Georgia's millionaire senators won't drain the swamp. They are the swamp

[marmar]

Georgia's millionaire senators won't drain the swamp. They are the swamp
Moira Donegan

Obscene wealth, financial speculation, cavalier indifference – yet Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue claim their Democratic challengers are out of touch
Mon 21 Dec 2020 06.15 EST

(Guardian UK) Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the two Republican Senate incumbents from Georgia facing runoff elections on 5 January, are trying to nationalize their respective races. They have spent much of their time saying that if their opponents win, thereby giving Democrats a narrow majority in the senate, the country will be unrecognizably altered. They spin horror stories about a liberal dystopia, focusing particular ire on Loeffler’s Democratic challenger, a Black Atlanta pastor named the Rev Raphael Warnock, and mostly ignoring Perdue’s opponent, the white former investigative journalist Jon Ossoff. The incumbents have tried to mimic Donald Trump’s rhetoric, making poorly veiled racist overtures to the white grievance voters whose turnout they will need in order to keep their seats. Loeffler has gone on conservative media to scaremonger about Black Lives Matter; Perdue pulled a juvenile stunt at a Trump rally in which he pointedly and deliberately mispronounced Kamala Harris’ first name.

The high stakes of their races, as well as these kinds of theatrics from Loeffler and Perdue, have functioned, maybe intentionally, to distract from their own conduct in office, which has raised questions and sparked investigations from the justice department, congressional ethics authorities and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Loeffler and Perdue, two of the Senate’s richest members, have each been accused of using their office to get privileged information that they used to make advantageous stock trades. (The cases against Perdue and Loeffler were closed without charges this summer.)

The investigation was centered on stock trades made after the senators attended a closed-door Senate briefing on the coronavirus in January 2020 – before the severity of the coronavirus and its economic repercussions were clear to most Americans. Both Loeffler and Perdue made windfalls in financial transactions, dumping stocks that were damaged by the pandemic and investing in stocks that later soared in value as a result of new restrictions.

....(snip)....

Loeffler owns a private jet. Perdue lives in an island gated community. Both are trading vast sums of money in a financial market to which most Americans do not have anything like their access. These are not ordinary Georgians. If anything, Loeffler and Perdue’s financial antics have underscored the degree to which the Republican party is part of the very swamp that Donald Trump decries. The question now is whether voters will see them for what they really are. ..........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/21/georgia-kelly-loeffler-david-perdue-swamp

[3catwoman3]

1. They are the slimy, malodorous ooze...

...all the way at the bottom of the swamp, where everything is decomposing.

[The Roux Comes First]

2. A Little Sunshine and Some Oxygen Could Work Wonders on the Bilious Two