The Washington D.C. wheeler-dealers are making patsies out of the rest of us.
Members of Congress get million-dollar-plus expense accounts, lifetime pensions, and lavish perks, but for the greedy, that’s not enough. They’re also racking up big bucks trading stocks in the very same companies Congress regulates.
Stock picking by members of Congress should be illegal because they have an unfair edge over the rest of us. They’re privy to the regulatory burdens or legal changes these companies are likely to face. And top leaders, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, actually control what’s ahead for these companies.
That control is like gold. Pelosi and her husband, venture capitalist Paul Pelosi, report trading tens of millions of dollars of assets a year, largely in Big Tech. The Nancy Pelosi Portfolio Tracker, based on these reported trades, estimates the couple is outperforming Wall Street titans such as Warren Buffett. Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow marvels that the Pelosis bested the S&P 500 by nearly 15% in 2020. All the while, she’s tamping down demands to regulate Big Tech.
Members of Congress are not the only one’s double-dealing. On Jan. 14, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida stepped down, following resignations of both the Dallas and Boston Fed chiefs. They’re in trouble for trading stocks and mortgage-backed securities while making Fed policies that impacted those markets.
A Wall Street Journal investigation finds some federal judges also climbing aboard the stock-picking gravy train. Sixty-one federal judges actually traded a company’s stock while the company was a litigant in their courtroom.
Congress needs to clean up this spreading corruption, starting with its own.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) is offering a bill that requires federal lawmakers and their immediate family to put their stocks in a blind trust or diversified mutual fund. Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz (Texas), who are as far to the right as Ossoff is to the left, say they’ll offer similar bills.
Pelosi has the power to block all of them. In March 2021, Pelosi kept a bipartisan ban on stock trading from ever getting out of the Rules Committee and on to the House floor for a vote.
Looking ahead, if Republicans capture the House in the midterm elections, count on the stock trading ban to gain momentum. Encouragingly, Biden administration economic adviser Brian Deese supports the ban to “restore faith in our institutions,” suggesting the president might actually sign it.
Limiting stock trading will also pave the way for an urgently needed reform of Big Tech.
In October 2020, on the eve of the Trump-Biden presidential contest, Facebook and Twitter canceled the New York Post’s damaging findings that Hunter Biden’s laptop implicated his father in clandestine deals with the Chinese.
Big Tech literally has the power to tilt an election by depriving the public of damning information about one candidate.
To prevent that, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) has introduced the 21st Century FREE Speech Act, which would regulate Big Tech platforms, treating them like railroads, telephone companies, or other public utilities. AT&T can’t bar you from using the phone because it dislikes your political speech. But Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube routinely silence speakers they dislike, even the president of the United States. This proposed law would put a stop to it and restore free debate.
What’s standing in the way? Democrats are zealous to silence what they call “disinformation,” never mind that one person’s disinformation is another person’s truth. But the other barrier is Democrats’ large stock investments in Big Tech.
Nearly half of Democratic lawmakers’ stock holdings are in Big Tech, compared with a mere 14% of Republicans’ holdings. The Pelosis have reaped between $5.6 million and $30.4 million from investing in just five Big Tech firms — Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft — since 2007. No wonder she’s slow-walking any reforms of Big Tech.
When they say it’s not the money, you can bet it’s the money. Congress is cashing in, and freedom-loving Americans are getting screwed.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of “The Next Pandemic.” Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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They are all sanctimonious criminals.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Time to bring back public hangings for these lawbreaking, self-serving, narcissistic Anti-American Chyna traitors.
Make America Great Again!
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Pelosi, all the Bidens, turtle McConnell and all the others should be THROWN OUT and get real jobs in the private sector!
This administration won’t stop until they’ve totally ruined our country!!!
Its the politician -lobbyist revolving door syndrome day1 since
We used to have an FBI to investigate these corrupt practices but now that they are a partisan political entity nobody is left to enforce the law fairly. It was a big deal when Loeffler did it but it is okay for democrats. Real fair.
We created and cultivated the roles of elected officials into elites, for whom we financially tend for their lifespans, and they see and use citizens as mere proletariats, and treat us as the children who should be seen but not heard. We need a Donald Trump to help straighten this mell of a hess swamp out.
prime example of selling soul to the devil she needs to get on her knees asking forgiveness so close to being in presence of evil one
A broad Bill must be written for Congress.
You live by ALL rules and laws you foist on the rest of America.
You make NO rules or laws for yourselves that every American also does not benefit from.
In other words, what’s good for the goose is also good for the gander.
ALL of my emails from Amac goes into Trash. Always has. I always go through all the necessary steps to “white”mail it. Never works.If I happen to catch it in my trash and put “use browser’ , then it opens. Why don’t ya’all just pit it in bowser to start with? Thank you.
Trump went after people in Congress over this very subject matter… He exposed the Congress for what it has become, i.e. a huge out of control Ponzi Scheme that benefits the members of Congress, NOT the American taxpayer…The original Covid-19 stimulus Bill that went all over the world, but totally controlled by Congress is a case in point, i.e. they control the off shore accts. the money sits in & gets T/F back to them in the many millions of dollars, i.e. a huge sum of money for gender studies in Pakistan, the study of mating habits of carp fish in the Caribbean as the list goes on & on…How did Congress react to this? Both parties went after Trump with a vengeance for the illicit EXPOSURE he presented to the American people… The Democrats, i.e. 100% of them & RINO’s as well as a good many supposed Republicans that turned a blind eye to all the attacks Trump had to endure for ( 4 ) very long years as POTUS…We the People now know why politicians enter the fray of politics in going to Washington, DC. They go to DC to ENRICHEN themselves, they DO NOT go because they feel it is their patriotic duty to do so…
As each & every one of us patriots know full well because we all experienced it first hand, Trump accomplished more than any sitting president in US history ever did & he did it in ( 1 ) term served & had his ( 2nd ) term STOLEN from himself & We The People as we are all suffering the consequences of a FRAUDULANT 2020 election that is still reverberating across this land & rightly so…
Bill… :~)
Lets continue the swamp cleaning in November.