In three current political happenings, lawmakers are undermining the public by ignoring or changing the laws they themselves write so they are not held accountable or face the consequences anyone else would face. These are situations that heavily tilt the scales of justice and Democracy, and demoralize its authority as well as bastardize the rule of law.
For one, two Supreme Court justices are being asked to recuse themselves from cases involving “the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.” But the two justices are refusing to recuse themselves and basically stuck their middle fingers up to the law and the public.
“In a May 23 letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts, the senators (Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Federal Courts, Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), requested a meeting with Roberts to discuss what they termed an “ethics crisis” at the court and urged him to “take appropriate steps to ensure that Justice Alito will recuse himself from any cases related to the 2020 presidential election and January 6 attack on the Capitol….Their letter also criticized the recently adopted, first-ever code of conduct for the court on grounds the recusal language was purely voluntary for individual justices to decide. Last Thursday, Chief Justice Roberts responded by letter, formally turning-down their requests.”
The senators based their reasoning “that the two justices are mandated by law to recuse themselves. The law (28 USC 455) reads in part: “Any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
Yet because of their clout and position of power, the justices have ignored the law and continue doing whatever they want to do despite what their own law states. This is reckless and a contempt of the justice system and the rule of law. But because of partisan politics, they have chosen to stick with supporting the tearing down of a Democracy.
In another example of politicians skirting the law, everyone suspects that congress people and other politicians participate in illegal insider trading schemes to increase their own personal financial gain using inside information on the stock market. At one time this was a huge scandal but now it has become almost expected.
It seems as though politicians are telling the public; we are going to cheat to get rich and you just might as well except it and move on in your hard-working lives. According to a recent investigation of such illegal and unethical activity though:
“Traders and market watchers are using publicly available data to track which lawmakers are reporting big stock market gains. They believe that information provides an edge on the market, and companies are selling access to tools that track those profitable lawmaker trades. This dynamic demonstrates that the STOCK Act, the law enacted more than a decade ago to tamp down on congressional trading, may be boosting it.
The CEO of Unusual Whales, a financial startup that offers investors tools to track market activity, noticed his posts flagging notable stock trades by members of Congress were going viral on social media. “I was just posting what the disclosures were telling me,” he told NPR.
He started crunching these numbers about five years ago and said the academic literature largely concluded that Congress had no edge in trading. But his anonymous reports — published under the name Unusual Whales, which is how he refers to himself — tracked notable gains by lawmakers happening around big policy changes or global events. “Those reports started really, really taking off during 2020, 2021 — when COVID trading happened.”
He saw trades by lawmakers in both parties spiking at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and found roughly 15 senators making trades from February into April 2020.
“That’s around like $100 million of stock being traded in that time,” he said. “And around 40 members of the House made like 1,500 trades, almost $100 million.”
Kedric Payne, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, said the growth of this industry in the last few years is an unintended consequence of the STOCK Act. The law was designed to tamp down on trading by lawmakers, but “instead, you have investors profiting off the trades, which also incentivizes the members of Congress to continue to make the trades because they, in fact, profit when other people invest,” he said.
There was momentum for bipartisan reforms to the STOCK Act around the 2022 midterm elections. But those efforts stalled. Lawmakers from both parties say banning stock trading could be a disincentive for people to want to serve in Congress and for staffers to build careers on Capitol Hill.
Members of Congress have information that most investors don’t have, and they write laws that could impact the companies they are invested in.
“It would be like a member of an NBA team rewriting the rules of the game to favor their team and then the fans getting upset,” Lynn told NPR. “Like, there’s a reason that we don’t allow players to bet on their own teams, because it creates a huge conflict of interest.”
“We bring conservatives and progressives together, because while Congress has divided, the American people are not,” Lynn said. “And so it’s always a tall order to ask Congress to pass a law that puts shackles on themselves. But with enough voices out there and with enough momentum in the states, I think we have a chance.”
Politicians cheat, they know they cheat, and they know we know they cheat, but they do not care what the people think. They are turning this country into one huge casino that benefits them and not the people. Any regular person caught doing this would definitely go to jail.
And last but not the least, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has hypocritically gone against his own law that convicted felons cannot vote in elections after arresting Black voters for doing just that, even after they were told by the state they could vote.
However, “Following former President Donald Trump’s felony conviction of falsifying business records, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he hasn’t lost his voting rights in the state. Florida is a state notorious for restricting the voting rights of people with felony convictions.”
The list goes on, but people should get the point. There are truly two tiers of justice in this country and the people need to step up and speak out. They are being underrepresented and mistreated by politicians who believe that the law does not apply to them. How long can a citizenry lay down to anarchist who ignore the public’s well-being to exalt their own?
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