Nancy Pelosi, wanna getaway? Sure, the House Minority leader said, “God bless the 99 percent,” but perhaps she should have added, “God forbid, if I’ll ever vacation like them.”
The former House Speaker is enjoying her holiday at a posh Hawaiian resort in a suite that costs $10,000 a night, while most vacationing Americans don’t come close to spending that in a year.
Nancy Pelosi is certainly not a member of the 99% she so publicly admires, and she doesn’t want to be.
For the second Christmas in a row, Pelosi is staying at the luxurious Four Seasons Resort Hualalai at Historic Ka'upulehu in Kona, reports the Hawaii Reporter.
According to the report, Nancy Pelosi has been escorted by local police during her two visits, at a cost of $34,000 to local taxpayers each visit, i.e. the 99 percent.
Editor's Note: Is this the Video that will cost Pelosi Her Job? Watch it now.
By the way, Congresswoman Pelosi’s colleague and fellow Democrat, President Obama, who is enjoying a 17-day vacation in Hawaii, is also racking up the charges.
The Reporter says his trip is costing around 4 million of the 99 percent’s hard earned dollars.
So how rich is Nancy Pelosi? According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the San Francisco democrat is the ninth wealthiest member of Congress and has a colossal net worth of $196,299,990.
To quote Pelosi during a recent speech about economic inequality: "Something is wrong with this picture."
In fact, while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes (all of whom belong to the 99 percent Nancy Pelosi purportedly strives for) the men and women they elected to represent them in the United States Congress actually prospered, and not by just a little bit.
According to a New York Times analysis of financial disclosure, members of Congress got, on average, 15 percent richer during the past six years, while the average American’s net worth dropped 8 percent.
Members of Congress even fare better than the uber-wealthy.
While the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans has remained relatively unchanged since 2004, the net worth of lawmakers has enjoyed double-digit improvement, the Times reports.
So, what is the cause of this tremendous disparity?
If you ask Steve Kroft of CBS’s ‘60 Minutes,’ he’ll say one of the reasons is because of the lawmakers “legal” access to insider information.
Based on information provided by the conservative Hoover Institution, elected officials, like Pelosi, are exempt from insider trading laws – the same laws that would put any other citizen in prison.
Even if they are a member of the Pelosi’s favored 99 percent.
As it relates to elected officials – this secret information ranges from timely details on lucrative federal contracts to legislation that can cause companies’ stocks to rise and fall dramatically.
How do they get away with it? Simply put, lawmakers have exempted themselves from the laws that govern every other citizen.
‘60 Minutes’ reported that Pelosi and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs (initial public offerings) while having access to information directly relating to the companies involved. One of those came in 2008, from Visa, just as a troublesome piece of legislation that would have hurt credit card companies, began making its way through the House.
“Undisturbed by a potential conflict of interest Pelosi and her husband purchased 5,000 shares of Visa at the initial price of $44 dollars.
Two days later it was trading at $64. The credit card legislation never made it to the floor of the House,” 60 Minutes" reported.
The Hoover Institution’s Peter Schweizer stressed that what Pelosi did was absolutely, 100 percent legal.
“There are all sorts of forms of honest grafts that congressmen engage in that allow them to become very, very wealthy.
So it's not illegal, but I think it's highly unethical, I think it's highly offensive, and wrong,” he told Kroft.
Following the “60 Minutes” report, Pelosi’s office issued a statement saying, “It is very troubling that ‘60 Minutes’ would base their reporting off of an already-discredited conservative author who has made a career out of attacking Democrats.”
Editor's Note: Is this the Video that will cost Pelosi Her Job? Watch it now.