Final Proof Of Undeniable Corruption, Immorality, and Greed of The American Political Class

Most of us have long suspected that the American political class had devolved to a state where personal political careers and wealth have now taken precedence over the good of the country, relative to most of our politicians. Rather than truly addressing and resolving issues in the right way for the right reasons, seems many of our politicians would prefer to take the cowardly approach and do nothing or do the wrong thing for the country rather than endanger their re-election and personal enrichment efforts.

We have reported on these situations many times in the past in this blog:

- In our September 1, 2011 post we reported on a analysis by two university professors of the historic stock market returns of Washington politicians' personal portfolios. Seems that both Democrats and Republicans serving in Congress, but especially Democrats, have historically outperformed the stock market's overall returns with their own stock portfolios. The study analyzed results over decades across hundreds of different politicians so the sample size is more than ample to draw conclusions from.

Given that these same politicians have not outperformed in any other facet of their jobs, it becomes suspicious that they would do so well in this area of personal enrichment vs. the rest of America's investors, i.e. you and me and professional investors. At that time, we raised the distinct possibility of insider trading of Congressional politicians because of their outstanding stock market performances. Coincidence or corruption?

- In our October 4, 2011 post, we reviewed a few of Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid's documented investment strategies over the past few years. According to John Ransom, writing for Townhall.com on September 30, 2011, in 2008, one month before oil prices took a historical plunge, the good Senator sold between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of energy stock holdings he held in the Dow Jones Energy index.

Shortly thereafter, he purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of health care holdings in the Dow Jones Health Care Index, at a time when he was considering rewriting the nation's health care laws. Coincidence or corruption?

- Also from our October 4, 2011 post, consider the shenanigans of Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite. According to an article that was written by John Frank for the June 30, 2009 St. Petersburg Times.ne day before the House of Representatives approved a massive bank bailout plan in October, 2008, the Congresswoman bought stock in Citigroup, one of the major banks that received a significant portion of the bank bailout funding.


About two weeks later, on the day Treasurer Henry Paulson announced he would invest $250 billion of taxpayer money in nine major banks, the Congresswoman bought stock in Bank of America, one of those nine banks. Coincidence or corruption?


- On November 11, 2011, Money News reported on accusations that at about dozen lawmakers and their senior aides bragged about how much money they had earned in the stock market based on insider trading-like information that they knew ahead of the general public because of their government positions.


The article included the following details:

• The insider trading dollar amounts ranged from a few thousand dollars to six figures.
• Much of the insider trading involved companies that were likely to be brought before Congress for investigations, an act that usually resulted in a negative impact on a company's stock price. By shorting a stock ahead of that information being public, Congressional figures could and did make out sized profits.
• The huge profits were being made by people that had no serious background or past history of success in picking winners and losers in the stock market.

Coincidence or corruption? I think most honest Americans would conclude that all of these incidents are examples of political class corruption, immorality, and greed.


Now, some in the political class would claim that this last piece of corruption information cannot be trusted because it was made by Jack Abramoff, a former lobbyists who was convicted of corruption himself and who has served time in jail.


I would usually agree with such a stand but not this time. First, if anyone should know about corruption, it should be Abramoff since he was the king of corrupt special interests years ago. Second, a recent story that appeared on the CBS show "60 Minutes" not only verifies that this type of behavior exists but went so much further in explaining how and who was deeply involved in the corruption. (You can see the entire,unabridged  "60 Minutes" story at
http://lonelyconservative.com/2011/11/nancy-pelosis-insider-trading/)


According to the "60 Minutes" report, almost everyone in the country is subject to insider trading laws and compliance. This includes ordinary Americans, anyone serving in the executive branch of the Federal government (e.g. the President, the Vice President, etc.), and Federal judges. The only people excluded from having to comply are...members of Congress, the same people who wrote and passed the laws on insider trading that exclude themselves from being prosecuted for such actions.

Just when you think you have heard every conceivable sin, shortcoming, and outright immorality from our politicians, you come across this travesty. They have cleared the decks for themselves to make grand sums of money in the stock market by using insider government trading information.

Examples from "60 Minutes" included the following:

• John Boehner, currently the Speaker of the House, made a serious investment in health care insurance stocks shortly before he led the legislative effort to defeat a key component in Obama's original health care reform bill, a component that would have depressed health care stock prices if not defeated. With the component's defeat, health care insurance stocks rose and made money for Mr. Boehner. Coincidence or corruption?
• Several years ago, then Speaker of the House Dennis Hasert, made some land acquisitions in Ohio. He then worked to adjust Federal highway projects so that a new Federally-financed highway would run close to his newly purchased land, significantly increasing the land's value when he sold it.
• Congressman Spencer Bachus also seemed to do pretty well with insider information. The "60 Minutes" story was apparently inspired by a recently published book, "Throw Them All Out," written by Hoover Institute fellow Peter Schweizer. According to Schweizer, Bachus and Nancy Pelosi got secret briefings from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who basically told the legislators that it was "a matter of days before there is a meltdown in the global financial system.”  Bachus went out shortly thereafter and invested about $7,000 to short the stock market. When the stock market did start to collapse, he was able to cash in the investment for almost twice what he originally put out just a few days before. He also shorted General Electric four times after Paulsen told him GE bond sales were having problems. Coincidence or corruption?

Terrible, terrible, immoral behavior. Which brings us to our favorite member of the political class, Nancy Pelosi. According to the story, Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, and her husband had access to at least eight IPO offerings over the past few years. As most of you know, we ordinary Americans rarely get in on a ground floor, the most lucrative financial time, in any IPO offerings.

The most troubling and potentially corrupt IPO was for the Visa IPO back in 2008. Ms. Pelosi purchased 5,000 IPO shares on the first day of the Visa offering at $44 a share. She sold it within days when the price had reached $64 a share, a profit of about $100,000.

What makes this so very troubling is prior to the Visa IPO offering there was a legislative effort within the House of Representatives to impose credit card fee limits on companies such as Visa. Obviously, if such legislation passed, it would certainly put a damper on Visa's stock price, and would depress the earnings and gains of anyone who invested in the Visa IPO.

That legislation was mysteriously never able to see the light of day prior to the IPO date. The legislation eventually did become law but the driver and leader in the legislation was the Senate, not the House, and passage happened well after people like then- Speaker of the House Pelosi had made their substantial gains off of the IPO offering. Coincidence or corruption?

I really do not know what to say. No more proof is necessary to finally declare that we have allowed a privileged, spoiled, selfish, and, because of the insider trading disaster, an immoral set of people to take control of the country for their own benefit and personal enrichment. Immoral, I cannot come up with any better word to describe this insider trading insult to the American taxpayer and citizen.

And the sad thing is that they do not see anything wrong with this immoral behavior. When the "60 Minutes" reporter, Steve Croft, asked Ms. Pelosi about her IPO behavior at one of her press conferences, her answer was both incoherent and bordering on indignant that someone could even imply she ever had a conflict of interest.

In press releases from her office later that day, she attacked the writer of the book, "Throw Them All Out," as being a discredited conservative.  In other words, she attacked the person and not his information or his process. The "60 Minutes" report showed how the writer and eight of his aides had meticulously gone through official financial records to ensure the book's accusations were accurate. She also accused CBS and "60 Minutes" of a "right wing smear," failing to mention in her press releases that the story also illustrated the same type of immoral behavior of several Republicans.

Ms. Pelosi did not refute that she had participated in the Visa IPO or had made a ton of money in the process. She did not refute that she had participated in many other IPOs while in a powerful position in government, Speaker of the House. She did not refute the fact that she had received highly sensitive and highly valuable advance information from Bernanke and Paulsen. She did not refute the fact that Congress had exempted her and her comrades from the very laws that every other American had to abide by. She tried to turn it into a political issue and attack the person, the messenger.

Obviously, three actions have to take place to fix this immorality:

1. Short term, we need to force Congressional members to make themselves subject to the same insider trading laws as the rest of us.
2. We need to tighten up information sources within government so that pending government actions are kept as secret as possible, as compared to the situation today (as referenced at the end of the "60 Minutes story) so that no one, either inside the Beltway or outside, gets sensitve and valuable insider information.
3. And the most important action is to implement Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" which calls for the Constitutional establishment of term limits for all Federal politicians, "one and done." There is no other way to deal with this immorality, the current set of politicians in Washington do not deserve to serve any longer, given the rampant corruption we constantly see.

When Pelosi became Speaker of the House in 2007, she boldly declared that she and the Democrats were going to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Congress, Instead, it looks like she and her peers in Congress built a dam and the corruption is as deep as ever. "One and done," it cannot happen soon enough.

One additional note: According to a recent blurb in Roll Call, and published the November 18, 2011 issue of The Week Magazine, the 500 or so members of Congress had a collective net worth of more than $2 billion, a whopping 25% increase over their collective wealth in 2008. The 50 richest lawmakers account for 80% of the wealth and the median net worth is about $513,000.

How many ordinary Americans do you know who made a 25% return in their personal portfolios in the past two years? Why wouldn't the 50 richest lawmakers serve their country for no salary and no benefits since they obviously can afford to serve, without suffering financial distress, if they did not collect salary or benefits. Wouldn't that be the moral, courageous thing to do.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available, at http://www.loathemygovernment.com .It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respectfreedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


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http://www.cato.org/
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http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

1. 

The Washington Corruption Train Keeps On Rolling Down The Cronyism Track

The Associated Press reported on another treasure trove of Washington corruption in an article that was published on July 5, 2012. However, before we get into that corruption wave, let's review some of the other major corruption and cronyism chapters we discussed earlier this month and in other past blog posts:

• Solyndra - a California solar panel company that went bankrupt and took over half a billion dollars worth of taxpayer wealth with it but make numerous Obama and Democratic Party supporters are wealthier.
• Fisker Motors - a FINNISH auto maker that has received over half a billion dollars worth of AMERICAN taxpayer support to produce a luxury electric car that most America taxpayers will never be able to afford and who will also likely see no return on their half a billion dollar investment. However, numerous Obama and Democratic Party supporters are wealthier.
• Tesla Motors - at least this was an American auto maker who got free taxpayer money, money that the taxpayers will never see again. However, numerous Obama and Democratic Party supporters are wealthier.
• Numerous Nevada Solar Companies - Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, from the great state of Nevada, has made sure that he and other Democratic politicians were well financed in their election campaigns from the many companies and people who received taxpayer wealth to build up their alternative energy companies in the southwest.

Details on all of these corruption episodes can be found at the following post link:


http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/07/obamas-solar-energy-cronyism-train.html
But the corruption does not end with alternative energy companies. Consider some straight greed plays by several of our national politicians over the past couple of years:

- Consider the shenanigans of Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite. According to an article that was written by John Frank for the June 30, 2009 St. Petersburg Times, one day before the House of Representatives approved a massive bank bailout plan in October, 2008, the Congresswoman bought stock in Citigroup, one of the major banks that received a significant portion of the bank bailout funding.

About two weeks later, on the day Treasurer Henry Paulson announced he would invest $250 billion of taxpayer money in nine major banks, the Congresswoman bought stock in Bank of America, one of those nine banks. Coincidence or corruption?

- On November 11, 2011, Money News reported on accusations that about dozen lawmakers and their senior aides bragged about how much money they had earned in the stock market based on insider trading-like information that they knew ahead of the general public because of their government positions.

The article included the following details

•The insider trading dollar amounts ranged from a few thousand dollars to six figures.

•Much of the insider trading involved companies that were likely to be brought before Congress for investigations, an act that usually resulted in a negative impact on a company's stock price. By shorting a stock ahead of that information being public, Congressional figures could and did make outsized profits.

•The huge profits were being made by people that had no serious background or past history of success in picking winners and losers in the stock market.

Coincidence or corruption? I think most honest Americans would conclude that all of these incidents are examples of political class corruption, immorality, insider trading, and greed.

- According to a "60 Minutes" report from late, 2011, almost everyone in the country is subject to insider trading laws and compliance. This includes ordinary Americans, anyone serving in the executive branch of the Federal government (e.g. the President, the Vice President, etc.), and Federal judges. The only people excluded from having to comply are...members of Congress, the same people who wrote and passed the laws on insider trading that exclude themselves from being prosecuted for such actions.

Just when you think you have heard every conceivable sin, shortcoming, and outright immorality from our politicians, you come across this travesty. They have cleared the decks for themselves to make grand sums of money in the stock market by using insider government trading information.

Examples from "60 Minutes" included the following:

•John Boehner, currently the Speaker of the House, made a serious investment in health care insurance stocks shortly before he led the legislative effort to defeat a key component in Obama's original health care reform bill, a component that would have depressed health care stock prices if not defeated. With the component's defeat, health care insurance stocks rose and made money for Mr. Boehner. Coincidence or corruption?

•Several years ago, then Speaker of the House Dennis Hasert, made some land acquisitions in Ohio. He then worked to adjust Federal highway projects so that a new Federally-financed highway would run close to his newly purchased land, significantly increasing the land's value when he sold it. Coincidence or corruption?

•Congressman Spencer Bachus also seemed to do pretty well with insider information. The "60 Minutes" story was apparently inspired by a recently published book, "Throw Them All Out," written by Hoover Institute fellow Peter Schweizer. According to Schweizer, Bachus and Nancy Pelosi got secret briefings from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who basically told the legislators that it was "a matter of days before there is a meltdown in the global financial system.” Bachus went out shortly thereafter and invested about $7,000 to short the stock market. When the stock market did start to collapse, he was able to cash in the investment for almost twice what he originally put out just a few days before. He also shorted General Electric four times after Paulsen told him GE bond sales were having problems.

Were all of these coincidences or corruption?

- However, the most despicable part of the "60 Minutes" report concerned Nancy Pelosi. Ms. Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, and her husband had access to at least eight IPO offerings over the past few years. As most of you know, we ordinary Americans rarely get in on a ground floor, the most lucrative financial time, in any IPO offerings.

The most troubling and potentially corrupt IPO was for the Visa IPO back in 2008. Ms. Pelosi purchased 5,000 IPO shares on the first day of the Visa offering at $44 a share. She sold it within days when the price had reached $64 a share, a profit of about $100,000.

What makes this so very troubling is prior to the Visa IPO offering there was a legislative effort within the House of Representatives to impose credit card fee limits on companies such as Visa. Obviously, if such legislation passed, it would certainly put a damper on Visa's stock price, and would depress the earnings and gains of anyone who invested in the Visa IPO.

That legislation was mysteriously never able to see the light of day prior to the IPO date. The legislation eventually did become law but the driver and leader in the legislation was the Senate, not the House, and passage happened well after people like then- Speaker of the House Pelosi had made their substantial gains off of the IPO offering. Coincidence or corruption?

Okay, the above is just a sampling to show how far reaching and how deep Washington corruption and cronyism goes in a wide variety of ways. One would have hoped that our politicians would have put as much effort into governing and leading the country as they did to their self-enrichment schemes. Maybe if the did we would not be facing a $16 TRILLION national debt, failing public schools, a lost war on drugs, etc.

But let's get back to the recent uncovering of corruption as laid out in the July 5, 2012 AP report. I could never understand how nobody in Washington saw the housing bubble and resultant Great Recession coming. I mean, darn, it was the biggest and worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. Even a pseudo idiot could look at the historical rise in housing prices and probably figure out that something was amiss (double click on the chart for a larger version to view):

Look at that bubble forming in the mid-1990s. Nobody in the political class saw what was happening and acted to avoid the collapse of the housing market and the resultant havoc in the financial and banking industries?

Well, consider what the AP found out about what was going on at the time and who was benefiting from the corruption within the housing/banking/mortgage industry:

• According to a House of representatives investigation, Countrywide Financial Corp., once a major, major mortgage company, whose subprime loans helped start the nation's housing crisis, made hundreds of discount loans to members of Congress, congressional staff, top government officials and executives of troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae in order to buy influence and clout over these insiders.
• The report named six current and former members of Congress who received these so-call VIP discount loans along with the names of former top executive branch officials and three chief executives of Fannie Mae who also got special treatment.
• A quote from the article summed up the corruption quite nicely: "Documents and testimony obtained by the committee show the VIP loan program was a tool used by Countrywide to build goodwill with lawmakers and other individuals positioned to benefit the company. In the years that led up to the 2007 housing market decline, Countrywide VIPs were positioned to affect dozens of pieces of legislation that would have reformed Fannie" [and its sister entity, Freddie Mac].
• Amazingly, no one has ever been arrested for such blatant misbehavior although the House report did conclude that the participants "may have skirted the Federal bribery statute by keeping conversations about discounts and other forms of preferential treatment internal. Rather than making quid pro quo arrangements with lawmakers and staff, Countrywide used the VIP loan program to cast a wide net of influence."
• The company became so ingrained into Congressional personnel and processes that the company became a "trusted adviser" to Congress on housing and mortgage matters and was actually consulted when the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee considered reform of Fannie and Freddie and unfair lending practices. Talk about letting the wolves guard the hen house.
• The House report said Fannie Mae had up to six dozen lobbyists working on Financial Services Committee members when it considered legislation to overhaul the company from 2000 to 2005. Four reform bills were introduced in the House during the period, and none made it out of the committee. Think about the insanity of this arrangement. One Federal government organization, Fannie Mae, spending big bucks and hiring a multitude of  lobbyists to lobby another Federal government organization, a Congressional committee.
• Without any reform measure being passed and enacted, Fannie, Freddie, and Countrywide eventually collapsed when the housing market collapsed, requiring the government (i.e. the American taxpayer to step in) to steady the situation, at a cost of $183 billion as of January 1, 2012. This cost figure will continue to rise since no one in Washington is still not working on a solution to Fannie and Freddie. FYI, that $183 billion comes out to a cost of about $1,600 for every U.S. household, that is the current and rising cost of corruption, just in this little part of  Washington corruption central.

One has to wonder about how much economically better we would be now and how much smaller the Great Recession would have been if companies like Counrywide were not negatively influencing or blocking Congressional action to fix the housing bubble.

The political class members that jumped on this discount bandwagon include the following people:

1. Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
2. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
3. Mary Jane Collipriest, who was communications director for former Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, then a member of the Banking Committee. The report said Dodd referred Collipriest to Countrywide's VIP unit. Dodd, when commenting on his own loans, has said he was unaware of the discount program, which we know is probably false, given the finding noted below.
4. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
5. Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., former chairman of the Oversight Committee. Towns issued the first subpoena to Bank of America for Countrywide documents, and current Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., subpoenaed more documents. The committee said that in responding to the Towns subpoena, Bank of America left out documents related to Towns' loan.
6. Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif.
7. Top staff members of the House Financial Services Committee.
8. A staff member of Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, a member of the Financial Services Committee.
9. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Calif.
10. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretaries Alphonso Jackson and Henry Cisneros; and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. The VIP unit processed Cisneros' loan after he joined Fannie's board of directors
11. Former Fannie Mae heads James Johnson, Daniel Mudd and Franklin Raines. Countrywide took a loss on Mudd's loan. Fannie employees were the most frequent recipients of VIP loans. Johnson received a discount after Mozilo waived problems with his credit rating.

Note: One hero did emerge from this fiasco: Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, was an exception. He told the VIP unit not to give him a discount, and he did not receive one.

The House report found that all of the above people who leveraged their government job and the American taxpayer fully knew they were getting a special deal because of their positions since: "The documents produced by the bank [Countrywide] show that VIP borrowers received paperwork from Countrywide that clearly identified the VIP unit as the point of contact."  No excuse due to ignorance is available to these people who traded their integrity for personal enrichment.

Disgraceful. Maybe if these people were doing their jobs honestly without undue outside influence and monetary reward, we would not have record high unemployment rates, millions of homes in foreclosure, tepid economic growth, and hundreds of billions of dollars in wasted taxpayer wealth.

The graph above shows there is no excuse for not knowing what was going on. The fact that reforming the housing and mortgage market failed numerous times is certainly an indication that some people knew there was a problem but could not overcome the Countrywide money distribution and dozens of Fannie Mae lobbyists. No one was able to upset the gravy train of cheap VIP mortgages.

The greatest sins:

• No one was prosecuted for hoisting this economic disaster on the American public.
• No one in Congress was censured for hoisting this economic disaster on the American public.
• No one was thrown out of Congress for hoisting this economic disaster on the American public.
• No one has a plan to allow the American taxpayer to get out from under the continuing burden of Fannie and Freddie.

Obviously, the taxpayer and American citizens are almost more than likely to end up on the short end of this corruption stick. Thus, at least two steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" need to be implemented:

1. Step 38 would require every one in Congress, including their staffs, to sign off on a shared values pledge every year, in which integrity would be a major component of that pledge. At least if everyone in Congress, including that ignoble list of people above, had to read about integrity and put their signature to a pledge to remain within integrity, we might have a better chance of sidelining the corruption.
2. Step 39 would implement term limits for every Federal politician. If Countrywide and others like it knew that every politician would be in office for a limited amount of time, they might be less likely to hand out corruption favors so easily. Countrywide, for example, might not want to be saddled with discounted, less than optimal 30 year mortgages if the people they can influence with the carrot of lower mortgage payments will only be around for a few years.

This is one situation where derailing a train might be a good thing.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

May, 2023, Political Class Insanity: Insider Trading Corruption In Washington, Terrorist At The Border, Free Press Fails and More

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue show that they are incapable of operating any level of government in this country. 

Even their best efforts are almost always inefficient and ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.

Lately it seems like the insanity is getting more frequent and more intense as politicians continue to fail us all. Let’s look at just for of the latest examples of political class insanity:

1)We have often documented the greed and self-wealth generation that politicians are involved in. They have privileged access to information that regular Americans do not or they use their influence to direct government contracts and money to family members and friends.

For example, a number of years back, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, delayed putting forth legislation that would tighten government control  over credit card companies until after one fo them, VISA, went though their IPO. Pelosi and family netted almost half a million dollars since they were granted stock  options in VISA and cashed them shortly after the IPO was done. If the legislation had been passed prior to the IPO, it is possible that Pelosi would have gotten far less from her options.

Her husband, Paul Pelosi, seemed to have the golden touch during the crazy days of covid. He bought and sold stocks that seemed to time the market perfectly given pending or possible legislation in Congress. The obvious two conclusions are that 1) he is a great stock picker or 2) he had inside information from his Speaker of the House wife on what covid-related government actions were coming down the pike.

But the Pelosi clan is not the only Washington family that have made themselves obscenely wealthy as a result of having a family member in  Congress:

• Diane Feinstein is a long time Washington insider as a result of being a Senator from California.

• According to an organization called Unusual Whales, an entity that analyzes stock trades, some of Feinstein’s finely timed stock trades may account for a lot of her possible $200 million net worth.

• Shortly after Feinstein reportedly attended some covid hearings in January, 2020, her husband sold between $1.5 and $6 million worth of Allogene Therapeutics stock and a few other stocks.

• The stock market crashed very soon afterwards as a result of the covid pandemic.

• In April, 2018, Facebook chairman, Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the Senate Judicial  Committee, a committee that Feinstein was a member of.

• Feinstein praised Facebook and Zuckerberg at the hearing, possibly because her husband had bought $250,000 worth of Facebook stock a few months before.

• In August, 2020, her husband bought $50,000 worth of College Reaction stock, a purchase that was never filed as required by law, an oversight for which Feinstein received no financial penalty.

• In December, 2009, Feinstein and her husband bought $1 million worth of Amyris Biotechnologies, it was the ONLY stock transaction they made the entire year.

• A few weeks later, the company was awarded a $24 million government contract and later on Feinstein introduced legislation that further benefited the company, talk about a lucky stock pick.

• In July, 2011, the Post Office entered into an exclusive contract with the CB  Richard Ellis Group, whose chairman just happened to  be Feinstein’s husband.

Another classic political class tenet, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Insider trading apparently gets us in jail but gets politicians rich.

2)Anyone with a lick of common sense knows that Biden’s border policies have been a disaster. Millions of unvetted, unvacinated, and unknown foreigners have been pouring across the border during Biden’s first two years. And while many of them are probably just looking for a better life, this border chaos has had many other bad side effects:

• The smuggling of illegal drugs, especially fentanyl, has boomed because of his lax policies, which will likely result in record overdose deaths of Americans when the next annual government report is tabulated.

• Central and South American gang members have come over the border and are setting up ciriminal shops all across the country which will result in more American citizens being victims of these criminal gangs.

• Illegal immigrants are dying everyday as a result fo his inane border policies, whether they are dying in the desert, drowning in rivers, being killed and raped by human traffickers, or dying in facilities in Mexico.

And another danger has just been justified at the border:

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents just arrested an Afghan citizen at the southern border.

• This single arrest is important because this person was on the FBI’s terror watch list.

• Who knows that havoc he could have created from a death and destruction perspective if he had not been  apprehended.

• Congressman Darrell Issa summed up the disaster at the border quite nicely: "Biden's open borders. aren't just a gateway to 5 million illegals, record human and child trafficking, and the deadliest drug crisis in our history. Biden's reckless policy is also an open invitation to even the most wanted terrorists in the world to come to America.”

The good news is they got this guy. The bad news is how many terrorists like him did not  get caught and have made  it into the country for nasty deeds yet to be done.

3)We have  made the contention a number of times in this blog that the nation can survive bad, corrupt, and ineffective  Presidents, e.g. Nixon, Carter, Obama, Biden. The nation can survive bad Congressional  members, a list too long to list here. 

However, I  am  not sure we can survive a corrupted news industry, an industry that is supposed to be honest, trustworthy, and reporting all the facts and realities as it applies to politicians and government doings. Journalists and the press should be the watchdogs to make sure that corruption and criminal behavior is rooted out regardless of who is doing the deeds.

However, recent polls show that Americans have  little faith that most of the country’s journalists and the news organizations they work for are doing the job that a democracy requires them to do:

• According to Gallup polling, by the middle of last year confidence in national news organizations had reached an all time low.

• 50% of Americans believe strongly that the national news organizations actually intend to mislead, misinform, or persuade the public.

• Only 16% have “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of confidence in newspapers.

• Of the 16 American institutions polled in the confidence survey, newspapers ranked second to last.

• But back in 1979, newspapers had a positive confidence level over 50% so the fall has been pretty dramatic over the past four decades.

• Republicans had the lowest confidence in  newspapers (5%), Independents had ther second lowest confidence (12%), and Democrats had the highest level of confidence but still a dismal at 35%.

• The interesting thing is that confidence by Democrats in newspapers has actually decreased since a fellow Democrat, Joe Biden, came into office.

• Separate Pew Research found that in a survey, 55% of journalists felt that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news while 76% of non-journalists in the survey felt that the news should cover both sides equally, a major gap from what is expected by Americans and what journalists think they deserve to hear.

Think about that 55% number: over half of journalists think that biased, slanted, unequal news reporting is okay.  Again, the country will survive bad politicians, it will not  survive as a free country when journalists feel they are entitled to control the flow of information according to their own perspectives and biases.

4)Not only has Biden failed at border security, among dozens of other things, he has also repeatedly failed at the handling of foreign affairs:

• He has alienated Saudi Arabia which has driven the Saudis into partnerships with China which in turn is likely to endanger the petrodollar word which in turn will mean a massive inflation hit for Americans.

• He has allowed China to cut major trade deals with countries like Brazil, in our hemisphere, which will also have bad ramifications for our economy.

• He has failed miserably in bringing the Ukraine/Russian war under control and his weakness has strengthened China;s intentions in their quest to take over Taiwan.

• His babbling often incoherent oral performances on the international stage have scared allies and emboldened enemies like Iran.

But he recently allowed his wife and granddaughter to get embarrassed on the international stage during the coronation of King Charles of England:

• Rather than go himself and lead a blue ribbon contingent of Americans to represent the country, like previous Presidents had done for past coronations, he sent only his wife and granddaughter.

• As a result, the Brits insulted him and the rest of us by seating this thin contingent, his wife and granddaughter, in the LAST row of the coronation ceremony.

• According to Boston University historian Ariann Chemock: “Joe Biden clearly hasn’t made  it a high priority, as past Presidents have done.”

• According to Nile Gardner, a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “Leaders from across the world are attending today’s Coronation of King Charles III. Even the French President is there. Notably absent is Joe Biden, who could not be bothered. What message does this send to America’s closest ally? Biden is a petty, arrogant, sneering disgrace.” 

A sneering disgrace? He could be describing most of Biden’s term in office so far, e.g. a leaky, dangerous border, out of control inflation, transportation problems, money laundering by the Biden family, the list of disgraces goes on and on.

Just a small, bitter taste of American politics today: a lazy President relative to a trusted foreign ally, a biased journalism industry that threatens our democracy, at least one terrorist coming over our leaky borders, and another Congressional  member gets rich while not solving any national problem and without criminal  prosecution. Insanity.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

February, 2024, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Senator Goes To Jail But A Speaker for the House Does Not, Politico Loses More Credibility, and Treason At The Federal Reserve

 Every month we devote posts to just general political class insanity that is running rampant through the country. The members of the American political class continue to show that they are incapable of efficiently operating any level of government in this country.

Even their best efforts are almost always ineffective at resolving any problem facing Americans. They spend a great amount of time not trying to improve the lives of their citizens but continually ensuring their reelection and enriching themselves, their families, and their friends in the process, all at taxpayer expense.

1)Bob Mendenez is a former New Jersey U.S.  Senator that was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption after he was found guilty in Federal court. But as we  have discussed over the years, corruption is kind of standard operating  procedure and one of the  most tenured member of Congress is alleged to be steeped in  corruption:

• Podcaster Joe Rogan and former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, discussed the alleged corruption and self enrichment of Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House.

• According to a New York Times article, Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, are worth about $240 million, up from $171.4 million that they were estimated to be worth in 2021. 

• Thus, they upped their net worth by almost $70 million in three short years.

• “Her estimated net worth has increased significantly since 2008 thanks in large part to the success of her husband, Paul Pelosi, who is a venture capitalist and property investor. It’s not possible to know the precise net worth of members of Congress as they are only required to provide a range of values in their financial disclosures and not specific dollar amounts,” Newsweek noted.

• In 2024 alone, the Peloissi return on investment was much higher than just about every professional investment company in the country, an amazing 720% return on investment over the past decade.

• Thus, given these numbers many allege that her husband drives his investment decisions by insider government information that his wife has provided to him over the decades.

• While this corruption has never been proven, a smart persons(s) has come up with a solution to the alleged insider trading.

• They have developed a phone app called Autopilot which tracks the Pelosis’ investment decisions with the logic being that you too can get outstanding investment returns by simply doing whatever the Pelosi family does.

• According to Rogan: “Oh, it’s so good.  I’m not really a stock market person. I don’t pay attention. But, I do know people that are very invested in the stock market. And ‘Pelosi stock tracker’ is legit. Like, you could find out what she’s buying and you should buy it. She’s a really good stockbroker Rod. She’s super good at it.”

I guess that if you cannot prove corruption and stamp out corruption, you  might as well profit off of it via the app. Maybe Menendez just went about it the wrong way.

Note: long ago we reported on a little bit of shady dealings that Nancy Pelosi was allegedly involved with as it pertains to the VISA credit card IPO:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/11/final-proof-of-undeniable-corruption.html

2)We have often asserted that the country can survive bad politicians, e.g. Nixon, Carter, Biden, etc. However,  it will not survive a corrupted press. When the mainstream media in a country becomes a mouthpiece for the political class, then the checks and balances that an unbiased press should be providing in a democracy becomes non-existent.

Only someone with blinders on can say that the mainstream press has not devolved into a mouthpiece for liberal and Democratic politicians. And recent disclosures again prove how corrupt and out of integrity the  mainstream press has become:

• Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri used to be “journalists” for the left leaning news site, Politico.

• They recently admitted that Politico was guilty of covering up the dirty laundry and other laptop scandal of Hunter Biden’s infamous broken laptop computer.

• Many believe, and opinion polls support their view, that if the public knew what the Biden crime family and Hunter Biden were up to, it would have swayed the 2020 presidential election to Trump.

• Caputo has now publicly proclaimed that when he tried to report on the laptop in October 2020, Politico executives told him to shut up and not report on any aspect of the laptop: don’t write about it, don’t talk about it, don’t tweet about it.

• Instead, Politico wrote about the now debunked and outright lie that Trump and Russia were partners in “disinformation.”

• Palmeri verified his position, that despite doing a real journalist's job and doing in-depth research over several  months, Politico executives also squashed her efforts.

• Caputo also said that his bosses told him to back off in 2019 about a tax problem Hunter biden had back then.

We can survive corrupt and  bad politicians, we cannot survive corrupt and bad journalism.

3)Let’s stay on the corruption angle and go to the Federal Reserve:

• A former Federal Reserve official was recently indicted for allegedly giving China confidential economic data that was developed by the Federal Reserve.

• Federal authorities arrested John Harold Rogers and accused him of conspiring with Chinese intelligence officers while working as an economic advisor to the Federal Reserve.

• His arrangement with the Chinese stretched over 11 years, from 2010 to 2021, and he used the cover story of teaching at a Chinese university where he earned a whopping $450,000 salary, which should have been a sure tip off that he was up to no good.

•  He tried to cover his acts of treason by lying to Federal investigators in 2021.

Another day, another case of corruption, this time at the Federal Reserve.

That will do it for today: corruption in DC be it accepting bribes, self enrichment using insider government information or outright treason of the Chinese.

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If you agree that we need to deseat every member of Congress for their lack of success and accomplishment, then please consider going to the following petition link to help the cause:

https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom

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Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w