Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act

[Atreus21]

What we need to abolish is human nature, apparently.

 

[SMOGZINN]

To insist that someone who's a major corporate executive or company founder

Perhaps what we really need is less corporate executive or company founder in congress and more people that actually care about this country because they know they will have to live here.

Personally, I can't wait to hear the arguments against it.

This is what I was talking about earlier on why I thought the timing made it a throwaway. The argument is going to be 'We are tabeling this to focus on budget negotiations at this time' then in a few months when the budget cycle is over it will have been forgotten.

If you want this to go anywhere you need to watch for that to happen, and then write your representatives as soon as a budget is passed and tell them to take it back up.

 

[woolfe9998]

General investment funds would be impossible to outlaw. The entire premise of outlawing stock ownership seems to come from someone who has never owned stock before and thinks it's somehow evil. To insist that someone who's a major corporate executive or company founder who is considering a job with the government needs to completely divest of that stock holding (and thus incurring the tax burdens, loss of voting rights, and potentially a huge realized loss on the value of the stock by selling it at that moment), and do so for the "privilege" of taking a huge pay cut to serve as the Deputy Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of Toilet Cleaning, is quite frankly someone who has huge blinders on.

Are you actually claiming that it doesn't matter if a public servant holds stock in a company whose bottom line is directly affected by their behavior while in office? Stock ownership in and of itself isn't "evil." That's a gigantic straw man. It is, rather, a conflict of interests in certain situations.

You seem concerned that corporate brass won't have enough incentive for government service. I'm not. Their incentive is supposed to be a genuine desire to serve, though in actuality, it's probably power, fame and recognition for someone who has already made his or her fortune. If someone already worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars has insufficient incentive for public service because they had to pay taxes or lost some stock value, that is not someone we want or need in public service.

 

[realibrad]

Are you actually claiming that it doesn't matter if a public servant holds stock in a company whose bottom line is directly affected by their behavior while in office? Stock ownership in and of itself isn't "evil." That's a gigantic straw man. It is, rather, a conflict of interests in certain situations.

You seem concerned that corporate brass won't have enough incentive for government service. I'm not. Their incentive is supposed to be a genuine desire to serve, though in actuality, it's probably power, fame and recognition for someone who has already made his or her fortune. If someone already worth hundreds of millions to billions of dollars has insufficient incentive for public service because they had to pay taxes or lost some stock value, that is not someone we want or need in public service.

How much benefit should someone get from laws past before it is wrong? For example, if someone had an index fund and passed a law that made the entire market go up, is that wrong? What if its an index fund for a specific sector, and the law helps that sector? What if you own a car dealership and you pass a law that promotes more auto sales?

 

[woolfe9998]

How much benefit should someone get from laws past before it is wrong? For example, if someone had an index fund and passed a law that made the entire market go up, is that wrong? What if its an index fund for a specific sector, and the law helps that sector? What if you own a car dealership and you pass a law that promotes more auto sales?

Before I answer you, let's be clear that you're addressing a different issue than what is under discussion here. We're talking about a bill which attempts to prevent conflicts of interest from arising in the first place. You're asking me whether we call something "wrong" in one situation or another. The problem with this entire line of inquiry is that whether something is "wrong" depends on intent. Which provides a short and simple answer to your question: it's wrong whenever private financial gain is the primary motive behind the policy undertaken, regardless of the specifics, meaning that any of your examples could be wrong or not wrong in the individual case.

Yet this intent is difficult to impossible to prove. A person could financially benefit from a policy they enact but that might be incidental to their purpose of trying to promote the general public interest. Or not.

Except in a rare case where a policy benefits only one specific company that the person in question has an interest in, it's nigh impossible to ever prove the bad intent. Which is precisely why this is a bill about prevention of conflict of interest situations, rather than one which imposes penalties for unethical behavior after the fact. The way you've framed your questions suggests you may be erroneously assuming that the things this bill seeks to prohibit are situations which are unethical by definition. It is not. Stock ownership while in office isn't unethical per se. Rather, it creates a situation where one is tempted to act unethically.

Accordingly, I will address your specific scenarios through the rubric of what red flag situations it makes sense to prevent, rather than your formulation of what is wrong or right. The idea behind a preventive bill like this is to identify the most likely situations where an official might be tempted to act for personal gain. This bill does a pretty good job of that.

It excludes general index funds, which makes sense. Ownership is too dilute in that circumstance to provide much temptation, and in a very real sense, everyone in the country, regardless of what they do or do not own, has at least a potential financial interest in the general state of the economy.

Common stock ownership and targeted fund ownership, yes, those are situations where there is too much incentive to act for private gain. It should be prohibited so that we don't have to later wring our hands and speculate as to whether the official in question acted with bad intent or not. And even where there was no bad motive, there is still an appearance of impropriety which undermines public trust in government.

Your car dealership example is also a red flag situation, but from the standpoint of federal law, we're best addressing it as stock ownership rather than saying that no business interests are permitted whatsoever. That is because stock ownership, which is generally ownership in big companies which do business nationally, is more likely to corrupt public policy at the federal level than does ownership in a small business.

That kind of issue is better addressed at the state, or even the local, level. I'm talking about situations where someone on the town counsel promotes an ordinance which would spend money to improve road access to only one business: his own. But you likely can't address it even there by prohibition of owning the business. Having to sell off a small business which may be your entire middle class livelihood in order to serve on a town counsel is a very different situation than requiring a billionaire to convert his stock into cash. So in the case of small business ownership, prevention is simply too harsh. Fortunately, on the local level the issue can be better addressed through punishment after the fact, because local laws are often very minute and specific in scope (like my road access example), and hence it can be easier to make the case for bad intent than it is with federal laws which are generally much broader in scope.

 

[Josephus312]

What we need to abolish is human nature, apparently.

No, what we need to abolish is corruption and greed in politics. There are plenty of venues for those people to act but they shouldn't be allowed to act like that in public office.

It's not like they are clergymen.

 

[zinfamous]

General investment funds would be impossible to outlaw. The entire premise of outlawing stock ownership seems to come from someone who has never owned stock before and thinks it's somehow evil. To insist that someone who's a major corporate executive or company founder who is considering a job with the government needs to completely divest of that stock holding (and thus incurring the tax burdens, loss of voting rights, and potentially a huge realized loss on the value of the stock by selling it at that moment), and do so for the "privilege" of taking a huge pay cut to serve as the Deputy Special Assistant to the Undersecretary of Toilet Cleaning, is quite frankly someone who has huge blinders on.

I think such people aren't qualified for/should not have those type of jobs anyway, so no loss.

 

[zinfamous]

Are you actually claiming that it doesn't matter if a public servant holds stock in a company whose bottom line is directly affected by their behavior while in office? Stock ownership in and of itself isn't "evil." That's a gigantic straw man. It is, rather, a conflict of interests in certain situations.

"The necessary and thoroughly proven need to regulate unrestrained capitalism by placing walls between large value assets and ownership of such assets by those in a position of public trust to directly influence and take sole advantage of the value of those assets = owning stocks is evil." You know, the obvious problems with boundless corruption and all.

/a retard.

 

[realibrad]

Before I answer you, let's be clear that you're addressing a different issue than what is under discussion here. We're talking about a bill which attempts to prevent conflicts of interest from arising in the first place. You're asking me whether we call something "wrong" in one situation or another. The problem with this entire line of inquiry is that whether something is "wrong" depends on intent. Which provides a short and simple answer to your question: it's wrong whenever private financial gain is the primary motive behind the policy undertaken, regardless of the specifics, meaning that any of your examples could be wrong or not wrong in the individual case.

Yet this intent is difficult to impossible to prove. A person could financially benefit from a policy they enact but that might be incidental to their purpose of trying to promote the general public interest. Or not.

Except in a rare case where a policy benefits only one specific company that the person in question has an interest in, it's nigh impossible to ever prove the bad intent. Which is precisely why this is a bill about prevention of conflict of interest situations, rather than one which imposes penalties for unethical behavior after the fact. The way you've framed your questions suggests you may be erroneously assuming that the things this bill seeks to prohibit are situations which are unethical by definition. It is not. Stock ownership while in office isn't unethical per se. Rather, it creates a situation where one is tempted to act unethically.

Accordingly, I will address your specific scenarios through the rubric of what red flag situations it makes sense to prevent, rather than your formulation of what is wrong or right. The idea behind a preventive bill like this is to identify the most likely situations where an official might be tempted to act for personal gain. This bill does a pretty good job of that.

It excludes general index funds, which makes sense. Ownership is too dilute in that circumstance to provide much temptation, and in a very real sense, everyone in the country, regardless of what they do or do not own, has at least a potential financial interest in the general state of the economy.

Common stock ownership and targeted fund ownership, yes, those are situations where there is too much incentive to act for private gain. It should be prohibited so that we don't have to later wring our hands and speculate as to whether the official in question acted with bad intent or not. And even where there was no bad motive, there is still an appearance of impropriety which undermines public trust in government.

Your car dealership example is also a red flag situation, but from the standpoint of federal law, we're best addressing it as stock ownership rather than saying that no business interests are permitted whatsoever. That is because stock ownership, which is generally ownership in big companies which do business nationally, is more likely to corrupt public policy at the federal level than does ownership in a small business.

That kind of issue is better addressed at the state, or even the local, level. I'm talking about situations where someone on the town counsel promotes an ordinance which would spend money to improve road access to only one business: his own. But you likely can't address it even there by prohibition of owning the business. Having to sell off a small business which may be your entire middle class livelihood in order to serve on a town counsel is a very different situation than requiring a billionaire to convert his stock into cash. So in the case of small business ownership, prevention is simply too harsh. Fortunately, on the local level the issue can be better addressed through punishment after the fact, because local laws are often very minute and specific in scope (like my road access example), and hence it can be easier to make the case for bad intent than it is with federal laws which are generally much broader in scope.

Thank you for your answer.

 

[woolfe9998]

Thank you for your answer.

That was a five word response to what was probably a 1000 word reply. Sorry, but the issue you raised is nuanced and required more than a brief response from me.

If you have a tendency to not read long posts, let me know what your length limit is so I won't waste time replying in cases where the reply has to be long to thoroughly address your questions or arguments.

 

[realibrad]

That was a five word response to what was probably a 1000 word reply. Sorry, but the issue you raised is nuanced and required more than a brief response from me.

If you have a tendency to not read long posts, let me know what your length limit is so I won't waste time replying in cases where the reply has to be long to thoroughly address your questions or arguments.

I read it. My question was to see how you answered the question. It was a well thought out response from you. There was no follow up because you answered my questions well enough that I did not have any more.

 

[woolfe9998]

I read it. My question was to see how you answered the question. It was a well thought out response from you. There was no follow up because you answered my questions well enough that I did not have any more.

Fair enough. That wasn't all clear from "thank you for answering" but it is now.