Video: Questioning Pelosi (and Boehner): Steve Kroft heads to D.C.
Pelosi fires back at '60 Minutes' report on 'soft corruption'
The book that was the background for the report:
Yes.... throw all these crooks out!
Posted on 11/13/2011 11:36:21 PM PST by STARWISE
Updated: 10:30 p.m.
Members of Congress may be personally profiting from insider information they gather while legislating, according to a “60 Minutes” report that aired tonight.
A segment on the long-running TV news show noted that insider-trading laws do not apply to Members of Congress, highlighting several suspiciously timed deals in which lawmakers profited.
The examples came from Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution think tank at Stanford University, but “60 Minutes” said it verified all of the information in them.
* Rep. Spencer Bachus bought stock option funds that would profit if the market crashed just before the financial meltdown of 2008. As then-ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, the Alabama Republican had received closed-door briefings from then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on the impending financial crisis. His office issued a statement saying he never trades on non-public information.
* Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), then House Minority Leader, bought stocks in private health insurance companies in the days before the government-run public option was removed from the Democratic health care overhaul bill. A Boehner spokesman said a financial adviser he consults once a year makes all of his investment decisions.
“I have not made any decisions on day-to-day trading activities in my account and haven’t for years,” Boehner told “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft during a news conference last week. “I do not do it, haven’t done it and wouldn’t do it.”
* House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her husband participated in an initial public offering from Visa when she was Speaker, around the time that legislation affecting credit cards was being considered in the House. Pelosi told Kroft at a recent news conference that the idea that those were related was a “false premise.”
“I will hold my record in terms of fighting the credit card companies as Speaker of the House or as a Member of Congress up against anyone,” she said.
The report also highlighted real-estate deals tied to earmarks secured by former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).
A senior GOP aide defended Boehner, saying that his opposition to the public option was a natural policy position favored by conservatives and that it was removed from the health care bill after infighting among Democrats.
“The idea that the Republican leader in the House opposed the ‘public option’ — policy favored by the left of the left — for personal profit is, frankly, stupid,” the aide said.
A source familiar with the issue said that Boehner’s investments in health care came at the behest of his financial adviser, who also recommended a suite of other “blue-chip stocks” to replace a retirement fund associated with his former business.
In a statement today, Pelosi’s office said that her husband’s participation in the Visa IPO was not “preferential” and came at the recommendation of his broker at a Wells Fargo in San Francisco.
Her staff added that Schweizer has previously written books criticizing liberals.
“It is very troubling that ‘60 Minutes’ would base their reporting off of an already-discredited conservative author who has made a career [out of] attacking Democrats,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in the statement.
He added that the credit card legislation mentioned in the piece was reported out of the Judiciary Committee while the House was “consumed” with the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout.
Hammill also said that the House passed the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights in September 2008, a proposal that became a law in the next session of Congress, along with the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, which limited credit card fees.
Video: Questioning Pelosi (and Boehner): Steve Kroft heads to D.C.
Pelosi fires back at '60 Minutes' report on 'soft corruption'
The book that was the background for the report:
Yes.... throw all these crooks out!
Take a breath ...
Everybody’s innocent in here. Didn’t you know that? —Andy Dufresne
REVEALED: Nancy Pelosi Blocked Credit Card Reform While Investing Millions in Exclusive Visa Stock Offering
~~~~~~
Obama Campaign Backers and Bundlers Rewarded with Green Grants and Loans
###
Excerpt:
Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer writing in Newsweek:
When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about the need for an economic stimulus to revive a struggling economy.
He wanted billions of dollars spent on “shovel-ready projects” to build roads; billions more for developing alternative-energy projects; and additional billions for expanding broadband Internet access and creating a “smart grid” for energy consumption.
After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends. “Decisions about how Recovery Act dollars are spent will be based on the merits,” he said, referring to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
“Let me repeat that: decisions about how recovery money will be spent will be based on the merits. They will not be made as a way of doing favors for lobbyists.”
Really?
It would take an entire book to analyze every single grant and government-backed loan doled out since Barack Obama became president.
But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies.
The grants were earmarked for alternative-fuel and green-power projects, so it would not be a surprise to learn that those industries were led by liberals. Furthermore, these were highly competitive grant and loan programs—not usually a hallmark of cronyism.
Often fewer than 10 percent of applicants were deemed worthy.
Nevertheless, a large proportion of the winners were companies with Obama-campaign connections. Indeed, at least 10 members of Obama’s finance committee and more than a dozen of his campaign bundlers were big winners in getting your money.
At the same time, several politicians who supported Obama managed to strike gold by launching alternative-energy companies and obtaining grants. How much did they get? According to the Department of Energy’s own numbers … a lot.
In the 1705 government-backed-loan program, for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.
The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.
This report is absolutely sick for the average hard working, tax paying, law abiding Joe.
Why is that? Why are these thieves (and worse) allowed to enact laws yet exempt themselves from the very laws they impose on the rest of us? That {expletive} has got to stop, like yesterday.
Wait a minute.
At first I was pissed then I thought back to Frauxbama’s comments of late and his intent to drive Congress’ approval numbers into the ground.
Looks like his sycophant operatives are at work here.
The Dems can’t be touched, they are the minority, so the majority will take the hit for “crony capitalism”, erhhh, doucebag kickback takers....
EXCLUSIVE: Financial Documents Suggest GOP Rep. Bachus Profited from ‘Insider Trading’ on TARP Bailout
Excerpt:
U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL) had access to highly sensitive financial information during the 2008 bailout debates that may have helped him earn tens of thousands of dollars by trading stock options, even as most Americans’ portfolios took a beating.
On Sunday, Rep. Bachus’s trading behavior came under fire in a 60 Minutes report based on Throw Them All Out, the book by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor that has triggered a political earthquake in Washington. Schweizer, who is also a Breitbart editor, devotes a significant portion of the book to exposing possible congressional insider trading.
*snip*
July 14th: Bachus bets $4,500 that the financial sector will fall, and sells short. Bachus comes up a winner and cashes out the next day for $1,500 in profit.
.
August 15th and 22nd: the Alabama congressman buys over $11,000 of SPDR sector option contracts, and sells them a few days later for $5,000.
.
September 8th: Paulson gets a troubling call from General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, saying GE is having trouble moving its bonds. Two days later, Bachus shorts GE options four times in a single day, more than doubling his money.
.
September 10th and 15th: Bachus shorts GE a total of 12 times and comes up a winner 9 times—an impressive average for the high-risk options game.
.
September 18th: Bachus and congressional leaders receive a private briefing from Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke inside then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Bernanke warns of a total financial meltdown in a matter of days.
.
The very next day, September 19th, Bachus shorts the market by buying contract options on Proshares Ultra-Short QQQ, an index fund that strives for results 200% of the inverse of the Nasdaq 100. He nearly doubles his money when he sells his shares four days later for over $13,000.
.
October 21st: the Federal Reserve announces it will spend $540 billion to buy debt from money market mutual funds. The next day Bachus buys over $5,000 of options in Market Vectors TRN, and more than doubles his money.
MUST READ THE ENTIRE PIECE!
Of course they deny it....
Scroll down for the 60 Minutes video
Crony capitalism. The RINO Political Class is every bit as bad as the Democrats.
I, for one, am not surprised to see Boehner’s name on this list. He’s always struck me as the “perfect” Congressman — although I don’t mean it as a compliment.
This is exactly what the Tea Party was formed to fight!
Anyone ever notice how many of our public servants become millionaires while in office?
In the interview, it was revealed that his financial
adviser does his trades, and he speaks to him about
once a year. The question Schweizer would like to
know is if his account is in a blind trust.
But the sickening thing is that it’s not illegal for
them to trade on their inside info. THIS MUST STOP!
You mean they didn't admit to everything?
They didn't tell the truth?
lol
That’s what the report CLEARLY reveals .. it’s a MUST see.
Yeah, like I believe THAT! Oh sure, technically, he probably didn't say a word to him, but a wink is as good as a nod, he managed to get the message across somehow. They all know the tricks.
It's obscene! They arrive as near paupers, and after between 10 and 30 years of lying their collective butts off, they somehow manage to build a fortune.
Utterly despicable.
I’d say this is THE big news he promised months ago
“Schweizer, who is also a Breitbart editor, devotes a significant portion of the book to exposing possible congressional insider trading”
http://biggovernment.com/tag/throw-them-all-out/
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