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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    STOCK Act, Banning Congress from Insider Trading, Revived

    STOCK Act, Banning Congress from Insider Trading, is Revived

    Written by Raven Clabough
    Monday, 21 November 2011 11:58

    In 2006, Democratic Representatives Louise Slaughter (left) and Tim Walz introduced the STOCK Act (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge), intended to stop members of Congress from benefiting from insider knowledge of stocks. The legislation was placed on the congressional backburner — that is, until it was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Now the bill has moved to center stage and has garnered a significant number of co-sponsors in the Congress.

    The 60 Minutes episode aired on Sunday, November 13, and by the following Friday, the number of co-sponsors of the bill had shot from 9 to 91.

    The CBS report incriminated congressmen on both sides of the aisle, specifically citing three: Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and John Boehner (R-Ohio). According to 60 Minutes, Spencer Bachus bet on option funds which would increase in value after the stock market dropped. He took that action after having sat in on several confidential meetings in September of 2008 regarding the nation’s financial crisis.

    Likewise, Nancy Pelosi, 2007-2010 Speaker of the House, invested in a stock offering from Visa in 2008 while simultaneously preventing a bill on tough Visa regulations from making it to the House floor for a vote.

    The report also implicated John Boehner, who was instrumental in defeating the “public optionâ€
    NO AMNESTY

    Don't reward the criminal actions of millions of illegal aliens by giving them citizenship.


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  2. #2
    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    How Congress Occupied Wall Street

    Politicians who arrive in Washington as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires. Why?.

    By SARAH PALIN
    Mark Twain famously wrote, "There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." Peter Schweizer's new book, "Throw Them All Out," reveals this permanent political class in all its arrogant glory. (Full disclosure: Mr. Schweizer is employed by my political action committee as a foreign-policy adviser.)

    Mr. Schweizer answers the questions so many of us have asked. I addressed this in a speech in Iowa last Labor Day weekend. How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians' stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers'? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves.

    Enlarge Image

    CloseAssociated Press
    .The money-making opportunities for politicians are myriad, and Mr. Schweizer details the most lucrative methods: accepting sweetheart gifts of IPO stock from companies seeking to influence legislation, practicing insider trading with nonpublic government information, earmarking projects that benefit personal real estate holdings, and even subtly extorting campaign donations through the threat of legislation unfavorable to an industry. The list goes on and on, and it's sickening.

    Astonishingly, none of this is technically illegal, at least not for Congress. Members of Congress exempt themselves from the laws they apply to the rest of us. That includes laws that protect whistleblowers (nothing prevents members of Congress from retaliating against staffers who shine light on corruption) and Freedom of Information Act requests (it's easier to get classified documents from the CIA than from a congressional office).

    The corruption isn't confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It's an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It's an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests.

    None of this surprises me. I've been fighting this type of corruption and cronyism my entire political career. For years Alaskans suspected that our lawmakers and state administrators were in the pockets of the big oil companies to the detriment of ordinary Alaskans. We knew we were being taken for a ride, but it took FBI wiretaps to finally capture lawmakers in the act of selling their votes. In the wake of politicos being carted off to prison, my administration enacted reforms based on transparency and accountability to prevent this from happening again.

    We were successful because we had the righteous indignation of Alaskan citizens on our side. Our good ol' boy political class in Juneau was definitely not with us. Business was good for them, so why would they want to end "business as usual"?

    The moment you threaten to strip politicians of their legal graft, they'll moan that they can't govern effectively without it. Perhaps they'll gravitate toward reform, but often their idea of reform is to limit the right of "We the people" to exercise our freedom of speech in the political process.

    I've learned from local, state and national political experience that the only solution to entrenched corruption is sudden and relentless reform. Sudden because our permanent political class is adept at changing the subject to divert the public's attention—and we can no longer afford to be indifferent to this system of graft when our country is going bankrupt. Reform must be relentless because fighting corruption is like a game of whack-a-mole. You knock it down in one area only to see it pop up in another.

    What are the solutions? We need reform that provides real transparency. Congress should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act like everyone else. We need more detailed financial disclosure reports, and members should submit reports much more often than once a year. All stock transactions above $5,000 should be disclosed within five days.

    We need equality under the law. From now on, laws that apply to the private sector must apply to Congress, including whistleblower, conflict-of-interest and insider-trading laws. Trading on nonpublic government information should be illegal both for those who pass on the information and those who trade on it. (This should close the loophole of the blind trusts that aren't really blind because they're managed by family members or friends.)

    No more sweetheart land deals with campaign contributors. No gifts of IPO shares. No trading of stocks related to committee assignments. No earmarks where the congressman receives a direct benefit. No accepting campaign contributions while Congress is in session. No lobbyists as family members, and no transitioning into a lobbying career after leaving office. No more revolving door, ever.

    This call for real reform must transcend political parties. The grass-roots movements of the right and the left should embrace this. The tea party's mission has always been opposition to waste and crony capitalism, and the Occupy protesters must realize that Washington politicians have been "Occupying Wall Street" long before anyone pitched a tent in Zuccotti Park.

    Ms. Palin, a former governor of Alaska, was the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008.


    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 91222.html
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  3. #3
    Senior Member laughinglynx's Avatar
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    It's no wonder our politicians don't enforce our laws on illegals. They don't have to follow the laws they inflict on us themselves. Look at Rangle and his tax problems. He's sits on the committee that writes the tax laws and he doesn't have to follow them. He would say "throw them in jail" in a second if a citizen did the very things he has done.

    And that health care bill. They don't have to live under that garbage. They get elected and then pass laws that give themselves raises and perks. Can any of us do that? What jerks.

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