Federal employees have more strict stock regulations and yet we still see problems with private influence on the government.
The issue is our bribery laws are ridiculously weak. It's not illegal for your pals at Nestle to pay you 10x for your house or send your kids to college.
Stock is fairly public knowledge and you owning shares in Nestle doesn't do nearly as much to influence the laws you write regulating Nestle. You can always dump the stock before sending the laws out of committee.
The one positive of banning congressional stock trading is that at least it might make congressional people more sensitive to the broad market.
Make your own crypto coin, maybe do a few press conferences about it and how great it is. If you find yourself in a situation where you might be legally immune to any prosecution, maybe just outright state that buying said asset will get you favoritism.
But yes, I'd support outright banning crypto, especially for Congress. WAAAAY to easy to spin up a new coin that effectively works as money laundering.
That's a much worse scenario than stock currently is. It's a lot harder to create new stock.
Strict Scrutiny is a SFW alternative to 5-4. They both cover more or less the same events and issues. Strict Scrutiny's hosts are profs and former clerks, whereas 5-4 are "blue color" lawyers.
Though they have different POVs, I think they're both hysterical.
Former prosecutor Preet Bharara (Cafe Insider) has yet another POV. More nuts & bolts. Super informative.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Until this ACTUALLY passes and is rattified I these talks dont even get me excited. Its been tried so many times. Today is just Hawley's turn to grand stand. Just before it gets strangled in the crib, and then in 2 years it will be someone elses turn.
I personally think killing earmarks was just as bad. It removed a key avenue for congressmen to do the "right thing" in defiance of the party line while still remaining safe on the reelection cycle. These days there's a ton more party-managed back room vote trading and whatnot and the legislators are substantially less free to be reasonable.
We’re already on the verge of eliminating birthright citizenship, with the Supreme Court’s blessing. This is a major and pretty unequivocal clause of the 14th amendment. If they can do that, then none of the other amendments are going to matter either.
This will make lobbying more powerful. If you can’t make money from insider trading, you have one less alternative to accepting bribes. I’d rather require insider trading than ban it.
A stock ban is some nice grandstanding but if they were truly serious, they'd remove money from politics.