Jane Harman still quite well off

No surprise here: Roll Call is out with its list of the wealthiest members of Congress, and the South Bay's Jane Harman once again ranks #1 in the House of Representatives. (Sen. John Kerry is the wealthiest overall, edging Harman by a somewhat over-precise $5 million.)
Harman, of course, is married to stereo pioneer Sidney Harman, who founded Harman International Industries.
Because of the nature of financial disclosure documents, nobody can peg the Harmans' wealth with any real certainty. But Roll Call estimates that Rep. Harman is worth about $226 million -- $10 million more than she was two years ago.
That figure may be off somewhat after the market crash of the last couple of weeks. As Bloomberg reports, Harman claimed $50,000-$100,000 of stock in Lehman Bros., which went bankrupt last week. (Lehman shares were worth about $60 six months ago, but are now trading at around 18 cents.)
For a better sense of where the Harmans' wealth comes from, imagine a world without hi-fi home stereo systems. Then imagine that somebody came along and invented them. That guy was Sidney Harman, who co-founded Harman-Kardon Inc. in 1953 with his friend Bernard Kardon. Here is the eureka moment:

The two friends were working together during the early 1950s as engineers at the Bogen Company, which was then the top manufacturer of public address systems. High-fidelity technology that was emerging at the time had caught Harman's interest, and he tried to persuade his superiors at Bogen to become more involved in the burgeoning field.
Bogen showed little interest in Harman's desire to pioneer high-fidelity equipment for the home. So, in 1953, Harman and Kardon left the company to form their own enterprise: Harman-Kardon Inc. Drawing from their $10,000 in funds, the pair developed an advanced stereo system that could be used to play records at home. When their friends heard the system, they were amazed. "We knocked the hell out of them; they were trembling with Shostakovich's Fifth," Harman recalled in the September 1989 Regardies--The Business of Washington. "Nobody had heard anything like that in his living room," Harman added.

Also of note, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, is #8 on the Roll Call list ($52 million), Sen. John McCain is #13 ($20 million), and Speaker Nancy Pelosi is #17 ($19 million).