All political bureaucracies; institutions funded by government, end up being filled with self-serving elitists. If you govern from the left the elitists are from unions and academia. Of you given from the right the elitists are from business. They have in common an overblown sense of self-worth, an unquenchable desire to ravage the public purse for their own personal gain and a total lack of respect for the tax payer. There are two injustices at play here. The first is the lack of meritocracy in appointments. The second is the over compensation. Combined they deeply undermine our publicly funded institutions. On the compensation side, perhaps the only solution is to set up compensation boards run by the judiciary, to determine the fairness of compensation of political appointees. On the merits of an appointment, as ugly as it may seem in the U.S., confirmation hearings by democratically elected representatives may be the only way to vet candidates for these highly paid positions.