 3A-11F, Jingrong Innovation Hub, No.200, 5th TianFu St., Hi-tech District, Chengdu City, China 610041 Stock Code: [ 688070.SH, https://www.jouav.com/blog/drug-trafficking.html
https://www.jouav.com/company

If a person charged with government responsibilities is irresponsible; if focused entirely on image and posture on social and traditional media, on power, position and pandering to whatever (or whoever) applauds his antics or funds his position—this person has no space or time to devote to the public good. Such an individual is totally ignorant of and divorced from public need and public good; what is vital to the strength of a nation. The priorities and actions of such a person amount to betrayal—betrayal dangerously lacking even in self-reflection. 

W

ithout leadership imbued with high moral character and intellectual caliber, we are lost. 

Without focused, reflective, serious and sustained due diligence in governmental leadership (and without a collective population holding them to task), whole societies, domestic and international, will continue to be subjected to needless harm and neglect.

Absent the aforementioned leadership qualities, a nation is bereft of essential good governance— governance in service to the public good. A nation is weakened (threatened from within) by weakness at the helm. Moral and intellectual weakness at the helm (in one after another US congress and administration) has inflicted perhaps irreparable harm on the nation’s people and the prospect of deepening and reinforcing a non-factional, indivisible Union, and shared culture.

  

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Prolific Southern-Born American Writer Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett focuses on People, Press, Politics USA; Domestic and Foreign Affairs (no copyright claimed in direct quotes and individual image)

https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett

https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/

Latest book: Are There No Champions? Yes and No

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Email: Nolandanisland@hotmail.com or Authorswork@gmail.com