Page 2 The Skanner Portland February 7, 2018
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Opinion
Trump’s Consumer Protection Agency Changes Course
I
n the wake of a recent series
of anti-consumer actions
taken by Mick Mulvaney,
the Trump-appointed Con-
sumer Financial Protection
Bureau’s Acting Director, a bi-
cameral call for accountabil-
ity was released on January
31. Led by Congresswoman
Maxine Waters of California
and Sen. Elizabeth Warren
of Massachusetts, two other
Congressional Black Cau-
cus Members, Congressmen
Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and
Al Green (D-Texas) joined
Senators Richard Blumenthal
(D-Conn.) and Jeff Merkley
(D-Ore.) as signatories.
Together, the group of law-
makers seek to know what
prompted Mr. Mulvaney’s ac-
tions as well as his ties to the
payday lending industry.
A January 31 letter calls into
question the following specif-
ic actions that have occurred
over the past month:
• Halting
implementation
of the agency’s final rule
preventing abusive payday
lending (the ‘Payday Rule);
• Announcement of the Bu-
reau’s intention to initiate
a rulemaking process that
appears designed to weak-
en the Payday Rule;
• Withdrawing a Bureau law-
suit against four online pay-
day lenders who allegedly
misled customers on inter-
Charlene
Crowell
NNPA
Columnist
est rates that spanned a low
of 440 percent to as high as
950 percent; and
• Ending an investigation of
World Acceptance Corpora-
tion, a high-cost installment
lender that began in 2014 af-
ter consumers complained
of unaffordable loans and
aggressive collection prac-
tices.
“For too long, some payday,
auto title, and installment
lenders have taken advantage
of American workers who
need a little extra money to
pay an unexpected medical
bill or fix their car,” wrote the
lawmakers. “For too many
families, one unexpected
expense or tight week traps
them in a cycle of debt that
lasts months or years…The
rule finalized by the CFPB last
October was carefully bal-
anced to end that cycle of debt
while ensuring that borrow-
ers retain access to needed
credit.”
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform Act that created the
CFPB intended for it to be an
independent agency, charged
with serving as the consum-
er’s financial cop-on-the-beat.
Its director was to be nomi-
nated by the President and
confirmed by the Senate to a
five-year term of service. Ad-
“
One unex-
pected ex-
pense or tight
week traps
them in a cy-
cle of debt
ditionally, CFPB was to secure
its funding directly from the
Federal Reserve Bank, rather
than through Congress’ an-
nual appropriations process
that could enable powerful
special interests to restrict
necessary funding.
Even though the Dodd-
Frank Act also defined a suc-
cession plan for an Acting
Director in the event of per-
sonnel changes, two people
were appointed to this same
role. One, Leandra English
was lawfully appointed by
the former Director Richard
Cordray, while another, Mr.
Mulvaney, was appointed by
President Trump. The law-
makers’ letter is addressed to
both appointees.
An appellate federal court
will eventually decide who
should be the legal Acting
Director; but in the interim,
Mulvaney leads CFPB while
retaining his position as Di-
rector of the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget. In his prior
role as a South Carolina Con-
gressman, he co-sponsored
a bill to eliminate the CFPB
and accepted nearly $63,000
in campaign donations from
payday lenders. These dona-
tions included $4,500 from
World Acceptance Corpora-
tion’s political action commit-
tee.
“The CFPB spent five years
honing the Payday Rule,
conducting research and
reviewing over one million
comments from all types of
stakeholders: from payday
lender, to state regulators, to
faith leaders,” wrote Ranking
Members Warren and Wa-
ters.
Now Mr. Mulvaney over-
sees the daily operations
of the same Bureau that re-
turned $12 billion to nearly 30
million consumers in about
six years. Instead of regulat-
ing financial services, this
Acting Director prefers al-
lowing private enterprise to
determine consumers’ choic-
es — including those that are
harmful and predatory.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
Black Women Show the Way Forward in 2018
T
here is a reckoning afoot
in this country. On one
side, Trump has embold-
ened and embodied a vir-
ulent and reckless hate that
targets women, Black peo-
ple, and immigrants (among
many others). Each day
brings a new outrage. On the
other side, #MeToo has fol-
lowed #BlackLivesMatter as
a hashtag-turned-movement,
led by courageous truth-tell-
ers who are sick and tired of
a violent and largely ignored
status quo. The conversation
about race and gender in this
country has broken open, and
now we must all contend with
the truth of who we are as a
nation.
While this may feel like
scary and unfamiliar territo-
ry to some, in reality, the U.S.
is just catching up to an un-
Monica
Simpson
Executive
Director,
SisterSong
derstanding and analysis that
Black women in this coun-
try have had for a long time.
Black women have never had
the luxury of ignorance—not
to police violence, not to the
rampant sexual harassment
and assault that women ex-
perience at home, school, and
work. In 2018, we should look
to the work of Black women
to see the path forward for a
troubled and divided nation.
In a way, Black women schol-
ars and organizers have left
breadcrumbs for us to follow
to liberation.
In 1989, legal scholar Kim-
berlé Crenshaw coined the
term “intersectionality” in
her paper for the Universi-
ty of Chicago Legal Forum to
explain how Black women’s
oppression on the basis of
gender combined with op-
pression on the basis of race
to create an experience of
discrimination did not match
what either white women
or Black men experience.
This concept would lay the
groundwork for social justice
organizing that now spans
the globe, and provided a
vocabulary for something
Black women experience on
a daily basis. While intersec-
tionality risks dilution as an
increasingly popular buzz-
word, the analysis it provides
is a crucial tool to cut through
the noise and understand the
Trump administration’s pol-
icies and their impact on dif-
ferent communities.
Take for instance the re-
cent Jane Doe case, and sim-
ilar cases, of the Trump ad-
ministration blocking young
immigrant women from
getting reproductive health-
care. The mistreatment of
the “Janes” (as they’ve come
to be called) at the hands of
the Trump administration
targets them both as wom-
en and as immigrants, and
the two identities cannot be
pulled apart. “Intersectional-
ity” provides an analysis that
explains why their treatment
is so much more extreme, and
its impact so severe.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
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