I’m pretty sure there isn’t a Boomer or Gen X-er who hasn’t ever been graced with the phrase, “Do what I say, not what I do,” is some form or another — mostly from parents, but occasionally from an employer.
Now, it’s become a regular implication from our fearless leaders.
Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission — the agency that decides how personal business transactions must be done — filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk for buying stock in Twitter. Their claim was that he notified the agency (that I can’t find listed in the Constitution anywhere) in the required amount of time that he bought a lot of Twitter stock.
The SEC’s rule is that if an investor crosses a 5 percent ownership line, they have 10 days to let the feds know. They also claim that he purchased the stock at an undervalued price, causing economic harm to the sellers.
The fact that a government agency is required to level a playing field that is designed to buy low sell high is ridiculous. The fact that it only focuses on conservatives for the application of its laws is equally suspicious.
The SEC also has law regarding insider trading, which can be summed up as people making investment decisions with information not available to the general public; however, only private citizens have been the focus of any investigations.
So how is it that elected officials, who make less that $200,000 per year (and complain about maintaining two households in order to do their jobs) can become millionaires during their tenure as legislators? As an example, Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont, has never had any job other that being an elected official, yet owns several homes.
Former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz pointed out, and claims to have information about, the insider trading going on in the houses of Congress. Yet not a peep has been heard from the SEC.
It’s not just that department, either. The IRS has done probes on individuals and organizations — all conservative, mind you — for tax-related matters, but when it was reported that noted Democrat Rev. Al Sharpton had more than $10 million in unpaid taxes, there wasn’t even a citation issued.
The feds even tried to exempt themselves from the Affordable Care Act recently.
Last week’s confirmation hearings into the Cabinet members selected by President-elect Trump brought even more of the hypocrisy to light, especially during the hearings for Attorney General candidate Pam Bondi. She was being peppered about becoming an attack dog for Trump to exact revenge for the lawfare perpetrated against him, which to my mind was a tacit acknowledgement that it was being done by the Biden administration.
Questioners demanded of Secretary of Defense candidate Pete Hegseth whether he would abide by his claim to not drink on the job, and it took the comments of Sen. Markwayne Mullin to point out the hypocrisy of that line of questioning, claiming many senators have done just that.
When governments fail to apply their own laws equally, when legislators look to change the rules to their benefit, it undermines the rule of law, as well as the idea behind representative government.
Tony Farkas is editor of the San Jacinto News-Times and Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.