When confronted with two of the three branches of government now so corrupt as to be unmanageable, what does the third branch do? What should it be doing?
The corruption of the Supreme Court is something the president can do little about, except propose, in the strongest and clearest voice possible -- that the Court be changed. Jonathan Turley proposes the addition of ten more members to the Court to make sure individual political voices are muffled. Meanwhile the confirmation of Supreme Court justices still depends on the quality and good faith of senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee and -- for the past decades -- that committee has done a lousy job. Both parties are to blame, if not equally.
How much evidence do we need to quit supporting our favorite candidate simply because he's the stinker we know?
Maybe a nation that's weighed down by debt and anxiety - and the awareness that our future lies in the hands of some of the most corrupt among us -- will respond to specific evidence of that corruption.
One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.
The lawmakers bought and sold a total of between $85 million and $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that appeared before them, according to an examination of all 45,000 individual congressional stock transactions contained in computerized financial disclosure data from 2007 to 2010.
Almost one in every eight trades — 5,531 — intersected with legislation. ...WaPo
One in every four members of Congress have been caught doing it, the tally split about equally between Democrats and Republicans, though Republicans seem to be the most glaring, extreme, and reportable.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) reported buying $25,000 in bonds in a genetic-technology company around the time that he released a hold on legislation the firm supported. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) sold between $50,000 and $100,000 in General Electric stock shortly before a Republican filibuster killed legislation sought by the company. The family of Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) bought between $286,000 and $690,000 in a high-tech company interested in a bill under his committee’s jurisdiction. ... WaPo
These trades fall into the category of "conflict of interest." And members of Congress can't say they didn't know. But here's the problem: the president and vice-president are required to stash their money in blind trusts while members of Congress don't require that of themselves. As one ethics lawyer says, they should be required to set up genuine blind trusts. "Your wife isn’t a blind trust. Your financial adviser isn’t either."
Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn's behavior was particularly blatant.
In 2007, Sen. Coburn placed a legislative hold on the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, saying he wanted changes to address fears about exposing employers and insurance companies to lawsuits. The bill prohibited employers and health insurers from using genetic information to discriminate.
After negotiating a compromise on April 22, 2008, Coburn released his hold.
On that day and the day after, Coburn’s financial disclosure form shows a total of three bond purchases in Affymetrix, a pioneering genetic technology firm that was one of 33 companies registered to lobby on the legislation.
Affymetrix lobbied on only a handful of bills that session. Coburn is one of five lawmakers who reported buying and selling Affymetrix stocks or bonds since 2004. ...WaPo
He called it "a coincidence." Affymetrix had "no comment."
