LABOR, ECONOMY & THE CLIMATE - page 58

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is asking a federal judge to approve of a $24 million penalty against Wells Fargo for participating in a kick-back scheme. The arrangement between Wells Fargo and a now-defunct mortgage servicing company allegedly went on between 2009 and 2013, despite “multiple warnings of the illegal arrangements,” according to a civil complaint filed at a Baltimore District Court on Thursday by the CFPB. The two companies, the complaint stated, exploited “a hot mortgage refinancing market and very low interest rates” to… Keep Reading

The lawmaker in charge of crafting and publicizing policy for House Democrats pushed back against President Obama’s renewed drive for international trade agreements. “Trade is going to be a very significant debate,” Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Chair, said on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal Thursday morning. “At the end of the day, I’m going to have to see in a trade deal that we’re not just increasing Gross Domestic Product, we’re increasing actual paychecks,” he said. In his State of the… Keep Reading

A Republican Senator holding the reins of the body’s influential finance committee talked about working intimately with the nation’s largest business lobby to implement a legislative agenda throughout the 114th Congress. . In what was referred to as a “Prebuttal” to the President’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) touched on tax reform, international trade, and healthcare in a speech at the US Chamber of Commerce. He promised to give the business lobby plenty of input when it comes to… Keep Reading

As President Obama prepared to tout social mobility and equitable economic growth at the State of the Union, a Federal Reserve Board Governor he appointed said more changes are needed to a deep-penetrating system that was, in recent years, infamously manipulated by Too Big To Fail banks around the world. Speaking at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday morning, Jerome Powell said that the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) is still unreliable, and revealed that the Fed and “a group of the largest global dealers” has… Keep Reading

Environmentalist groups are planning on suing the federal government, accusing it of allowing the killing of grizzly bears “beyond sustainable levels” near Yellowstone National Park. The Sierra Club and the Western Watersheds Project said that the allowance could see the regional female grizzly population decline by more than three times the rate required to maintain the current population. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the US Forest Service approved a “take” of 15 grizzly bears in two orders that last… Keep Reading

President Obama put forward a plan of action Wednesday to reduce methane emissions over the next decade. Hours later, the nation’s most powerful business lobby said it hoped the idea would be squashed. “Now the administration comes out with another one-size-fits-all regulation that’s going to have an impact on one of the most innovative industries in the country,” said Bruce Josten, the Executive Vice President of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Government Affairs. He made the statement as he and the Chamber’s CEO, Tom Donohue,… Keep Reading

In a series of votes on Wednesday, House Republicans attached several anti-immigrant riders to a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that will now assuredly be vetoed by the White House, if it can pass the Senate. The bill, which keeps the agency funded through September, was passed out of the House Rules Committee Monday night, along with several amendments ruled in order. The addition to the appropriations bill would roll back President Obama’s executive actions on immigration. In a 237-190 vote in the full… Keep Reading

In attempting to address criticism leveled by lawmakers, the US Trade Representative has acknowledged past problems with a type of controversial dispute settlement mechanism included in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. USTR Ambassador Michael Froman told Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) in a letter sent in December that investor protections written into the TPP “are designed to prevent the kind of abuses of the investor-State [sic] dispute settlement that have happened under agreements negotiated by other countries.” Froman described those deals as “more expansive” with “few (or none)… Keep Reading

A Republican lawmaker took to the floor of the Senate on Monday to say that last week’s violence in France justifies tougher immigration laws in the United States. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) cited the Islamist attacks in Paris and just outside the French capital as reasons to oppose President Obama’s executive order on immigration and to call for the implementation of a biometric visa system that has been criticized by civil liberties advocates. “Attacks on the people of France demonstrate in the most chilling terms… Keep Reading

Amid a fledgling primary campaign, rural Iowa state lawmaker Joni Ernst crafted a quirky hardscrabble persona that propelled her to both the forefront of the race and, eventually, the United States Senate. In a 30-second spot that gained attention for its employment of hog castration imagery, Sen. Ernst (R-Iowa) claimed that her farmer parents “taught us to live within our means” and said that “it’s time to force Washington to do the same.” The Washington Post said the ad “transformed” the race and was “a vivid reminder… Keep Reading