Tag: jim inhofe
Caught Dumping Stocks, Sen. Burr Requests Ethics Investigation

Caught Dumping Stocks, Sen. Burr Requests Ethics Investigation

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

Sen. Richard Burr, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, requested a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into his stock trading, a day after ProPublica and the Center for Responsive Politics reported that he had dumped significant amounts of shares before the market crash triggered by the coronavirus outbreak.

Burr unloaded between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions, a significant portion of his total stock holdings. The sales came soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus.

On Twitter Friday morning, Burr defended the sell-off. “I relied solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks on February 13,” he said. “Specifically, I closely followed CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time.” He asked for the ethics committee to “open a complete review of the matter with full transparency.”

The ethics committee can recommend disciplinary action against lawmakers and refer potentially criminal violations to law enforcement. But it has been criticized for being too lax. It is illegal for members of Congress to trade shares on non-public information they gather in the course of their work. But cases are rare because proving that a politician relied on such non-public information is difficult.

As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.

A week after Burr’s sales, the stock market began a sharp decline and has lost about 30% since.

After the story published, Burr faced a firestorm of criticism from both sides of the aisle. Former Obama administration officials along with prominent Trump allies blasted Burr’s stock sales. Calls for his resignation came from both ends of the political spectrum, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Thom Tillis, North Carolina’s junior senator, said on Friday that a review by the ethics committee was warranted. “Given the circumstances, Senator Burr owes North Carolinians an explanation,” Tillis, a Republican, wrote.

Throughout the day Thursday, news outlets reported instances of other lawmakers who also sold off stock before the market tanked.

The Daily Beast reported that Kelly Loeffler, a Georgia Republican who took office this year, sold off stocks jointly owned with her husband worth between $1.2 million and $3.1 million in the weeks after senators received a private briefing on the coronavirus from the Trump administration. Loeffler’s husband is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. In response, Loeffler posted on Twitter early on Friday morning that “this is a ridiculous and baseless attack. I do not make investment decisions for my portfolio. Investment decisions are made by multiple third-party advisors without my or my husband’s knowledge or involvement.”

Other senators who sold off stocks this year include Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the Armed Services Committee. Reports with the Senate show that Inhofe sold shares worth between $380,000 and $830,000 both before and after the briefing, which Inhofe did not attend. “I do not have any involvement in my investment decisions,” Inhofe posted on Twitter on Friday. “In December 2018, shortly after becoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I instructed my financial advisor to move me out of all stocks and into mutual funds to avoid any appearance of controversy.”

Reports of sales by other senators surfaced as well. But those sales were less anomalous or noteworthy. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, reported selling shares in a private firm he ran, Pacur LLC, worth between $5 million and $25 million. That transaction took place on March 2. The deal had apparently been in the works for some time and had been announced on Feb. 11.

In another case generating headlines, filings also show large sales reported by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who serves on the Intelligence Committee alongside Burr. But they only involved one stock. Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, sold off shares in Allogene Therapeutics Inc. worth between $1.5 million and $6 million on Jan. 31 and Feb. 18. Blum is a frequent stock trader, according to Feinstein’s financial disclosures, and appears to have taken a loss on at least a portion of the shares he sold.

Asked about senators making stock trades at a press conference Friday, President Trump said “I’m not aware of it, I saw some names.”

He added, “I find them to all be very honorable people, that’s all I know and they said they did nothing wrong.” The only senator he addressed by name was Dianne Feinstein, and complained that reporters at the press conference were not noting her stock trades.

By the standards of the Senate, Burr is not particularly wealthy: Roll Call estimated his net worth at $1.7 million in 2018, indicating that the February sales significantly shaped his financial fortunes and spared him from some of the pain that many Americans are now facing.

He was one of the authors of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which shapes the nation’s response to public health threats like the coronavirus. Burr’s office did not respond to requests for comment about what sort of briefing materials, if any, on the coronavirus threat Burr may have seen as chair of the intelligence committee before his selling spree.

According to NPR, Burr had given a VIP group at an exclusive social club a much more gloomy preview of the economic impact of the coronavirus than what he had told the public, saying it might close schools and impede business travel. In response, Burr said the NPR report was misleading.

Burr’s public comments had been considerably more positive. In a Feb. 7 op-ed that he co-authored with another senator, he assured the public that “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus.” He wrote, “No matter the outbreak or threat, Congress and the federal government have been vigilant in identifying gaps in its readiness efforts and improving its response capabilities.”

Members of Congress are required by law to disclose their securities transactions.

Burr was one of just three senators who in 2012 opposed the bill that explicitly barred lawmakers and their staff from using nonpublic information for trades and required regular disclosure of those trades. In opposing the bill, Burr argued at the time that insider trading laws already applied to members of Congress. President Barack Obama signed the bill, known as the STOCK Act, that year.

Stock transactions of lawmakers are reported in ranges. Burr’s Feb. 13 selling spree was his largest stock selling day of at least the past 14 months, according to a ProPublica review of Senate records. Unlike his typical disclosure reports, which are a mix of sales and purchases, all of the transactions were sales.

His biggest sales included companies that are among the most vulnerable to an economic slowdown. He dumped up to $150,000 worth of shares of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, a chain based in the United States that has lost two-thirds of its value. And he sold up to $100,000 of shares of Extended Stay America, an economy hospitality chain. Shares of that company are now worth less than half of what they did at the time Burr sold.

The assets come from accounts that are held by Burr, belong to his spouse or are jointly held.

IMAGE: Senator Richard Burr (R-NC).

In Spite Of What You See Outside, Global Warming Is Real

In Spite Of What You See Outside, Global Warming Is Real

Cue the igloos.

The winter blizzard set to paralyze the East Coast has given climate change deniers the perfect opportunity to proclaim, once again, that global warming is a hoax, that several feet of snow prove the planet is as cold as ever, that the Earth is flat: You can tell by looking outside. Common sense.

During a similar snowstorm in 2010, the family of one of the nation’s leading flat-earthers, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., built an igloo on the National Mall. His daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren deposited a sign across the structure that read “Al Gore’s New Home,” in mockery of one of the saner voices on the risks of climate change.

This latest storm has produced plenty of igloo material but no evidence that Gore is wrong. Sorry, but the Earth is, in fact, a sphere — no matter what you see as you look out your bedroom window. Similarly, the planet is warming — no matter how cold it is outside your bedroom window.

Earlier this month, climate scientists released a report saying that 2015 was the warmest year on record for the planet, shattering the previous record that had been set by a very warm 2014. El Niño’s winds contributed to last year’s heat, but the bulk of it is a consequence of human activity, scientists said.

By now, the science is settled. Shouldn’t we be talking about solutions? Shouldn’t our politicians be leading a national discussion about ways to build on the climate accord that President Obama signed in Paris?

One of the most promising answers is a carbon tax, a way to raise prices on the fossil fuels that create much of the environmental havoc. A price hike would help to discourage use by everyone, from the executives at coal-fired electric plants to motorists who drive alone to and from work.

A carbon tax is even more compelling in this era of rapidly falling petroleum prices. While cheap gas helps the family budget, it simply encourages us to use more of it. And, oddly, it even encourages car buyers to skip the smaller, more efficient models and opt for bigger gas guzzlers. At the end of 2015, fuel economy for new vehicles was falling, likely reflecting more purchases of pickup trucks and SUVs, according to the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.

It might seem perverse to suggest a carbon tax — or “fee,” as some prefer to call it — just as average households are getting a break from gas prices. After all, the American middle class is still struggling with wage stagnation.

But those households need not be penalized. There are already detailed plans for protecting low- and middle-income households from the budget pinch of a carbon tax, which would affect not only gasoline but also home energy prices.

The bigger problem is that a carbon tax has no chance of passing a recalcitrant Republican Congress, many of whose members still insist that climate change isn’t real. The few GOP moderates who had, in the past, acknowledged human-caused climate change — New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, for instance — dare not say so anymore.

It hasn’t always been this way inside the Republican Party. As The Wall Street Journal has noted, “Republicans, not Democrats, first championed market-based systems to control pollution.” In 2008, GOP nominee John McCain and his Democratic rival, Obama, had similar proposals for a carbon tax.

Nowadays, though, the carbon tax is anathema to an irrational Republican electorate. Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, has said that any GOP candidate who supported a carbon tax “would be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process.” That helps explain why not a word has been uttered in support of it.

But that’s no reason to give up. Environmentalists and their allies have to keep plugging away at rational solutions, playing the long game. There really is no choice. Global warming is a crisis, no matter how big a blizzard batters the East Coast, and no matter how many igloos the Inhofe clan builds.

(Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.)

Photo: Workers clear falling snow from the East Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 22, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Pride And Prejudice, An Unlikely Senate Pair

Pride And Prejudice, An Unlikely Senate Pair

WASHINGTON — You have delighted us long enough, Congress. That’s what Jane Austen would say. Perhaps it’s time you go home on your summer recess.

(Note to self and reader: this column will borrow a pinch of sugar and salt from Pride and Prejudice, Austen’s most sparkling novel. Just because there is a lot of pride — and many prejudices — in Congress.)

Oh, wait, the House just left town, rudely leaving the Senate holding the bag on the important highway transportation funding bill for all 50 states. The Senate actually worked out a massive bipartisan highway bill — that covers crumbling bridges, too.

The small miracle was that Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) worked together to make it happen. They are the most arch-conservative and the most liberal members of the 100 members in the Capitol chamber. It gives you a breath of hope, to see them defending and explaining the bill out on the floor — and giving credit and respect to each other. That’s the way the Senate is supposed to work. Boxer was elected in 1992 and Inhofe in 1994, so they are old hands.

The lively Californian and the rugged Oklahoman resemble young Elizabeth Bennet and high-class Mr. Darcy, the leading characters of Pride and Prejudice (roughly 200 years old) who are, at first glance, perfect opposites. He is pride, and she is prejudice. He will not even dance with her at first, conscious of his social station, but soon falls to her wit and beauty: “the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”

Like Elizabeth, Boxer speaks her mind plainly. When she heard the House might defy custom and leave for summer early without voting on the Senate highway bill, she scolded the other chamber publicly: “Do your job!” Austen might have written the lines differently, but she might have appreciated the refreshing American candor.

I’m not saying she and Inhofe took walks around the verdure in the summer rain, but if they can bridge their differences, then anyone can. For starters, Inhofe denies the existence of global warming, and Boxer is an ardent environmentalist. In the end, the resulting bill did not please either of them, they declared, but that’s a sign of true compromise.

Let’s remember the interstate highway system was created under a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, also a general.

A great nation has to have at least a good infrastructure. Check with the builders of ancient Roman roads, bridges, and aqueducts on that. Soldiers and citizens alike moved around the Republic and then the Empire, farther than ever before. A highway bill is just fundamental to governing. As the granddaughter of Wisconsin’s chief highway engineer, I take it personally. My grandfather, a man of few words, saw no politics in the hundreds of roads he worked on through his career. In fact, he had no use for politics, but boy, did he love highways, catalogued with photos in the basement.

Here in Washington, the untold story is we have some glimmers of bipartisan civility in the Senate. The real trouble in getting things done may be the strife between the Republican Senate and the Republican House — in culture and manner. In a glaring moment, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said something that would make Austen faint. As reported in Politico, he called the Senate highway bill “a piece of s**t.”

Sorry, that’s not sporting. As Boxer said, she could not repeat it on the Senate floor because that would break the rules. Inhofe was more stoic, but neither was pleased when the House left without doing their homework on passage of a highway bill. A three-month extension or “patch” was passed by both houses.

Everything ends perfectly in Austen’s novel at Pemberley, Darcy’s gorgeous estate. Elizabeth dearly loves to laugh, and life will be sparkling, for sure. Not so much here under the dome. It’s a bit gloomy this summer. Inhofe and Boxer did their best.

At the Dumbarton House, which is a perfect period piece (1800), Pride and Prejudice was shown under the stars the other cinema night. Who knew she knew so much about politics.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit Creators.com

Screenshot: Sens. Boxer and Inhofe, 2012. (via Jim Inhofe/YouTube)

This Week In Crazy: The Savage Theorem

This Week In Crazy: The Savage Theorem

There are cranks and then there are cranks. And then there are these people. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:

5. Jim Inhofe

Infrastructure, environment, Jim Inhofe, politics, Congress, climate change, Keystone XL, pollutionYou might remember Senator Jim Inhofe as the instigator of the shortest snowball fight to ever take place within the U.S. Capitol.

The logic-proof Republican from Oklahoma announced this week that he was opposed to the Pentagon’s new policies that will allow transgender troops to serve openly. And just as a single clump of snow disproves the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists, Inhofe thinks that the expansion of transgender rights “wouldn’t work” because of a single tween’s innocent question.

Regarding the inclusion of transgender troops, Inhofe explained his opposition to Politico with the following parable: “I had a 10-year-old,” spake Inhofe the Wise, “not my son, but a friend of mine’s grandson — say, ‘All right, which bathroom would they use?’”

Pack it in, folks. Inhofe says we got a confused kid here. Checkmate, civil rights.

Via Politico

Next: Michele Fiore

4. Michele Fiore

Did you know that cancer is a fungus that you can flush out of your body with mineral water?

This is the gospel of Michele Fiore, who runs a health care business out of her home, and is also a duly elected lawmaker in the Nevada state Assembly.

“If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, and we can put a pic line [one of these things] into your body and we’re flushing with, say, salt water” or baking soda “through that line and flushing out the fungus,” Fiore was reported saying on her radio show back in February.

This week Fiore popped up on my daft board again because she has been obstructing a state investigation into her racket. Fiore — a onetime supporter of Nevada grass freeloader and vocal insurrectionist Cliven Bundy — is sitting at a comfortable intersection of quackery and hypocrisy. According to Ralston Reports, Fiore’s pseudo clinic has received $6 million from Medicaid in the last five years and she is threatening to pass legislation to kill the probe that’s angling to shut her down.

Via Raw Story

Next: Michael Savage

3. Michael Savage

Screenshot: YouTube

The Savage Theorem:

  • Let X = whatever is upsetting conservative radio host Michael Savage this week.
  • For every X, there exists a rant less than or equal to 30 seconds connecting X to Barack Obama.

Proof #1: If X = an imaginary plan to pay slavery reparations, then:

I would fight to my death before I pay one dime in reparations and I would go to jail before I would pay one cent in reparations […] I would lead an armed rebellion against the government if they try to push that one down my throat after ripping off my life with affirmative action and welfare, I’m sick of it! And this gangster keeps getting away with it, this criminal in the White House, day in and day out, one lie after another, imperious, arrogant, hostile, aimed only at the white middle class. Look at his policies and tell me who he’s going after. Open your eyes, you idiots!

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