Our corrupt elites never fail to disappoint. In recent weeks:
Chuck Schumer, who criticized President Trump for being in bed with Russia, along with other top Democrats took campaign contributions from a prominent Democrat fundraiser whose lobbying firm received $8.5 million from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which is owned by Gazprom, the Russian state-run energy giant. Schumer recently refused to have a floor vote on sanctions against Russia. No conflict of interest here, nosiree.
Then, again, congress critters are not known for their high ethical standards. Nancy Pelosi’s husband owns up to a million dollars in call options on Tesla stock, while Nancy is out there pushing federal subsidies for electric vehicles to the tune of tens of billions of dollars for charging stations and tax credits. It might all be legal, but it sure stinks -p-ew! – and Nancy won’t comment.
Lawmakers are supposed to report stock trades but seven of them – four Democrats and three Republicans – did not, according to an ethics watchdog group that filed complaints. One lawmaker failed to report 300 transactions. Critics say lawmakers are finding ways around reporting requirements and little is being done to enforce the rules.
Democrat Maxine Waters paid her daughter another $81,000 in campaign funds in fiscal 2021, raising the total to more than $1.2 million since 2003. Nice work, if you can get it, but most of us can’t.
A Democrat Congresswoman from Florida used her official Twitter account to push followers to her Senate campaign account, apparently violating House rules against using taxpayer-funded resources for campaign purposes, critics said.
Speaking of campaign contributions, a health firm in California whose personnel donated almost a million dollars to Joe Biden and other Democrat campaigns was just ordered to pay $90 million to settle claims it had defrauded Medicare. Worst case, this is an example of companies greasing the palms of politicians in the hopes they will look the other way when it comes to questionable activities.
A lawsuit is alleging the EPA violated the law when it threw out a Trump administration conflict of interest rule in order to replace Trump appointees on advisory committees. “In an unprecedented purge, EPA eliminated all industry representatives from two important advisory committees in order to stack those committees with academics who are financially beholden to EPA for multimillion-dollar research grants,” the complaint reads. People dependent on the EPA for their livelihood now passing judgment on what the EPA wants to do – imagine that.
Over at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency announced its intention to prohibit the use of education benefits at some for-profit schools, but investor activity in the stocks affected picked up before the announcement was made. Some are concerned the announcement was either mishandled or intentionally leaked to facilitate insider trading.
Finally, sixteen Biden appointees have gotten ethics waivers exempting them from the ethics rules other people have to follow. Observers anticipate the adventures of these swamp creatures will become the subject of congressional investigations if Republicans take over the House or Senate next year. We can only hope. We deserve better than swamp gas, don’t we?
