It is no secret the way I feel that there are too people making profits off of our total involvement in most of the world’s conflicts.

First there are all those lobbying firms from K Street but what about the Congress?

At least 50 U.S. lawmakers or members of their households are financially invested in companies that make military weapons and equipment—even as these firms “receive hundreds of billions of dollars annually from congressionally-crafted Pentagon appropriations legislation,” a report published Thursday revealed.

Sludge‘s David Moore analyzed 2023 financial disclosures and stock trades disclosed in other reports and found that “the total value of the federal lawmakers’ defense contractors stock holdings could be as much as $10.9 million.”

According to the report:

The spouse of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, holds between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of shares in each of Boeing and RTX, as well as holdings in two other defense manufacturers. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), another Defense Appropriations subcommittee member, holds up to $50,000 in the stock of Boeing, which received nearly $33 billion in defense contracts last year. On the Democratic side of the aisle, Sen. John Hickenlooper (Colo.) holds up to a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of stock in RTX…

The most widely held defense contractor stock among senators and representatives is Honeywell, an American company that makes sensors and guiding devices that are being used by the Israeli military in its airstrikes in Gaza. The second most commonly held defense stock by Congress is RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, the company that makes missiles for Israel’s Iron Dome, among other weapons systems.

All 13 senators whose households disclosed military stock holdings voted for the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, which, as Common Dreams reported, allocated a record $886.3 billion for the U.S. military while many lawmakers’ constituents struggled to meet their basic needs.

“It is an obvious conflict of interest when a member of Congress owns significant stock investments in a company and then votes to award the same company lucrative federal contracts,” Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, told Sludge.

“Whether or not the official action is taken for actual self-enrichment purposes is beside the point. There is at least an appearance of self-enrichment and that appearance is just as damaging to the integrity of Congress,” Holman added. “This type of conflict of interest is already banned for executive branch officials and so should be for Congress as well. The ETHICS Act would justly avoid that conflict of interest by prohibiting members of Congress and their spouses from owning stock investments altogether.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/members-of-congress-who-own-defense-stock?

A definite conflict of interests and yet life goes on like they are just fulfilling their job.

No one should be surprised just look at others in Congress that have the inside tract to money making opportunities that the rest of us do not have….like Pelosi, et al.

But not to worry these people will not do much to rein in their corruption…so they can make the obscene profits from continuing our funding and supplying of conflicts around the world.

It is good to be in Congress.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”