History Repeating Itself

It was the dawn of a new century and across the United States, its citizens were angry. The U.S. military was fighting an insurgency in a country that many Americans would have difficulty locating on a map, sapping both the country’s youth and finances. Domestically, the national economy experienced a sharp downturn, causing unemployment and a deep distrust of Wall Street that extended to its influence on the nation’s politicians. The Supreme Court, too, came under attack, accused of promoting the welfare of corporations over that of Americans. In the media, tales of corporate corruption and monopolistic behavior appeared on an almost daily occurrence, leading to protests and calls for action from the public. This sounds depressingly familiar; however, it is a description of the problems facing the United States a century earlier; we, as a nation, have been here before. At the turn of the twentieth century, our nation was fortunate to have a strong, intelligent leader, Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who recognized the corrupting influence of corporate finance on the political system, and spent a lifetime attempting to level the playing field for all Americans. Who will play this protective role for contemporary Americans?

In The Bully Pulpit, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin described the conditions facing the new President:

“At the start of Roosevelt’s presidency in 1901, big business had been in the driver’s seat. While the country prospered as never before, squalid conditions were rampant in immigrant slums, workers in factories and mines labored without safety regulations, and farmers fought with railroads over freight rates. Voices had been raised to protest the concentration of corporate wealth and the gap between rich and poor, yet the doctrine of laissez-faire precluded collective action to ameliorate social conditions.”(Goodwin, 24)

Were Roosevelt alive today, his fellow Republicans would probably brand him a Republican in Name Only, or RINO (pronounced Rhino), because his political ideals ran counter to that of the party. He campaigned for women’s voting rights, eight-hour workdays, workers compensation for job injuries, federal regulation of industry, an end to political machines and cronyism, and the breakup of corporate monopolies. Americans were fortunate to have a leader such as Roosevelt at the turn of the century, when major corporations ran roughshod over the public’s political, economic, and social lives. He recognized the corporate domination of the Republican Party as a threat both to the party’s continued existence, and to the well-being of Americans. Winning the presidency in 1904 as a Republican, despite a ticket that was antithetical to Republican-machine politics, provides both a measure of Roosevelt’s leadership abilities, and his popularity with the American people.

The numerous biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, never Teddy, which he disliked, provide a consistent list of the qualities making him such a dynamic leader that include: extremely intelligent; boundless energy; near-photographic memory; a prodigious writer and reader of books; a willingness to seek out and listen to criticism; empathy for the lowest in society; and a disposition to personally investigate important political issues. During his long political career, Roosevelt applied these qualities to propel the Republican Party and American people into the twentieth century, while reigning in the dangerous excesses of corporations. An incident in his early career as a New York State legislator demonstrated these qualities when Roosevelt took on the city’s cigar manufacturers.

In 1882, a bill to ban the production of cigars in tenements began to circulate through the New York legislature. Introduced by the Cigar-Maker’s Union, it accused cigar manufacturers of running tenement factories that required entire families to eat, sleep, and work in filthy, cramped, and over-crowded apartments, resulting in a danger to public health. Ignoring his initial impulse to vote against the bill because it impinged on the rights of tenement factory owners, Roosevelt took the extra initiative to inspect several factories unannounced and the scenes he encountered decisively changed his opinion on the bill. Throwing his support behind the bill, it passed into law but was later challenged by cigar manufacturers and overturned by the New York Court of Appeals.

“It was this case,” Roosevelt later said, “which first waked me to…the fact that the courts were not necessarily the best judges of what should be done to better social and industrial conditions. They knew nothing whatever of tenement house conditions,” he charged, “they knew nothing whatever of the needs, or of the life and labor, of three-fourths of their fellow-citizens in great cities.”(Goodwin, 101)

In the collision, or what some critics label collusion, between government and industry, the corporate mandate won. Taking the lesson to heart, Roosevelt fought a lifelong uphill battle against the Republican Party machine to introduce progressive ideals that uplifted the American people, and returned the government to that of the people instead that of the corporation. It was a battle that temporarily divided the party and allowed the Democratic Party to recapture the White House in 1910, and one that Roosevelt would not live to see to its completion. His legacy lived on, however, when his cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, achieved the Oval Office and implemented a progressive agenda that was decades in the making. Today, when an American goes to work it is with assurance from government that the environment will be free of harassment based on age, gender, race, religion, or politics, and the workplace will be safe. If injured on the job, or as the result of unsafe working conditions, the employee is entitled to fair compensation. Additionally, the employer is limited in the number of hours it can require individual employees to labor. These were all tenets that Theodore Roosevelt fought to realize.

Roosevelt’s administration did succeed in rendering Americans safer from the proclivities of industry on a number of fronts, beginning with a pure food and drug act, and a meat inspection act that required the industry to implement sanitary conditions in all food-processing stages, and to stop selling rancid or adulterated meats. In arguably his greatest legacy to the American people, Roosevelt placed 230,000,000 acres of land under federal protection with a view to preserve the nation’s natural wonders from the creeping exploitation of industry in its search for resources. At a time when government policies skewed toward that of big business, his stance revealed a streak of political bravery that is rarely found in the contemporary Republican Party. After all, Ronald Reagan’s insistence on party unity that included an imperative not to criticize a fellow Republican precludes any opportunity for critical discourse or compromise on important issues facing the nation. Unwilling to reach a middle ground with the Democratic Party, the contemporary Republican Party stands unified, while doing nothing.

When Roosevelt died at home in his sleep, a contemporary noted that death had to sneak up on the former president, because if awake, a fight would have broken out. In addition to his political record, his noted accomplishments include winning the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace between Russia and Japan, the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the Philippines, and authorship of 18 books. In contrast, who has the Republican Party offered by way of leadership in the twenty-first century?

George W. Bush, an alcoholic and failed business executive who achieved sobriety and found religion on the way to becoming the Governor of Texas, reached the presidency after losing the popular vote and intervention by the United States Supreme Court. Unlike Roosevelt, Bush was a mediocre student at both Yale, and at Harvard’s Business Administration program. Bush, too, served his country as a pilot in the National Guard; however, he did not seek out the challenge of combat in Vietnam as Roosevelt did in the Philippines. The Bush presidency was racked with controversy, such as White House officials signing off on a program of rendition and enhanced interrogation that a century earlier Roosevelt would recognize as kidnapping and torture, and the unjustified invasion of Iraq based on specious intelligence that it was a national threat because it harbored weapons of mass destruction. When Joe Wilson challenged the administration’s rationale in a New York Times op-ed, top White House officials leaked information that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a Central Intelligence Agency operative, a crime punishable under United States law, but federal officials held no one accountable. Moreover, Bush signed into law the deeply unpopular Patriot Act of 2001 that allowed unwarranted searches of Americans, and the targeted assassination of U.S. citizens without due process of the law.

Perhaps more disturbing was the role Dick Cheney played as the Chief Executive of Halliburton, and later as second in command to the president, in providing the company with no-bid military contracts during combat operations. In 2004, Cheney still owned stock options in the company worth eighteen million dollars, leading Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) to openly accuse the Vice President of war profiteering. In contrast, Theodore Roosevelt recognized the dangers of corporate influence on politics and frowned upon politicians using their office to give corporations an unfair advantage over small-business owners and individual Americans.

Roosevelt and Bush each confronted the threat of catastrophic economic collapse caused by Wall Street’s greed. In 1907, two men attempted to corner the market on copper leading to the collapse of New York’s second largest investment bank. To keep the system from ruin J.P. Morgan used his considerable fortune, in cooperation with other leading bankers, to prop up the market. Roosevelt promised twenty five million in funds, but in the true laissez-faire system, government expected financial institutions to accept the losses. Alternately, Bush responded with upwards of four trillion dollars to keep financial institutions afloat during the 2007 subprime mortgage scandal, and collapse of the housing bubble, and while fines were issued to the worst offenders by federal regulatory agencies, no one was held criminally accountable for actions that cost untold numbers around the world their life savings. In a comparison between both men as leaders of the Republican Party, Bush casts a dim shadow next to that of Roosevelt.

Following in the Bush administration’s tumultuous jet stream, the Republican Party chose a genuine former combat jet pilot who endured years of torture after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War, Arizona Senator John McCain. Accentuating his reputation as a “maverick” politician, McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign against Democrat Illinois Senator Barack Obama stumbled on a number of occasions, notably when a reporter asked McCain how many houses he owned, and the Senator appeared unsure, but guessed that he and his wife probably owned about six. Furthermore, McCain chose Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as a running mate without properly vetting her as a viable candidate. In response to the Democrat’s selection of a black candidate, the Republicans attempted to secure the female vote by choosing Palin, however the strategy failed when her numerous limitations and inexperience as a political leader became apparent. She did prove a boon for late-night comedians who lampooned Palin mercilessly over her perceived lack of intelligence; her brand of “maverick” was found wanting by the American people, signaled by Obama’s 2008 presidential election win.

Behaving as if it learned nothing about the nation’s priorities after losing the 2008 presidential election the Republican Party nominated Mitt Romney to lead it in the 2012 election. The former-Governor of Massachusetts earned his fortune in private equity and campaigned on a promise of bringing fiscal responsibility to government. After contradicting himself on key issues on a number of occasions, opponents labeled Romney a flip-flopper whose ideals changed in chameleon-like response to public opinion. Critics also questioned the manner in which Romney earned his fortune at Bain Capital, describing him as a corporate raider who benefitted by predating off weak companies. Just four years after the worst economic turndown since the Great Depression, the Republican Party offered Americans a prime example of the despised Wall Street everyman, and it lost another election. It is difficult to imagine Theodore Roosevelt telling an audience, as Mitt Romney did, “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That’s an entitlement. The government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean the president starts off with 48, 49…he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax.”

Romney voiced the beliefs of a Republican establishment that increasingly view the U.S. citizen in terms of taker or producer, and corporations as the only American entity truly deserving of being propped up by the government. In one hundred years of political maneuvering, the Republican Party remained true to its ideology of associating wealth with success, and the taxation of said wealth as anti-American. The Luddite-like attitude of the Republican establishment appears in its interpretation of scientific evidence to deny climate change, and its banal understanding of women’s health issues, such as the rights to seek a safe abortion, and to access affordable contraceptives. Proudly voicing its pro-life ideals to protect unborn children, the Republican Party offers little support for a child after leaving the mother’s womb, and later castigates the child for being a drag on society. It is a stagnant ideology that resists change in a continuously evolving nation, with leaders who see the rest of society in terms of units. And just as they did a century earlier, Americans recognize the tune, and tire of the song.

When the 2016 presidential campaigning begins in earnest, the Republican establishment will trot out the usual suspects: Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Do any of the individuals listed possess the political courage of a Theodore Roosevelt to address the pressing social and economic inequalities facing Americans? Do they understand the full spectrum of American society wrestling with barriers to economic advancement, and voice realistic and humane solutions to the problems? Perhaps the Republican establishment is too dependent on Wall Street to change, but were Roosevelt alive today, he would relish the fight to level the political playing field between individuals and corporation, and the nation would benefit in the process.

Lifetime Appointments Place Supreme Court Justices Above the Political Fray: The Lie That Provides Supreme Court Justices With Lifetime Appointments

From its inception, the United States government based its authority on the rule of law as decided by the will of the people. After years of enduring the whims of a distant king, the colonists decided on a government of popular representation with each branch of government answerable to the people, with the exception of the Judiciary. Instead, the president nominates a qualified individual to one of the highest positions in government, who the Legislative Branch then votes on, and if accepted, becomes a Supreme Court Justice. After swearing to protect the constitution, the new S.C. Justice begins a term unfettered by the need to seek the approval of the other government branches or the American people, and unburdened by election campaigns or term limits.

As the highest court in the United States, its members are the gatekeepers tasked with protecting the constitutional rights of every U.S. citizen from the unfair encroachment of the Executive and Legislative branches. The gravitas with which it carries out this task places the Supreme Court beyond reproach. However, has the court proven itself worthy of this power by observing a history of fair judgments untainted by political ideology? Have the justices earned the privilege of serving a lifetime commitment protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens? Is providing this small group of individuals with such far-reaching power good for a democracy?

The popular argument for providing Supreme Court Justices with lifetime appointments is to place them beyond the ideological reach of the party politics forced upon elected officials. However, any objective history about the United States Supreme Court’s impact on American civil liberties provides ample evidence that its members are politically committed to a particular party. It begins with the model case for understanding how the Supreme Court gained the power of absolute authority over the constitutionality of American laws, the 1803 Marbury v. Madison case.

The details of the case revolved around a political battle between the outgoing Federalist presidential administration of John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, his Democratic-Republican predecessor. Jefferson accused the Adams administration of packing the federal judiciary with last minute appointees and refused to deliver three commissions, one of which belonged to William Marbury. Marbury v. Madison signaled the first of many political battles waged by presidents to select federal judges who fit the prevailing characteristics of the ideological climate. For example, Sandra Day O’Connor described President George Washington’s selections for the Supreme Court as, “reliable supporters of the Federalist cause, had service in the Revolution, were active in the political life of the nominee’s state, and were favorably regarded by the President or other well-known Federalists.”

Adams, too, selected Federalist-affiliated Justices for the court, leading to a showdown between the Jefferson administration and a Federalist-packed Supreme Court. From its very inception the highest court in the nation was shaped by political forces and it became the norm, not an isolated event. Speaking about the contemporary selection process, O’Connor said, “Every President making appointments has tried to appoint people who were politically acceptable to the President himself.” If the President’s search for Justice appointees relies on ideological equivalency, how, then, can its members claim exemption from the political vagaries facing the nation, while asserting a lifetime appointment as the solution?

Examples of the damage caused to Americans by the Supreme Court’s adherence to the prevailing political climate abound in its young history. In 1857 the Supreme Court had an opportunity to correct the injustice of slavery forced onto a large portion of the country’s black population. It was an issue of such importance that in just four years the nation would fight a civil war to overturn the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery at the cost of an estimated 600k soldiers’ lives. With an opportunity to be on the right side of history, the Supreme Court, instead, ruled in favor of the political tenet in Dred Scott v. Sandford that blacks under the Constitution were a “subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by a superior race” with “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

In the aftermath of the Civil War and the South’s reconstruction, the Supreme Court received a second opportunity to secure national rights for all Americans in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873. It decided on two levels of citizenship, with those laws addressed by state rights gaining precedence over national rights. Some southern states enacted laws requiring separate accommodations for whites from ‘inferior races’ in the public sphere. When the constitutionality of these laws was challenged in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, the Supreme Court denied that “the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority.” Legislation was “powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences…If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them on the same plain.”

Supreme Court Justices were not immune to the climate of racism that plagued the nation long after the end of the Civil War. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson appointed James McReynolds, a man with many prejudices, to the Supreme Court. When Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardoza, both Jews, joined the Supreme Court, McReynolds refused to sit next to, speak with, and dine with, either man because he was, according to Justice O’Connor, a “notorious racist.” If the Supreme Court lacked the ability to curtail racism within its own ranks, what level of impartiality could black Americans hope for in the early 20^th century?

After supporting a national two-tiered social system for 151 years, the Supreme Court finally took a turn toward supporting civil liberties for all Americans. Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the court decided against the segregation of black and white schoolchildren in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case. Appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, who later considered Warren “one of the two worst mistakes” of his presidency, Warren believed separating black children “from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”

The Supreme Court finished its pivot toward civil liberties for all Americans in 1967 when President Lyndon Johnson appointed the first black American to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall. The following year, civil rights legislation passed that finally broke down the racial barriers separating white Americans and the rest of the country. When President Ronald Reagan selected Sandra Day O’Connor for the Supreme Court, she brought the promise of a truly diverse Supreme Court with her. However, with such a long, dismal record of adhering to outdated, antiquated, and conservative political ideologies, should Americans continue to trust Supreme Court Justices with the power to shape decades of government policy through lifetime appointments based on the false tenet of political neutrality?

President Thomas Jefferson once predicted that the Constitution would become a “mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” With advances in medicine, S.C. Justices enjoy longer terms in office, and the opportunity to mold government policy for the next three decades. In recent rulings, the Supreme Court continued its support of free speech principles in campaign finance, but its focus moved from that of protecting individual rights to allowing more money to flow into the political process. The media uproar in the wake of the McCutcheon v. FEC included a stern accusation from economist Robert Reich that the decision was “the most brazen invitation to oligarchy in Supreme Court history.” He noted the court overturned “40 years of national policy and 38 years of judicial precedents” to reach its conclusion. Has Jefferson’s prediction come true?

Education and Political Power

The definition of American democracy in its simplest form is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and it worked for the nation’s earliest political leaders. Consisting of men who worked the land, they were familiar with the wants and needs of their constituents, and took the matter of government service as a serious duty. The legislative calendar reflected the times as politicians scheduled session breaks to coincide with the planting or harvesting of crops. Times, however, have changed and a popular complaint today is that our leaders are out of touch with the populace, and place corporate welfare above the well-being of the people. The overwhelming cause for this disconnect is education, or more precisely, which college a politician attends.

For most Americans, the cost of college plays a significant role when choosing a school. Higher education is an investment that serves to expand the student’s mind, while also teaching the social skills necessary to make friendships that may last a lifetime. With each new addition to the social network, new opportunities become available for the student, and if seeking a graduate degree, the social network matures to include a smaller network of exceptional friends. However, for some students cost is not a factor, and the choice becomes influenced by a university’s prestige and reputation for providing the student with both a degree and a pedigree. The friendships made while attending one of the nation’s top schools offer exponential benefits to the student via access to social elites, while the school’s reputation bestows an often-undeserved gravitas on its alumni.

Education matters, but to reach the truly preeminent position of presidential, judicial, and senatorial power requires attendance at one of the nation’s top twenty universities. To explore the relationship between education and political power, this analysis divided American higher educational schools into three tier levels using data provided by U.S. News and World Report rankings of National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges. The top twenty schools on both lists formed the Tier 1 schools, while schools ranked from 21 to 50 were included in Tier 2 schools. Tier 3 schools included any institution ranked below fifty.

To attend a Tier 1 school in 2014 costs an individual $43k annually with an average student enrollment of 15k in national universities that drops to an average of 2k for liberal arts colleges. A steep price to pay for a smaller class size, the cost of an undergraduate degree from an elite school is $172k and it continues to rise. The students encounter elite private clubs and rub elbows with the next generation of socioeconomic giants, and possibly future powerful contacts.

Further, these contacts make the exorbitant school costs at this level such a worthwhile investment. Narrow the focus to the nation’s top five universities – Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia Universities – and the fiscal benefits of attending one of these institutions becomes apparent with an alumnus that boasts 116 billionaires, according to The Atlantic. Harvard alone counts almost 3000 graduates as worth more than $30 million each. Academically, these schools are staffed with scholars whose studies drive the narrative for the nation’s future. However, the elite atmosphere that insulates these institutions also limits their students and faculties exposure to America’s cultural soup and the economic realities confronting the nation’s denizens. As a result, the scholarship from Tier 1 schools is often focused through a very narrow socioeconomic prism of understanding.

The difference in cost between a Tier 1 school and Tier 2 school is small, with the student on the hook for an average of $39k annually at a national university, and a $42k average annual price tag for attendance at a liberal arts college. Annual average enrollments climbed to 24k at national universities, but maintained the same 2k average found at Tier 1 schools. The increased enrollment signals that Tier 2 national university schools appear more accessible to a larger portion of the American populace, providing greater diversity for its student body, and broader access to opportunities for cultivating economic contacts. The mirror-like averages for Tier 1 and Tier 2 liberal arts schools infers that the colleges in this group also provide a measure of exclusiveness to degree-holding students, thus boosting the perceived value of alumni membership. Ideas, too, flow copiously from the scholars at these universities, bringing with them the possibility of providing the fame necessary to make the leap to teach at a Tier 1 school.

Tier 3 schools are populated by the remaining higher education institutions, with an average annual cost of $22.8k for the student. This is the tier group available to the majority of American families, admitting students based on a sliding scale of costs in relation to their economic conditions. The quality of academic output from scholars at this level also varies too much to generalize because its members are in the process of career expansion or decline. The substance of a degree earned from a member school depends on the student’s willingness to study diligently in the search for knowledge. While Tier 3 contains the vast majority of American colleges, it is the least represented group within the halls of presidential, judicial, and senatorial power.

In the 20^th and 21^st century, all but four of eighteen American presidents attended Tier 1 schools. The remaining four presidents hailed from Tier 3 schools or possessed no college education, while two members made sweeping changes to the national dialogue about poverty and identity. Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and advanced the ideology of a Great Society and the War on Poverty that resulted in government supported food assistance and education programs. Without Johnson’s support for black Americans, there is no President Obama. Ronald Reagan, the penultimate presidential hero for modern Republicans, redefined the definition of poverty leading to a reduction in welfare recipients, while arguing for lower taxes on the wealthy that he promised would “trickle down” to the rest of society. Neither, however, attended a Tier 1 school.

The percentage of Supreme Court Justices hailing from a Tier 1 school is 66%, and shows only a moderate fall from that of the presidential numbers. With thirty-seven of the fifty-six justices appointed in the 20^th and 21^st century coming from Tier 1 schools, this percentage pales in relation to the current number of sitting Supreme Court Justices, with 100% representation. The impact the judicial branch of the government has on its citizens is mighty. Collectively they are the custodians of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and the institution’s power was on full display when it expanded the definition of free speech in politics, resulting in a flood of money for campaigning purposes.

Because of the vast numbers of Senators voted into office during the 20^th and 21^st century, information for this analysis was limited to a fifty year period beginning with the current
Senate members of the 113^th Congress and continuing in decade length intervals to include the 108^th, 103^rd, 98^th, and 93^rd Classes. In the Senate, there was a greater level of diversity among Senators and their school tier group representation, with almost 47% of its members identifying as Tier 1 school alumni. However, the tilt in numbers remains firmly in the direction of Tier 1 alumni, with Tier 3 school representation hovering at 45% throughout the period. While these numbers point to a greater degree of influence sharing between the tier groups, much of a Senator’s power resides in committee memberships.

Using information from the 113^th Congress, power sharing at the committee level appears relatively even between Tier 1 and Tier 3 schools with the exception of three committees – Committee on Rules and Administration, Committee on the Budget, and Committee on the Judiciary. The Committee on Rules and Administration operates to provide credentials and qualifications for Senate members, but it also oversees federal elections for President and Congress. The Tier 1 representation for this committee stands at 57%, or eleven members, while Tier 3 representation was 37%, or seven members. With the power to decide elections, the current trend means a small cadre of schools possesses the ability to influence election outcomes through entrenched ideologies that emanate from these institutions.

The Senate Budget Committee, in a sense, holds the purse strings of the federal government, deciding the general economic plan for the nation’s spending, while also overseeing the Congressional Budget Office, which monitors the federal debt. This committee contained the highest Tier 1 membership of any committee, as it contained 14 senators, or 64%. Senators from Tier 3 schools numbered seven for 32%, a dismally small percentage of members to represent the viewpoint of the average American, particularly in matters of spending. A committee populated by members who earn more in a year that many Americans earn in a lifetime, yet they still claim to understand the harsh economic conditions that embrace the nation’s poorest people.

The final committee with an overwhelming number of Tier 1 schooled senators is the Committee on the Judiciary. Tasked with oversight of amendments to the U.S. Constitution, it also controls the selection process for new federal and Supreme Court justice nominees. With such far-reaching influence over the laws of the land, the decisions made by committee members directly impact the rights of all Americans. Tier 1 representation on this committee is 61%, or eleven senators, while Tier 3 members only number six, or 33%, a paltry accounting from a government organization that purports to be defenders of justice. It is a vision of justice imagined through the narrow filter of the most expensive, socially exclusive higher education institutions, and only slightly ameliorated by the diversity of six Tier 3 senators.

Each senate committee possesses its own form of power. The Rules and Administration Committee influences the election process, the Budget Committee holds sway over the spending of federal monies, and the Judiciary Committee controls the lawmakers and lawmaking processes. However, is it wise to trust these vast powers and the ideology driving them when only a narrow band of schools, the nation’s top twenty institutions, informs their world view? Further, what does the data mean for the average American?

First, unless the average American can afford to invest $368k on education, joining the Supreme Court is virtually impossible, and gaining the presidency becomes a remote possibility. If the percentages were expressed in terms of a successful cancer recovery diagnoses, the average American’s chance of living would be 22% (President) or 23% (Supreme Court), both low enough to begin planning a funeral, unless, of course, cost was no issue for the patient. The only president who served in the last two centuries without a college education was Harry Truman, an anomaly the current statistical trend indicates will not recur anytime soon.

Second, data from the 113^th Senate class points to greater opportunities for power sharing, however, to achieve a seat on an influential committee requires the same heavy education investment as that of a President or Supreme Court Justice. The large presence of Tier 1 schooled senators on the Judiciary Committee may influence its preference for choosing like-minded Supreme Court Justices. Anyone familiar with the high court’s nomination process recognizes the penchant toward selecting candidates that conform, while differences in social or economic ideology provide ammunition to attack and dismiss those whose views fall outside mainstream beliefs.

Finally, the accusation leveled by the Occupy Movement, that American political leadership favors the 1% of society, appears valid. The overwhelming representation of Tier 1 schools among the nation’s political elites reinforces an ideology poorly influenced by the economic and social diversity encountered by the average American. These conditions create a self-sustaining ideological loop that equates elitism with intelligence, resulting in political support by Tier 1 educated leadership for policies that appear foreign to its citizens.

A nation that once enjoyed fair representation by its peers, who provided a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has devolved into a system that instead is of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites. With the rising cost of college tuition, it is a system built to accommodate success, unless you are an average American.