How Did Harry Reid Get Rich?

Spread the love

Loading

Betsy Woodruff @ NRO:

Try this thought experiment. Imagine that someone grows up in poverty, works his way through law school by holding the night shift as a Capitol Hill policeman, and spends all but two years of his career as a public servant. Now imagine that this person’s current salary — and he’s at the top of his game — is $193,400. You probably wouldn’t expect him to have millions in stocks, bonds, and real estate.

But, surprise, he does, if he’s our Senate majority leader, whose net worth is between 3 and 10 million dollars, according to OpenSecrets.org. When Harry Reid entered the Nevada legislature in 1982, his net worth was listed as between $1 million and $1.5 million “or more,” according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. So, since inquiring minds inquire, let’s try to figure out how Reid’s career in public service ended up being so lucrative. He hasn’t released his tax returns, which makes this an imperfect science, but looking at a few of his investments helps to show how he amassed his wealth.

In 2004, the senator made $700,000 off a land deal that was, to say the least, unorthodox. It started in 1998 when he bought a parcel of land with attorney Jay Brown, a close friend whose name has surfaced multiple times in organized-crime investigations and whom one retired FBI agent described as “always a person of interest.” Three years after the purchase, Reid transferred his portion of the property to Patrick Lane LLC, a holding company Brown controlled. But Reid kept putting the property on his financial disclosures, and when the company sold it in 2004, he profited from the deal — a deal on land that he didn’t technically own and that had nearly tripled in value in six years.

When his 2010 challenger Sharron Angleasked him in a debate how he had become so wealthy, he said, “I did a very good job investing.” Did he ever. On December 20, 2005, he invested$50,000 to $100,000 in the Dow Jones U.S. Energy Sector Fund (IYE), which closed that day at $29.15. The companies whose shares it held included ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and ConocoPhillips. When he made a partial sale of his shares on August 19, 2008, during congressional recess, IYE closed at $41.82. Just a month later, on September 17, Reid was working to bring to the floor a bill that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would cost oil companies — including those in the fund — billions of dollars in taxes and regulatory fees. The bill passed a few days later, and by October 10, IYE’s shares had fallen by 42 percent, to $24.41, for a host of reasons. Savvy investing indeed.

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of

3 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.” Ayn Rand

Harry Reid is one of the traders of favors, enriching himself by graft and pull, and encouraging others to do the same.

An entire “industry” has been built in DC based on these methods of men(and women) being able to enrich themselves. Unfortunately, it is at the expense of those who actually do work, and do build things, and create the wealth these thieves avail themselves of.

It may be that we are, in fact, doomed. We see evidence of that in people such as Greg, who support the ideas these thieves in DC promote. And we also see it when the industrialists, the entrepreneurs, and the workers themselves, throw their hands up in defeat and engage in the graft and corruption rampant around our country, going along to get along, so to speak. Crony capitalism at it’s finest.

The wealth creators in our country are besieged by such men (and women) as Harry Reid.

Does this story surprise anyone. Take a look at Eric Cantor and the rest of them. Any body who thinks these people are on their side is a dreamer.

@Liberal1 (objectivity): You do know that the article is about Reid not Cantor, right?