Checks and balances is an essential part of the genius of the American system, but they have also slowed the government down to a grinding halt. Mired in the gridlock, it seems our representatives have found a way to kill time: insider trading.
When we need our representatives to help speed economic recovery, they’ve been getting filthy rich off of their privilege and status instead. John Stewart said, “It’s called checks and balances… they deposit the checks… it increases their balances.” The outcry began years ago when congressional members learned that Tom Delay’s chief of staff was doing day trading with insider information on government computers. Now it seems everyone is doing it.
If there was ever an issue that should bring conservatives and liberals together, it should be this one.
How it works is that House & Senate members and their staffs gather intelligence information which they have access to through committee assignments having to deal with the financial industry, the stock market, financial regulations, and other sources, then they do one of two things:
- First, they use the information to manipulate their stock portfolio and make money.
- Second, they can gather non-public political intelligence and sell this to hedge fund managers.
If you or I did this we would be thrown in jail.
Yet the “Stock Act,” introduced to stop this illegal practice has been stalled, is being stripped down, and will be toothless in the end.
Perhaps what we are seeing is the limitation of checks and balances. Checks and balances have worked really well to created complete and total gridlock. It has been absolutely powerless to stop graft and political profit taking. Everybody is in on it, both republicans and democrats, all the way to the very top of the parties.
When we learned that the economy imploded because banks were playing a high stakes game of poker with the American people’s money, we had no idea how much congress was in on it. The US House and Senate should immediately act to end this illegal insider trading.
60 Minutes led the way, but once again the satirists are the ones keeping this story alive. If you want to understand what it going on and laugh a little, watch these videos from the Daily Show. They are crass – but so is what our representatives are doing. At 7 min. he does a phenomenal Joe Lieberman impression. If you want to watch the whole show, go to their website. He does a great interview with a congresswoman who is trying to stop it.
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