The latest Gallup poll shows that not all of America is in economic doldrums.  What "state" has the most optimism about the economy?  Not a "state" at all, but the national capital: the District of Columbia.  In fact, only in the District of Columbia do people have a net positive confidence in the economy -- at +19, according to the Gallup poll.

All the states of the republic have a pessimistic view of the economy, with the least pessimistic state in the Gallup poll being Massachusetts (where the negative confidence rating in the economy of only -1).  What was the national average of confidence in the economy?  It was a negative confidence rating -16.

This outlook is grounded in hard facts.  Those who dwell in the environs of our imperial capital ought to be optimistic about their wealth, their income, their power, and their general standard of living.  The states of the union have 3,144 counties (or county equivalents).  All of the counties in America in the top tenth of one percent in income are nestled around the imperial capital, Washington, D.C., and half of the counties in America within the top one percent of income are also parasitical appendages to the District of Columbia. 

The imperial capital does not just have income; it has wealth.  Hawaii, and not the District of Columbia, has the most valuable homes in America, with an average $503,000.  But the average home in the District of Columbia, with an average value of $435,000,  is significantly higher than the state next on the list, California, with an average value of $358,000.  And homes in the District of Columbia are valued almost three times higher than homes in general across the nation, with the latter amounting to $176,000.   

The Virginia and Maryland counties close to the District of Columbia have values far greater than America as a whole.  Ten percent of the counties with the one hundred highest values in America are in those states near the imperial capital, and eighteen of the one hundred and fifty counties with the highest home values are near Washington. 

Who dwells in this most concentrated region of fat cats and millionaires?  There is next to no business or industry on the Potomac River.  The weather is muggy in the summer and no better than ordinary the rest of the year.  The main product that comes out of Washington is government influence of one sort or another.  The legions of influence-peddlers, lawyers, bureaucrats, foundation and related association minions, and the other vast gray army of nabobs, courtiers, and supplicants feeding off the unhealthy and unchecked centralized power of the federal government have one single-purpose industry: federal government.

While Barry brays about income inequality in America, the very flacks and functionaries of federal power command for themselves a redistribution of wealth from Americans who engage in genuine productive activity, into the trough of extracted loot from their poorer and less powerful countrymen.  All the trite maxims of leftism like "speaking truth to power" and "helping those less fortunate" are grim mockeries of the oppressed producers whose marrow is continually sucked out by those in Washington.

The inequality in income, in wealth, and in privilege between the rulers in our imperial capital and virtual colonies like Louisiana and Nebraska is stark, but while ordinary Americans consume the oil and the corn that other ordinary Americans produce, no one wants to "consume" the officious busywork of Washington.  Leftists hound those parts of America that produce fossil fuels and deprive them of their wealth.  Well, how about doing the same to the ghastly rhetorical pollution of Washington? 

If Barry wants to redress differences in wealth and power in America, then how about demanding that Congress pass an across-the-board salary cut of twenty percent for all federal employees making more than $100,000 per year?  Or why not amend the tax code so that those with an income greater than $50,000 and who live within twenty-five miles of Washington pay a fifty-percent federal tax surcharge on their income?  

The sordid truth, of course, is that obscene wealth and huge inequality in income are just fine to the left.  The cadres of leftism live in luxury compared to most Americans, rather like the nomenklatura of the old Soviet Empire, also disproportionately located in Moscow, lived much better lives than subjects in the colonial possessions of Moscow. 

There is a winning political  issue here, if some conservative will pick up the banner and lead the charge: the rich, arrogant and powerful cliques of Washington are wildly unpopular in most of America.  Government power and its natural adjunct, coerced government wealth, ought to be devolved back to the people -- or at least to state governments, which are located in real America.

To champion federal bloated wealth is an indefensible position.  Those forced to fight for bureaucrats, lobbyists and lawyers will lose.