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Nancy Pelosi’s Recent Stock Purchase Raises Important Ethics Issues For All Of Congress
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 28: U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during a weekly news conference May 28, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Speaker Pelosi discussed various topics including the death of George Floyd after being detained by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the imposing of national security law to override Hong Kong’s autonomy by the Chinese government. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) Nancy Pelosi made some stock purchases last month that are raising eyebrows — and questions — about the ethics of Congresspeople buying and selling stocks. In December, Rep. Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, purchased 25 call options of Tesla stocks, along with a few other stock purchases. Why does this matter? Because under the Biden administration’s new agenda, with its focus on environmental protections and combating climate change, Pelosi could benefit financially from those political plans. President Joe Biden is currently encouraging the purchase of electric vehicles, and that could mean lifting the cap on sales, providing tax credits to buyers, and a potential program incentivizing people to trade in used vehicles to buy an electric one. Biden also announced on Monday that he would be replacing the entire fleet of 645,000 federal vehicles with electric ones. This could create a conflict of interest, as part of Pelosi’s job will include working to pass these environmental and clean energy initiatives — initiatives from which her family now stands to profit handsomely. According to the disclosure, Pelosi (or her husband, Paul, who runs a venture capital firm) purchased call options at a stake price of $500. Since the calls were bought last month, shares of Tesla have risen from $640.34 to over $890. The call options are now valued at $1.12; they were purchased for between $500,000 and $1 million. Questions of whether it’s ethical for members of Congress to buy and sell stock are not new. Last year, former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler was accused of insider trading and profiting off the coronavirus pandemic when she sold between $1.275 million and $3.1 million in stocks right after being briefed in January 2020 about the seriousness of the virus. In June of 2020, the investigation was dismissed by a Senate ethics panel. And since then, Loeffler lost her seat in the Senate to Democrat Raphael Warnock. Another former Georgia Senator, David Perdue, was also criticized for potentially unethical stock purchases during the six years he spent in Congress. The Republican was investigated by the Justice Department for his stock market activity, though no wrongdoing was found (he, too, lost his recent re-election campaign to a Democrat, Jon Ossoff). In the past, there has been legislation aimed at combating this. The STOCK Act, passed after the 2008 financial crisis, attempted to stop insider trading by making it illegal for government officials to trade stocks after receiving material or nonpublic information “derived” from their jobs, or information that they received while performing their jobs. In light of the Loeffler and Perdue activity, that bill has been re-examined and some people have argued it did not go far enough. “Given that Congress’ first obligation is to the American people and that serving that obligation so often requires having more knowledge than ordinary American investors, why should members of Congress be permitted to trade individual stocks at all?” Tyler Gellasch, a former Senate staffer who helped draft the STOCK Act, wrote last year in a piece for Politico. “Why should we expect them to even be capable when making business decisions of separating what they know as a result of their governmental job and what they might otherwise know as private individuals?” Other lawmakers agree, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley. Currently, there is proposed legislation that would ban individual stock purchases by members of Congress. “After nearly four years of the most corrupt president in American history and with U.S. senators brazenly trading stocks to profit off a raging pandemic, the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act is more urgent than ever,” Warren and other lawmakers said in a joint statement. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?Sarah Huckabee Sanders Is Running For OfficeWhy Biden Is Ending Private Prison ContractsMarjorie Taylor Greene Harassed Parkland Survivors
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US-China relationship is ‘arguably’ the most important one in the world for Washington, says new Secretary of State Antony Blinken
China looks set to remain a central feature of the United States’ foreign policy under Joe Biden, with newly appointed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying on Wednesday that Washington’s relationship with Beijing is “arguably the most important … that we have in the world”. Speaking at his first press conference since being confirmed in his new position by the Senate on Tuesday, Blinken highlighted areas, like climate change, in which it was important for the two nations to “try to work together” but did not gloss over the conflict that existed between them. “Increasingly, [the US-China] relationship has some adversarial aspects to it,” he said. “It also still has cooperative ones, and the cooperative ones are in areas where it’s in our mutual interest to try to work together, including manifestly on climate, where it’s in the interest of China and the interest of the United States and countries around the world to make concrete progress in combating global warming.”Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China. Despite Blinken putting China at the top of his list of key relationships, he has yet to speak to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. Within hours of his confirmation, Blinken called Japan’s Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, in which he stressed that cooperation between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo was essential to maintain “a free and open Indo-Pacific region”. Blinken’s two other calls immediately after his confirmation were to Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau. He called his counterparts in Britain, France and Germany on Wednesday. The quick outreach to the four countries underscores the pledges President Joe Biden has made during his election campaign and since he won the contest in November to “build coalitions of like-minded partners and allies”. “It makes sense diplomatically that Blinken’s first calls in Asia would be to Japan and South Korea, by way of reassuring those allies, but also by way of generating buy-in from these countries whose support in the region is crucial for dealing with China,” said Sarah Kreps, a government and law professor at Cornell University. US ambassador to UN nominee aims to counter China’s ‘authoritarian agenda’ “Blinken’s tone is consistent with the new tenor that the Biden administration is trying to herald both abroad and at home,” she said. “Abroad, it means trying to mend some of the alliances bruised after several years of an administration that was quick to rattle sabres and question alliances. “It may be necessary to talk a harder line if the emphasis on diplomatic overtures doesn’t succeed, but the more constructive tone we’re seeing now is a solid foundation for some of the tougher negotiations, such as on climate, that are to come.” Other incoming Biden administration officials signalled a hard line against Beijing earlier on Wednesday. Special presidential climate envoy John Kerry, for example, vowed that Washington would not compromise on outstanding issues with the Chinese government, such as human rights and intellectual property protection, in exchange for cooperation on efforts to arrest global warming. “We have serious differences with China on some very, very important issues,” Kerry told reporters in Washington. “The issues of theft of intellectual property and access to markets, the South China Sea. Run the list; we all know them. Those issues will never be traded for anything that has to do with climate.” Suga and Biden to strengthen US-Japan alliance, with eye on China As secretary of state under former president Barack Obama, Kerry founded the US-China Climate Change Working Group with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi and helped broker negotiations with Beijing that ultimately paved the way for the Paris climate agreement. Biden made rejoining the climate accord, which his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew from in 2017, one of his first tasks after taking his oath of office last week. However, leaders and lawmakers in both political parties in the US are mostly aligned on taking the Chinese government to task for its internment of Uygurs and other Muslim minorities in facilities described by Beijing’s critics as “concentration camps” and by Chinese officials as “re-education camps”. Blinken’s predecessor Mike Pompeo announced his determination that the situation constitutes genocide as one of his final acts this month before leaving his post. Pompeo sanctioned a number of high-ranking Chinese government officials for policies in Xinjiang in the last few months of his tenure. Last year, the Uygur Human Rights Policy Act – introduced by Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez – became law. As Blinken spoke on Wednesday, Rubio and Jeff Merkley, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reintroduced their Uygur Forced Labour Prevention Act, which would require US importers of Chinese goods to ensure that there is no forced labour involved in the manufacture of products they buy from the country. The Biden administration also appeared to move closer to Pompeo’s stance against Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer Huawei Technologies on Wednesday as White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the company’s products a national security threat. Huawei founder sees decentralised control as a way to beat US sanctions “Telecommunications equipment made by untrusted vendors, including Huawei, is a threat to the security of the US and our allies,” Psaki told White House reporters. “We’ll ensure that the American telecommunications networks do not use equipment from untrusted vendors and we’ll work with allies to secure their telecommunications networks.” Pompeo made his “Clean Network” initiative, which sought to curtail the influence of Chinese tech firms on the development of data networks around the world, a key part of his agenda. Britain, Sweden and several central and eastern European countries have plans to purge Chinese equipment from its 5G networks in the next seven years. Germany, France, Italy and other major European countries have moved to dissuade their companies from transacting with Huawei, and have placed tighter restrictions on its 5G networks that create obstacles for Huawei in those markets.More from South China Morning Post:Why is Isis silent on China’s Uygur Muslims, when US alleges genocide?Japan key to US plan to rally allies against China in Indo-Pacific, observers sayAntony Blinken confirmed as Joe Biden’s secretary of stateChina’s Xinjiang more than doubled its US exports in 2020, despite Trump’s sanctions and bansThis article US-China relationship is ‘arguably’ the most important one in the world for Washington, says new Secretary of State Antony Blinken first appeared on South China Morning PostFor the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2021.
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Deepika Padukone, Malaika Arora & Other Stars Join 'Bernie Sanders' Meme Fest
US Senator Bernie Sanders has taken social media by storm with his look at the US presidential inauguration ceremony, which has triggered a hilarious meme fest. Here's a look at the Bollywood stars who have shared Sanders memes on their social media.
