Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Dreams Become Nightmares
But I being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
— William Butler Yeats, He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
It is the thought that counts-not the amount that funded the thought. I refer, of course, to the extraordinarily generous offer of DJT to give to Hurricane Harvey flood relief, $1 million of his “personal money,” as spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, described it in a meeting with reporters at the White House on August 31st. Sanders said that DJT had not yet decided to what specific charities he wants to give the money. She said he was soliciting advice from the purveyors of what he has repeatedly called “fake news” who were at the meeting. As she explained: “He’s actually asked that I check with the folks in this room since you are very good at research and have been doing a lot of reporting into the groups and organizations that are best and most effective in helping and providing aid. He’d like some suggestions from the folks here, and I’d be happy to take those if any of you have them.”
If DJT’s annual income is $60 million, as some reports say, it would mean that DJT is giving away slightly less than 5 days’ worth of income. Of course, since he lives in the White House at taxpayer expense, the loss of $1 million for a 5-day period is not going to have a huge impact on him or his family, so it is not as great a sacrifice as it at first appeared. And then, of course, there is the question of whether he’ll in fact make the gift. Last year he promised to make a gift of $1 million of his own money and $5 million he said he had raised, to veterans’ organizations. Because of what must have been merely an oversight, the gifts were not made until reporters’ asked him, months after he’d made the promise, who the recipients of the funds were. And for what were surely good and sufficient reasons, the amounts given were less than the promised $6 million. None of that is, of course, meant to detract from the enormous generosity his promised $1 million gift for Hurricane Harvey victims demonstrates. The early estimates of the cost of Hurricane Harvey is $190 billion and as those affected by Harvey would surely say, every penny given for flood relief helps. DJT has given his penny.
DJT’s penny does not simply go a long way towards helping flood victims. It goes a long way towards showing that, executive actions suggesting otherwise notwithstanding, DJT is deeply concerned about people. Showing that concern and compassion was needed when, less than a week after announcing his generous gift to hurricane relief, DJT sent a surly surrogate, Jeff Sessions, (a poor substitute for a tweet), to announce that DJT was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program known as “DACA, “that had been created by President Obama. It was created because Congress refused to enact legislation to address the plight of immigrant children brought into this country as youngsters by their parents. Those children had no contact with the countries from which they were brought and, in many cases, do not even know the language in their home countries. Eliminating the program, even though postponing the effective date for six months, introduces a plague of uncertainty into the lives of those who have been beneficiaries of the program. Many of them work in medicine, law and other occupations, or are in college or secondary school hoping to complete their educations. They are now confronted with the terrible uncertainty of not knowing what the future holds for them.
The rescinding of that program is not approved by all Republicans. In expressing his opposition to the elimination of DACA, Senator Orrin Hatch (R. Utah) said that rescinding DACA would “further complicate a system in need of a permanent legislative solution” that, he said, should come from Congress. Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (R. Wisconsin) also said that DACA should not be eliminated but that Congress should come up with a permanent solution. In a radio interview, he said it was up to Congress to determine how immigrants who had enrolled in DACA should be treated. Senator John McCain (R. AZ.) said it was the wrong approach to immigration policy and risked sending innocent children out of the country.
The lives of 787,000 people (as of March 2017) will be affected when the program is ended. They are the people who are now protected by its provisions. They may recall, ruefully, that before ending the program, DJT had repeatedly said that: “We love the dreamers. We love everybody” and, “I think the dreamers are terrific.” The Dreamers might have taken comfort from those words before the end of the program was announced. Had they done so, they should have considered by whom those words were spoken. DJT had certainly expressed similar sentiments to his ex-wives and ex-girlfriends before leaving them. The ex-wives were, of course, better off than the Dreamers. They got alimony and property settlements. The Dreamers are left with only memories.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Luther, Roy, and Alabama
Old times there are not forgotten. . . .
Dixie Land
Alabama is back. It hadn’t gone far, but whenever it returns, it fills the heart of the observer with wonder. Its most recent re-entry onto the national stage is occasioned by its September run-off election to fill the senate seat left vacant when Jeff Sessions became DJT’s attorney general.
The qualities of the Republican candidates running in that election bring to mind, for reasons unrelated to the upcoming election, (except that it also happened in Alabama,) the letter sent out to parents by the W.F Burns Middle School in Valley, Alabama, in 2015. The letter suggested that all children attending that school be armed with “canned goods” to protect themselves should an intruder enter their classroom. The letter said: “We realize at first this may seem odd, however, it is a practice that would catch an intruder off-guard. The canned food item could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive. The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves. . . .” It takes someone who lives in Alabama to feel secure when contemplating a roomful of middle schoolers throwing cans of food at an intruder who would, in all probability, be armed with something more lethal than a can of corn. As odd as this may seem, it is no odder than the run-off election that will take place in Alabama in September, where the two Republican contestants are Roy Moore and Luther Strange. On a comparative basis, Roy is stranger than Strange. The strange thing about Strange is how he became the replacement for Jeff Sessions as United States Senator, when Sessions gave up his senate seat in order to become DJT’s attorney general. The strange thing about Roy is Roy.
In April 2016, the Alabama House announced that articles of impeachment would be introduced to impeach then Governor Robert Bentley for corruption and neglect of duty because of an affair the Governor had with one of his former aides. The House Judiciary Committee conducted the investigation on behalf of the House. In early November, Luther, who was the attorney general for the state, wrote the Judiciary Committee saying it: “would be prudent and beneficial to delay the work of the House Judiciary Committee on impeachment. . . . I respectfully request that the Committee cease active interviews and investigation until I am able to report to you that the necessary related work of my office has been completed.” In response, the Judiciary Committee suspended its activities. On February 11, 2017, the governor appointed Luther to the United States Senate. On April 10, 2017, Governor Bentley resigned. Only someone familiar with how things work in Alabama would tie Luther’s instructions to the House Judiciary Committee to the Governor’s appointment of Luther to the United States Senate.
Luther’s competition in the September 26 run-off election is Roy Moore. Roy has the distinction of being, probably, the only person in the history of the United States to have served as the Chief Justice of a state’s highest court, and to have been removed from his position the first time he served, and barred from continuing to act the second time he served.
Roy’s career as Chief Justice began in 2000 when he was elected to that post. One of the first things he did upon assuming the chief justice’s office, was to have a 5,280-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments built, and following its construction, installed in the central rotunda of the State Judicial Building. Litigation over the propriety of this installation followed and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court order for removal of the monument. Roy refused. As a result he was removed from the court by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary and the monument was removed from the rotunda by a large crane.
Ambition awakened again in Roy, and in 2012 he decided he would make a good chief justice notwithstanding his earlier disgraceful departure from that office. He ran again, and was elected to the position by the people in Alabama who had either forgotten about or didn’t care about his earlier service. Once again, Roy believed himself to be above the law. After a federal judge ordered Alabama probate judges to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Roy ordered the judges to ignore the federal court order. After a trial before the Judicial Inquiry Commission, he was found guilty of 6 violations of the Judicial Ethics by the commission and suspended as Chief Justice of the Court. He continued to draw a salary, but the commission’s order said he could not remain an active member of the court. On April 17, 2017, the ruling of the Commission was upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court and on April 27, 2017, Roy resigned from the Court. One day later he announced that he was running for the United States Senate seat held by Luther Strange. The primary election that took place on August 15, 2017, provided Roy with enough support to permit him to compete against Luther in the run-off election.
The foregoing goes to show that in Alabama you can’t keep a good man down. The quality of the two candidates in the run-off, however, suggests you may have trouble finding good men.
Thursday, August 17, 2017
More Banking Follies
A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests . . . and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.
—ohn Calhoun, May 27, 1836 Speech
It was a sad coincidence. It occurred within a couple days after the public was apprised of Wells Fargo’s new foray into discovering ways to make more money by bilking its customers. It was not, of course, a first for that venerable institution. Last year it was learned that millions of customers of the bank had bank accounts and credit cards opened for them by employees of the bank, without being authorized to do so by the customer. If the employee had not only opened the account, but had caused the bank to deposit, for example, $1000 into the account in order to give it life, the practice would not have upset the unsuspecting customers. Instead, the employees simply opened the accounts and, instead of depositing money into them, charged the account holders fees for creating the accounts and associated fees for services that accompanied the new accounts. That, of course, did not please the customers and, when the practice was discovered, caused the bank to pay a $185 million dollar fine and $142 million to the millions of its customers who were victims of the bank’s practices. Wells Fargo was just beginning to recover from the reputational losses it suffered from what, in Trumpian terms would be described as “fake” bank accounts, when it was disclosed that its employees had discovered a new way of bilking customers-insurance sales connected with car loans.
In late July 2017, we learned that approximately 500,000 bank clients were sold car insurance when taking out car loans with the bank, even though they already had car insurance. According to reports, the bank will pay $80 million to clients who were bilked. Whether fines will be imposed on the banks will not be known until some time in the future. (In fairness to Wells Fargo it should be noted that in 2013 JPMorgan Chase paid $13 billion in fines and penalties for some of its activities. It makes Wells Fargo’s recent activities seem trivial.) The other event of note that happened at the end of July was purely coincidental.
The coincidence occurred when we learned that Congress was on the verge of getting rid of a new rule that had been proposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The rule, if permitted to go into effect on January 1, 2018 as planned, would let consumers band together when they were defrauded by banks, and sue the banks as a group in what is known as a “class action.” Under current practices, individuals defrauded by bank practices, such as those undertaken by Wells Fargo, cannot bring class action lawsuits, but are forced into arbitration by virtue of the agreements they signed when entering into transactions with the bank. The rule proposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was to take effect on January 1, 2018, would ban compulsory arbitration. Once it became effective it was estimated it would cost banks approximately $1 billion a year. That seems to many observers like a lot of money, but banks are believed to have roughly $171 billion in profits annually, so the rule is not as onerous as it might at first seem.
Keith Noreika, the acting Comptroller of the Currency, has said he has no plans to try to block the rule even though he thinks it is a bad rule. Indeed, in addressing the effects of the rule were it to go into effect he said: “Ultimately, the rule may have unintended consequences for banking customers in the form of decreased availability of products and services, increased related costs, fewer options to remedy consumer concerns and delayed resolution of consumer issues.” What he is, of course suggesting, is that if the rule were to go into effect, banks, confronted with the possibility of law suits and the need to defend their practices in front of juries instead of boards of arbitration, might decide to no longer issue credit cards or otherwise deal with consumers. Because of the actions of the House of Representatives and, once it returns to Washington, the Senate, Mr. Noreika will never have to explain what he meant when he said that: “The rule [if put into effect] may turn out to be the proverbial straw on the camel’s back.” Mr. Noreika will never have to explain why, a $1-billion-dollar reduction in profits for the camels (qua banks) would be the straw that would put them out of business. That is because, availing itself of procedural steps it can take under the Congressional Review Act to avoid the implementation of recently enacted regulations it dislikes, the House of Representatives passed a “resolution of disapproval” to revoke the rule before leaving on its well-deserved five-week vacation. The Senate is expected to follow suit when it returns from its holiday. The camel, whose back was threatened by a straw, can be heard breathing a big sigh of relief. The consumer can be heard simply sighing. Christopher Brauchli can be emailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see his web page at http://humanraceandothersports.com