(FL Senator) Rick Scott: Time to Permanently Ban Members of Congress From Lobbying

Oh No ,how will they become Millionaires for nothing

BLAST Act...I like the sound of that. I expect this to go no where. Congress is busy stopping a wall from going up on the southern border.

Now this is what I call common sense reforms.

They should ban former gov’t employees who still have a Security Clearance for lobbying too.

It would take an amendment to the constitution to prevent ex congressmen from lobbying Congress.

At first glance I thought it said ban them from lying.

But that would require cutting their tongues out so not much chance of it passing.

Y-e-e-e-s-s-s......and also include the rampant nepotism pols use to get filthy rich. Read on.

Joe Biden said he was consulting with his "family" whether to run. This is why.

During the Obama Admin, then-VP Joe Biden took his son Hunter on an official trip to China.
China then gave Hunter a billion dollar check....making it likely that Biden sold out the United States to China.

And what was Obama's cut of the deal?

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INSIDE THE SHADY PRIVATE EQUITY FUND OF BIDEN AND KERRY'S KIDS

EXCERPT--Peter Schweizer in his new book, “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends,” details a number of ethical violations on both sides of the political aisle. One example: the little-noticed private equity firm run by the sons of Democrats Joe Biden and John Kerry, as detailed in this exclusive first excerpt.

The two men became close while serving for several decades together in the US Senate. The two “often talked on matters of foreign policy,” says Jules Witcover in his Biden biography.So their sons going into business together in June 2009 was not exactly a bolt out of the blue. But with whom their sons cut lucrative deals while the elder two were steering the ship of state is more of a surprise.

What Hunter Biden, the son of America’s vice president, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (later to be secretary of state), were creating was an international private equity firm. It was anchored by the multi-million Heinz family alternative investment fund, Rosemont Capital. The new firm would be populated by political loyalists and positioned to strike profitable deals overseas with foreign governments and officials with whom the US government was negotiating.

Hunter Biden, Vice President Joe Biden’s youngest son, had gone through a series of jobs since graduating from Yale Law School in 1996, including the hedge-fund business. By the summer of 2009, the 39-year-old Hunter joined forces with the son of another powerful figure in American politics, Chris Heinz. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania had tragically died in a 1991 airplane crash when Chris was 18. Chris, his brothers, and his mother inherited a large chunk of the family’s vast ketchup fortune, including a network of investment funds and a Pennsylvania estate, among other properties. In May 1995, his mother, Teresa, married Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. That same year, Chris graduated from Yale, and then went on to get his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Joining them in the Rosemont venture was Devon Archer, a longtime Heinz and Kerry friend. The three friends established a series of related LLCs. The trunk of the tree was Rosemont Capital, the alternative investment fund of the Heinz Family Office. Rosemont Farm is the name of the Heinz family’s 90-acre estate outside Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania. The small fund grew quickly. According to an email revealed as part of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, Rosemont described themselves as “a $2.4 billion private equity firm co-owned by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz,” with Devon Archer as “Managing Partner.”The partners attached several branches to the Rosemont Capital trunk, including Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC, Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, and Rosemont Realty. Of the various deals in which these Rosemont entities were involved, one of the largest and most troubling concerns was Rosemont Seneca Partners.

Rather than set up shop in New York City, the financial capital of the world, Rosemont Seneca leased space in Washington, DC. They occupied an all-brick building on Wisconsin Avenue, the main thoroughfare of exclusive Georgetown. Their offices would be less than a mile from John and Teresa Kerry’s 23-room Georgetown mansion, and just two miles from both Joe Biden’s office in the White House and his residence at the Naval Observatory. In short, the Chinese government was literally funding a business that it co-owned along with the sons of two of America’s most powerful decision makers.

--SNIP--rest at source

Chris Heinz (left) with John Kerry at a campaign fundraiser,
April 16, 2004./ Dennis Van Tine

Hunter and Dad, Joe Biden.

SOURCE http://nypost.com/2018/03/15/inside-the-shady-private-equity-firm-run-by-kerry-and-bidens-kids/

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Hunter Biden also had connections to jailed hedge fund crook Allen Stanford
WSJ, By Susan Schmidt, Steve Stecklow and John R. Emshwiller, Feb. 24, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden's family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud.

The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens' Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors......--snip--rest at WSJ paywall.

SCOTUS would probably shoot this down

SCOTUS would probably shoot this down

More's the pity.

Speaking of politicians' hedge funds (above).......that reminds me......

Chelsea’s husband allegedly used Clinton Foundation ties to boost his failing Eaglevale hedge fund.
In a hacked email to Podesta, ex-Clinton aide Doug Band claims Marc Mezvinsky traded on family ties to help his fund.

By KENNETH P. VOGEL, Politico staff, 11/06/2016

Chelsea Clinton’s husband Marc Mezvinsky extended invitations to a Clinton Foundation poker event to rich Clinton supporters he was courting as investors in his hedge fund, and he also relied on a billionaire foundation donor to raise money for the fund, according to the WikiLeaks documents. They also assert that he had his wife Chelsea Clinton make calls to set up meetings with potential investors who support her family’s political and charitable endeavors.

The documents — a memo and an email — were written in late 2011 and early 2012, respectively, by ex-Clinton aide Doug Band. They were sent to family confidants including John Podesta, who is now serving as Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, and Cheryl Mills, who was Clinton’s State Department chief of staff. They were hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account and made public Sunday in the latest batch of Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks.

At the time Band wrote them, Mezvinsky, who had been an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, was working with two partners to raise capital to launch a hedge fund of their own called Eaglevale Partners. The word among rich Clinton backers on Wall Street was that the family would look favorably on investments in Eaglevale, a major Manhattan investor told POLITICO.

That sentiment seems to be corroborated by the newly released WikiLeaks, which could provide fodder for critics, including Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump, who argue that the Clintons have used their charitable foundation to try to enrich themselves. Band did not respond to requests for comment Sunday, nor did representatives for Chelsea Clinton or the Clinton Foundation, while an Eaglevale spokesman declined to comment or to make Mezvinsky available for comment.

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THE PODESTA EMAILS----In a Jan. 2012 email to Podesta, Mills and current Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Band wrote that Mezvinsky invited “several potential investors” for his hedge fund “and a few current business ones” to a foundation poker night fundraiser he had been planning. “I assume all are contributing to the foundation, which of course isn't the point,” Band wrote. “The entire plan of his has been to use this for his business.” In the same email, Band — referring to Chelsea Clinton by her initials — wrote that Mezvinsky “has CVC making some calls for him to get mtgs with some clinton people.” And, in a Nov. 2011 memo released Sunday, Band wrote that major Clinton Foundation donor Marc Lasry was “assisting Marc Mezvinsky – Chelsea Clinton Mezvinsky’s husband – in raising money for his new fund.”

Lasry, who also employed Chelsea Clinton as a chemical industry analyst at his own hedge fund Avenue Capital Group from late 2006 until 2008, declined to comment. But Band, in his Jan. 2012 email, suggested that Mezvinsky needed to lean on his wealthy and well-connected in-laws because he wasn’t having much luck generating investor interest in his hedge fund on his own. “His raising money for his own fund hasn't been going well,” wrote Band, who at the time was engaged in something of a turf war with Chelsea Clinton. She had accused Band, who had worked closely for years with Bill Clinton at the foundation and on for-profit ventures, of using his foundation role to supplement his money-making ventures.

--SNIP--

SOURCE https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/chelsea-clinton-foundation-marc-husband-230859

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SECY OF STATE HILLARY USED BENGHAZI/STATE DEPT FOR CHELSEA'S HUSBAND'S INVESTING BUSINESS

On Sept 15, in a telephone call with then-Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr, then-Secy Clinton emphatically portrayed the “stupid, very offensive film” as the root cause of the Benghazi violence.

“I have repeatedly, as has the President and other and murder of four Americans officials in our government, deplored not only the content of this stupid, very offensive film… But we have to exercise more self-discipline… otherwise we’ll be in a vicious downward circle against everyone who has ever felt offended, particularly on the internet….”

After referring to Benghazi, Secy Clinton’s telephone call with then-Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr also contained a curious reference to what the former secretary referred to as a “very successful investment visit led by my deputy Tom Nides,and on the very day they left, this series of incidents began to unfold.”

(FL Senator) Rick Scott: Time to Permanently Ban Members of Congress ~~From Lobbying~~

Fixed!

“Oh No ,how will they become Millionaires for nothing”...…….

It’s definitely not for NOTHING. Those people are the ones who need to be investigated. That new “Twit” AOC has already made a lot of bucks just by getting elected. She sure as hell isn’t smart enough to have earned the money.

Would that pesky old document, The Constitution, get in the way of this grandstanding?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"

Well that sounds good but you can’t do that. Its a free country. You can put a time limit after they leave office. Like 2-5 years. That would kill the incentive.

Lobbying today bears no resemblance whatsoever to petition for redress of grievances and is almost entirely concerned with targeted tax breaks and subsidies for the lobbyists’ clients and obtaining federal contracts.

An actual petition for redress of grievances would be perfectly legal, but that’s not what lobbyists do. They are vampires sucking blood out of the American people, nothing more.

But how is Trent Lott’s DC Lobbying Firm going to find corrupt
former Congress Critters for employees?

I spoke with Scott’s office shortly after he was sworn and one thing I said was “Don’t go Rubio on us..” So far he’s been on our side.

Or a scaffold.
Either is okay.

The problem, of course, is the rampant corruption inside the Beltway. This is nothing new, but the last time we tried to fix this problem we got the 17th Amendment and the cure is worse than the disease. When politicians leave the political stage and return to private citizen status, they have all the rights and freedom of private citizens and the rights of citizens to lobby their government is well established.

The real problem is not lobbying activity per se, but the influence that comes with enormous amounts of money flowing into the pockets of current politicians. The American people can solve that problem, but they will have to make it clear that any politician who resists such a move will be removed at the next election. That is unlikely to happen.