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Mick Mulvaney’s Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy From Within
- hguhghuff 7y agoCan someone summarize please? I can't see through the pay wall.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoHere's a mirror: archive.is/fl5ta
- abernard1 7y agoThis article leaves off a very critical detail around why people were critical of the CFPB in the first place. Contra this statement: > Their unease had only grown as Mulvaney ordered a hiring freeze, put new enforcement cases on hold and sent the Federal Reserve, which funds the C.F.P.B., a budget request for zero dollars, saying the bureau could make do with the money it had on hand. That was advertised as a feature of the CFPB when it was originally created, as they are funded from the fines they collect from violations. Anyone who has a problem with the incentives in privatized prisons should have a problem with the funding structure of the CFPB, as they are both policing for profit.
- JohnFen 7y agoThe main problem with things like privatizing prisons is that doing so seriously reduces the ability of the citizenry to affect how they operate, compared to them being run by the government.
- abernard1 7y agoIn that case, the citizenry voted their opinions on how the government should run the CFPB for 4 years.
- JohnFen 7y agoThat's a bit of a stretch. But at least the citizenry is able to do so.
- wavefunction 7y agoAnd often, that's the idea, that privatizing what was originally something with some social oversight into something that can be abused. One glaring example for me is that the NSA is mostly contractors now.
- specialist 7y agoPrivatization is an unintended side effect of increasing government transparency (FOIA). Just like the combo of increased roll call votes [1] and public disclosure commissions inadvertently increased the power of lobbyists, by allowing them to verify bought politicians stayed bought. [1] vs voice votes, show of hands, other secret ballots
- geofft 7y agoMy problem with private prisons is not the fact that they're "policing" but about the injustice of keeping a human body in a cell in degrading conditions, which does not apply to the CFPB's actions, and the incentives about that. It seems equally sensical to argue that I should have a problem with the Rust compiler because it strictly enforces rules about appropriate behaviors, just like prisons do.
- CPLX 7y agoThey are not the same thing. A government program with a dedicated funding system (like, for example, the FAA) is a different thing entirely from a for profit entity. The tell is that there’s no such thing is “profit” in a government context.
- matt4077 7y agoThat’s wrong. See Section 1017 of the Dodd-Franken act: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-111publ203/html/PLAW-111publ203.htm https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-111publ203/html/PLA... The bureau gets its funding from the Federal Reserve System. What the argument may or may not have been is that fines would exceed operating costs. But they don’t go directly to the bureau, which therefore still needs to finance its operations. Collected fines do not go into the bureau’s general operating budget, but are supposed to be used for compensating victims or, if that’s not possible, specifically into financial literacy programs. Quote: “There is established in the Federal Reserve a separate fund, to be known as the ``Consumer Financial Civil Penalty Fund'' (referred to in this section as the ``Civil Penalty Fund''). The Civil Penalty Fund shall be maintained and established at a Federal reserve bank, in accordance with such requirements as the Board of Governors may impose. If the Bureau obtains a civil penalty against any person in any judicial or administrative action under Federal consumer financial laws, the Bureau shall deposit into the Civil Penalty Fund, the amount of the penalty collected. (2) Payment to victims.--Amounts in the Civil Penalty Fund shall be available to the Bureau, without fiscal year limitation, for payments to the victims of activities for which civil penalties have been imposed under the Federal consumer financial laws. To the extent that such victims cannot be located or such payments are otherwise not practicable, the Bureau may use such funds for the purpose of consumer education and financial literacy programs.”
- JackFr 7y ago> That was advertised as a feature of the CFPB The feature was not so much the fine paying for it, but rather Congress being unable to pressure it via the pocketbook. Which presumably Elizabeth Warren regrets now.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Animats 7y agoHe's doing his job: keeping the little people in their place.
- JackFr 7y agoAlternative title: Elizabeth Warren succeeds in creating agency insensitive to political pressure. I think the current administration is absolutely wrong about the payday loan industry. But at the same time the law that created the CPFB was terrible, and its frankly shocking to me that Elizabeth Warren failed to foresee this. She purposely created a particularly undemocratic institution which quite predictably, but to her horror, went off the rails. The way to stop payday lending is through congressional action. The way to counteract unfriendly lobbyists is with horse trading. One of the reasons legislation like this has become harder is the disappearance of earmarks.
- dd36 7y agoThe simplest solution is private rights of collective action in court. The rise of the forced arbitration agreement that has been allowed used to ban class actions is anti-consumer and anti-free market. Markets cannot work correctly if consumers cannot band together to hold fraudsters accountable. This leaves the only possible source of accountability as the government, which is inherently problematic.
- Matticus_Rex 7y ago"stop payday lending" Have you asked any poor people about that? Because getting rid of payday lending just leaves people with worse options or no options at all.
- octonion 7y agoDo you actually know what payday lending is and what the lending rates are like? They're designed to trap people in an endless cycle of high-interest debtorship.
- peterhadlaw 7y agoYeah if you look at APRs, except what the anointed don't want you to know is that these loans are very short term, not lasting years. This is a choice you're advocating to remove from people experiencing hardships you will never understand. The reason the interest is so high is that these are high risk and high necessity markets.
- tomohawk 7y agoLive by the sword, die by the sword. The CFPB is an extra-constitutional body. It's creation and whatever happens to it just showcase how off the rails things are.
- cylinder 7y agoExtra constitutional? What does this even mean? What is every other government agency then?
- BalinKing 7y ago> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. - Tenth Amendment, Bill of Rights The federal government does not have the right to create agencies and regulation at will. With certain exceptions (e.g. the DoD), it is reasonable to conclude that many federal agencies are, in fact, unconstitutional in scope.
- Animats 7y agoThe easiest way to stop payday lending is to mandate weekly pay for anyone making under $100K a year. Why should workers be loaning two weeks pay, on average, to their employer?
- throwawaymanbot 7y agoHistory will write this mans political epitaph. And he wont like it. If there were Russian Assets, Hell bent on helping to ruin American Democracy.. they couldn't do it with this mans passion for it, as they would be afraid that being too obvious about it might trigger interest from the authorities. Not Mulvaney. Sensible spending is one thing. Gutting a country and its ability to function is benefiting whom exactly?