James

Straight-shooting American 48/50 on Benning's moving target range: Veteran, Dad, Grandpa, Teamster, GenX Boy Scout. 🇺🇲🙏
Novice_Sarcasm = zero filter

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@TrumpDailyPosts @resist312 Congress and the federal bureaucracy it funda and hides behind

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. ActBlue just PLED THE 5TH and REFUSED to answer about getting foreign donations infiltrating US politics on behalf of Democrats

She wouldn't even refute getting RUSSIAN money! 🤯

ActBlue is a FRAUD group. Shut it down!

REP. JIM JORDAN: Your board chairman said ActBlue accepted up to 38 million contributions in 2024 that had the signs of foreign origin. How much fraud is too much fraud?

ACTBLUE: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.

JORDAN: How many foreign contributions did ActBlue accept?

ACTBLUE: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.

JORDAN: How much money did ActBlue accept from Russia?

ACTBLUE: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.

JORDAN: Why did your entire legal team quit? Your in-house legal team?

ACTBLUE: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.

JORDAN: Did your legal team quit because of reduced fraud standards?

ACTBLUE: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.

JORDAN: We won't keep you here all day, but let me just do one more. Did you weaken your fraud standards to help Democrats?

ACTBLUE: On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer the question pursuant to my Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.

Absolutely insane.

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@kate_p45 They cant hear you, might just as well save your breath. Senate Republicans hate America First just as much as Democrats —maybe even more.

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@grok @SholdonDaniels How do homeless people prove domicile for voting? How does the state track down homeless people to verify their domicile?
How many provisional ballots fail verification in a standard California election?

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@grok @SholdonDaniels What if a day or two after I voted in realized their was no future for me in California and returned to whence I came. Would i be in any legal jeopardy or eligible for any vote related charges or prosecution?

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@grok @SholdonDaniels Would it have to show a California id or just give the number

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@grok @SholdonDaniels @grok if I flew down to California intending to live there indefinitely, what documents do I need to same day register and vote in the California elections

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@ewarren So what are you all going to resign?

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@AngelFrank86681 @Hunter_Eagleman @grok Do you bitch then?

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@BuckatLarge1 @CynicalPublius @cruadin Wow, seriously? Bush, Rumsfeld and Kissinger are basically the things I did not like about the Reagan admin.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 JUST IN: Sen. John Kennedy GOES OFF on the Senate floor because $1.2 TRILLION was stolen from Medicaid

"Medicaid in California pays for bicycles, MUSIC LESSONS, art lessons...this money didn't just fall from heaven!"

"That's how we end up having $1.2 TRILLION over 10 years STOLEN from Medicaid."

CUT THEM OFF!

[Farm Girl Carrie 👩‍🌾 @FarmGirlCarrie]

This is what local accountability looks like:

In Festus, Missouri, a town of about 14,000 people, the city council quietly approved a $6 billion Ai data center to be built on 360 acres just north of Highway 67.

Residents say they were never properly heard. Meetings were held in private. Documents were released too late. A week after the approval, the town held a regular election. Voter turnout jumped 129 percent.

Every single council member who had voted yes lost in a landslide. A 70-year-old first-time candidate beat an 8-year incumbent by 40 percentage points.

Now a recall petition is circulating to remove the mayor as well. The lawsuit against the city is already filed.

Has your local government ever been held accountable like this? 🔥

[Rep. Wesley Hunt Press Office @RepWPH]

What we’ve learned from the radical left is:

Ten Commandments in schools, BAD.
Islamic pamphlets, GOOD.

Ten Commandments, BAD.
Free Qurans, GOOD.

Ten Commandments, BAD.
Sharia brochures, GOOD.

A free Bible display is controversial, but free Qurans and Shariah literature are treated like ‘cultural enrichment.’

The hypocrisy is STAGGERING.

Here’s how our schools should actually operate:

Math, yes.
Science, yes.
History, yes.
Reading, yes.

Religious indoctrination and foreign legal systems that conflict with American constitutional values?

Absolutely NOT.

Sharia law has no place in the United States of America, and it certainly has no place being promoted inside American schools.

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@WellsJorda89710 If the GOP and Dems in Congress are still doing everything they can to destroy America from within while enriching themselves, it won't matter who is president in 2029.

[Vince Langman @LangmanVince]

Whoever Spencer Pratt has putting together his commercials, every Republican running for office in the midterms needs to hire them today!

Here's another banger!👏

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@GuntherEagleman CNN and Van Jones are 20 years and 20 trillion dollars too late.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Spencer Pratt’s LA mayor ads are incredible.

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@BasedMikeLee @DataRepublican From where I sit it appears slightly more than half of Congressional Republicans are actually democrats in their heart and mind.

[James @Novice_Sarcasm]

@IndianaGPA I pushed one like that around the neighborhood and cut a lot of lawns when i was a kid.

Circa 1977-1985

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late.

The right stack is always taller.

On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN.

I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS.

The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881.

He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts."

I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes.

The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200.

I waived it.

I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness.

Let me show you what I processed this year.

January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%.

February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed.

March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file.

I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again.

In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not.

I want to tell you about the soldier again.

He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in.

In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on:

Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee.
Defense appropriations they voted on.
Trade policy they negotiated.
Pandemic response measures they drafted.
Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public.

None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012.

Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases.

My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that.

The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop.

She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed.

I want to tell you about the fine.

$200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk.

Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself.

On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office.

The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year.

The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million.

The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write.

He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million.

The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised.

In my field, we call this self-regulation.

The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate.

Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return.

I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process.

As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.