Not at all surprising – from the Washington Post:
In both houses of Congress, a host of other committee chairmen and ranking members have reported that they have millions invested in business sectors that their panels oversee, according to a Post analysis of financial disclosure records through 2008, committee assignments and lawmaker investments by industry…
…Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), for instance, served as chairman of a subcommittee responsible for overseeing technology-oriented efforts to improve homeland security, intelligence, information sharing and risk assessment in 2008. At the time, she disclosed more than $1 million in holdings in companies involved in intelligence and homeland security contracting, including Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems…
Now, we Republicans can’t act all high and mighty on this issue – some of ours are doing this, as well. Though, naturally, Democrats lead the field in such shennanigans.
There are two things wrong with this picture:
1. lawmakers should never be financially beholden to the businesses they regulate.
2. Business is so highly regulated that its hard for Congressmen not to be beholden to the people they regulate.
The solution is quite simple – knock it off on the over-regulation, and prohibit sitting federal, State and local officeholders from owning stocks or corporate bonds during their tenure of office – and make sure we include spouses and children in this ban.
Will that be hard on people thinking of going in to public life. Yes. And that’s a good thing – public service is supposed to entail great sacrifice; in fact, the more onerous it is, the more likely we are to get good men and women rather than the corrupt hacks we overflow with now. They can hold all the land, family-owned businesses and government bonds they like – but they can’t hold a stake in profit making enterprises they can give a leg up to (can’t they benefit their family-owned business? Sure – but that is a lot easier to see, expose and drive cretins out of office over).
We need a government which works for the whole people, not just for the special interests. To get this, we’re going to have to be increasingly harsh towards those who seek public office. Essentially, we want to make it so that only people of the sternest republican virtues will even seek office – then we can rely on government once again.
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