 It's February the 23rd, 2022. Welcome to What Now America? I'm your host, Tim Apacella. Today's title is Congress, No Stocks for You. A ban on all stock trading proposed. Back in 2008, a very influential lobbyist, probably one of the most influential lobbyists that Washington DC maybe has ever known by the name of Jack Abramoff. And Mr. Abramoff pled guilty to fraud, conspiracy, and a whole host of other things, but he did serve time. And what Jack Abramoff did was literally apply millions and millions of dollars and spread them out to representatives and senators in Washington DC in the form of trips, campaign donations, meals, entertainment, golf trips. And a lot of people were caught up in that and they suddenly didn't wanna be a friend of Jack Abramoff, but they were. And it took some time, but years later, 2012, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act was passed or otherwise known as the Stock Act. And a very ineffective bill, but it is law of the land. And now in 2022, we have 57 different representatives and senators who have been caught in violation of the act. And the act basically is very simple. You have to disclose your stock purchase and sale transactions. And you have to do it within a timely manner. And we have people such as Senator Diane Feinstein, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Rand Paul, Mark Kelly of Arizona, 57 different to representatives and senators have been caught in violation. And what's happening now is there is a very strong synergy to enact a prohibit all stock trading for all members of Congress. And I find this very strange and certainly worthy of a topic to discuss. So let us go to our guest, Jay Fiedel, Cynthia Lee Sinclair and Karen Buzzard to join us to talk about this discussion. Good morning, everyone. Morning, Tim. Jay, to you first, you know, the GOP has said that the January 6th is a nothing burger and the impeachments were nothing and they were trumped up and against Trump. And we have the suppression laws for voting rights. That's a nothing burger according to the GOP. We have all these things that they choose not to pay attention to. And then lo and behold, we have strong bipartisan support for this proposed bill that will stop all stock trading for members of Congress. Why this bill that gets now strong bipartisan support to stop trading? Why this versus all these other important things that they don't want to acknowledge? Two things come to mind. I really don't know the answer, but one thing is they want to show bipartisanship. So this is a demonstration that doesn't really cost much to do. The second thing is an invidious comparison that some of those legislators have the money to do the stock trading and others don't. Some of them have the knowledge to do the stock trading and others don't. Some of them have done, maybe are now doing the stock trading and others haven't. And I really don't know the answer. It's all bizarre. It's, I was thinking a week ago that there's a certain strange bipartisanship about supporting Biden in Ukraine. That seems to have dissipated and the GOP has gotten its act together to criticize him as usual. So who's to say, you tell me now that there's a move that's bipartisan to stop stock trading in the Congress. How about a week from now, Tim? When the GOP gets its act together on that point, they'll be opposing any rational, useful, honest approach, including this one. You know, when this 2012, it was called actually the formal name was the stop trading on congressional information or Congressional Knowledge Act truncated to the stock act. But the bipartisan support on that was amazing. Back then the Senate 96 to three and the House 417 to two, it passed. But from all the reports I hear, I mean, these bills are co-sponsored and there seems to again to be a lot of energy behind it. But you and I have talked and this group has talked about the fact that there will be nothing other than maybe the budget resolutions that have to be passed or else we default on our debt. But there will be nothing coming out of Congress that is in any way beneficial to Democrats and certainly Joe Biden. But here we go. This one's coming forward. In fact, also from Georgia, remember he was replaced. He replaced and Mark Kelly from Arizona. They seem to have a very strong bill and it's going to take time to modify and edit but there it is, it probably will pass. I'm reminded of section 318 of the Internal Revenue Code which is a definition of attribution. So you don't have to do anything bad, but your family, what your family does is attributed to you and there are degrees of sanguinity involved in section 318. And the same thing here and maybe to further answer your question a moment ago, maybe they think this is not going to be enforceable or enforced and they may be right. I can do stock trading through my wife, my niece, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin and it'll help me a lot. So I don't know what the bill says. You say it's strong, I'm not sure. Let me make a different distinction between two proposed bills. There's been a lot of bills in the last year about this, but two specifically, the one with Asif and Mark Kelly, that is to place all stocks in a qualified blind trust. That's one bill, a proposal. The other one is from Elizabeth Warren and Steve Danes, a Republican from Montana and that is the prohibition of stock transactions from not only yourself as a member of Congress but also the spouses and children of that family and a stiff $50,000 penalty if a violation occurs. Okay, well, that's attribution. That's good to hear. I don't know about the blind trust. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, there was a blind trust rule or norm for Trump and he completely abandoned it. He completely ignored it during his administration in office. But one thing that strikes me is what these guys care about is being embarrassed. And there has been a failure on the part of the media to regularly follow. It's interesting. Now you have a list of all these people who have been caught stock trading right now today. Somebody had to achieve that list. Somebody could find that information. And I'm sure it's not that hard. I mean, all four of us could go and do that, I suppose. But you don't see the media doing it regularly. I mean, there ought to be a page in the Times or any print newspaper every week, every day, every month, whatever the iteration would be reporting all the stock trades that are public record for these guys. And maybe some op-ed pieces saying, well, there was a move that Congress made about, I'm just making this up, technology companies. And lo and behold, all these guys sold their stock or bought their stock in technology companies a few days before. Does that smell? And the public should know that. I think the media has not really paid attention to this. It's one thing for a $50,000 fine, where now that may or may not happen. And the attorney general may not do anything about it. You remember him, Merrick Garland? I hardly remember him anymore. But the problem is it's very hard to enforce and there are not agencies out there that will enforce it. But the media, the media can put it out in a double fold and they can comment on it and they can embarrass these people. Even from red states, these people will be embarrassed because people in general, they don't like government making money off their jobs. They don't like corruption. You guys, I don't wanna be the first guy on the block, but this is corruption. When they vote for a bill or against a bill based on insider information and Congress is loaded with inside information, that is old fashioned corruption. There might be the sick old movie. I don't know if you remember the sick old movie, Michael Moore, it was about healthcare in the United States. Oh yeah. And he pointed out and he named names a number of Congress people in the Senate who were sitting on health committees and voted for or against health bills for years. And as soon as their term was up, lo and behold, they would regularly get jobs with these big health agencies and be paid hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for those jobs immediately after their terms were up. I wonder what happened there. That is corruption. Michael Moore pointed it out, but you know, I haven't seen a lot in the press about it. The media has to get involved in this and it has to come in swinging. Excellent points, Jay. Excellent point, especially about the Affordable Care Act before it became a law. Karen, to you, number one, part A of this question is, do you think this action or this movement to ban all stock trading for Congress people? A, is that a good idea? And B, what do you think's behind it? What do you think why all of a sudden there's a bipartisanship support for this potential law that could be passed? Well, maybe I'm just unduly suspicious. I'm wondering, some of them go further than others. Like there's a new one, the Stock Act II proposed by Gillibrand, who says that also should extend to the Supreme Court and to the Federal Reserve and to all members and relatives of, so it goes further than just the members of Congress. So I'm wondering if it's just because they wanna pass one that doesn't go as far. See who could be the, it still gets credit for it. In other words, if Gillibrand's process and it would go a lot further than say, Ossoff's or even there's one out by Josh Hawley. So because that just targets members of Congress. Also, I think the other issue with the First Stock Act was it basically just gave you a slap on the hand. There was no real penalty for violating it. I think it was $50 or something, but in the meantime, they're making, raking in millions of dollars. So, what kind of penalty is that? So there is an attempt to put, I think a $50,000 penalty, but even that, if you're making millions of dollars, maybe you'd be willing to pay $50,000 to make them several million. Well, those who have been caught in the violation of this, there's 57 members of Congress, both as a Senate and the House of Representatives. They cite clerical errors or their staff didn't properly do it or their accountants didn't file properly. What does it say about Congress when you have 57 members currently in violation of a federal act? I mean, I think they know the law. I mean, they're not stupid. So I don't think that's a proper excuse. It's unethical behavior and they're taking advantage of insider trading knowledge. I mean, that's the basis of all of this. Well, very much so. I mean, if it was a private citizen, I think if the SEC caught wind of it, there'd be an investigation. So here we have members of Congress that serve on these committees. A lot of it was sensitive information. For example, Richard Burr, Senator Burr from North Carolina, he was sitting on us intelligence committee and Lo and behold, just days before the COVID shutdown, he invested $628,000 to $1.7 million of his own personal funds in hotel stocks and teleworking stocks. And he made a lot of money. And- I believe he's under investigation right now too. He isn't, good point. Yes, he's under investigation. So perhaps maybe that's the first bug under the rock that's now been exposed and maybe out of this 57, there's others that follow. You know, Nancy Pelosi thought it was no big deal, nothing burger. And her quote directly was, it's a free market economy and they should be able to participate in that. That's the speaker of the house. Well, her husband was one of the ones that cleaned up in the stock market. So there were three kind of culprits that brought this to a head. Kelly Loeffler, her husband and the one you mentioned. So basically, I think that there was so egregious that it sort of brought it to a head, how bad things were. But her husband, who basically, I think he made over a hundred million. Well, actually, hang on here. Oh, that was Pelosi's husband that made 5.3 million in perfectly timed stock trades. Couldn't have been any perfect timing, 5.3 million. So it's interesting that she's against any attempts to code accountable the ethical behavior of the Senator. Well, she's done a 180 though, Karen. She knows in full support of any of these proposed bills that are on the floor, either by Josh Hawley or Elizabeth Warren or Mark Kelly and Ossoff. She's now in full support of them. But they probably should make the law sort of retroactive for a few years because to clean up the, if they really want to clean it up, they need to hold a people accountable that will benefit it on the insider trading since the COVID started. Because that seems to be a lot of it. Well, it's hard to make laws retroactive. There's a constitutional issue on that. But the problem, all this discussion suggests that there really is no enforcement. Whether the bill is old or new, soft or hard, nobody's enforcing it. You know, we get our tails tied or not. We get our tails tied and they're not saying that, you know, the GOP is ignoring the rule of law, yet here's the rule of law enforce and everyone's ignoring it. Yeah, nobody's doing anything about it. Where is the Department of Justice on this? If you want to have an investigation of prosecution day, you have to be involved and they're not. Good points. All right, thank you, Jay. Thank you, Karen. Cynthia, to you. Kind of the same question. What do you think about this proposal and why do you think it's gaining the synergy that it's gaining? Is it a smoking gun and more are going to be wrapped up into this and they'll have an answer to any future investigations by the media that someone's involved? What do you think? I think it's long overdue. I think enforcement is the key to all of this and without it, it's all about accountability when it comes to corruption. If they're not held accountable, it's just going to keep going on. And yeah, they made millions, all of them made millions when they knew the pandemic was going to hit and everybody changed their stocks. They unloaded the stuff they didn't want and they bought up all the stuff low that they knew was going to skyrocket because of it. There's a really good article in TNR by Jason Lincoln about this very subject. And he says that in 2002, he went to work for the Wall Street Journal and they have strict rules in the same way. You cannot trade stocks and be a reporter. And it makes sense because, of course, you're gonna give the stories to the people you want and that sort of stuff. And it's the same sort of side handing everything around. And I think that's what's kind of going on. I'm hoping maybe I caught a positive buzz from Winston and since he's not here today, I'll try to bring a positive bent to some of this. Maybe what's happening and the reason we're having this wonderful bipartisan approach is the Republicans and the Democrats alike. And 62% of Americans, both Democrat and Republican alike are for this, let's get this under control. Maybe it's because they found something they can all come together on. Well, I love that thinking and I like to think that's the case, but what about voting suppression? I mean, 62% of Americans or higher think that these voting suppression bills are out of line, yet here they are, yes. I think that's really important, Tim. And what we have here is, I should have said this earlier, a distraction. This is a distraction. We have the world falling apart. We have the country falling apart, democracy falling apart, voting falling apart, immigration falling apart, the social safety net is falling, falling, falling apart. And we're talking about doing the windows and baseboards. This is a distraction, it's not important. Okay, Cynthia, are you on that same page as Jay? I think that's a good point, yeah. Because we always have to remember that distractions, that's the heart of their MO, is to keep everybody looking over here so you don't look over here, right? That whole side-handing thing that I was talking about before. Absolutely, I think that's very possible. And it's just, like I said, a hopeful whim, I guess. I keep thinking, well, maybe they found something they can come together on. I keep hoping though, find something to come together on, whatever it is. You know, going to the point that Jay made and Karen and you, and that is, this is corruption. You know, the lobbyists attempts to influence legislation. They're, you know, be it trips or meals or entertainment. We call it corruption, but if it's not against a law, is it corruption? Jay, to you, or no, Cynthia, to you on that point. It is against the law, that's the thing. I mean, there is an act that says you can't do it. So it is against the law. They just have conveniently decided they don't want to follow it because they're making millions and millions of dollars. And I remember back in the day when, you know, politicians had to lock everything away. They couldn't make any money at all while they were working, or else they got no pay at all while they were politicians, right? They had to have another job. And I wonder, can we like put that back in there somewhere where they have to, they don't get any money from the taxpayers, at least we're not paying them while they're making millions, you know, something, anything that we can do. I'm for, let's shut them down and start holding people accountable because corruption is rampant. Okay. Can I take that a little further, Tim? Yes, of course. A couple of points. One is, you know, I've wondered over the past few years why these GOP guys like to stay in office so much so that they'll do anything to stay in office, not be primaried by Trump and his friends, okay? Isn't that big a deal to be a congressman? I mean, go out and get a job, you guys. You don't have to be in Congress. What does the congressman get paid? You must know Karen, 150,000, something like that. 175? Nancy Pelosi gets 225,000. Well, she's a top dog. But, you know, it's similar. I think it's 175,000. Okay, all right. I mean, you're wrong on that. Okay, in the world of executive and the world of influence, the world of business, it's not that much. If they lose that job, you know, it's not a total disaster, especially if they've been in Congress before. They can parlay, you know, their experience in Congress into the market. And so I think this factors into this whole thing about why they don't want to lose their jobs. It's not the 150 or 175,000. It's the 5 million or more that they care about. And they're not going to have the inside information if they're out of Congress, if they're primaried out. This is part of the way they see their compensation. So, it's waving on. So, I mean, even if you said, okay, we found you, we caught you with your hand in the cookie jar, and now we're going to stop your 175, and I says, okay, it's okay with me. I make 5 million anyway, have a nice life. So, you know. This is the point of the topic of my showing. Why a bill that's going to kill the gravy train? I mean, why are the gung-ho on this when clearly they could be making $5 million on the side and probably have been? Well, I think it's A, because of enforceability, real problem. B, because they, as I mentioned before, there's a corruption here. I mean, just as we have a corruption in the Hawaii state legislature, which is only now beginning to reveal itself, you know, the rock has been turned and there are two, three guys out of government who are pleading guilty, what have you? And by the way, they're not pleading guilty to the full charge. I hope you noticed that. That's a strange deal. Who knows what's going on there? We need to know more. But it reflects a corruption in the legislature and in government in Hawaii. And now this reflects a huge moral failure in Congress. You would have thought that when Mr. Smith, was it Smiths who goes to Washington is, you know, as pure as the driven store and wants to help the country and would never ever do anything like this. Now we find that it's endemic all over Congress. And probably courts too, I don't know which ones. And I would vote for that bill that put the kivash on inside trading by the courts, including especially the courts, including especially Justice Kavanaugh, who I just looked deeply in his eyes. And I wonder about that. In any event, what I'm saying is that this all reflects a moral corruption. We have it, we have the pox and we really have to do a lot of work to get rid of it. If I can. Karen, go ahead, sit there. Sorry, it's not the millionaire guys though that are bringing this to the forefront. It's the ones that aren't corrupt that are bringing it. So I think that's an important distinction to make. Good point. Karen, I can't quite get off this point because if it's a daily occurrence where lobbyists are applying their tradecraft to our House of Representatives and our senators in Washington, DC, why isn't that being tackled versus the Stop Trading Act? Say the first part of your question again, I was moving. Well, the question is if lobbyists get to apply their tradecraft to all the representatives and senators in Washington DC and that seems to be unchecked either by the media or by the Department of Justice. Shouldn't that be the area of concern that they should be looking at versus a stock prohibition new law that addresses stock trading? Absolutely. I think the lobbyists are a huge part of the problem but I believe the Supreme Court gave them kind of free license with their... Citizens United or...? Yeah, so I'm not sure to be honest how they can handle that. And I did read there is a bill to try to pass legislature which would basically eliminate Citizens United Act through the Congress. Somebody has proposed it so they can do away with that kind of lobbying and unchecked money and private donors and anonymity but I think it is being proposed. I forgot who it is. Karen, I wanna make you a side bet on that one. Don't take it, Karen. If that passes, you have to buy me a pizza. Don't do it, Karen, because he's collecting pizzas all over the place. Well, Karen, let me ask you this. Does this bill pass? Jay's early comment was, yeah, there's a lot of hype about it but when it comes down to vote time, they won't be anywhere, the GOP won't be anywhere to be found on this. Do you agree with Jay's initial comment about that? I think like Josh, I think they're competing to who can come in with the most watered down version of it. So like Elizabeth Warren is holding the line, we have to go after everybody and all the relatives and there has to be severe penalties. And then Josh Howley, no, just the senators should be, in other words, your wives and your children could do the same thing. So that's my, unfortunately, cynical theory that they're seeing if it has to pass, they'd rather have a sort of watered down version with very little penalties, like the one they have now. Like the existing 2012 version. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can be even more cynical, though. I mean, I'm into cynicism, as you know. Part of your right up, Tim, reflected and your points a minute ago reflected that Nancy Pelosi did $5.3 million. Or her husband. Her husband. Her husband, to me, that's the same thing. I mean, it's not that, oh gee, it had that came to my account. Isn't that marvelous? I should wake up in the morning one day with $5.3 million in my account and not know about it. You mean our new Palm Springs home was purchased from a stock trade that I didn't know about? See, so what this might be is a step transaction kind of thing where the GOP says, yeah, let's do something bipartisan. And in the middle of their effort to get it passed, all of a sudden they start attacking Nancy Pelosi and do her up in the press over her $5.3 million. And it's all addressed to her and possibly other Democratic representatives. Okay. Well, before we go around the table for last thought, Cynthia, by chance, is this any kind of gateway open to a renewed effort to look at a build back better or the voting right bill that seemed to be stalled and languishing and certainly I'm gonna lose a pizza bet over it. And I'm never taking that bet again with Jay Fiedel ever again. What do you think, Cynthia? You know, I have hope. And it's important for all of our government officials to be ethical and behave ethically, right? But it's even more important that people, that just the American people believe that our government is ethical, right? So there's a perception in there that's important also. And so I don't think this is gonna have any effect on voting or build back better or any of that. But I'm hoping that what it can do is start to drill away at some of the corruption. And we've talked a lot about Nancy Pelosi and a couple of other names around here today, but there's one giant name we have not mentioned. And that is Mitch McConnell. Fiddle Moscow Mitch and his wife, who has what did she make was a billion dollars or something in the last three years. So, you know, it's definitely a problem that goes across and needs to be delineated so that they know where the parameters are. It's not just sort of a general rule. It's specific with specific accountability. Alrighty, well, remember the old saying, it's not the love of money is the writ of all evil. It's the love of money is the writ of all evil. So, okay. Last thoughts, Jay, let's go to you and we'll go around the table here. Yeah, we haven't talked too much about Trump and I'm really astounded where the MSNBC did a little survey of remarks he made about killing people and someone charged Putin with being a murderer and killing people. And Trump's response to that was the United States kills people too. Yeah, I remember that. Which is an astounding remark that he made. And so the same thing here. I think that what's gonna happen is the focus is not gonna be on corruption. It's gonna wind up being on those who did the insider trading, including Democratic members of Congress. And I think that that actually helps Trump because he'll say, well, you know, there's corruption everywhere. This is the swamp I was talking about. It falls in his camp. This whole issue falls in his camp and he will use it to say government is screwed up and I alone can fix it. And that's where this is gonna wind up. Not with a dampening of corruption, but with a gift, a political gift to Trump. All right, Karen, your last thing thinking on this. Well, I think, you know, they all sing out of darkness light. There needs to be some kind of government agency that keeps track every year of what people are making in the stock market and it'd be visible to the public. They can go to the site and they could see that Nancy Pelosi made, you know, $5 million or whatever it was, you know, just so there's a tracking of each Congressperson and they're held accountable. And you know, and when it comes to campaigning then those numbers can be, you know, brought up and people can see how corrupt they are. All right, thank you for your thoughts. Cynthia, you get the last word with your thoughts. Karen just said gets my vote. I think that's exactly right. And there's been a few articles that I read while I was getting ready for the show that talk about that very thing, that there needs to be an agency and there needs to be more, you know, transmissibility that we can actually see what's happening. What's wrong with the media? I'm sorry to interrupt your last thought, but what's wrong with the media? Thank you, exactly the media, but the media, right now the media is, I'm not sure why they're being so, okay, don't take it wrong when I said pussy foot and around everything, you know? Trump came out yesterday and called Putin a genius and we've hardly even heard about it on the news anywhere. So, you know, he was giddy about what he had done in calling those places, you know, to put out those things as independent places where he was able to go in. And is he gonna just try to inch his way in, you know? That's what I was, when I see the map all the time, I think, oh boy, so I'm getting off track because I'm going to Putin and Ukraine and I'm terribly worried. And I really, regardless, we're all talking about sanctions and stuff and things and Putin's gonna kill people, people are gonna die. And that's what we need to look at and think about. But here at home, and I know I'm going all over the map here, but we're still losing 2000 people a day, a day to COVID. Those are some things that are pretty staggering and everybody needs to wake up, pay attention, get involved. Excellent points. All right, well, thank you, Cynthia. We've run out of time and I'd like to thank our guest here for What Now America, Jay Fiedel, Karen Buzzard and Cynthia Leeson-Claire. Join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What Now America. I'm Tim Apachele, your host and we hope to see you next week. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.