A few days back, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that lawmakers
should not be prevented from trading stocks.
“We are a free
market economy. They should be able to participate in that,”
Pelosi
Her remarks are probably owing to the fact that Pelosi’s husband
holds stocks worth
of and options worth tens of millions of dollars.
This includes stocks in
big tech firms such as Amazon and Apple that are each worth between
$5 million and $25 million. In Comcast, Pelosi’s husband holds stock worth
between $1 million and $5 million and in Visa worth between $5 million and $25
million. He also holds stock options in Google’s parent company worth between
$1 million and $5 million.
Pelosi insisted that she had no involvement or prior knowledge
of her husband’s stock investments. She also stated that she had no stock on
her name.
However, the fact that Pelosi’s husband made millions on big
tech firms such as Amazon, Apple, and Google which Nancy is supposed to
regulate, at the very least is a huge conflict of interest.
But Pelosi is not the only one.
Back in April, a study by the Campaign Legal
Center discovered that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers bought and sold
stocks hundreds of times throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Many lawmakers had invested in industries whose importance and
relevance were elevated owing to the Covid19
pandemic. They also sold their stocks from the hospitality industry,
restaurants, and other sectors that were adversely affected by the pandemic.
Another investigation in
September revealed that “49 members of Congress and 182 senior congressional
staffers have violated laws to prevent insider trading.”
Most of these lawmakers obviously had advanced information
about the pandemic-related restrictions which enabled them to reap an instant profit.
Back in 2012, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act,
also known as the STOCK Act was passed which bars lawmakers from using inside
information to make investment decisions and requires that all stock trades be
reported to Congress within 45 days.
To date, no one in Washington has been charged in connection with stock trading investigations undertaken by the Justice Department and the Securities Exchange Commission.
A law that is not enforced is can almost be regarded as
non-existent.
What about people beyond Washington?
A former Netflix engineer and his ‘co-conspirator’ were sentenced
to 14
months in prison and $10,000 in fines for insider trading.
A former McKinsey
& Co. partner recently pleaded guilty to using inside
information to profit on the acquisition of a fintech company by client Goldman
Sachs Group. The one count of securities fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20
years in prison.
There are myriad cases of citizens being deservedly punished
for insider trading.
Nancy Pelosi’s statements places also her at odds with her fellow
Democrats such as Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez aka AOC.
AOC had tweeted “It is
absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual
stock while in office. The access and influence we have should be exercised for
the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade
individual stock with the info we have.”
Senator Warren said "We
need both tougher laws and enforcement of those laws. The American people
should never have to guess whether or not an elected official is advancing an
issue or voting on a bill based on what's good for the country or what's good
for their own personal financial interests."
Perhaps like broken clocks are correct twice a day, both
Warren and AOC are absolutely right in this particular instance.
If AOC and Warren continue to maintain this position and act on their words, they will probably
discover that sharp decline in their re-election funds or perhaps a primary
challenger from their party or perhaps a few media hit jobs may come their way.
Back in September, Nancy Pelosi
had said the
following during her trip to the UK
"In America, capitalism is our system, it is our economic
system, but it has not served our economy as well as it should.
You cannot have a system where the success of some springs
from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the
environment and the rest, and we have to correct that."
The free-market principles should allow any individual,
including lawmakers to invest where they desire. But primary qualifier for a
free market is a relative amount of fairness.
A regular investor simply doesn’t have the level of access to insider information
that lawmakers have, this means only a few in Washington can profit from inside information.
This is the exploitation of the system that Pelosi was talking about when
she offered her critique of capitalism.
The function of a public servant is obviously to serve the
citizen, with this responsibility comes certain sacrifices. The first among these
sacrifices is to not use their office for profit.
But these fundamental principles no longer apply to the Democrat
Washington Establishment, of which Pelosi is a prominent leader.
The members of this establishment may say the right thing to appear
noble and virtuous. But when you scrutinize their actions, it is clear that
their claims are hollow.
They claim to want to resolve income inequality but have no
problem trading in stock based on information that is only available to them either directly or by proxy.
The fact there these acts have gone unpunished proves that they co-opted various agencies and the news media who are ideally supposed to function as watchdogs.
Is there a way to bring down this self-serving cabal?
Firstly the citizen must actively participate and vote in brave, honest, and fearless individuals who will not be tempted by various inducements.
Secondly, all elected officials must have term limits, perhaps
not more than 2 terms.
Thirdly, for various administrative services and agencies,
there must be mandatory transfers after a fixed period of time.
Stronger laws must be passed that prevent abuse of power and profiting
by virtue of office and these laws must be enforced.
The question is will the self-serving, self-promoting, and self-sustaining Democrat
Washington Establishment allow changes that will harm them?
Of course not!
The change has to begin at the grassroots with the citizen being engaged in the
political process and voting for the right candidate after carefully scrutinizing
their records.
Having honest and upright elected officials for a few decades
may bring about the first step in the journey of change.
This article also appears on www.AmericanThinker.com
The link is
Comments
Post a Comment