Pelosi's Continued Ethical Deficiencies

Despite her 2006 promise to run the 'most ethical' Congress in history, Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appears to be falling flat.

First, Ray Robison reports that Pelosi appears to be directly trading benefits to a company in which she owns stock for campaign contributions:

The year 2007 kicked off with expectations of good market news for the California-based biotech firm. It was expected to surge 27 percent on its share value that year according to analysts with Thompson Financial. Instead, it did just the opposite, beginning a sharp tumble down after just the first few weeks into the year.

After falling from the mid seventies to the mid fifties, the stock started to get back on its feet. Until May of 2007, that is, when Medicare announced it was considering new restrictions on the use of anemia treatment drugs made by Amgen for its own sales, and for Johnson & Johnson to market under a different product name.

Amgen was sweating the new restrictions, but when Medicare made their final decision, most of those restrictions had evaporated. Of course, it was probably in no small part because a big location of Amgen was in Pelosi's district, and Pelosi's former policy adviser worked for Amgen. Oh, and Pelosi owns half a million dollars worth of Amgen stock. Coincidentally, Pelosi received a major campaign donation the week before the Medicare decision came out. Hmmm...

In the scheme of things, a few tens of thousands of dollars in donations is not so much, nor is the mere fraction of a million dollar investment a big deal to the seriously wealthy Pelosis, but our public trust is priceless. So when we see a circumstance in which the government is planning to restrict government purchasing, and then we all of a sudden find anomalous donations to a politicians' campaign, and then we see that politician in charge empower the resurrection of a bill that will counter the effect of the restrictions, it at least raises the question of a quid-pro-quo, doesn't it?

You may be thinking that this isn't proof. True, but...

Appearances do matter.

In 1999, Congressman Tom Delay was reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for "participation in and facilitation of an energy company golf fundraiser". The ethics panel determined that at the very least his actions "created an appearance that donors were being provided special access to you regarding the then-pending energy legislation."

Did Delay even own stock?

After that, Delay stepped down from his leadership position and eventually left office.

This invisible handshake illustrates Pelosi's back room ethical problems, but it gets even more obvious than that.

Michelle Malkin reports on the latest attempt by the House Democrats to steal a vote (get the full story of the first attempt here, here, and here). Excerpts [emphasis mine]:

After a dramatic and controversial vote that included charges that Democrats broke their own rules, the House approved the creation of a new “Office of Congressional Ethics” Tuesday night. It marks the biggest change in House ethics rules in more than a decade: For the first time, non-members will be involved internally in reviewing the activities of sitting lawmakers and staff.

Republicans, backed by 18 Democrats, thought they had won a parliamentary vote prior to consideration of the new ethics office, a victory that would have derailed the proposal. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democratic leadership held the vote open for 16 minutes beyond the alloted 15-minute deadline and, in that period, convinced several Democrats to switch their votes. The final vote on the parliamentary procedure was 207-206. The Democrats who changed their votes were Reps. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), G.K Butterfield (N.C.), Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.) and Bart Stupak (Mich.), according to Democratic and GOP members and aides.

Once again, this is the Democrat party in action: lying, cheating, and stealing votes on the floor of the House. On top of that, given that these actions are public record, they did them in full view of the American public, so that means they think that American voters are either too stupid to figure out their duplicity or too ignorant to find out.

Either way, it is utterly shameful.

So, is Nancy Pelosi running the 'most ethical' Congress in history? Quite the opposite! But hey, that's par for the course, just one more lie.

There's my two cents.