Mick Mulvaney (previously) is a terrible human being -- as Trump's head for the financial watchdog, he's gutted the agency and allowed crooked lenders and dirty banks to get away with ripping off Americans -- so he knows one when he sees one. Read the rest

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Elizabeth Warren's gift that keeps on giving -- one of the most effective US government agencies, handing out real punishment to banks that break the law, fighting loan-sharks that prey on poor people, and maintaining a database of vetted consumer complaints against banks that have ripped them off. Read the rest

Wells Fargo defrauded 800,000 car loan borrowers, forcing 274,000 of them into bankruptcy and stealing ("wrongfully repossessing") 25,000 cars; they also ripped off mortgage borrowers by failing to send them their paperwork until after the deadline for filing it and then fining them for not filing it on time. Read the rest

Following reports this week that Mick Mulvaney, Trump's new chief of the Consumer Finance Protection Board had stopped all activity related to probing the Equifax breach in which the sensitive financial data of virtually every adult American was stolen, 32 Democratic senators have written to Mulvaney demanding that he account for himself. Read the rest

Mick Mulvaney, the former loan-shark lobbyist who killed plans to regulate payday lenders after being appointed chief of the Consumer Finance Protection Board, has effective abandoned the agency's efforts to punish Equifax for leaking the sensitive personal and financial information of at least 145,500,000 Americans. Read the rest

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, founded by Elizabeth Warren prior to her career as a senator, was once the gem of the US political system, a consistently effective force for punishing finance industry wrongdoing, until Trump let Wall Street robber barons loose on it, under the direction of a lawyer who represented loan sharks before going to work for the Trump administration. Read the rest

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a rare gem in the US financial regulatory apparatus, a regulator that actually tackles fraud and criminality by monied, powerful financial institutions, exacts meaningful penalties from them, and forces them to stop. They're one of the only things standing between you and highway robbery. Read the rest

Trump, his deal-making skills having failed him, simply ordered his party Thursday night to pass his unappetizing Obamacare replacement plan, or else. And the "else" is Obamacare, forever and ever and ever. Read the rest

As Xeni wrote, yesterday's vote to de-fund the NSA's warrantless dragnet surveillance came within a whisker of passing. 205 Reps voted in favor of asserting innocent Americans' right not to be spied upon; 217 voted against, and 12 abstained -- enough to have carried the day. Who were these heroes and villains and absentees? Here are their names from the full roll call.

If you live in the district of a Congresscritter who voted in favor of defunding the NSA, please call her or him and say thank you. If your Congresscritter voted in favor of you being spied upon at all times and in every way forever, call that person up and do some shouting. The anti-NSA side was thoroughly bipartisan. There are undoubtably some "no" voters who can be persuaded to switch to a yes if they think that their constituents really care about it. We are so close.

Same goes for abstainers -- if those 12 had bothered to show up for work yesterday and voted with the Constitution they've sworn to uphold, the day would have been carried.

Click through the jump to see the full lists, courtesy of Techdirt. Read the rest

Mulvaney on Bomb Disposal is a WWII-era cartoon drawn by and for Navy bomb-disposal experts. Warning: lots of racial stereotyping, especially of Axis powers.

Link

(Thanks, James!)

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