The Bipartisan Ban on Congressional Stock Ownership Act

Facebook, Netflix, Google, Tesla, SpaceX, etc, pay their political bribes using stock market tricks.

You can see EXACTLY which scumbag politicians and which of their corrupt Silicon Valley financiers are dirty by watching to see which ones spend money to try to defeat this bill. It is RACKETEERING when government funds are hard-wired to just one tiny group of investors who all party at each other's houses. Want to see the proof? It is in the FINCEN, SEC, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan files that can be presented to any jury or Congressional investigation hearing.

The dirty political manipulators have something in common. They are almost all, ALSO, guilty of: Money Laundering; Sex Trafficking; Family Alcoholism; Political Bribery; Stock Market Manipulations; Hookers; Media Censorship; Misogyny; Dynastic Family Manipulations of Public Policy; Election Rigging; Search Engine Bias; Monopolies; Recession Causing Market Trusts; Racism; Brotopian Frat Boyism; Secret Offshore Shell Corporations; Venture Capital Black-Lists; Patent Thefts; Payola; Graft; Corrupt Lobbyists; Using Your Democracy As Their Play-Thing; Hacking; User Privacy Abuse; Insider Trading Bribes; Causing Teen Suicides; Public Shootings Incitement By Linking Facebook, Instagram, Google Shooter PR; Tracking Of Women Seeking Abortions; Patent and Trade Secret Infringement; Tracking Of Assurance Phone-Using Poor People; Harassment Of Consumers Filing Complaints Against T-Mobile; Black-Listing Of Customers And Service Cut-Offs; RICO Law Violations; Stock Market Payola To Public Officials; Profits-Over-Privacy-Safety; Anti-Trust Law Violations; Using, Or Supporting Fusion GPS - Black Cube -Types Of Reprisal Attacks and a hundred other illicit things.

United States Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) introducednew, bipartisan legislation to ban Members of Congress and their spouses from owning and trading stocks. The legislation is the first bipartisan proposal inthe Senate to prevent members of Congress from owning and trading stock. Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) areintroducing the bill in the House of Representatives.

“No one should ever have to wonder whether their Member of Congress is working for the public interest or their own financial interest. I’ve foughtfor years to root out corruption in Washington, and to ban federal officials from owning and trading individual stocks,” said Senator Warren. “With Senator Daines and this strong coalition, I’m proud to introduce the first bipartisanbill in the Senate on this critical issue, and now we have a real chance to get it done.”

“Congress is here to serve, not be served. The American people should have faith in that fact,” Senator Daines said. “Members shouldn’t be able to make legislative decisions or use their platform and influence to benefit themselves personally,which is why it should be no question that owning and trading stocks should be banned.  I’m glad to work across the aisle with Senator Warren on abipartisan compromise to help restore the American people’s faith in Congress and hold Members accountable to the folks they’re serving.”

“Washington has lost the trust of the American people. Allowing members of Congress to trade individual stocks can create the perception of corruption anda conflict of interest. I'm glad to join my colleagues in introducing this bipartisan legislation to help restore Americans' trust in democracy,” said Senator Blackburn.  

“There is an inherent conflict of interest for Members of Congress who have access to information impacting the stock market that is not available to thegeneral public. Legislators have access to information and create laws that can impact entire industries. These actions can have a significant influence onstock prices. This legislation will prevent potential conflicts of interest and strengthen public trust in our government,” said Senator Stabenow.

“Members of Congress were elected to serve the people, not their personal financial interests. But as long as members and spouses are allowed to hold andtrade stocks, we keep the door open to corruption—and that cannot stand. I'm proud to join Senator Warren and our colleagues to introduce this legislationtoday and take this essential step to raising the ethical standards of Congress. It's good policy, and it's simply the right thing to do," said Congresswoman Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

“I’m proud to introduce the bicameral Bipartisan Ban on Congressional Stock Ownership Act with Congresswoman Jayapal, Senator Daines, and Senator Warren. Banning insider trading by Membersof Congress is a critical step to restoring public confidence in our institutions and ensuring the interests of the American people come beforepersonal financial gain,” said Representative Rosendale. “It’s unacceptable that so many career politicians abuse their office to enrich themselves. Public servantsmust be held to a higher standard and our bill will help prevent such conflicts of interest.”

In important respects, the Bipartisan Ban on Congressional Stock Ownership Act goes beyond current proposals to ban stock trading, and additionally bans the ownership of individualstocks. Specifically, the legislation:

• Bans Members of Congress and their spouses from owning and trading individual stocks, bonds, commodities, futures, and other securities including an interest in a hedge fund, a derivative, an option or other complex investment vehicle. It does not ban common, widely held funds, such as mutual funds and ETFs, as long as those funds do not present a conflict of interest and are diversified.

• Allows a transition period for lawmakers to divest their holdings and come into compliance, including a similar period for newly elected Members starting when they’re sworn in.

• Establishes a civil penalty of up to $50,000 for each violation. The Department of Justice and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel would enforce the law.

• Includes a provision which allows deferral of taxation of gains on investments that Members of Congress and their spouses are forced to divest.

The legislation is endorsed by the Project On Government Oversight.

“Congress has for a long time failed to hold itself to the kinds of high ethical standards that the American people expect and deserve,” said Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project On Government Oversight. “Capitalizing on their privileged positions and their access to nonpublic information throughinappropriate stock trading is one glaring example of this problem. Recent examples of real or potential insider trading by members of Congress and theirspouses as well as reports of violations of disclosure laws meant to crack down on this behavior have made this issue even more pressing than usual. That iswhy Senator Warren and Senator Daines should be applauded for introducing a strong bill that would take a momentous first step toward cleaning up Congressby banning members of Congress and their spouses from owning stocks. POGO looks forward to working with the Senators and the rest of Congress to get thesereforms enacted swiftly.”

LAWS YOU NEED TO FORCE YOUR POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVES TO MAKE

These are the steps that the you, The Public, must demand to strengthen public integrity by eliminating corrupt financial conflicts in Congress.

Congress must be ordered to eliminate both the appearance and the potential for financial conflicts of interest. Americans must be confident that actions taken by public officials are intended to serve the public, and not those officials. These actions counter-act the actions taken by Administration staff and Department of Energy officials in illicit coordination with U.S. Senators.

We experienced all of the damages from each of the abuse-of-power issues listed below. Your public officials are being paid BRIBES through their family stock market holdings.

CUT THEM OFF - Demand that Congress make it a felony for any politician, judge or regulator to own stocks, or to let their family own stocks. If they want to get rich, they can go into another line of work.

If you can get these laws made, it will end 90% of American corruption. Politicians won’t allow these laws to be made because it will cut off their corruption. Thus: You have to force the politicians to make these laws and leverage them with investigations and recall elections.

These are the actions needed to resolve this corruption:

• Ban individual stock ownership by Members of Congress, Cabinet Secretaries, senior congressional staff, federal judges, White House staff and other senior agency officials while in office. Prohibit all government officials from holding or trading stock where its value might be influenced by their agency, department, or actions.

• Apply conflict of interest laws to the President and Vice President through the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, which would require the President and the Vice President to place conflicted assets, including businesses, into a blind trust to be sold off

• Require senior Department of Energy government officials, employees, contractors and White House staff to divest from privately-owned assets that could present conflicts, including large companies like Tesla, Google, Facebook, Sony, Netflix, etc., and commercial real estate.

• Make it a felony to not respond to a filing by a citizen within 48 hours. Former White House and Energy Department staff use 'stone-walling' to intentionally delay responses for a decade, or more.

• Apply ethics rules to all government employees, including unpaid White House staff and advisors.

• Require most executive branch employees to recuse from all issues that might financially benefit themselves or a previous employer or client from the preceding 4 years.

• Create conflict-free investment opportunities for federal officials with new investment accounts managed by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board and conflict-free mutual funds.

• Close and lock the Revolving Door between industry and government and stop tech companies from buying influence in the government or profiting off of the public service of any official.

• Lifetime ban on lobbying by Presidents, Vice Presidents, Members of Congress, federal judges, and Cabinet Secretaries; and, multi-year bans on all other federal employees from lobbying their former office, department, House of Congress, or agency after they leave government service until the end of the Administration, but at least for 2 years ( and at least 6 years for corporate lobbyists).

• Limit the ability of companies to buy influence through former government officials.

• Require income disclosures from former senior officials 4 years after federal employment.

• Prohibit companies from immediately hiring or paying any senior government official from an agency, department, or Congressional office recently lobbied by that company.

• Prohibit the world’s largest companies, banks, and monopolies (measured by annual revenue or market capitalization) from hiring or paying any former senior government official for 4 years after they leave government service.

• Limit the ability of companies to buy influence through current government employees.

• Prohibit current lobbyists from taking government jobs for 2 years after lobbying; 6 years for corporate lobbyists. Public, written waivers where such hiring is in the national interest are allowed for non-corporate lobbyists only.

• Prohibit corporate outlaws like Google, Tesla, Facebook, Linkedin, Netflix, Sony, etc., from working in government by banning the hiring of top corporate leaders whose companies were caught breaking federal law in the last 6 years.

• Prohibit contractor corruption by blocking federal contractor and licensee employees from working at the agency awarding the contract or license for 4 years.

• Ban “Golden Parachutes” that provide corporate bonuses to executives for federal service.

• Publicly expose all influence-peddling in Washington.

• Strengthen and expand the federal definition of a “lobbyist” to include all individuals paid to influence government.

• Create a new “corporate lobbyist” definition to identify individuals paid to influence government on behalf of for- profit entities and their front-groups.

• Radically expand disclosure of lobbyist activities and influence campaigns by requiring all lobbyists to disclose any specific bills, policies, and government actions they attempt to influence; any meetings with public officials; and any documents they provide to those officials.

• End Influence-Peddling by Foreign Actors such as that which occurred in the ENER1, Severstal, Solyndra and related scandals.

• Fire the Fed officials that own, trade and pump stocks using the Fed itself for profiteering.

• The most senior officials in the U.S. Government are the worshipers of Elon Musk, investor’s in Elon Musk’s companies and suppliers, deciders of the financing for Elon Musk, suppliers of staffing to Elon Musk, recipients of political campaign financing by Elon Musk and Musk’s covert Google And Facebook partnership, social friends of Elon Musk and the attackers of Elon Musk’s competitors. Make this a felony.

• Combat foreign influence in Washington by banning all foreign lobbying.

• End foreign lobbying by Americans by banning American lobbyists from accepting money from foreign governments, foreign individuals, and foreign  companies to influence United States public policy.

• Prohibit current lobbyists from taking government jobs for 2 years after lobbying; 6 years for corporate lobbyists. Public, written waivers where such hiring is in the national interest are allowed for non-corporate lobbyists only.

• End Legalized Lobbyist Bribery and stop lobbyists from trading money for government favors.

• Ban direct political donations from lobbyists to candidates or Members of Congress.

• End lobbyist contingency fees that allow lobbyists to be paid for a guaranteed policy outcome.

• End lobbyist gifts to the executive and legislative branch officials they lobby.

• Strengthen Congressional independence from lobbyists and end Washington’s dependence on
  lobbyists for "expertise" and information.

• Make congressional service sustainable by transitioning Congressional staff to competitive salaries that track other federal employees.

• Reinstate the nonpartisan Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to provide critical scientific and technological support to Members of Congress.

• Level the playing field between corporate lobbyists and government by taxing excessive lobbying beginning at $500,000 in annual lobbying expenditures, and use the proceeds to help finance Congressional mandated rule-making, fund the National Public Advocate, and finance Congressional support agencies.

• De-politicize the rulemaking process and increase transparency of industry efforts to influence federal agencies.

• Require individuals and corporations to disclose funding or editorial conflicts of interest in research submitted to agencies that is not publicly available in peer-reviewed publications.

• Prevent McKinsey-type sham research from undermining the public interest by requiring that studies that present conflicts of interest to undergo independent peer review to be considered in the rule-making process.

• Require agencies to justify withdrawn public interest rules via public, written explanations.

• Close loopholes exploited by powerful corporations like Google, Facebook, Tesla, Netflix, Sony, etc., to block public interest actions.

• Eliminate loopholes that allow corporations, like Tesla and Google, to tilt the rules in their favor and against the public interest.

• Restrict negotiated rule-making to stop industry from delaying or dominating the rule-making process by ending the practice of inviting industry to negotiate rules they have to follow.

• Restrict inter-agency review as a tool for corporate abuse by  banning informal review, establishing a maximum 45-day review period, and blocking closed -door industry lobbying at the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

• Limit abusive injunctions from rogue judges, like Jackson, et al, by ensuring that only Appeals Courts, not individual District Court judges , can temporarily block agencies from implementing final rules.

• Prevent hostile agencies from sham delays of implementation and enforcement by using the presence of litigation to postpone  the implementation of final rules.

• Empower the public to police agencies for corporate capture.

• Increase the ability of the public to make sure their interests are considered when agencies act.

• Create a new Office of the Public Advocate  empowered to assist the public in meaningfully engaging in the rule-making process across the federal government.

• Encourage enforcement by allowing private lawsuits from members of the public to hold agencies accountable for failing to complete rules or enforce the law, and to hold corporations accountable for breaking the rules.

• Inoculate government agencies against corporate capture such as Google undertook against the White House.

• Provide agencies with the tools and resources to implement strong rules that reflect the will of Congress and protect the public.

• Boost agency resources to level the playing field between corporate lobbyists and federal agencies by using the proceeds of the tax on excessive lobbying and the anti-corruption penalty fees to help finance Congress-mandated rule-making and facilitate decisions by agencies that are buried in an avalanche of lobbyist activity.

• Reform judicial review to prevent corporations from gaming the courts by requiring courts to presumptively defer to agency interpretations of laws and prohibiting courts from considering sham McKinsey studies and research excluded by agencies from the rule-making process.

• Reverse the Congressional Review Act provision banning related rules that prevent agencies from implementing the will of Congress based on Congress’ prior disapproval of a different, narrow rule on a similar topic.

• Improve judicial integrity and defend access to justice for all Americans.

• Strengthen Judicial Ethics Requirements.

• Enhance the integrity of the judicial branch by strengthening rules that prevent conflicts of interest.

• Ban individual stock ownership by federal judges.

• Expand rules prohibiting judges from accepting gifts or payments to attend private seminars from private individuals and corporations.

• Require ethical behavior by the Supreme Court by directing the Court to follow the Code of Conduct that binds all other federal judges.

• Boost the transparency of Federal Courts.

• Enhance public insight into the judicial process by increasing information about the process and reducing barriers to accessing information.

• Increase disclosure of non-judicial activity by federal judges by requiring the Judicial Conference to publicly post judges’ financial reports, recusal decisions, and speeches.

• Enhance public access to court activity by mandating that federal appellate courts live-stream, on the web, audio of their proceedings, making case information easily-accessible to the public free of charge, and requiring federal courts to share case assignment data in bulk.

• Eliminate barriers that restrict access to justice to all but the wealthiest individuals and companies.

• Reduce barriers that prevent individuals from having their case heard in court by restoring pleading standards that make it easier for individuals and businesses that have been harmed to make their case before a judge.

• Encourage diversity on the Federal Bench.

• Strengthen the integrity of the judicial branch by increasing the focus on personal and professional diversity of the federal bench.

• Create a single, new, and independent agency dedicated to enforcing federal ethics and anti-corruption laws.

• Support stronger ethics and public integrity laws with stronger enforcement.

• Establish the new, independent U.S. Office of Public Integrity, which will strengthen federal ethics enforcement with new investigative and disciplinary powers.

• Investigate potential violations by any individual or entity, including individuals and companies with new subpoena authority.

• Enforce the nation’s ethics laws by ordering corrective action, levying civil and administrative penalties, and referring egregious violations to the Justice Department for criminal arrest and enforcement.

• Receive and investigate ethics complaints from members of the public.

• Absorb the U.S. Office of Government Ethics as a new Government Ethics Division tasked with providing confidential advice to federal employees seeking ethics guidance.

• Consolidate anti-corruption and public integrity oversight over federal officials, including oversight of all agency Inspectors General, all ethics matters for White House staff and agency heads, and all waivers and recusals by senior government officials.

• Remain independent and protected from partisan politics through a single Director operating under strict selection, appointment, and removal criteria.

• Provide easy online access to key government ethics and transparency documents, including financial disclosures; lobbyist registrations; lobbyist disclosures of meetings and materials; and all ethics records, recusals, and waivers.

• Maintain a new government-wide Office of the Public Advocate, which would advocate for the public interest in executive branch rule-making.

• Enforce federal open records and FOIA requirements by maintaining the central FOIA website and working with the National Archives to require agencies to comply with FOIA.

• Strengthen legislative branch enforcement.

• Expand an independent and empowered ethics office insulated from congressional politics.

• Expand and empower the U.S. Office of Congressional Ethics, which will enforce the nation’s ethics laws in the Congress  and the entire Legislative Branch, including the U.S. Senate.

• Conduct investigations of potential violations of ethics laws and rules by Members of Congress and staff with new subpoena power.

• Refer criminal and civil violations to the Justice Department, the Office of Public Integrity, or other relevant state or federal law enforcement.

• Recommend disciplinary and corrective action to the House and Senate Ethics Committees.

• Boost transparency in government and fix Federal Open Records laws, public official and candidate tax disclosure.

• Disclose basic tax return information for candidates for federal elected office and current elected officials.

• Require the IRS to release tax returns for Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates from the previous 8 years and during each year in federal elected office.

• Require the IRS to release t ax returns for Congressional candidates from the previous 2 years and during each year in federal elected office.

• Require the IRS to release tax returns and other financial information of businesses owned by senior federal officials and candidates for federal office.

• Require the IRS to release tax filings for nonprofit organizations run by candidates for federal office.

• Disclose the Cash behind Washington Advocacy and Lobbying.

• Prevent special interests from using secret donations from corporations and billionaires to influence public policy  without disclosure.

• Require nonprofit organizations to list donors who bankrolled the production of any specific rule-making comment, congressional testimony, or lobbying material, and to reveal whether the donors reviewed or edited the document.

• Require individuals and corporations to disclose funding or editorial conflicts of interest in research submitted to agencies that is not publicly available in peer-reviewed publications.

• Prevent sham research, like that from DNC shill McKinsey Consulting, from undermining the public interest by requiring that studies that present conflicts of interest to independent peer review to be considered in the rule-making process.

• Improve the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

• Close the loopholes in our open records laws that allow federal officials to hide tech industry and Silicon Valley oligarch industry influence.

• Codify the default presumption of disclosure and affirmatively disclose records of public interest, including meeting agendas; government contracts; salaries; staff diversity; and reports to Congress.

• Require all agencies to use a central FOIA website that is searchable and has downloadable open records databases with  all open FOIA requests and all records disclosed through FOIA.

• Strengthen FOIA enforcement by limiting FOIA exemptions and loopholes, and by giving the National Archives the authority to overrule agency FOIA decisions and to compel disclosure.

• Extend FOIA to private-sector federal contractors, including private federal prisons and immigration detention centers, and require large federal contractors to disclose political spending.

• Make Congress more transparent by ending the corporate lobbyists leg up in the legislative process. The public deserves to know what Congress is up to and how lobbyists influence legislation.

• Require all congressional committees to immediately post online more information, including hearings and markup schedules, bill or amendments text, testimonies, documents entered into the hearing record, hearing transcripts, written witness answers, and hearing audio and video recordings.

• Require Members of Congress to post a link to their searchable voting record on their official websites.

• Require lobbyists to disclose when they lobby a specific congressional office; specific topics of visit; the official action being requested; and all documents provided to the office during the visit.

Do these seem like common-sense rules that should have already been in place? They are!

These anti-corruption rules have been blocked by your own elected officials because they work for themselves and not you!

You need to PUNISH any public official who does not put these changes into effect!

We are not asking for your money or your mailing list data. First: Simply put the logo at the top of his page (download it here) on all of your blogs, websites, social media, T-shirts and other visible locations. Next: only vote for candidates who promise to enact the platform goals, above, and stop any candidates who do not promise, in writing, to enact these goals.

That's it. It is that easy!

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News And Reports:

Report: Over 131 Federal Judges Broke The Law by Hearing Cases Where They Had A Financial Interest

Places Where You Can Research Ant-Corruption Tools:

http://www.majestic111.com
http://vcracket.weebly.com
https://www.transparency.org
https://www.judicialwatch.org
https://wikileaks.org
https://causeofaction.org
https://fusion4freedom.com/about-gcf/
http://peterschweizer.com/
http://globalinitiative.nethttps://fusion4freedom.com/the-green-corruption-files-archive/
https://propublica.org
https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
http://wearethenewmedia.com
http://ec.europa.eu/anti_fraud/index_en.html
http://gopacnetwork.org/
http://www.iaaca.org/News/
http://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas/Corruption/Corruption
http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/
http://www.traceinternational.org/
http://www.oge.gov/
https://ogc.commerce.gov/
https://anticorruptionact.org/
http://www.anticorruptionintl.org/
https://represent.us/
http://www.giaccentre.org/dealing_with_corruption.php
http://www.acfe.com/
https://www.oas.org/juridico/english/FightCur.html
https://www.opus.com/international-anti-corruption-day-businesses/
https://www.opengovpartnership.org/theme/anti-corruption
https://www.ethicalsystems.org/content/corruption
https://sunlightfoundation.com/
http://www.googletransparencyproject.org/
http://xyzcase.weebly.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelgate
https://www.opensecrets.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation
http://www.projectveritasaction.com