Reply #3: The newspaper makes it look like a huge conflict of interest. [View All]

[Igel]

That's in the newspaper's interest.

The question is, Is there a conflict of interest?

Take the wording: "longstanding family investments" by Kerry. What does that mean? Longstanding investments by Kerry? Or by his family, which would imply either his Kerry relatives or his Heinz wife. Now, we know that his wife keeps her money separate from his. Should she be forced to sell any holdings she has to make sure his hands look clean? Or what--he should be forced to abstain from voting or divorce her?

Then there's the collective investment of $6 to 14 million. Now, that's a rather wide spread. Presumably they're going through financial holdings statements where a range is indicated and then summing all the lows and all the highs. If so, there's a problem: The financial statements (a) aren't up to the minute, and (b) a number of congressfolk have their investments in some sort of blind trust, so if their holdings have changed neither the WP nor the congressperson in question would know. So their holdings might be far less or far more, and the least well informed would be the WP.

Still, the observation holds that the more Congress gets involved in details the more their holdings matter. There are other observations. For example, the more Congress has sway over the private sector the greater the private sector's motivation to try to gain sway over Congress.