{"id":3665,"date":"2009-08-06T10:14:32","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T15:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3665"},"modified":"2009-08-06T08:19:54","modified_gmt":"2009-08-06T13:19:54","slug":"the-perks-of-princes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3665","title":{"rendered":"The Perks of Princes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Randy Cohen &#8211; as an ethicist writing for the <em>New York Times<\/em> &#8211; tackles <a href=\"http:\/\/ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/03\/too-much-vacation-for-congress\/\">the vexing question of Congressional vacations<\/a>. He comes down hard &#8211; and while I don&#8217;t endorse his message, I think that if more people expressed this attitude, our country would be better off:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In an egalitarian society, lawmakers do not exploit their office to vote themselves lavish perks but live much like the people they represent. Congress should get the same health coverage enjoyed \u2014 can that be the right verb? \u2014 by a typical American. Congressional pay should be pegged to the\u00a0<a style=\"color: #004276; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.acf.hhs.gov\/programs\/ocs\/liheap\/guidance\/SMI75FY09.pdf\">median for a family of four<\/a>, currently $70,354. And Congress will receive the same vacation time as an average American, which\u00a0<a style=\"color: #004276; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.afscmeblog.org\/2007\/07\/27\/a-clear-case-of-vacation-deprivation\/\">right now is 37 days<\/a>. No, wait, I\u2019m thinking of France, that terrifying example of all that is to be shunned \u2014 attractive clothes, delicious meals, widespread human happiness. American workers average 12 days a year of vacation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Randy Cohen &#8211; as an ethicist writing for the New York Times &#8211; tackles the vexing question of Congressional vacations. He comes down hard &#8211; and while I don&#8217;t endorse his message, I think that if more people expressed this attitude, our country would be better off: In an egalitarian society, lawmakers do not exploit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1889,2144,2145,2143,148],"class_list":["post-3665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-congress","tag-congressional-vacations","tag-ethicist","tag-randy-cohen","tag-the-new-york-times"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-X7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3665"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3672,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions\/3672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}