| THE BOOK WASHINGTON DOES NOT WANT YOU TO READ As Ben Franklin knew, ambition and avarice, the love of power and the love of money, “when united in view of the same object . . . have in many minds the most violent effects.” In Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer rips back the curtain to show how Washington has become Franklin’s worst nightmare, thanks to: Insider trading in Congress * Senator John Kerry regularly and aggressively traded health care stocks while helping write health care legislation * Congressman Spencer Bachus shorted the market in 2008 after receiving private briefings from Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson Legal legislative graft * Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi received insider IPO shares and bought millions more in Visa stock, and shortly thereafter she blocked four bills that would have harmed the company * Former Speaker Dennis Hastert used an earmark to pull off a multimillion-dollar land deal that helped make him rich. Favors to crony capitalists * Over $10 billion worth of stimulus grants and loans were directed to companies run or owned by members of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign National Finance Committee and his campaign-donor “bundlers.” For the rest of us, this is called insider trading, conflict of interest, and kickbacks. But for them, it’s completely legal. It’s time to end crony capitalism once and for all. |
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