Throw Them All Out
Peter Schweizer
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Amazon.com Review  ** Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Author Peter Schweizer**      **Q:When did you realize that so many insider trading and sweetheart land deals were going on?**  ** A:** When I first discovered that members of Congress are exempt from insider trading laws, I didn’t believe it. Then, when I started to look at their stock trades and compare them with what they were doing in office, I was stunned.  **Q: What do you mean by the "Permanent Political Class"?**  **A:** I think politics in Washington has become a business opportunity. Republicans and Democrats are not so different as you think. They work together to enrich themselves. They have designed the system to work so that they can make lots of money doing things that would get the rest of us sent to jail.  **Q: What do you mean by "honest graft"?**  **A:** When people think of politicians making money in Washington, they think of bribery and other illegal activities. That’s small potatoes. The *real* money is made by doing stuff that’s legal, including insider trading on the stock market and land deals.  **Q: Politicians are exempt from insider trading laws? You’re kidding, right?**  **A:** No. They write the rules, and guess what: the rules that apply to us don’t apply to them. By the way, they are also exempt from whistleblower laws. If you see your boss committing a financial crime, you can report them and you will be protected. You can’t be fired. But if your boss is a congressman? You’re toast. You are not protected.  **Q: What’s wrong with politicians who trade stock? Don’t we want them involved in the economy?**  ** A:** Yes, but they are doing exactly what corporate insiders get sent to jail for doing. It’s a double standard and it’s unfair. If Martha Stewart had been in the U.S. Senate, she would have been protected.   * * *   From the Inside Flap  Politicians often come into office with relatively modest assets. As investors, they regularly beat the market and sometimes beat the most rapacious hedge funds. Even without making stock trades, they often retire rich. How do they do it?     Billionaires and hedge fund managers often make well-timed investment decisions that anticipate events in Washington. How do they do it?     When such former politicians and federal appointees as Al Gore, Dan Quayle, and Madeleine Albright decide to launch investment funds, wealthy clients sign up. Why?     Welcome to the insidious world of crony capitalism.     Cronyism exists not so much as outright bribery, using suitcases full of cash, but rather in accepted insider routes to wealth: Members of Congress trade stocks based on privileged information. They insert earmarks into bills to improve their own real estate holdings. Campaign contributors receive billions in federal grants. Nobody goes to jail.     Crony capitalism transcends party lines and has become a big business hidden in plain sight. Using personal financial information, government databases, and a team of indefatigable researchers, Peter Schweizer shines a light into the darkest corners of the system — and offers ways to overcome it. It is time to clean house.