One of the Democratic Party’s top fundraisers and the co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention host-committee, Duke Energy Corp. CEO Jim Rogers, contributed more than $210,000 to Democrats since 2008 and saw his company receive $230.4 million in federal grants for so-called “green energy” projects.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

Just as Rogers has helped fund Democratic politicians, they, in turn, have helped steer massive amounts of federal funding to Duke Energy. The 2009 stimulus package, for instance, was a boon for the company: Duke received federal grants totaling $230.4 million for a number of “green” energy projects including “smart grid” development and wind energy storage.

According to Recovery.gov, Duke created 196.6 jobs as a result of the grants.

The company also received a $350,000 grant to assist General Motors in the development of the Chevrolet Volt, the poorly selling electric vehicle that the Obama administration has recently proposed subsidizing at a rate of $10,000 per car.

Rogers’ support for the president’s “green” agenda earned him a spot on the short list to become President Obama’s Energy Secretary.

As if that act of crony capitalism weren’t enough, in 2009, Mr. Rogers’s company paid the lobbying firm of the co-chairman of Obama-Biden transition team, John Podesta, and Mr. Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta, $860,000 to lobby to “support the passage of climate change and energy legislation” and “energy efficiency and clean energy solutions.”   John Podesta was also formerly the president of the left wing Center for American Progress.

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Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) wants answers from Energy Secretary Steven Chu about documents that appear to indicate that Mr. Chu personally intervened to help secure a $1.4 billion partial loan guarantee for a large-scale rooftop solar project known as Project Amp that was to be supplied equipment by the sinking ship that was Solyndra.

“It is astonishing that DOE actively negotiated a plan to risk even more taxpayer money to prop up Solyndra at all costs,” said Rep. Stearns.

In his role as Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Rep. Stearns sent Sec. Chu a letter inquiring why the Energy Secretary would have helped put even more taxpayer money at risk when it was clear Solyndra was yet another failed green energy scheme, particularly since the Department of Energy itself seemed squeamish about approving the loan:

Project Amp is a large-scale rooftop energy generation project using solar panels on commercial facility rooftops to generate electricity for sale to utilities and power purchasers.  The panels for first phase of Project Amp were to be sole sourced from the failing Solyndra, Inc.   Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that DOE had some hesitation in approving the loan guarantee and that Secretary Chu intervened on behalf of Project Amp.  This brings up many questions, including if this was an attempt to support the faltering Solyndra since it occurred during discussions over the second restructuring of the Solyndra loan guarantee.

According to Rep. Stearns letter, a Solyndra employee email suggests that, indeed, Mr. Chu was part of a Herculean effort to craft a deal that “went to higher levels in the Obama Administration”:

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Both the House and Senate have now passed their respective versions of a bill known as the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act to ban members of Congress from using private information to enrich their investments.

As the two chambers now hammer out the distinctions between the two bills, one major difference has emerged: whether to require so-called “political intelligence” firms, who scour Congress and leverage high-level contacts with Hill staffers to gather tidbits of valuable nonpublic information that can be sold to investment firms or others, to register as lobbyists.  The Senate version of the bill contains such a provision; the House version does not.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), the person responsible for adding the provision to the Senate version of the STOCK Act, says that requiring political intelligence operatives to register as lobbyists is simply a matter of common sense:

If you seek information from Congress in order to make money, the American people have a right to know your name and who you’re selling that information to.

There’s much at stake in whether or not the eventual STOCK Act will require political intelligence operatives to register as lobbyists. Experts say that the 300 political intelligence firms worldwide comprise a $100 million industry.  Furthermore, many of the 2,000 individuals who make up the political intelligence industry are themselves former Hill staffers or members of Congress.

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Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) support for a bill banning members of Congress from using insider information to enrich themselves is being overshadowed by a report by the Wall Street Journal that the congresswoman’s husband, Stephen Lowey, invested $350,000 in a fund co-founded by Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs board member facing criminal insider-trading charges.

Rep. Lowey’s husband says his decision to invest $350,000 since 2008 in a fund run by New Silk Route Growth Capital should not reflect negatively on his wife:

Neither Mrs. Lowey nor I know Mr. Gupta, have ever met him or have had any dealings with him at all. It’s not her [Rep. Nita Lowe's] investment. She had nothing to do with it.

Between 2006 and 2011, one of New Silk Route’s co-founders, Parag Saxena, contributed more than $8,000 to Rep. Lowey’s congressional campaign funds.  According to the Wall Street Journal’s report:

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In his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer revealed how members of Congress enrich themselves and their relatives using earmarks and insider information.  Now, the Washington Post, following in Schweizer’s footsteps, has conducted a study that found 16 members of Congress have used their power of the purse to benefit companies, colleges, and community groups tied to their relatives.

Image by Washington Post

According to the study, the bipartisan “dirty 16″ deny that their actions were meant to directly benefit themselves or their spouses, parents, or children.  Instead, they claim, they were merely helping organizations and institutions in their congressional districts that just so happen to be connected to their relatives.

But as the investigation reveals, hiring the relative of a member of Congress can bring big bucks for employers.  Among those cited in the Washington Post report were the following:

• Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): obtained $5.3 million and sought $16.5 million more for the University of Houston where her husband has been employed since 1978 and has seen his salary double since 1994 (a year before Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was elected) to $210,491.  Rep. Lee’s staff ignored repeated requests for comment.

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When Peter Schweizer uncovered evidence of insider trading by Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus (R-AL), and 60 Minutes reported on it, I was the first person to call for Rep. Bachus to resign.

That was November 14, 2011.

Now, with news that the Office of Congressional Ethics has launched an insider trading investigation of Rep. Bachus, among possible others, I once again call on the Alabama Republican to do the right thing and leave Congress for good.

At the historic moment when the American people were looking to their elected leaders to protect them and their families’ portfolios, Rep. Bachus was busy using nonpublic information to enrich his own portfolio. In the summer and fall of 2008, Spencer Bachus’s position as the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee gave him access to high-level private meetings and conversations with the then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other senior officials. The meetings Bachus was privy to were so secretive that those in attendance were not even allowed to bring cell phones into the meetings so as to prevent sensitive information that could threaten our nation’s financial system from leaking out.

And what did Congressman Bachus do with such trust and responsibility?

From July to November 2008, Bachus executed at least 40 well-timed, highly risky options trades throughout the turbulent period that netted him as much as $50,000 in capital gains. As Americans were losing their life savings, Bachus was padding his. (more…)

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), whose financial transactions while ranking member of the House financial services committee were exposed by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, is now the target of an insider trading inquiry by the Office of Congressional Ethics, according to the Washington Post:

The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee over possible violations of insider-trading laws, according to individuals familiar with the case.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who holds one of the most influential positions in the House, has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation’s banking and financial services industries.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the individuals said. OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe insider-trading violations have occurred.

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(Reuters) – The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed on Thursday a bill to curb insider trading by lawmakers and other government officials, despite objections from both Democrats and Republicans that it was weaker than a version passed by the Senate last week.

The House voted 417-2 to pass the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, even though it did not include a provision to impose new regulations on Washington insiders who collect “political intelligence” from lawmakers and sell it to Wall Street. The Senate version included this proposal.

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Steve understands that while we’re trying to work our way out of this economic crisis, we have to hold the financial industry accountable to prevent the next one. That’s why Steve wrote a bill that would have taken back the bonuses paid to top executives at Wall Street firms – like AIG – that received federal bailout funds. (Source: Steve Israel For Congress Website)

Did you ever wonder where a self-proclaimed corporate raider and Occupy Wall Street supporter such as Congressman Steve Israel gets his campaign donations from?

According to Open Secrets, Israel has raised $1,581,081 for this election cycle (2011-2012), of which $15,790 comes from small donors, the “average Joe” like you and me.

Another $965,850 was raised from his top 100 donors, an all-star team of big labor and big business; many of those businesses from industries, which based on his committee assignments, Israel is supposed to be overseeing (including those Wall Street firms he talks about on his campaign site). The following takes a look at the donations to his reelection campaign and political action committee (PAC).

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On Tuesday, February 7, House Republicans proposed adding a “Pelosi Provision” to the fast-moving insider trading ban known as the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act that would prevent members of Congress from landing coveted and lucrative initial public offerings (IPOs), similar to the Visa stock IPO Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi scored that made them a staggering 203% profit.

The Pelosi Visa IPO revelation made headlines when Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer published the evidence in his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out.  CBS News’s 60 Minutes did a subsequent report based on Schweizer’s book that sparked a media firestorm.

In early 2008, Nancy Pelosi and her real estate developer husband, Paul, were given an opportunity to buy into a Visa IPO.  Despite Rep. Pelosi’s consistent railing against credit card companies, on March 18, 2008, the Pelosis bought between $1 million and $5 million (politicians do not have to report the exact amounts, only ranges) worth of Visa stock at the IPO price of $44 per share. Two days later, the stock price rocketed to $65 per share, yielding a 50% profit. The Pelosis then bought Visa twice more. By their third purchase on June 4, 2008, Visa was worth $85 per share.

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The Washington Post has completed an extensive study of earmarks–the process of slipping pet spending projects into bills–for all 535 members of Congress and has concluded that Rep. Nancy Pelosi added $50 million in earmarks for a light-rail project that runs near a four-story commercial building she and her husband own.

The Post says the revelation was uncovered by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestseller, Throw Them All Out:

Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi’s husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square. These earmarks were reported in the book “Throw Them All Out.” A Pelosi spokesman said the project was requested by community leaders and that the new stations on the line will be farther away from the building than those on the existing line.

In response, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, had this to say:

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Borrowing a page from Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s investigation of how elected officials funnel taxpayer dollars to projects that increase the value of properties they own, the Washington Post has conducted a study revealing that 33 members of Congress earmarked more than $300 million for projects within two miles of land they own.

After analyzing the holdings of all 535 members of Congress and comparing them to their earmarks for pet projects since 2008, the Washington Post found numerous eye-opening instances of potential self-enrichment at taxpayers’ expense, including:

• Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): obtained a $900,000 earmark to resurface roads where he and his daughter own two homes.  “I didn’t say, ‘Do the street that I live on,” Rep. Thompson protested when the Washington Post confronted him.  “The earmark went to the county.  It had no designation on it whatsoever, and that was it.”
• Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD): secured approximately $4.5 million for an interstate interchange that leads to Rep. Bartlett’s home, his 104-acre farm, and rental properties that earn him $150,000 annually.  “He was being an advocate for what was presented to him as the highest priority,” the congressman’s press secretary Lisa Wright said.  “Coincidentally, this was around two miles from his farm.”
• Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX): bagged $665,000 in taxpayer funds to expand a road 600 feet away from his family’s food processing plant, H&H Foods.  “It helps everybody,” Rep. Hinojosa told the Washington Post.  “The only way it made sense to handle this tremendous population growth and avoid problems for the school buses that go through that intersection was to widen it.”
• Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA): scored $750,000 for a new bridge three blocks away from a 7,000-square-foot building he and his wife own as well as Columbia Basin Paper & Supply, a janitorial supply company he previously owned that is now run by his brother.  “It never crossed my mind,” Rep. Hastings told the Washington Post.  “Every business in Pasco will benefit by that.”
• Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MA): landed a $187,000 earmark to replenish a shoreline 90 miles away from his home district near a beach that, coincidentally, he and his wife own two condominiums by that generate $15,000 in rental income.  Rep. Ruppersberger said questioning the proximity of his properties to the project was “ridiculous.”  “That’s a stretch to say that thing’s going to benefit me.”
• Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): secured $6.3 million to replenish a beach 900 feet away from a $142,900 cottage he owns.  “It’s absurd to suggest that this benefits me,” Kingston protested to the reporters.  “The beach doesn’t improve the real estate of a house, unless it’s on the beach.  The only thing that changes in value is the beachfront property.”
• Rep. John W. Olver (D-MA): obtained $5.1 million in earmarks to restructure a road 209 feet from Rep. Olver’s 15-acre home and several adjoining properties he and his wife own.  “I had no monetary interest whatsoever in this project,” Rep. Olver said.  “I had nothing to with the design.  I was never notified of any of the hearings.  I had no involvement whatsoever.”
• Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-MI): obtained a $486,000 earmark that helped add a 14-foot bike lane within walking distance of her house.  “People earmark for all kinds of things,” Rep. Miller said when asked about the project.  “I’m pretty proud of this; I think I did what my people wanted.  Should I have told them, ‘We can never have this bike path complete because I happen to live by one section of it’?  They would have thrown me out of office.”
• Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY): secured $7 million in earmarks, a portion of which went to overhaul streets around the corner from a bank where he is director emeritus and owns a $1-$5 million stake in the bank’s holding company and also narrowed the street he lives on to slow traffic.  “Congressman Rogers sees no conflict of interest in helping local community leaders achieve their goals for growth,” the congressman’s chief of staff Michael R. Higdon told the Washington Post.

The Washington Post report also concluded that 16 members of Congress directed taxpayer dollars to “companies, colleges, or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.”

The practice of earmarks continues to be a source of angst for conservatives and citizens concerned with out-of-control federal spending.  In 2010, a record high 11,230 earmarks accounted for $32 billion in federal spending.

On Thursday, the Senate voted 96-3 to ensure that the same insider trading laws that apply to citizens also extend  to members of Congress.

But as the Associated Press points out, elected officials enjoy at least seven legal exemptions that the rest of us do not:

Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s battle to ban members of Congress from using private information to enrich themselves scored a stunning victory on Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted 96-3 to pass the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act.

While the bill was widely hailed as an essential first step to begin repairing Congress’s abysmal approval ratings, three senators voted against the measure outlawing congressional insider trading.

One of the dissenters was Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM).  According to Sen. Bingaman, an amendment by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) to the STOCK Act would subject 300,000 federal worker to the bill’s 30 day public disclosure reporting requirements for investments.  Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) aides dispute this figure and say the amendment would only apply to 28,000 workers.  Still, according to the New Mexico Democrat:

I can’t support a bill that places unreasonable and burdensome reporting requirements on over 300,000 federal workers.

Also voting against the STOCK Act was Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).  Sen. Coburn said his opposition to banning members of Congress from engaging in the kinds of insider trading revealed in Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, and the much-discussed 60 Minutes investigation his book sparked, is that he is not convinced any such instances of insider trading even exist.

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On Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) fired a frontal assault on the Obama Administration when he took to the floor of the Senate to offer a series of amendments to the congressional insider trading bill known as the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act designed to “bring an end to the revolving door between federal employees and companies lobbying for federal funding or loans,” reads a press release from Sen. Paul’s office.

In his Senate speech, Sen. Paul singled out the Obama Administration’s approval of billions of dollars of so-called green energy loans and grants, 80 percent of which went to companies connected to or owned by President Obama’s fundraisers, supporters, or bundlers:

Currently there are some large donors that have been giving to this Administration who have profited enormously and disproportionately.

This will allow this bill to apply to the Administration, and I don’t believe people who are multimillionaires and billionaires should use the apparatus of government as was used in the loans that were given to Solyndra by someone who is profiting off of their relationship and ties to the President, profiting off of people who used to work for these companies now, who are now employed in the administration and using these connections to get taxpayer money to go to private individuals.

This is wrong and this should stop.

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On Tuesday, the New York Republican State Committee issued a press release blasting Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) for cosponsoring a ban on insider trading when her husband shorted housing stocks 34 times and made a “killing” during a period when she was “privy to inside information.”

The New York GOP press release reads in part:

When New York’s junior senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-WFP) was a member of Congress – and privy to inside information on a plethora of topics – her husband “shorted” housing stocks at least 34 times , making a financial killing for the couple, as millions of Americans saw the value of their homes abruptly plummet. The Gillibrand’s timing in betting against the housing market was conspicuously perfect, the New York State Republican Party today noted.

Now, Senator Gillbrand is purporting to be a champion of reform against “insider trading” among members of Congress – using the issue to raise money for her re-election campaign.

A May 2010 article published by the Wall Street Journal confirmed that Sen. Gillibrand’s husband, Jonathan Gillibrand, did execute more than 250 transactions in options in 2008:

Almost all the trades were in put options, which convey the right to sell a stock or other instrument at a given price until a given date. At least 34 times, Mr. Gillibrand bought puts on stocks of home builders, including Beazer Homes USA Inc., Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., Meritage Homes Corp. and Ryland Group Inc. These were bets the builder stocks would fall; if they did, the puts’ value would rise.

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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)released a study telling Americans if they want a raise, they should go work for the federal government, because federal workers are compensated much better than those in the private sector. The CBO did an apples to apples comparison of federal and private sector employee salaries and benefits from 2005-2010. The compared workers who were similar in the following characteristics:

• Level of education
• Years of work experience a
• Occupation
• Employer’s size,
• Geographic location (region of the country and urban or rural location)
• Demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, immigration status, and citizenship).

…and what they found was staggering.

Salary:

• Federal civilian workers with no more than a high school education earned about 21 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector.

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Democrats controlled all three branches of government for the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency and did nothing to advance congressional insider trading reform. Indeed, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have been cited as among Congress’s worst abusers of using nonpublic information to influence their private stock trades. And until his State of the Union speech last week, President Obama had said nothing publicly about the issue–ever.

But now, in the wake of Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestselling insider trading expose, Throw Them All Out, and the 60 Minutes report the book sparked, Mr. Obama and his campaign team have begun co-opting the insider trading issue, first in Mr. Obama’s State of the Union speech and now in a new campaign email blasting House Republicans for inaction on the issue and praising the Democratic leadership of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate.

The Obama-Biden email, with a subject line titled “This isn’t already illegal? Email from O’camp,” reads:

Right now, members of Congress can make personal investment decisions based on confidential information they get in the course of regulating industries and doing their work.

It’s kind of unbelievable that this isn’t already illegal. President Obama wants to make it illegal once and for all — no one should profit from inside information about the very businesses they’re supposed to be regulating.

Today, the Democratic leadership in the Senate voted to move forward on a bill to extend to Congress the same strict rules that apply to anyone else whose job gives them access to sensitive information about businesses. This legislation is expected to pass the Senate with bipartisan support later this week.

But Republicans in the House have yet to move on it.

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In the wake of Monday’s bipartisan 92-3 Senate vote to take up legislation that would ban members of Congress and their staffs from profiting from the use of nonpublic information when investing, freshman Congressman Sean Duffy (R-WI) believes the much-discussed STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act contains significant flaws that render the measure a largely symbolic gesture.

“The truth is, there are loopholes in that bill [the STOCK Act] you can drive a truck through,” said Rep. Duffy in an interview with Big Government.

A far better solution, says Rep. Duffy, would be to pass the bill he has introduced known as the RESTRICT (Restoring Ethical Standards, Transparency, and Responsibility in Congressional Trading) Act, which has been endorsed by the person responsible for spearheading insider trading reform, Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out.

The RESTRICT Act’s strength, say supporters, lies in its simplicity: the bill would require all members of Congress to either place their assets in a blind trust or submit to a three-day public disclosure requirement for any and all investments.

Rep. Duffy believes that the RESTRICT Act’s straightforward approach solves at least three significant weaknesses found in the STOCK Act.

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