Josh Riley Doesn’t Show Up For CryptoCurrency Showdown. Why?
Congressman Josh Riley is a member of two committees in the U.S. House of Representatives: The House Science Committee and the House Agriculture Committee.
Yesterday, some quite interesting things were going on in the House Agriculture Committee,
The plan was to hold a joint hearing of the House Agriculture Committee and the House Financial Services Committee about new legislation that was written by cryptocurrency lobbyists and designed to help cryptocurrency businesses evade serious regulation. That legislation remains in draft form, and was only released the afternoon before the joint hearing. It has still not officially been introduced to the U.S. House.
You may be scratching your head, wondering what the House Agriculture Committee has to do with cryptocurrency. Yes, it’s a bit crazy, but there’s a historical reason for it.
The House Agriculture Committee was created in 1820. It took jurisdiction over laws regulating the trade of agricultural commodities, things like corn, soybeans, and pork bellies. In 1974, the creation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was authorized by the Agriculture Committee.
Cryptocurrency businesses want to be regulated only by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and not by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the trade of stocks and other financial instruments. That’s why questions of cryptocurrency are taken up by both the House Agriculture Committee and the House Financial Services Committee.
Maxine Waters Objects
The catch is that a joint hearing of two committees in the U.S. House of Representatives needs to be agreed to by all members of both committees. At the beginning of the joint hearing, Maxine Waters, the Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, rose to state that she would not give her agreement to the joint hearing. She stood up and said:
“I object to this joint hearing because of the corruption of the President of the United States, and his ownership of crypto and his oversight of all the agencies. I object.”
The Republicans tried to pressure Maxine Waters to withdraw her objections. “We will try not to silence one other over policy disagreements,” Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill promised.
Democratic U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch, Ranking Member of the Agriculture Committee, requested to further explain objections to the hearing and the pro-crypto legislation. He was granted permission to speak by Hill. Lynch stated:
“Ranking Member Waters has objected to this hearing because of the clear conflicts of interest between President Trump and his family’s personal crypto ventures and the legislative proposals our committees are considering. President Trump and his family are exploiting the presidency to enrich themselves, using their personal crypto business, World Liberty Financial. Never in American history has a sitting president so blatantly violated…”
Suddenly, the Republicans on the committee interrupted Lynch, declaring that Lynch had no right to speak. “The gentleman is no longer recognized!” It was clear that French Hill’s promise not to silence Democrats over policy disagreements was a sham. The joint hearing would not consider multiple perspectives on the issue of cryptocurrency regulation.
Maxine Waters and four other Democrats from the Agriculture and Financial Services committees left the hearing room in order to go to another room across the hall to hold an alternative discussion of the pro-cryptocurrency legislation. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic meetings could at this point be referred to as official congressional hearings, because of the objection from Waters. Both meetings proceeded under the informal title of “roundtable”.
Josh Riley Didn’t Show Up
Representative Josh Riley is a member of the House Agriculture Committee. However, cameras in both rooms failed to show the presence of Congressman Riley at any time in either the Republican roundtable or the Democratic alternative roundtable. From the start until the end of both roundtable meetings, Josh Riley was absent.
Where was Josh Riley, yesterday, when he was supposed to be attending as a member of the House Agriculture Committee? His office has not yet provided any information about that.
A Biased Joint Hearing
A joint hearing is held in order to move legislation through quickly, replacing the oversight of two committees with the perspective of just one gathering. Holding a joint hearing is often a tactic of political control in order to minimize dissent, reducing thorough consideration with a rush toward passage of legislation. This rushed and biased approach was further demonstrated by the witnesses that were invited to testify before the joint hearing.
All but one of the witnesses testifying before the Republican roundtable were professional cryptocurrency insiders. Rostin Behnam does not work for a cryptocurrency business. He is a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Behnam is a supporter of the proposed pro-crypto legislation. The remaining witnesses at the Republican roundtable were:
James Rathmell, top lawyer for Haun Ventures, a cryptocurrency venture capital firm
Alex Miller, Chief Executive Officer, Hiro Systems, a software company that creates software to enable trading of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency
Daniel J. Davis, partner at Katten, a law firm that specializes in representing cryptocurrency businesses
Greg Cusar, Vice President at Coinbase, a company that facilitates the trading of cryptocurrencies
These four witnesses each have a strong financial stake in the cryptocurrencies’ continued evasion of serious regulation. They spoke on behalf of cryptocurrency interests, and there were no witnesses invited to counter their perspectives.
The Democrats’ alternative roundtable, in contrast, featured witnesses who study cryptocurrency but do not financially benefit from cryptocurrency businesses in any way. They were:
Chastity Murphy, Visiting Research Fellow, University of Manchester Law and Technology Initiative
Timothy Massad, Research Fellow and Director of Digital Assets Policy Project, Harvard Kennedy School
Mark Hays, Senior Policy Analyst, Americans for Financial Reform
Jeff Hauser, Founder and Executive Director, Revolving Door Project
The Corruption Of Cryptocurrency Revealed
The roundtable led by Maxine Waters deviated from the talking points of cryptocurrency lobbyists, as witnesses questioned the claims that regulation of cryptocurrency must be kept loose in order to promote “innovation” and for the sake of “clarity”.
Is cryptocurrency innovative? Jeff Hauser pointed out that cryptocurrency is innovative in supporting organized crime, a kind of innovation that the USA could do without:
“We’re told by the crypto industry that this is something new, and we can’t be left behind, and oh my god, China’s going to… Look, Peru is ahead of us in cocaine cultivation. China is ahead of us in organ harvesting, and the Caiman Islands is ahead of us in nefarious hidden financial transactions. We can afford to have a few areas of the world where we are not the leader.”
What about the concern that the United States is missing out because cryptocurrency businesses are fleeing overseas? Mark Hays explained that cryptocurrency businesses have gone overseas to countries that allow them to engage in activities that support criminal activity:
“We have heard about World Liberty Financial’s recent announcement that it will use a Trump-affiliated stablecoin to finance an investment by a Dubai-based investment firm in the disgraced platform Binance, but the fact that the nexus involves the United Arab Emirates and Dubai is not an accident. Many crypto players have sought out or even lauded jurisdictions like Dubai, the Bahamas, and other offshore financial sectors because of their light touch regulatory regimes with respect to disclosure, transparency, and crucially, money-laundering compliance.”
In the Republican roundtable, cryptocurrency insiders said that they needed a loosening of regulations for the sake of clarity, but this argument was shot out of the water by Timothy Massad, who pointed out that the cryptocurrency lobby is consistently unclear about what its calls for clarity actually amount to:
“The crypto industry always says they need clarity, but there’s never been a consensus among them as to what that means.”
The problem with the cryptocurrency lobby’s legislation boils down to this: The primary use case of cryptocurrency is the bribery of government officials. U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch commented:
“This is a mechanism by which other people outside, foreign interests, can actually influence our president, not just this one, but in the future as well, and I think that’s a relevant issue before this forum.”
The legislation favored by the Republicans of the House Financial Services and House Agriculture committees would remove the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to conduct oversight of cryptocurrencies, leaving regulatory power solely in the hands of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a smaller regulatory agency with less ability to rein in criminal and abusive financial activities. The legislation doesn’t offer regulatory clarity. It offers regulatory loopholes big enough to drive a truck through.
Jeff Hauser told the Democratic roundtable:
“It is very difficult under current law to imagine any other outcome than corrupt outcomes from this statute and the president’s ongoing business activities. Much needs to be done. I agree that the president should not be allowed to be involved in ownership of cryptocurrency as it is the topic of such incredible policy debates at this moment. So, it is an inherent conflict of interest. I think the president should also not be allowed to be involved in the marketing of crypto because it is the best possible mechanism to receive gratuities, to receive the emoluments that the constitutional founders feared the president would receive.”
These concerns about political corruption enabled by cryptocurrency are not abstract. Donald Trump has created a memecoin of his own name, the $TRUMP memecoin, and promised to hold meetings, as President, including private tours of the White House itself, with the people or organizations that buy the most of his memecoin. These cryptocurrency purchases are bribes, and Donald Trump is making explicit offers of political influence in exchange for these cryptocurrency transactions. There has never been another scheme by any other American President that has been so transparently corrupt.
As one of the witnesses commented, “Crypto is the perfect mechanism of bribery.”
Donald Trump even proudly displays a leaderboard of who is paying the biggest cryptocurrency bribes to him, in order to encourage a kind of auction of access to the White House. At present, just the top ten people or organizations on this leaderboard have spent approximately 59 million dollars to bribe Donald Trump.
You won’t find any names of donors on Donald Trump’s bribery leaderboard. You can only see the strange codes of cryptocurrency wallets that are completely anonymous. Those wallets could be held by American business owners, or they could be held by Russian spies, or even the Chinese government. There is no way to know who is bribing Donald Trump. That’s the power of cryptocurrency.
Timothy Massad offered the following assessment of Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency bribery scheme, and related it to the loose regulation scheme offered by the new legislation being rushed through the House Agriculture and House Financial Services committees:
“With any other president, there would have been bipartisan outrage at what he has engaged in, what he and his family have engaged in. We need a prohibition on it. We need a prohibition on the president and vice-president and members of their families from being involved in any crypto-related business, whether as an owner, stockholder, director or officer. It’s unfortunate that Republicans won’t speak out about this. I think when you then put that in the context of the legislation we are debating, the risks do increase because the complexity of this legislation, the market structure legislation, will create, I think, further opportunities to exploit the laws for personal gain.”
The new legislation does not create rigorous cryptocurrency regulation. It creates new opportunities for evasion of regulation, and for corrupt criminal activities.
It’s About Fascism
The issue of cryptocurrency regulation is ultimately about fascism. Cryptocurrency has become a tool for transforming the United States from a democracy into a totalitarian state.
That’s because Donald Trump’s fascist regime is using a system of bribery through cryptocurrency to create a culture of obedience and fear among business owners. Donald Trump is not only making himself and his family wealthy. He is working on replacing the US dollar as an international standard for trade with a stablecoin that he personally owns and controls, the USD1 stablecoin.
Cryptocurrency has become a tool for intimidation and power.
Donald Trump’s rampant corruption through cryptocurrency is all about the centralization of power.
Through a massive network of bribery, Donald Trump is establishing a personal organization of political power that is larger than any political power. Cryptocurrency is being used to inflate Donald Trump’s influence,
Maxine Waters Stands Against CryptoFascism. Will Josh Riley?
People often describe Democrats in Congress as if they’re powerless to do anything to resist the spread of fascism under Donald Trump.
The action by Maxine Waters yesterday shows that isn’t true.
The defiance of Representative Waters slowed down the progress of a profoundly corrupt piece of legislation that is designed to preserve the ability of cryptocurrency businesses to facilitate the open bribery of the President and members of Congress.
Her refusal to consent gained attention from journalists and the public at large, and led people to talk about the connections between cryptocurrency, corruption, and the spread of fascism.
Any one of the members of the Agriculture or Financial Services committees could have taken this stand. Maxine Waters chose to do it.
Congressman Josh Riley appears not to have even showed up for the hearing, either to go along with it, or to object to it.
On Capitol Hill yesterday, Congressman Josh Riley could have stood up to fascism along with Maxine Waters. He didn’t.
Instead, Riley evaded his responsibility to deal with the question of rampant cryptocurrency corruption and the fascism that it creates.
Democracy is a form of government that relies on people to show up and participate.
Yesterday, in the face of the massive crisis our nation is going through, Josh Riley chose not to show up at all.
Josh Riley loves to promise that he’s going to “fight like hell” for the people of New York’s 19th congressional district.
Yesterday, Josh Riley didn’t participate in the fight. He didn’t even watch the fight.
Yesterday, Josh Riley hid out in his office like hell.
The people of Ithaca, Binghamton, Cortland, the Catskills, and the Hudson River Valley deserve better than that.
It’s time for Josh Riley to show up and decide: Which side are you on?
