Adele Ferguson

DID YOU EVER see an election year before where so many candidates worked so hard to paint themselves as members of the middle class?

It’s because the middle class is where the majority of voters are, of course. And in these days of high unemployment and escalating food prices, it’s not exactly conducive to be above the rest of us in earnings and status.

Millionairess Susan Delbene, who wants to be the new 10th district congressman, refers to being successful in business and says she’s running “to rebuild the middle class.”

Every candidate claims to come from roots of hard working grandparents and parents so voters will feel a kinship. Maria Cantwell is in the U.S. Senate today because of that ad showing her mother in a rocking chair proclaiming “Maria was the first one in our family to go to college.” Maria was a millionairess when she first ran for the Senate.

THE RICH ONES run for public office to satisfy their egos. The rest look upon the prospects of a fat salary, $42,106 in our Legislature and $174,000 in Congress, with plush perks and health care, and a staff to do most of the work for you.

There are a number of legislators in both the state House and the Senate, by the way, who do not take full salary because of the hard times facing the state. A $100 per diem expense payment during sessions also was cut to $90. Members of Congress also are free to turn down salary increases and the computer says some do that.

Even President Obama, a millionaire himself as a result of being elected and authoring, or so we’re told, best selling books, was the subject of a story in the Wall Street Journal headlined “President Plays Up His Roots In Pitch to Middle Class.” He refers in his stump speeches to his grandfather needing a government loan to afford college, his single mother struggling to raise two kids while working and putting herself through school and his wife’s father working in a water plant where he never missed a day after illness made it hard for him to walk.

WHAT HE DOESN’T talk about is how he got to be a best selling author, which was reported in the Washington Times. The State Department bought more than $70,000 worth of his books, sending them out as Christmas gifts and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams from My Father” more than a decade after its release.

The U.S. Embassy in Egypt spent $28,636 for copies of “Dreams from My Father” in 1995. Six weeks earlier the embassy ordered the same book for more than $6,000. About the same time, federal purchasing records show that the U.S. Embassy in South Korea spent more than $6,000 for copies of “Dreams from my Father.”

The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, spent more than $3,000 for hardcover copies of the Indonesian version of Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope.” The U.S. Embassy in Turkey spent more than $3,700 for “Dreams from My Father” in Turkish. The U.S. Embassy in Paris bought $8,300 for French language copies of “Dreams from My Father.”

Some taxpayer watch dog groups complained about the expenditures but the State Department said diplomats have long used books to broker talks on foreign policy matters. A review of the federal database, however, did not reveal any examples of State Department purchases of books by former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. There was no indication the White House knew about the purchases, the Times was generous enough to say, and while the amount spent was a tiny slice of Obama’s overall earnings, it was still a sizable chunk to most Americans.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.).