Collectivization is the priority, of course...

Forget Redmond, Washington, or Cupertino, California... Washington D.C. is now the richest area in the country:

Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation's greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.
The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.

There's something symbolic about bureaucratic D.C. surpassing the world-famed technology corridor as the center of wealth in the country.  But apparently, somebody forgot to tell Senator Reid that the Feds are doing well:

"It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine (!!!); it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers ((really???)), and that's what this legislation is all about," Reid said on the Senate floor.

Quotes like that one reinforce my conviction that as they added lanes to the Beltway around D.C., it just increasingly isolated the government from the governed... not to mention reality.