Congress Acts Quickly to Kill Transparency For Their Own Shady Insider Trading

While distracted with the Boston Bombing……

Ever see anything done this quickly?

4/11/2013 Introduced in Senate
4/11/2013 Passed/agreed to in Senate: Introduced in the Senate, read twice, considered, read the third time, and passed without amendment by Unanimous Consent.
4/12/2013 Passed/agreed to in House: On passage Passed without objection.
4/12/2013 Presented to President.
On Tuesday the 15th, the President signed the legislation.

Image: CBS

Sarah Jones – Politicususa – h/t to MJ:

What could make the House pass something in 30 seconds that the Senate also passed? What would motivate them to put aside their alleged “differences” and act in the best interest of the people? The answer is when they are not acting in the best interest of the people, but rather, in their own best interests.

To that end, late last week, your congress quickly approved a measure that modified (aka, killed) a part of the STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act ), which was only enacted a year ago. The STOCK Act was supposed to address shady stock trades based on insider information.

Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is taking credit for sponsoring the measure, but clearly he got no pushback from either side of the aisle. Check out the fast movement of this bill, and tell me if you’ve seen anything fly through like this in recent years, sans committee referrals and Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) deep debate over what he can even allow for a debate about a vote:

4/11/2013 Introduced in Senate
4/11/2013 Passed/agreed to in Senate: Introduced in the Senate, read twice, considered, read the third time, and passed without amendment by Unanimous Consent.
4/12/2013 Passed/agreed to in House: On passage Passed without objection.
4/12/2013 Presented to President.

On Tuesday the 15th, the President signed the legislation.

The Sunlight Foundation notes that the amendment passed with unanimous consent, though many members had gone home already. Huh. This doesn’t seem to work for measures that protect the security of the American people, like say, jobs. The Sunlight Foundation also pointed out what might be seen as a precursor of times to come, “The bill was not available to the public on the Library of Congress website until after the vote.” NPR noted that it took the House all of 30 seconds. “NPR’s Tamara Keith tells us the House procedure took exactly 30 seconds.”

The STOCK Act took aim at insider trading and insider information, and also required some 28,000 federal employees from the congressional and executive branches post their conflict of interest disclosures online. It followed “a ’60 Minutes’ report on how many members of Congress are making money on stock trades that are illegal for everyone else, correspondent Nancy Cordes reports a bill to ban lawmakers from insider trading is now on the fast track.”

So, while you were paying attention, they passed The STOCK Act, and now, a year later on a Friday, when you’re not paying attention, they quietly killed the parts they don’t like by unanimous consent (the coward’s way, so you can’t hold them individually accountable on the record).

Yes, senior officials will still have to fill out disclosure forms, but news agencies and anyone else who’s interested will have to dig deeply in order to get access to the information. Your congress claims it’s a security measure (apparently, when you hear “security”, you’re supposed to automatically bend over and initiate invasion, paying off too big to fail, etc.). However, the Sunlight Foundation pointed out that they did not merely address the alleged security issues, but found a way to deeply obscure and bury any path to the transparency:

The sweeping exemption goes even farther than critics of the disclosure requirements requested. For those to whom online disclosure would still apply (the president, vice president, members of Congress, congressional candidates and individuals subject to Senate confirmation) the Senate bill made electronic filing of the information optional and struck the requirement that online information be searchable, sortable and downloadable, making even the disclosures that remain in the bill tepid and relatively unusable.

Not only does the change undermine the intent of the original bill to ensure government insiders are not profiting from non-public information (if anyone thinks high level congressional staffers don’t have as much or more insider information than their bosses, they should spend some time on Capitol Hill) but it sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent suggesting that any risks stem not from information being public but from public information being online.

Are we going to return to the days when the public can use the Internet to research everything except what their government is doing? Will Congress, in its twisted wisdom, decide that information is public if journalists, academics, advocates and citizens are forced to dig through file cabinets in basements in Washington, DC to find it? And does anyone think that makes us safer?

This is heartening, indeed. Your congress can act and does act quickly, in a bipartsian manner, to address their privacy and security. No concerns about who’s read the bill and how it might destroy democracy or cover up crimes against citizens. No debate needed.

Your government can and does at times function much better than conservatives would like you to believe, but this is not one of them. If there’s ever a time when both sides should come together, it’s when elected officials betray the trust of the people in this manner. Not only is it apparent that these bodies can act quickly when their interests are at issue, but the haste with which they’ve agreed to bury transparency without debate should trouble citizens from both sides of the aisle.

Capitol Punishment - The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist – Some things really never change…

Technorati Tags: Congress,tranparency,killing transparency,watch the other hand,insider trading,double standards,smoke and mirrors,STOCK Act,Sunlight Foundation,hanky panky,Obamaland,they represent us,corruption in Congress,CORRUPTION,Washington D.C.

America in 2008: What of the Kenneys?

His voice firm, his wave familiar, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy told a cheering Democratic National Convention Monday night that his is "a season of hope" for an era of justice and fair prosperity with the election of Barack Obama as president.

DENVER, Aug. 26, 2008 (AssociatedPress Online delivered by Newstex) -- It wasn't subtle, but it was heart-tugging stagecraft at its best. With sailboats and choppy seas, passed torches and enduring dreams, clan Kennedy summoned the 1960s and showed that the flame -- the one tended by America's most ardent Democrats, at least -- burns still.

On their convention's opening night Monday, Democrats waved Kennedy signs and welcomed their lion in winter, the ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. And he delivered, using his political and cultural clout to etch a vivid connection between his family's mythology and Barack Obama's potential.

"The dream," Ted Kennedy said, "lives on."

A partisan party is one thing, though; American culture at large is another. And as the senator edges toward stage left, the final brother of his extraordinary generation, a question presents itself: When he is gone, what becomes of the renowned Kennedy mystique, that alchemy of hope, charm, tragedy, controversy and just a whiff of royalty?

"It's embedded in our history now. It's part of our DNA. You can't take that away," says Bobbi Baker Burrows, director of photography for Life magazine, whose intimate images helped craft the Kennedy mythology in the early 1960s.

Potent as a political dynasty, the Kennedys of Teddy's generation represent far more. Straddling the eras of Audrey Hepburn and Paris Hilton, they have embodied the better angels of the American nature, and their aura has endured tales of foibles and tragedies and missteps.

And, of course, they were the prototypes for a uniquely American hybrid of politics and celebrity -- something that played well for JFK in 1960, RFK in 1968, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and, some would say, Obama in 2008.

It's more than that, though. It's about adaptability to the national mood, a Kennedy hallmark. Which is why, in a fragmented century attuned to sound bites and information overload that might have made even JFK dizzy, space remains in the modern American bandwidth for the Kennedy mystique.

"They would be as successful today as they were in their own era because of their ability to adapt not only to their audiences but to the era they were playing in," says Gerald Shuster, a political communications expert at the University of Pittsburgh. "They had a very unique ability to integrate themselves into any audience demographic."

The Kennedys also used hope as clay, molding it into whatever shape was necessary for the moment. That encompassed not only the renowned oratory but the ability to convert the building blocks of personality into cultural capital.

Thus did a gorgeous American extended family, laughing and playing as if posing for a sporting-goods ad, become grist for a mythmaking machine that was far more self-aware than Americans of JFK's era ever realized. Cynical to some, it created bonds that made politics about far more than, well, politics.

"It really helps from on high to have somebody that you revere, that you care about and want to hear what they're saying and doing and what they're wearing, everything," says Letitia Baldrige, who was Jackie Kennedy's social secretary and chief of staff during the Kennedy administration. "That's important for us, whether it's an apparition or not."

Despite Democrats' attempts to link them for the purposes of Campaign 2008, those who study the Kennedys largely reject comparisons between Robert and John Kennedy and Obama. But forces outside candidates' control can also evoke the Kennedy mystique in more subtle ways.

"People are looking back now because we're in a very similar situation to '68 -- an unpopular war, an unpopular president who's waging it, serious domestic problems," says Thurston Clarke, whose new book, "The Last Campaign," chronicles RFK's final days in 1968.

"People ached to feel noble in 1968, and they ache to feel noble again," he says. "People sense there's a similarity between the two periods, and it makes the Kennedys more interesting to them."

Nevertheless, a huge swath of American voters know John and Robert Kennedy only from their parents and their history texts. And the current crop of Kennedys, with such notable exceptions as Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver, have not achieved the top tier of renown populated by their parents.

"I don't think the American people know them very well," JFK biographer Michael O'Brien says. "They do a lot of good humanitarian work, but if I was to have to name them, I think I would have a hard time."

Try telling that to the hard-core Democrats inside the Pepsi Center on Monday. They waved Kennedy signs at Teddy as he spoke, erupted into cheers at the nostalgic video of sailing and family gatherings and black-and-white footage of a time when much seemed possible. Some, standing in the aisles, even wept when the senator said, "It is time again for a new generation of leadership. It is time now for Barack Obama."

He also said this: "For me, this is a season of hope." The same Kennedy clay, yet another new sculpture.

Graying and aging and even retooled slightly, the Kennedy mystique endures -- as political symbol and cultural touchstone. The torch has been passed. What the new generation of Americans do with it is, as always, up to them.

By TED ANTHONY, Newstex ID: AP-0001-27662050