Thanks for the post, Chris! Hastert and Gingrich are definitely the worst speakers of my lifetime, but I didn’t know if you knew of anyone else who had defiled the office as much as either of those two.
Re: Nancy Pelosi’s wealth - It’s worth noting that Nancy Pelosi’s husband is an investment banker. While I agree with you 100% that members of congress and their immediate families shouldn’t be allowed to trade individual stocks, it’s not clear that trading on non-public information is how Nancy and Paul Pelosi became so wealthy. If you compare Pelosi’s financial disclosures for her first year in office and her last year in office using the midpoint estimate of her wealth (the disclosures are reported in dollar ranges, not actual dollar amounts), then her portfolio only outperformed the S&P 500 by a little more than a percentage point per year. It doesn’t seem outlandish to me that an investment banker’s portfolio would outperform a broad-based market index by one percentage point per year.
The estimates that have drawn a lot of eyes in the last several years have come from sources that aren’t acting in good faith. Sources like the Washington Free Beacon, which used the high number in the range of estimates for every asset class she reported, added them all together, and then pushed that information into the right wing media ecosphere.
To illustrate, if I owned between $1 - $10,000,000 in stocks, $1 - $10,000,000 in bonds, and $1 - $10,000,000 in real estate assets, then the WFP would’ve reported that I was worth $30,000,000, which is at least a dollar or two more than my actual net wealth.
Not saying the Pelosi family didn’t do something unethical, because I don’t have any evidence that they did or did not. But the people who made that a mainstream talking point aren’t serious or trustworthy people who have earned an assumption of good faith.
Maybe you know his secret real name, but the mainstream media is calling him Mike, not Matt, and Wiki says he is James Michael Johnson. He may owe money as James Michael.
Thanks for the post, Chris! Hastert and Gingrich are definitely the worst speakers of my lifetime, but I didn’t know if you knew of anyone else who had defiled the office as much as either of those two.
Re: Nancy Pelosi’s wealth - It’s worth noting that Nancy Pelosi’s husband is an investment banker. While I agree with you 100% that members of congress and their immediate families shouldn’t be allowed to trade individual stocks, it’s not clear that trading on non-public information is how Nancy and Paul Pelosi became so wealthy. If you compare Pelosi’s financial disclosures for her first year in office and her last year in office using the midpoint estimate of her wealth (the disclosures are reported in dollar ranges, not actual dollar amounts), then her portfolio only outperformed the S&P 500 by a little more than a percentage point per year. It doesn’t seem outlandish to me that an investment banker’s portfolio would outperform a broad-based market index by one percentage point per year.
The estimates that have drawn a lot of eyes in the last several years have come from sources that aren’t acting in good faith. Sources like the Washington Free Beacon, which used the high number in the range of estimates for every asset class she reported, added them all together, and then pushed that information into the right wing media ecosphere.
To illustrate, if I owned between $1 - $10,000,000 in stocks, $1 - $10,000,000 in bonds, and $1 - $10,000,000 in real estate assets, then the WFP would’ve reported that I was worth $30,000,000, which is at least a dollar or two more than my actual net wealth.
Not saying the Pelosi family didn’t do something unethical, because I don’t have any evidence that they did or did not. But the people who made that a mainstream talking point aren’t serious or trustworthy people who have earned an assumption of good faith.
Also, I'll need to do more research on Speakers. Hastert and Newt are low-hanging fruit.
I'm going to have to spend some time rereading this.
Wow I didn’t know any of that about Hastert. Good post!
The bounced check thing I didn't remember. He's an overall terrible person.
Maybe you know his secret real name, but the mainstream media is calling him Mike, not Matt, and Wiki says he is James Michael Johnson. He may owe money as James Michael.
Ha. Matt, Mark, Mike. Whatever. I have issued a correction at the bottom. Thanks, Uncle Jack!