Back during the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession, Richard Burr took the knowledge he got from being a Senator to tell his wife to pull as much money from their account as possible. He earned the nickname “Bank Run” Burr.
Now, he’s at it again, but on a much larger scale. After Senators got a briefing on the coronavirus and its likely impact, Burr dumped $1.6 million in stock just before the market crashed. At the same time he was covering his own financial ass, he was telling the country that Trump had the situation under control. Even Tucker Carlson is calling for him to resign.
When the dust clears, Burr will end up the face of the GOP “Greed is Good” ethos that began with Ronald Reagan. The party applauded people for exercising aggressive self-interest, putting the individual above the community. Richard Burr is a kind of John Galt of the Senate, looking out for himself and rising from lawnmower salesman to millionaire while holding a job that pays $174,000 per year.
It’s not just Burr and his greed that are on display. It’s the underlying philosophy of the free marketeers that is completely unsuited to deal with any national crisis but especially this one. As the government forces entire industries to shutter, leaving millions unemployed, the supply-side economics team of Art Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Steve Forbes urged Trump, “Don’t expand welfare and other income redistribution benefits like paid leave and unemployment benefits that will inhibit growth and discourage work.”
Work where? It’s hard to know if these people are just clueless or callous. I suspect it’s a combination of the two. Forbes is a trust-fund baby who wouldn’t know hard work if it hit him over the head and Laffer and Moore are ideologues safely entrenched in right-wing think tanks funded by big corporations. Regardless, they are the intellectual leaders of the Reagan Revolution that still defines much of the GOP.
Now, more than any time since the Great Depression, we need to come together as a community. Self-sacrifice, not self-interest, is the order of the day. We must figure out how to support the country when we are unable to produce goods or deliver services. For at least a period of time, the free market will prove woefully inadequate to address the task at hand. We have to survive long enough until the market can work again.
With hindsight, Burr and the family of grifters in the White House are the logical conclusion of the free market extremism that’s dominated the Republican Party since the 1980s. They’re just putting their own self-interests over the interests of society at large. After 40 years of rewarding those who look after themselves, the haves have grown so superior to the have-nots, that they’ve rigged the whole system in their favor. Who can blame Burr if he can’t tell the difference between self-interest and insider trading? Just look at the White House. Everybody’s doing it.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
I appreciated seeing your Burr article completely call him out. He is hoping all this we are going through will help him slither away once again. Please keep the pressure on his misdeeds. Senator greediness needs to know we won’t forget this .
These so-called blind trusts are a scam created for politicians to allow them to deny making a profit from their government service. When the trust is created, the politician can define what areas it can invest. So, it would follow, the politician can vote for legislation which can enrich the areas the trust can invest.
What is needed is legislation, designed to prohibit a politician from voting on legislation where there is even a remote possibility, they may stand to benefit.
It seems like every third email I got today was from somebody denouncing Burr and Loeffler and demanding their resignations. And all I could think was “where have you guys been for the last 18 years??” This is not news to anyone who has had even a passing interest in Burr’s career. He has ALWAYS been crooked, and self serving. Kind when the STOCK Act was introduced for the first time, his response when asked why he voted against it was “insider trading is already illegal”. So he has no excuse for this. He knew then, and he knows now that he has broken the law, and there is almost nothing that would give me more satisfaction than seeing him perp walked right into Butner. And if it looks like he’s going down, to you can bet that Tangerine Cthulhu will thrown him under the bus faster than you can say “Kushner”.
Thank you! Once news broke on Senator Burr, I awaited for your comments. You did not disappoint.
Senators and members of the U.S. House should not be allowed to hold stocks while in office or the investments should be placed in a blind trust. For crying out loud, Jimmy Carter felt compelled to divest himself of his peanut farm once elected president. Our country and our politics have fallen deeply since those days that look so quaint in hindsight.
I don’t expect elected or even appointed public servants to be candidates for the College of Cardinals. But I do expect them to conduct themselves with fair dealing, even sacrifice, especially when their fellow citizens are in the economic soup.
Most people of this generation don’t remember Bernard Baruch. He was a South Carolinian from a modest background who rose to affluence on Wall Street and ended up serving as an advisor to six or seven U.S. presidents. I recall his line: “In every crisis, there is an opportunity. ”
In the coronavirus crisis, I hope one of the opportunities will be for all of us, especially our elected leaders, to find or rediscover a moral compass.
Burr’s greed is one thing. Utter indifference to the health and safety of his fellow citizens is another matter altogether. What a slug of a senator.