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STOCK Act Passes in House 417- 2. Here Come the Hypocrites

The STOCK Act passed in the House by a vote of 417 – 2 , yet there was still plenty of complaining and partisan bickering during it’s passage on Thursday.  S. 2038, also known as the STOCK ACT is,  “An original bill to prohibit Members of Congress and employees of Congress from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit, and for other purposes” according to govtrack.us . This bill was rapidly drawn up in response to the taxpayer outrage that followed a 6o Minutes special that proved that several members of congress were indeed profiting from insider information that is kept from the public sector.

First of all, how did members of Congress away with 78 years of illegal insider trading that would land the average American in prison? According to Fox Business , insider trading was made illegal way back in 1934.( by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934)  The rules contained within the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 make it illegal for anyone to profit from insider information being used in the trading/buying/selling of stocks, as was witnessed when Martha Stewart went to prison for dumping her shares of ImClone to avoid big losses in the future.  It was proven that she had used inside information that the stock was going to tank, so she dumped her shares. Off to prison she went, while members of Congress benefited from the very same insider trading for the last 78 years, all because the rules of the 1934 Securities Exchande Act somehow, accidentally, (sarc) exempted Congress from obeying the very law that they had written to prevent insider trading. A quick browser search does not pull up one single member of Congress who has ever done prison time for illegal insider trading, even though they have been allowed to do it for over 78 years. Amazing.

   Ex- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took to the House floor on Thursday to praise the passage of this bill, while also stating what can only be seen as one of the most hypocritical statements to ever come out of Congress: (emphasis added)

 “I too want to join the distinguished Majority Leader, Mr. Cantor, in praising the leadership of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, our Ranking Member on the Rules Committee, and Congressman Tim Walz, for their extraordinary leadership over time.  Their persistence, the approach that they have taken to this—to remove all doubt in the public’s mind, if that is possible, that we are here to do the people’s business and not to benefit personally from it.

Is that not hypocritical to the tenth degree, after reading the following info-byte from the Fox Business article cited above?  “And these deals aren’t limited to one party or the other… In 2008, former  Speaker of the House Nancy  Pelosi (D-CA) was granted access to the Visa IPO back in 2008 while the  House was considering credit card legislation that would hurt the credit card  industry. Her initial $220k investment went up $100k in two days.”

In summary, we see that members of Congress have been allowed to profit from illegal insider trading for almost 8 decades, 60 minutes does a special based on based on a book by Peter Schweizer titled Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, which exposed what has to be considered just the tip of the iceberg on insider trading by Congress, and which named Nancy Pelosi as one of the offenders. Now she wants the public to give her credit for getting the STOCK Act passed to put a stop to illegal insider trading by members of Congress.  Martha Stewart went to prison for her insider trading, yet Nancy Pelosi wants the American public to reward her and the Democrats by voting them back in control of the House in 2012 for their insider trading. Only in America could people be so gullible, largely thanks to the Liberal political operatives posing as news reporters, and their blatant refusal to report the truth.

While the passage of The STOCK Act is a very welcome  piece of legislation, one has to wonder why illegal insider trading by members of Congress has been allowed to go on for over 7 decades in the first place. NOTE: Will this “bill that prevents members of Congress from participating in illegal insider trading” actuall call for criminal charges and/or prison time when they are caught,  such as was the case with Martha Stewart?  The House passed this bill on Thursday, yet according to govtrack.us, we the people are not able to actually read the bill to see what is in it, once again. “The text of this legislation is not yet available on GovTrack.  It may not have been made available by the Government Printing Office yet.’ (as of 02/10/2012.)

 

 

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