Monthly Archives: July 2026

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Dodd-Frank – The history


By CAP Action War Room

 Congress’ Financial Reform Law Is Doing Important Work

The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was enacted on July 21, 2010, and signed into law by President Barack Obama

In 2015, Congress’s financial reform law turned five. Dodd-Frank, the massive package of Wall Street reforms passed in the wake of the Great Recession, is massively underrated. The package overhauled the financial sector with the goals of tightening up enforcement and increasing consumer protections.

One major component of the law was the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB—the only financial regulator dedicated to protecting consumers. In its four years of existence, the CFPB has helped return more than $10.1 billion to more than 17 million consumers in addition to protecting Americans from predatory lenders and deceptive mortgage practices.

Despite this extraordinary success at keeping Wall Street responsible and protecting hard-working Americans, the law continues to be under attack. In fact, even though Dodd-Frank isn’t even fully in place yet, Congress has tried 139 times to either amend or repeal parts of the law. And the financial industry has spent $3.25 billion to influence the government in the five years since the law was passed. That means that if financial industry spending in the last five years were a country, it would be the 158th largest economy—bigger than 30 developing nations.

The powerful lobby against the rule has been successful in hamstringing the full implementation of the law. As a part of the package, many regulatory agencies were tasked with creating separate rules and because of the excessive lobbying and infighting, there are still 83 separate rules that haven’t been written yet. Included in the unfinished laws, are important rules like mandating disclosure of CEO-to-worker pay ratios and strengthening the controversial “Volcker Rule.”

BOTTOM LINE: We have Dodd-Frank to thank for the common sense reforms that have helped keep Wall Street accountable and level the playing field between consumers and the financial industry. But despite Dodd-Frank’s success, powerful lobby groups and conservative lawmakers have continued to thwart the law’s implementation.

 

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President Nixon refuses to hand over tapes


Bettmann Archive via Getty Images

On July 23, 1973, President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over his secret audio recordings to the Senate Watergate Committee and Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, citing executive privilege. His refusal kicked off a legal battle that culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling one year later that Nixon must hand over the tapes.

Between February 16, 1971, and July 18, 1973, Nixon secretly recorded some 3,700 hours of meetings and telephone conversations in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, his office in the Executive Office Building, the Lincoln Sitting Room and the Aspen Lodge at Camp David. Presidential aide Alexander Butterfield helped the Secret Service install the recording system at Nixon’s request, and Butterfield was one of the few people who knew about it.

Source: for the complete article history.com

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A quote by Margaret Mead


Where families suffer from disasters that are preventable, this is a measure of a whole nation’s neglect.

A society imperils its own future when, out of negligence or contempt, it overlooks the need of children to be reared in a family … or when, in the midst of plenty, some families cannot give their children adequate food and shelter, safe activity and rest, and an opportunity to grow into full adulthood as people who can care for and cherish other human beings like themselves.

Margaret Mead

a message in a bottle

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 Facts ~ taught in some schools


Civil Rights Act of 1964 Facts

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a far-ranging law that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

The Act essentially outlawed racial and gender discrimination in the workplace and outlawed most forms of racial segregation.

The bill was originally the idea of President John F. Kennedy, who was viewed by many in the Civil Rights movement as apathetic at best to their plight. Kennedy said he was influenced by sights of civil rights marchers being beaten by the police in Alabama, so he put forward the legislation in June 1963. The bill probably had the votes to pass, but was stopped in committee by Representative Howard Smith of Virginia, who was a segregationist.

After Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the Congress and the general public were much more sympathetic to the bill.

The bill was passed 289-126 in the House of Representatives and a modified compromise version by the Senate 73-27 on June 19, 1964.

President Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964.

 

CivilRightsactsigned
Interesting Civil Rights Act of 1964 Facts:
  • Opposition to the bill was more along geographic than political lines with a majority of both southern Democrats and Republicans voting “nay.”
  • Representative Emanuel Cellar (D-NY) was one of the bill’s early advocates. He was also instrumental in passing the Immigration Act of 1965.
  • Southern Democrats filibustered for fifty-four days to prevent the passage of the bill before a compromise bill was introduced that lessened the power of the government to regulate private business.
  • Civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP, and leaders, like Martin Luther King Jr., lobbied congressmen and both presidents to pass the bill.
  • Title VII of the Act expressly prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
  • The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), oversees enforcement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • Among the more interesting of the congressmen who were opposed to the bill were Senators Robert Byrd (D-WV), who became a mentor to the next generation of Democrat politicians, and Albert Gore Sr. (D-TN), who was the father of former vice president and senator, Al Gore.
  • The legality of the Act has been upheld in several Supreme Court decisions, including:

Heart of Atlanta Hotel v. United States, Philips v. Martin Marietta Corp., and Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations.
  • Title IX of the Act made it easier for criminal cases involving civil rights violations to be tried in federal court. This was extremely important as many Klansmen who were acquitted in state courts for crimes ranging from assault and arson to murder were usually convicted for civil rights violations, although the convictions usually carried far less time.
  • The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which barred racial discrimination in housing.
Although some aspects of voting problems were addressed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most of the barriers to black disenfranchisement in the southern states were dealt with in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

softschools.com

If you see any errors please feel free to comment… so many opinions on who actually came up with the idea of the Bill