Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., dumped stock holdings worth millions ahead of the market plunge that began in February after they received briefings on the coronavirus, according to published reports Thursday.If you're worried about the state of the Senate should he resign, you need not be. Under NC law, if there is a vacancy in the Senate unexpectedly the governor does appoint his replacement, but...
Burr, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sold the stocks on Feb. 13, ProPublica reported, citing disclosure filings.
Loeffler began dumping shares Jan. 24, after a private briefing for senators from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institutes of Health, the Daily Beast reported.
Shares of the companies whose stocks she sold are down an average of 33%, since then, according to the report. Loeffler's sales totaled between $1,275,000 and $3,100,000, according to the report.
On Feb. 7, Burr wrote in an op-ed co-authored with Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., that “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration.”
Earlier Thursday, NPR reported that Burr offered a far more dire forecast in comments in late February to a private luncheon organized by the Tar Heel Circle.
He warned that travel restrictions, school closures and military involvement could all come to pass, as indeed they have.
(a) The replacement must be of the same party, and,
(b) Must be chosen from a list of three people selected by that party's leadership.
So there's really nothing to lose in pushing him out. It's all upside.
By the way, the other Senator who chose personal profit over warning the public about the dangers was the one that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp appointed instead of Doug Collins. Kemp's a skunk too, as we were just discussing, and here's evidence that skunks run in packs. Fortunately there is an actual election in Georgia,
Also, get rid of Kemp when you can. That's my advice.
UPDATE: In researching the Senate Special Election, I discovered that one of the candidates is a man I know personally, Richard Dien Winfield. Don't vote for him. He's a nice guy, but the kind of political philosopher who thinks that the Wise should rule over all of you, and assign guaranteed employement jobs that befit your talents as assessed by them, etc. He should continue teaching Hegel, which he is as good at as anyone in the world, and not move to D.C.
UPDATE: Ah. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the Senator appointed by Kemp, is married to -- wait for it -- the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. That explains why it seemed plausible to Kemp to appoint a non-native Georgian to a Senate seat. Everybody explained that in terms of 'trying to appeal to the white suburban female demographic' or 'trying to appeal to the large transplant population in Atlanta,' but it still seemed amazing that a recent transplant with no longstanding ties to the state who had never held any other political office would be appointed to the Senate. Now it makes perfect sense.
14 comments:
What a dirtbag.
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., dumped stock holdings worth millions ahead of the market plunge that began in February after they received briefings on the coronavirus, according to published reports Thursday.
Didn't I just talk about this?
Btw, Congress always does insider trading. Their official salaries are not... even relevant.
And what you need to pay attention to is who BUYS THE DIPS. It does not matter when they sell, although selling at that date is... pretty good and efficient.
You sell at ALL TIME HIGHS. And you BUY at ALL TIME LOWS. This is not 33% of difference. This is 133%, 233% of difference, compounded over time.
This is how the elites keep you human livestock as slaves, while you pay the IRS and your debt and believe you are free and secure and living conditions are great.
Would you ever agree to being taxed 33% of your income? But that's exactly what the current financial system does, although people don't seem to notice. Where is the money coming from? It is coming from the poor smucks investing in the stock market, that aren't independent traders.
Apparently Feinstein and Inhofe did something similar although they, like Loeffler, say they were not personally involved in any of the decisions to sell:
https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/richard-burr-kelly-loeffler-urged-to-resign-for-selling-stocks-after-coronavirus-briefing/
(First read about this at Instapundit: https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/362054/)
Anyone who did this is absolutely a dirtbag.
I'd like to see some actual evidence on this. So far, all we have is the claims of journalists. I have no more reason to believe them than I have to believe or dispute the statements of the Senators accused.
Anyone who did this is absolutely a dirtbag.
That's being generous to anyone who trades on inside information.
As far as coincidences go, I adjusted my investments in the first couple of weeks of the dot-com bust, and left the market altogether two weeks before the Panic of 2008 set in. The Senators get more scrutiny on this partly because as government personages, they should, but also simply because they're in the public's eye.
Eric Hines
The financial disclosure forms are a public record you can verify yourself, and it’s not like he denies it. All he denies is that he chose to sell based on inside information, claiming that his decision was based on public reports. Nobody else was selling wholesale at the same time, which he acknowledged by saying that his sales happened before ‘market volatility.’ Distrust of journalists is reasonable, but on this occasion the facts aren’t really in dispute.
Some of the facts are not in dispute. Others are not fact, but merely journalist claims: that these Senators acted in bad faith/on inside information.
The Senators's descriptions of how those trades came about also are on the record; the journalists' claims of their motives are carefully unsubstantiated. I have no more reason to believe them than I have to believe or dispute the statements of the Senators.
I'm still waiting for actual evidence of actual wrong-doing, which fortuitous timing, or intuitive timing, of trades is not. Especially when it's not done by the Senators involved, but by folks they've put in charge of their accounts.
Eric Hines
If you are talking about putting them in jail, of course they deserve to have wrongdoing proven beyond a reasonable doubt. If you are talking about demands that they step down, like any public officials they depend upon the trust and confidence of the public. Unlikely explanations for highly profitable actions taken while they told the public nothing useful (Burt told his donors something useful, but only after he’d secured his own position) are not credible. If they’ve lost the public trust, as they have and deserve to have, they should step down.
“If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit” doesn’t mean that I have also to believe that the Juice didn’t kill his wife. It just wasn’t proven to the jury’s satisfaction. I’ll let the courts see if they can be sent to prison, but they should definitely leave the Senate.
It’s not like the Kavanaugh matter either, where wild accusations with no evidence at all were being fielded. It’s rather instead like the Hunter Biden matter. At this point it’s clear they did it, and we are now just arguing about whether their reasoning and process were lawful. The system may protect them from prosecution or conviction, but that’s because the system itself is corrupt.
But the people won’t trust them now. Normally one shouldn’t trust a politician of course, least of all one successful enough to have become a Senator. Even more, though, when it looks for all the works like they put illegal profit over duty.
*the world
Half the sec is doing insider trading.
If they’ve lost the public trust, as they have and deserve to have, they should step down.
If they've lost the public trust, their public will fire them at the next election--a worthier result than merely letting them resign. Besides, resignation would smack of cowardice and/or of vindication of the charges.
Eric Hines
Burr at least will not face re-election; he’s retiring in 2022. So I expect he will do what you are describing as the brave thing, stay in his powerful position and suffer no consequences and then retire with the wealth. The toothless ethics commission might give him a wrist slap, but perhaps not even that.
This is how one gets to guillotines, this endless escape by the powerful from any consequences for even appalling actions.
"If you are talking about demands that they step down, like any public officials they depend upon the trust and confidence of the public."
Yes, but isn't it beholden unto us as citizens that we be sure about the accusations made in at least some fashion beyond mere accusation, even outside of courtrooms? There are plausible defenses here, or we should just ban public officials from the market altogether. Not sure I like that idea either.
No, it's not a duty of ours to hold officeholders to a better standard than 'we believe you are a scoundrel.' They serve at our pleasure, and can be removed at our pleasure, without them having any claim to having been wronged by us.
They can buy and sell whatever they want, as individuals. But when it plausibly appears that they did so based on secret information provided to them qua their role as official, to their private profit rather than for the good of the people, they are wrong.
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