Jul 2, 2009 11:22 AM
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The White House released a list of all its staffers and their salaries, including the director of African American media, who makes $13,000 per year more than the director of Hispanic media. What would Sonia Sotomayor say?
The ceiling for White House salaries is $172,200 per year, which all our favorites—Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, Jon Favreau, and Valerie Jarrett, to name a few—pull in. Though we're fairly certain that Emmanuel demands that Obama write him a personal check for $1 on the first of every month so he can say he makes more than Axelrod.
The floor is $36,000, which is what various staff assistants, correspondence analysts, and "vetters" make, which is apparently why no one realized that Tim Geithner never paid any taxes. Obama should pay his vetter more.
If you want to write proclamations all day, you can make a cool 50 grand, like Anand Chhabra, the White House's senior writer for proclamations. If you want to make nothing, zilch, nada, zero, you can be an "adviser" like Patricia McGinnis, or a "senior adviser for economics, division of presidential personnel" like Michael Warren, neither of whom make any money at all.
Favreau's girlfriend Alejandra Campoverdi makes $55,000 as an executive assistant to the deputy chief of staff for policy, which we hope is more than she made as a contestant on NBC's reality-dating show For Love Or Money, or as a pin-up girl in Maxim.
So what glaring injustices have we found in Obama's salary scheme? Well, Corey Ealons, the director of African American media, makes $78,000 per year, while Luis Miranda, the director of Hispanic media, makes just $65,000.
Gibbs, the director of White media, makes $172,200, so it's basically a caste system.
And Obama also hates women, because Catherine Lelyveld, Michelle Obama's press secretary, makes $84,000, less than half of what Gibbs makes. And Michelle doesn't make any money at all!
Barack himself makes $400,000, because he made sure his contract had a clause saying he'd make at least 2.3 times whatever the next highest-paid employee makes.
The median household income in Washington, D.C., is $55,000 per year. Assuming dual-income households, all White House staffers almost certainly make more than that.
What we can't figure out is why Obama isn't paying everyone the same flat salary. He is a Communist, right?
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