Tag Archives: democrats

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Lisa Donner, Americans for Financial Reform


cfpbThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is doing invaluable work to make the markets for credit cards, mortgages and other financial products and services fairer and more transparent. And once again, the financial industry is going all-out to block those efforts.

The industry’s latest threat involves a proposal to make the CFPB’s complaint system more useful and user-friendly by giving consumers the right to include the specifics of their complaints in a searchable public database.

Please join us in telling the CFPB: Don’t back down from your proposal to let consumers share their stories publicly.

Hundreds of thousands of people have used the CFPB’s complaint system, and more than 30,000 cases have already resulted in monetary relief. Complaint data also helps the CFPB detect and respond to broader patterns of industry error or misconduct. The complaint system could be far more valuable, though, if consumers had the option of publicly describing their bad experiences. That way, consumers would be able to learn about the experiences of others and make more informed choices, and financial companies would have an added incentive to compete by actually trying to satisfy their customers, not by trying to put something over on them.

But financial companies, just as they fought the creation of the CFPB in the first place, are fighting its complaint proposal tooth and nail – through the press, through lobbying, and through a highly deceptive advertising campaign in which the industry falsely claims that businesses would not have an equal right to post their responses.

That’s why we need to fight back.  Urge the CFPB to stand firm and help consumers share their experiences and hold big banks accountable.

Speak up today, because the big banks are working feverishly hard to take away our chance to speak up in the future.

Thank you for your continued support for real financial reform.

Sincerely,

 

Lisa Donner
Executive Director
Americans for Financial Reform

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Liberia and Ebola


Introducing Liberia

After almost two decades of war, Liberia – a lush, rainforested country draped across West Africa’s southern flank – seems at last to have found some breathing room. With Africa’s first woman president at the helm, the peace, while still fragile, is holding and Liberians have thrown themselves with gusto into the work of rebuilding their shattered land.

If Liberia does stabilise and open up for travel, it will offer intrepid adventurers a fascinating glimpse into what was previously a wonderfully hospitable and fascinatingly enigmatic society. Liberia’s artistic traditions – especially carved masks, dance and storytelling – rivalled those of anywhere on the continent, and traditional culture was strong. This was especially true in the country’s interior, where secret initiation societies played a central role in growing up, and today still serve as important repositories of traditional knowledge and life skills. For now though, most of this cultural wealth remains inaccessible to visitors, and independent travel outside of the country’s capital Monrovia is not considered safe.

Liberia’s dense, humid rainforests – some of the most extensive in West Africa – are alive with the screeching and twittering of hundreds of birds, who are kept company by forest elephants, pygmy hippos and other wildlife padding around the forest floor. Along the coast, deserted white-sand beaches alternate with humid river deltas and tranquil tidal lagoons, while inland plateaus rise to verdant hill country on the borders of Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea.

Though the situation is definitely looking up, it’s advisable to get an update on local security conditions before setting your plans.

Resource: Lonely Planet

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Inequality In Focus


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America’s Disturbing And Pervasive Inequality, In Three Charts

The Census Bureau’s latest estimates of income and poverty released Tuesday reveal that, despite the economic recovery, inequality remains a massive problem in the United States. We’ve assembled three charts that demonstrate the how deeply the problem runs in our society:

1. Income inequality. Five years of economic recovery hasn’t resulted in any income growth for the vast majority of Americans. In 2013, the median income nationwide was $51,900, essentially unchanged from a year before and 8 percent lower than the median income in 2007, the year before the recession hit. The top five percent of earners made more than $196,000, while the bottom 10 percent made less than $12,400.

income inequality

2. Racial inequality. Black and Hispanic Americans continue to lag far behind non-Hispanic white and Asian households in the amount that they ear. The median household headed by a black person earned $34,600 in 2013 and the median household headed by a Hispanic person earned $41,000. That’s compared to $58,300 for the median white, non-Hispanic household and $67,100 for the median Asian household.

race inequality

3. Gender inequality. We wrote yesterday about how the gender wage gap hasn’t budged from last year: women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. But the poverty rate is higher for women than it is for men as well. The Census found that 15.8 percent of women live in poverty, compared to 13.1 percent of men. And as the chart below demonstrates, the poverty gap between men and women grows as the population ages.

poverty-gender-ageCREDIT: U.S. Census Bureau

BOTTOM LINE: Five years into the economic recovery, middle class Americans are still struggling to make ends meet. But there is no reason to expect the economy to really hum again and inequality to decrease unless we take action to address the problems. That means supporting policies like these that help working families, not the rich, and that grow the economy from the middle-out, not the top-down.

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110 million Americans


greenpeace

The EPA is asking the public for input on ways to improve its Risk Management Program.

Protect our communities!

Join me and tell the EPA we need safety to be a requirement for chemical facilities today.

submit a comment

110 million. That’s how many Americans live in high-risk zones near chemical facilities.

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Jindal Versus Louisiana Schoolchildren … a repost


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Another Republican chooses to sue the Administration

bobby-jindal-cc

Bobby Jindal, the Republican Governor of Louisiana, filed suit against the Obama administration on Wednesday. He argues that the Department of Education has exceeded its constitutional authority by offering states grants if they choose to opt-in to the Common Core standards.

Jindal’s Complaint claims the Common Core is “an attempt by the executive branch to implement national education reform far beyond the intentions of Congress; in fact, in contradiction to 50 years of Congressional policy forbidding federal direction or control of curriculum, the cornerstone of education policy.”

While this lawsuit makes little sense for a variety of reasons, perhaps the strangest is the complete about-face Jindal made. Not only did he sign the legislation implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), his administration actively pushed the legislature to enact them. Back in 2012, Stafford Palmieri, Jindal’s top education policy adviser, wrote: “I frankly don’t foresee a controversy over this and if there is one and we come out swinging about how impt [sic] this is that helps not hurts our case. We stand very firmly behind CCSS as you know,” according to emails obtained The Times-Picayune.

However, in Louisiana, Bobby Jindal is one of only a few politicians to choose politics over kids.

Back in May, a bill to repeal the Common Core didn’t even make it out of the Louisiana Senate Education Committee. And in April, the corresponding House committee shot down two Jindal-backed repeal bills. While a fraction of the state legislature tried to stop implementation by suing Education Superintendent John White, their request was denied. White, too, remains an ardent supporter of the standards.

Jindal marks the far-right on Common Core: only a handful of states are not participating in the voluntary program. If Jindal gets his way, he will join a select group of flip-floppers:

  • Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, who once supported their implementation, signed a bill this June to repeal them.
  • South Carolina first adopted the standards in 2010, but also had them repealed this summer.
  • Indiana led the way with its repeal in March, though its new state standards are remarkably similar.

By choosing to sue the Obama administration, Bobby Jindal enters a league of his own on the Common Core. He himself has protested unnecessary lawsuits, once remarking: “This bill will help stop frivolous lawsuits and create a more fair and predictable legal environment, and I am proud to sign it into law.” Unfortunately, he and other Republicans are gumming up the legal system instead of helping ordinary Americans.

BOTTOM LINE: When your duly elected state legislature and elected members of your Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Superintendent of education that you appointed all believe that the Common Core is good for Louisiana’s students, you should listen. Choosing politics – and a possible 2016 presidential run – over schoolchildren is wrong.