Author Archives: Shayna9349

GOP to Give Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Protection Agency the Darrell Issa Treatment

by Shayna9349 Posted on January 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ever since Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) helped get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau off the ground in 2010, Republicans have been trying to shut it down. GOPers drafted legislation to weaken the fledgling agency, which was designed to prevent mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other financial institutions from screwing average Americans. The measures died. Republicans turned to the courts to gut the bureau. That effort failed. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, they have another weapon at their disposal: new subpoena powers they can deploy to blitz the CFPB with document requests.

The goal is obvious: dig out material the GOPers can use to embarrass the agency. And if nothing untoward is discovered, Republican legislators can at least pin down the bureau with onerous paperwork demands. Democrats fear Republicans’ new information-gathering abilities will make it easier for the agency’s foes to launch witch-hunt style investigations of the CFPB similar to those former House oversight committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) launched regarding Benghazi and the IRS.

All committees in both the House and the Senate have the right to subpoena federal agencies for information. But until recently, either the most senior committee member from the minority party had to sign off on a subpoena or the entire committee had to vote on the request. In the last Congress, six House committees okayed a rule change giving the committee chair unilateral subpoena power. On Tuesday, the House financial services committee—which has jurisdiction over the CFPB—voted along party lines to grant the same privilege to its Republican chairman, Jeb Hensarling of Texas.

Republicans already have a track record of looking for information that could tarnish the CFPB’s reputation, and Democrats fully expect Hensarling to continue down the same path. And now Hensarling, a fierce CFPB critic, will be able to more easily mount politically motivated investigations of the agency.

Without the rule change, GOPers could still push through the subpoenas. As the majority, Republicans on the committee could vote to approve an information request. But with its new subpoena superpowers, the committee can demand records without a vote—and, thus, can keep the process from the public eye, a spokesman for the committee Democrats says. No longer will there be a public hearing where lawmakers can debate the subpoenas and Democrats can make a case if they think Hensarling and the Republicans are abusing the privilege. Last year, for example, ranking Democratic member Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) used the public forum to convince Hensarling to back down on a Treasury Department subpoena.

Now, if Democrats want to keep GOPers from going on a fishing expedition aimed at tarnishing the CFPB, they won’t have as much of an opportunity to create a ruckus. At a committee hearing Tuesday, Waters, the senior Democrat on the panel, called the rules change “anti-democratic” and “insulting.” (Under the new rule, Waters will be given 48 hours notice before Hensarling issues a subpoena, so that she can alert the press if she wants.)

“We think it’s ridiculous that the Republican leadership is exporting the Issa model to the rest of the House,” a Democratic staffer told Politico. Several other House committees are expected to approve similar powers for their chairs this month.

Last year the GOP-dominated financial services committee voted to subpoena three CFPB officials to require them to testify in an ongoing investigation of alleged discrimination against minorities and women at the bureau. Democrats claimed the move was politically motivated.

Hensarling has not yet indicated how he might use the new subpoena powers. Some Republicans are unhappy with the CFPB’s plan to crack down on shady payday lenders, so Hensarling could potentially subpoena the data the agency is collecting in an attempt to prove the effort is overly invasive. Hensarling denies the new rule is undemocratic.

The CFPB did not respond to a request for comment.

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GOP to Give Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Protection Agency the Darrell Issa Treatment

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What Are the Odds Your City Will Have a White Christmas?

by Shayna9349 Posted on December 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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The lighter the shade of blue, the higher the chance of a White Christmas. NOAA/NCDC

This story originally appeared in CityLab and is published here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Those determined to have a White Christmas should grab crampons and a bottle of scotch and prepare for a tough slog. Many places in the lower 48 with a lock on holiday snow are located in rugged, altitudinous climes—the bony ridge of the Sierra Nevada, for instance, and the wind-burned peaks of the Rockies.

That much is clear in this delightful NOAA map plotting probabilities across the US for a White Christmas, defined here as a December 25 with more than an inch of snow on the ground. Based on three decades of climate normals from the National Climatic Data Center, the graphic shows a stark geographic divide when it comes to unwrapping presents in snow-globe conditions: A region of zero to 10 percent probability curves from Washington State through coastal California and then explodes in the deep South and Southeast. Parts of the Midwest also are likely to be snowless, with places like Kansas, Missouri, and lower Illinois having only an 11 to 25 percent chance of a White Christmas.

New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., have piddling shots at this charming weather, though their brethren higher on the East Coast fare better: Boston and Providence each have a 41 to 50 percent chance. Chicago racks a (considering its frosty reputation) low-sounding 41 to 50 percent chance, and Buffalo, home to sudden crashing currents of lake-effect snow, takes it up to 51 to 60 percent.

Aside from the West’s mountain ranges, NOAA says the best-performing powder points for December 25 are Maine, upstate New York, Minnesota, the highlands of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and almost “anywhere in Idaho.” But even these crystal-crusted locales could shake off the holiday snow this year, the agency says: “While the map shows the climatological probability that a snow depth of at least one inch will be observed on December 25, the actual conditions this year may vary widely from these probabilities because the weather patterns present will determine the snow on the ground or snowfall on Christmas day.”

Here’s another version of the map that’s less smooth, but clearer at delineating regional probabilities:

NOAA/NCDC

View the original here:

What Are the Odds Your City Will Have a White Christmas?

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