Talk:List of richest American politicians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What is the source of all of this information? --Blue387 08:47, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually there are ways to source this, however the article is inaccurate. John Kerry is wealthy, but it is his wife - whose fortune he does not control, who is the hectamillionaire. Stirling Newberry 14:00, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how this article could ever be complete, since wealth figures are private and (as Stirling mentions) not so clear cut. For instance, the John Kerry figure seems to be calculated by taking the estate of his and his wife's, estimated at $1B, and dividing by two. Not too accurate. And how is Schwarzenegger not on there? Eliot 14:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Found this reference to Kerry's wealth. [1] It says that Kerry's personal assets are in the range of $1-10 million, while his wife's are in the range of $550 million. Should he be on the list? We don't know where his wife's money would go if she died, or if they divorced. Eliot 17:24, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Given the obscurity of the public financial disclosure required of federal office holders, this effort would seem doomed to failures. Independent holdings by spouses complicate the picture even further (Kerry is hardly the only politician with this "problem"). Discrepancies between state and federal laws are another difficulty. Unless someone is referencing external scholarship with a reasonably well-received methodology for broad examination of the issues, this is an exercise in futility. Journalists are unlikely to satisfy this requirement. I reckon this should be put to a VfD. Buffyg 23:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

rfc comment. Agree it should be vfd'd, and I'd vote to delete for several reasons, not least that the energy would be far better spent on articles on money in US politics in general, than Yet Another Pointless And Contentious Wikipedia List (YAPACWL). Rd232 13:41, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think those are valid reasons for deleting an article. Unverifiability is a valid one, but practically every list here suffers from excess of ambition. Eliot 14:19, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, everyone, the Federal Election Commission mandates a disclosure and also that certain items be held in blind trust. The bit about Kerry is right, also Frist is missing and are we going to count Edwards. 64.250.219.173 04:17, 24 September 2005 (UTC)JJ Glendenning

The Statement above is mine, I wasn't logged in.

One more thing this list would not be hard to maintain everyone does this just to name one, Forbes.