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Category: Revolving door project

  • Consumer Advocates Say Supreme Court Must Rebuke ‘Harebrained’ Attack on CFPB



    The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding, a move that was welcomed by some advocates as an opportunity for the nation’s highest court to protect American consumers from a lower court ruling.

    The justices will take up the case, Community Financial Services Association v. CFPB, after a panel of three U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges appointed by former President Donald Trump last year sided with the payday lending industry in the ruling by questioning the federal agency’s funding model and thereby its authority.

    At issue is whether the CFPB’s annual funding via the Federal Reserve and not Congress violates the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution. Critics of the October ruling argued that the CFPB’s funding mechanism was designed to ensure the agency’s independence.

    The Biden administration, backed by Democratic attorneys general in 21 states, argues that the 5th Circuit Court’s ruling “threatens the validity of all past CFPB actions.”

    First proposed by then-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB was established in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial crisis. Consumer advocates warn that the 5th Circuit’s ruling threatens the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve, as well as agencies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the National Credit Union Administration, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Farm Credit Administration, and the Office of Financial Research.

    Consumer advocates reacted to Monday’s news by saying the U.S. Supreme Court now has an opportunity to correct what they say is the mistaken logic of the lower court ruling.

    “There is no judicially cognizable limiting legal principle that distinguishes between the 5th Circuit’s harebrained assault on the CFPB and potential challenges to Social Security or other financial regulators which are funded outside of the annual appropriations process,” warned Jeff Hauser, executive director of the watchdog group Revolving Door Project.

    Maria Langholz, communications director at the online advocacy group Demand Progress, welcomed the high court’s acceptance of the case.

    “We are pleased to see that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this important case and expect a correction of the 5th Circuit’s misguided attacks on the CFPB,” she said in a statement. “In the past twelve years, the CFPB has proven itself as a fierce defender of consumers against unscrupulous creditors that decimated our economy and wreaked havoc on people’s lives. The Supreme Court should reject the Fifth Circuit’s unprecedented ruling, restoring stability to the marketplace and preserving the CFPB’s ability to protect the American people.”


    Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, called the 5th Circuit’s decision “a direct attack on the nation’s economy.”

    “Now that it has taken up the case, SCOTUS must move swiftly to overturn this dangerous opinion that could prevent financial regulators, including the Federal Reserve, from doing their jobs to protect American businesses and consumers.”

    Revolving Door Project researcher Vishal Shankar called the 5th Circuit’s ruling “a naked attempt by corporate fraudsters to destroy the only cop on the beat protecting consumers.

    Shankar continued:

    The case was originally brought by predatory payday lenders and is being supported by giant lobbying groups like the Chamber of Commerce, whose members and executives have a shameless history of breaking the law and ripping off consumers. Multiple Republican lawmakers who have praised the 5th Circuit’s ruling—and the far-right judge who wrote it—have taken large financial contributions from these corporate rip-off artists and lobbying giants.

    “Following the money confirms what we all know to be true: this case has nothing to do with the constitutional separation of powers and everything to do with destroying an overwhelmingly popular law enforcement agency that has already returned over $13.5 billion in relief to consumers from corporate fraudsters,” Shankar added.

    “If the Supreme Court has any respect left for the rule of law,” he said, “it should overturn the 5th Circuit’s radical act of right-wing judicial activism.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Corporate Media Failing to Report Shortcomings of Biden Rental Plan



    Last month, the Biden administration unveiled a slate of new agency-level actions it claimed would “protect renters and promote rental affordability.” The announcement followed nearly a year of public pressure from Congressional Democrats and the tenant-led Homes Guarantee campaign to get President Biden to crack down on rent-gouging and unjust evictions. In late January, the campaign sent the White House a list of 11 essential policy directives to include in its tenant protection plan.

    Unfortunately, the White House’s final action slate was a far cry from what tenants — millions of whom are only one missed paycheck or life emergency away from eviction — had been asking for. In a press statement, Homes Guarantee campaign director Tara Raghuveer said the White House Plan falls short “of using the full power of the administration to regulate rent and address market consolidation by corporate landlords.” The plan consists largely of voluntary, incremental measures that do almost nothing to help tenants today. Almost all of the campaign’s essential demands are missing from the White House plan, including any material rent regulations or efforts to integrate good cause eviction protections into existing federal housing programs.

    In lieu of these measures, the Biden plan includes something called the “Resident-Centered Housing Challenge”, a set of nonbinding voluntary pledges from real estate industry groups to “improve the quality of life for renters.” Among the Challenge’s participants are the National Association of Realtors (NAR), National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), and National Apartment Association (NAA), all groups who (as I’ve previously written in this newsletter) represent corporate landlords whose anticompetitive practices have fuelled the rental housing crisis. These groups spent much of the last year lobbying the White House to ignore tenants’ demands for robust rent regulations and tenant protections. Their efforts ultimately succeeded, with the final Biden plan failing to include the bare minimum that tenants had asked for.

    If the White House thought they would be rewarded by the industry for caving to its demands, they were sorely mistaken. NAR and NMHC immediately issued crocodile tear-laden press statements arguing the Biden plan contained “duplicative and onerous regulations” that would “drive housing providers out of the market” (as if private developers are doing a great job solving the crisis on their own currently!). NAA, saying the quiet part out loud, boasted in a press release that their lobbying efforts had “helped avert an executive order advanced by renters advocates and members of Congress, which would have imposed immediate policy changes.” That’s right, they openly bragged about keeping life terrible for tenants through sheer force of Washington muscle.

    Journalism should be about holding the powerful accountable, not reprinting their talking points.

    Taken together, the real estate industry’s public statements and behind-the-scenes lobbying paint a clear picture of what’s really going on here: corporate lobbyists flexed their power, got the White House to fold, and are publicly warning Biden not to test them again.

    Unfortunately, instead of exposing this underlying dynamic or pushing back on the real estate industry’s lies, many media outlets are instead quoting industry press statements without fact-checking their claims or properly reporting on their lobbying work. CNN and Yahoo! News both quoted press statements from NAA President Bob Pinnegar and NAR President Kenny Parcell (not that one) claiming the White House’s plan would increase housing costs for renters and was inferior to supply-focused policy alternatives. Forbes and Marketwatch likewise quoted NMHC’s press release trashing rent control as a “failed policy” and praising the group’s members as “competitive [and] resident centered.”

    None of these outlets compared the industry’s “sky is falling” assertions about Biden’s policies (or federal housing regulations in general) to independent economic analyses to assess whether their claims had any merit.

    Worse, none of the outlets listed above mentioned these groups’ functions as lobbying fronts for rent-gouging private equity landlords. NAR, for example, was described by CNN and Yahoo! News as merely a “real estate industry representative group,” with no mention of the fact that it was 2022’s biggest lobbying spender in the entire country, includingand spent millions to kill the Build Back Better Act’s sorely-needed investments in public housing supply. Marketwatch characterized NMHC as an “industry group” while Forbes referred to it merely as a “private housing actor.” Neither outlet mentioned that NMHC’s “competitive [and] resident-centered” members are among the nation’s biggest corporate landlords and pandemic evictors, or that NMHC has previously lobbied for lucrative corporate tax loopholes and against the CDC’s eviction moratorium.

    Marketwatch likewise referred to NAA as another “industry group,” while CNN and Forbes both described it as a “network of over 95,000 members owning and operating more than 11.6 million apartment homes globally” – a definition taken straight from the group’s own website. Despite quoting NAA’s press statement, it seems none of these outlets read the whole thing: NAA’s open admission in its press statement to killing an executive order on rent-gouging is nowhere to be found in the CNN, Forbes, or Marketwatch coverage.

    The media’s deference to industry is nothing new. Last October, I wrote for this newsletter about how the mainstream press often presents real estate lobbying groups as neutral “experts” when reporting on the housing crisis, and fails to disclose their obvious conflicts of interest. Just a month after I wrote that, NPR’s Jennifer Ludden again proved my point by quoting NMHC spokesman Jim Lapides for a story on rent control — without even once explaining what NMHC is or disclosing who its members are.

    Even reporting about the industry’s own lobbying efforts lacks vital context. In a Politico story about industry lobbying published one week before the White House plan’s release, RealPage chief economist Jay Parsons told reporter Katy O’Donnell that federal regulation was unnecessary, as “the balance of power [in the market] has shifted toward renters — they’re going to have more options, more competitive pricing and better deals.” Nowhere in O’Donnell’s piece does she mention that RealPage is currently being sued by renters for seemingly helping a cartel of corporate landlords artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law.

    While it’s not inherently a faux pas to quote industry reacting to policies that could affect them, the problem comes when industry’s claims are taken at their word unquestioningly — especially when the same credulity isn’t extended to tenants. It’s fairly common to see groups like the Homes Guarantee campaign referred to as “activist collectives” and the like by the mainstream press, in such a way as to signal to readers that this group has a political perspective and their views should be taken with a grain of salt. That’s fine, but reporters should also apply the same approach when quoting industry groups who have their own political agendas. Too often, if an industry group has an acronymed, dull-sounding name and dresses its lobbyists up in nice suits and clean haircuts, they’re taken as the serious “adults in the room,” even when what they’re saying is utter nonsense.

    For examples of good coverage of Biden’s plan, look to alternative media.“Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, for example, spoke to Tara Raghuveer and tenant organizer Davita Gatewood about how Biden’s plan actually measured up to tenants’ material needs and prior asks of the administration (during Goodman’s interview, Raghuveer called out the National Apartment Association by name for its gloating press statement and anti-tenant lobbying work). Similarly, The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein, doing what many mainstream journalists apparently failed to do, actually read the NAA’s full press statement and highlighted the group’s gloating about killing a tenant-backed executive order. Indiana University Law Professor Fran Quigley, writing for Jacobin, likewise cites Raghuveer’s and the housing industry’s reactions as evidence of the weakness of Biden’s plan.

    Housing reporters in the mainstream press need to learn from these examples and do a better job of accurately covering the rental housing beat. Organizations like the National Association of Realtors aren’t neutral forums where industry professionals chitchat: they’re lobbying groups which exist to make their members richer, often at the expense of renters. They should be considered just as political as tenant’s advocates, if not more so. Journalism should be about holding the powerful accountable, not reprinting their talking points.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • As Housing Crisis Deepens, Corporate Landlords Applaud ‘Weak’ Biden Renter Protections



    Economic justice advocates on Thursday said that to determine the strength of the Biden administration’s new nonbinding push for renter protections from the federal and state governments and private sector, one needs to look only at the elated response from corporate landlords.

    The Revolving Door Project (RDP) pointed to comments from the National Apartment Association (NAA) and the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC), lobbying groups that represents landlords, that followed the White House’s unveiling on Wednesday of its “Resident-Centered Housing Challenge” and “Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights.”

    “What we can say with certainty is NAA’s advocacy helped avert an executive order advanced by renters advocates and members of Congress, which would have imposed immediate policy changes,” said the NAA in a statement on Thursday.

    “The NMHC—which does the bidding of the nation’s leading corporate landlords—celebrated the omission of national rent control from the White House plan while also objecting to other ‘onerous regulations’ contained in the release, which it claimed would ‘discourage much-needed investments in housing supply,’” said Andrea Beaty, research director for the RDP.

    “The Biden administration has apparently decided to assume that corporate landlords are good-faith actors with their tenants’ best interests at heart, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, and just plain common sense,” added Beaty. “The best the Biden administration offered is industry-approved, nonbinding measures that kick the can down the road.”

    The lobbying groups’ response came as housing justice advocates noted that they have spent roughly a year calling on President Joe Biden to do everything in its power to address housing insecurity and the crisis facing households that are rent-burdened.

    As Moody’s Analytics reported on Thursday, the average U.S. tenant is now rent-burdened, which is defined as paying 30% or more of a household’s income on rent.

    “Tenant stories and expertise informed these actions, and tenants will continue to be central to policymaking that concerns their lives.”

    The firm compared the national median household income—$71,721—with 2022’s average rent of $1,794. In 2021 the average renter paid 28.5% of their income on rent, and in 2020 they paid 25.7%.

    The latest statistics represent “a symbolic threshold, a milestone,” Thomas LaSalvia, director of economic research at Moody’s, told The New York Times.

    “The rent-to-income ratio continued to climb up because income growth was not able to catch up with the rent growth,” Lu Chen, a senior economist at the firm, told the newspaper.

    Following months of meetings between tenant groups and administration officials, as well as advocacy by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on behalf of renters, the White House on Wednesday proposed a number of actions the government will take to gather data about the housing crisis and push federal agencies—but not require them—to consider how they can curb rent costs.

    The White House said it had secured commitments from the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to “collect information to identify practices that unfairly prevent applicants and tenants from accessing or staying in housing.”

    The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said it would “launch a new public process to examine proposed actions promoting renter protections and limits on egregious rent increases for future investments,” while a workshop by the U.S. Department of Justice will address “anti-competitive information sharing, including in rental markets.”

    The Biden administration also said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will propose new rules requiring public housing and rental assistance authorities to provide 30 days’ notice before terminating a lease due to rent nonpayment.

    The White House also released a nonbinding Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights, affirming tenants have the right to clear and fair leases, to organize, and to have access to safe, quality, and affordable housing. Its Resident-Centered Housing Challenge, starting in the spring, will encourage state and local governments to enhance policies that promote fairness in the rental market, urging them to “make their own independent commitments that improve the quality of life for renters.”

    People’s Action, whose Homes Guarantee campaign helped lead efforts to secure renter protections and rent price regulations, said its organizers helped “shape this policy for the better,” and said the commitment from the FHFA offers an opportunity for the agency “to create a policy that helps check the power of landlords.”

    But as the NAA boasted, People’s Action told The Washington Post that the policies will not change “tenants’ lives materially today.”

    “Tenant stories and expertise informed these actions, and tenants will continue to be central to policymaking that concerns their lives,” said Tara Raghuveer, director of the Homes Guarantee campaign. “The rent is still too damn high. While the White House announcement affirms a role for the federal government in correcting the imbalance of power between landlords and tenants, the president can do much more to provide relief to tenants. We are counting on this administration to continue working with our campaign to make it happen.”

    Ahead of Biden’s proposal, People’s Action led 281 national and local tenant organizations in calling on the White House to direct federal agencies to:

    • Protect tenants from unfair, unjust, and unaffordable rent hikes, fines, and fees through rent regulation;
    • Expand and enforce tenant protections by defining “good cause” eviction; and
    • Address the consolidation of the rental market by corporate landlords.
    “Rent is a significant economic issue the Biden administration has the opportunity to tackle. They should take it,” Raghuveer said. “These actions are the essential components of any meaningful strategy to protect tenants, and they complement other White House priorities to strengthen and grow the American economy, like their work to limit market consolidation and monopoly price-setting power.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Biden Admin Still Pushing Trump-Era Legal Positions After Two Years in White House



    Two years after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, his administration continues to advance Trump-era legal positions in dozens of court cases, a progressive watchdog group revealed Friday.

    Former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) “consistently made a mockery of the law throughout his four years in power,” the Revolving Door Project (RDP) noted in the latest release of its long-running litigation tracker.

    Even though “their laughable reasoning and indefensible positions were struck down at a historic rate, many cases were still waiting for Biden,” RDP wrote. “Two years into Biden’s presidency, an alarming number remain, either in some form of pause or advancing forward with the Biden administration adopting Trump’s position.”

    RDP’s litigation tracker, a noncomprehensive database updated Friday to include additional cases and developments, breaks down legal actions across more than a dozen categories. A selection of the Biden administration’s moves follows:

    Immigration
    • Biden’s DOJ bowed to Republican pressure and pulled out of settlement talks with migrants whose families were separated at the border;
    • The Biden administration continues to misuse Title 42 public health authority, first misused by Trump, to turn away asylum-seekers at the border; and
    • The Biden administration continued to defend the practice of violating the legal rights of unaccompanied migrant children under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program.
    Environment
    • Though Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day as president, his Department of Justice defended the Trump-approved Line 3 pipeline in court; and
    • The Biden administration urged an appeals court to overturn an offshore fracking ban once backed by Vice President Kamala Harris.
    Education
    • Biden’s DOJ defended Betsy DeVos and her corrupt Education Department’s actions in court.
    Voting Rights
    • Biden failed to defend voting rights amid historic assault.
    Criminal Justice Reform
    • Biden endorsed an expansion of police power.
    Social Security
    • Biden’s DOJ defended a Social Security provision that deprives Puerto Rico residents of benefits before the Supreme Court.
    Executive Power and Immunity
    • Biden’s DOJ is defending former President Trump in a defamation lawsuit stemming from a sexual assault accusation; and
    • Biden’s DOJ argued to toss out lawsuits against Trump and top officials for violently removing protestors ahead of a photo-op.
    Death Penalty
    • Biden’s DOJ asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence in the Boston Marathon bomber case.
    International Law/Human Rights
    • Biden’s DOJ declined to take a position on whether prisoners at Guantánamo have due process rights.

    “Fidelity to Trump-era positions takes many forms,” RDP pointed out. “Biden’s DOJ successfully defended Trump-era warrantless searches of travelers’ phones; in 2022, the public learned that customs officials maintain a huge database of travelers’ copied phone data. The DOJ continued to prosecute an Indigenous woman arrested while praying on sacred grounds disrupted by Trump’s border wall construction. They successfully defended the 17-year allowance Trump’s EPA granted to Montana to fail to meet clean water standards for nutrient pollution.”

    In addition, the Biden White House persists “in siding with the pork industry against California and animal rights groups in a high-profile Supreme Court case, despite dozens of Democratic lawmakers urging a change of course,” RDP continued. “National Pork Producers Council v. Ross is not the only animal farming case in which the Biden-Garland Justice Department continues to maintain Trump administration positions. The latest update to the litigation tracker shows the Justice Department continuing to defend multiple Trump-era Department of Agriculture decisions that excuse or enable the cruel treatment of poultry, lab-kept primates, and pigs in slaughterhouses.”

    In a statement, RDP researcher Ananya Kalahasti said that “as the previous administration violated legal and ethical norms at every turn, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s choice of continuity with the Trump DOJ’s positions erodes the integrity of the very institution he is determined to protect.”

    “While the Justice Department makes concerted strides towards a more just application of the law in many cases,” Kalahasti added, “it pulls backward in others, muddling the legacy and body of precedent it is shaping in real-time.”

    RDP researcher Hannah Story Brown observed that although “the Justice Department has chosen continuity with its Trump-era position in amicus filings before the Supreme Court in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross… the Biden administration still has a potent opportunity to chart a better course, with other ongoing cases like Suncor v. Boulder County Commissioners, a climate damages case in which the Supreme Court has solicited the Justice Department’s opinion.”

    Brown made clear that RDP is “watching closely to see whether the Justice Department chooses to break from or maintain the position it first adopted under disgraced former DOJ environmental attorney Jeffrey Clark in related state-level climate cases.”

    Under normal circumstances, maintaining the previous administration’s positions “would be relatively routine,” RDP argued. “Even if the White House is shifting from one party to another, it is not generally assumed that all of the federal government’s litigation positions will change. Instead of a blanket reversal, each case tends to receive a thorough review before the new administration decides to stay the course or reverse.”

    “But these are not normal circumstances,” the group continued. “At every turn and in every corner of the federal government, the Trump administration gleefully trampled the law. In fact, loyalty to the president’s person—which plainly required a willingness to ignore legal constraints—was a nonnegotiable condition of employment. In the wake of such an attack, normal deference is not warranted.”

    “The Biden administration must move quickly to drop, reverse, or settle the cases that Trump left behind,” RDP stressed. “And—we would have thought this wouldn’t need to be said—the administration should adopt Trump’s positions about as often as a stopped clock is accurate.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘An Issue of Legacy’: Groups Demand TVA Drop Plans to Build New Gas Plant and Pipeline



    A coalition of more than 100 environmental advocacy groups on Wednesday urged the Biden administration to take executive action to stop the Tennessee Valley Authority from building a new fossil gas plant and pipeline to replace a key coal-fired facility.

    The TVA, which serves around 10 million people in seven states, announced last October that it would replace its aging coal-fired plant in Cumberland City, Tennessee. Generating enough electricity to power more than a million homes each year, Cumberland is the TVA’s largest coal-fired plant. Closing it is part of the agency’s plan to shutter all five of its coal-fired facilities by 2035.

    “The EPA can either use its legal power to advance the clean energy economy or, given the alternative of no action, can needlessly sign off on dangerous fossil fuel expansion.”

    To replace Cumberland, TVA plans to build a fossil gas plant in Stewart County that will be supplied by a 32-mile fracked gas pipeline running through three Tennessee counties. Pipeline builder Kinder Morgan has a lengthy history of leaks, pollution, labor violations, and other offenses against the public and nature. Many local residents warily recall a 1992 pipeline explosion that injured five people and burned 400 acres of land less than a mile from the proposed pipeline’s route.

    The 112 groups argued in a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and a trio of White House advisers that Section 309 of the Clean Air Act stipulates that if the EPA chief “determines that any such legislation, action, or regulation is unsatisfactory from the standpoint of public health or welfare or environmental quality, he shall publish his determination and the matter shall be referred to the Council on Environmental Quality.”

    Therefore, the letter’s signatories want the EPA to refer TVA’s proposed plant and pipeline to the council, which is part of the Executive Office of the President.

    “This is a matter in which the Biden administration has power—and no required 50th Senate vote as a roadblock—to make good on its promises to tackle the global climate emergency,” the letter argues. “It is an issue of legacy where the EPA can either use its legal power to advance the clean energy economy or, given the alternative of no action, can needlessly sign off on dangerous fossil fuel expansion.”

    According to the watchdog group Revolving Door Project:

    The decision to replace two TVA coal plants with a new gas plant and pipeline was made by TVA CEO Jeff Lyash, who was a fossil fuel CEO for 17 years before joining the TVA. Under his leadership, Duke Energy leaked toxic chemicals into the sole source of drinking water for nearly one million North Carolina residents. Lyash’s TVA still generates 21% of its energy from coal and 26% from methane gas. It projects that it will emit over 34 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2038.

    “The enormous response to this letter from the TVA’s own customers, and across the country, shows that Jeff Lyash does not have anything like a popular mandate to expand fossil fuels at the TVA,” Revolving Door Project climate research director Dorothy Slater said in a statement. “Administrator Regan needs to step up and faithfully execute the laws, as is his mandate.”

    TVA is a federally owned electric utility established by Congress 90 years ago during Democratic then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs aimed at tackling the Great Depression. Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, it is the nation’s sixth-largest power supplier.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.