Fauxcahontas Clueless As Ever

GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Court Decision on Funding for CFPB a Bombshell​



The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created in 2010 as a mechanism for financial reform. It was part of the Dodd-Frank law that took a hatchet to the lending practices of banks and other financial institutions, making it harder and more expensive for consumers and banks to engage in loans.

The way the CFPB is funded has been controversial from the start. It receives funding from the Federal Reserve rather than appropriations legislation passed by Congress. Now, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the funding method is unconstitutional.

A particular target of the regulators over the years has been the “payday lenders.” A rule governing those small loan companies was also vacated.

“Congress’s decision to abdicate its appropriations power under the Constitution, i.e., to cede its power of the purse to the Bureau, violates the Constitution’s structural separation of powers,” the judges wrote.

Politico:

The appeals court ruling marked the latest victory for the finance industry, which has fought for years in Congress and the courts to blunt the CFPB’s reach and limit its ability to police financial services. Republican lawmakers have also worked for years to stifle the CFPB and revamp its structure, arguing the agency lacks accountability.
“Even among self-funded agencies, the Bureau is unique,” Judge Cory Wilson wrote Wednesday. “The Bureau’s perpetual self-directed, double-insulated funding structure goes a significant step further than that enjoyed by the other agencies on offer.”
Click to expand...

The purpose of having the Federal Reserve fund a federal agency was to “protect” the CFPB from “political pressure.” In fact, it made the Finance Bureau virtually bulletproof and ensured that no matter who was president, Democrats would have a huge say in agency policy.
 
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INGSOC
PREMO Member
The Democrat believed that her party has done a lot for the well-being of the country, promising to not let Republicans get in the way of their radical agenda.

“Where we can pursue legislative action, we should fight aggressively. When Republicans try to obstruct such action and the president can act by executive authority, he must,” Warren wrote, adding “Most of all, the Democrats should be aggressive in putting Republicans on the defensive, pressing hard on why they are blocking much-needed initiatives to help Americans.”

Warren claimed that if Republicans gain control of the House, they will attempt to take the economy hostage, voting against helping middle-class families.



townhall.com

Elizabeth Warren Attacks Republicans In Scathing Op-Ed, Urging Democrats To Get 'Aggressive'

townhall.com townhall.com
 
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INGSOC
PREMO Member

Elizabeth Warren's Crypto Bill Targets Financial Freedom, Not Fraud​



"Rogue nations, oligarchs, drug lords, and human traffickers are using digital assets to launder billions in stolen funds, evade sanctions, and finance terrorism," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) huffed this week. "The crypto industry should follow common-sense rules like banks, brokers, and Western Union, and this legislation would ensure the same standards apply across similar financial transactions. The bipartisan bill will help close crypto money laundering loopholes and strengthen enforcement to better safeguard U.S. national security."

The bipartisan bill to which Warren refers sports the tendentious moniker, Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022. Stripped of grandiose claims, it attempts to extend the financial surveillance state cooked up by drug warriors and anti-terrorism fearmongers to cryptocurrencies. Warren and company picked an opportune moment to do just that, while the public is occupied with a headline-grabbing financial scandal that taints crypto's already sketchy reputation.

In fact, Sam Bankman-Fried's shenanigans at FTX, perhaps concealed by generous political donations, look old-school, including mingling personal and corporate funds in ways that would have raised red flags long before digital tokens. But they cast further shade over a crypto sector that had yet to gain acceptance by the American mainstream. After years of breathy warnings that cryptocurrency is shady, and speculative values detached from reality, many people are prepared to believe the worst.
 
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INGSOC
PREMO Member

Elizabeth Warren Browbeats Tesla Board Over Elon Musk’s Work With Twitter​



Warren told Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm in a letter that the board has a responsibility to ensure that Musk “fulfills his legal obligation to act in the best interests of Tesla and all of its shareholders, not just himself,” as well as guarantee that he “does not treat the company as a private plaything.” She asked about specific oversight measures board members have created to determine whether Musk is adequately leading the automaker.

“Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his simultaneous management of both Twitter and Tesla raise significant legal questions about conflicts of interest, compliance with labor laws, and misappropriation of corporate resources,” she wrote.

The lawmaker, who has previously clashed with Musk over his supposed failure to pay a fair share of taxes, referenced his reported use of Tesla engineers to assume control of the social media company’s code immediately following the acquisition. Though Musk has said that the employees volunteered to help him take over the platform, Warren cited one anonymous report claiming that “most would also feel it was impossible to turn down a direct request from Musk without later facing poor performance reviews or other consequences.” Warren also said that using Tesla employees at Twitter could violate Musk’s legal “duty of loyalty to Tesla” and “trigger questions” about the board’s responsibility to prevent such actions.

Musk has remarked that he still oversees Tesla and SpaceX, where he says the teams “are so good that often little is needed” from him. The serial entrepreneur said in court last month that he holds no desire to be a chief executive “of any company.”



WTF would Lizzy know, about running a company


CEOs Who Lead More Than One Company​



Several chief executives are so well-known that they have become business celebrities. Ben Geier highlights several of them in his Fortune.com article, “Jack Dorsey Isn’t Alone: 8 CEOs (and Others) Who Served Double Duty”:

  • Elon Musk: Perhaps the most famous executive serving on multiple boards, Musk heads up SpaceX and Tesla. The fruits of his labor can be seen driving silently and efficiently on the streets or roaring toward the heavens.
  • Warren Buffett: Perhaps the most investment-savvy executive in the business, Buffett leads both Berkshire Hathaway, a multinational holding company, and Salomon Brothers, an investment bank.
  • Steve Jobs: Another corporate celebrity, Jobs made history by ushering in the age of the mobile device with his company Apple’s iPhone. He also made a splash in the film animation industry through Pixar Animation Studios.
Musk, Buffett, and Jobs may be the most well-known, but executives other than CEOs often serve on the boards of different companies as well. Nothing prohibits a chief financial officer or chief technology officer from serving on other boards, as long as their positions don’t violate the Clayton Act.







Carlos Goshn​

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Image Source: nineoclock

Most CEOs have a full schedule running one company. Carlos Ghosn runs three: He’s the chief executive of both Nissan and Renault, and the chairman of Russian automaker AvtoVaz. He spoke with LinkedIn executive editor Daniel Roth in November 2014 about how he manages three companies based in three countries. One key: Having his schedule set more than a year in advance.
 
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GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Sen. Elizabeth Warren's debt limit whopper



There are two big further points to make about Warren’s tweeted twaddle.

The first is that the 2017 tax cuts did not lower revenues but boosted them. As two of the bill’s authors, Tyler Goodspeed and Kevin Hassert, noted last May, the new tax rates lifted business investment and capital expenditures by 9.4% and 20%, respectively, raised household income, elevated corporate tax revenue $46 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office forecast, increased corporate tax revenue’s share of the economy by 21%, and prompted companies to bring overseas earnings back to America rather than stashing them abroad.

Total federal tax revenues rose 22% between 2017 and 2021. So, it isn’t reduced revenues that are now pushing congressional heads painfully up against the debt ceiling, as Warren implies. The culprit is excessive spending, to which she objected not at all.

The other big area where Warren is totally off base is not to do with her math but with her language and what it implies. When she accuses Republicans of spending $2 trillion by cutting taxes, the suggestion is that the money is by rights the property of the government. This assumption also undergirds the notion of a government “giveaway,” an allied similar trope of leftist fiscal thinking.

But you can only, as a matter of definition, give away what is yours. Money in people’s pockets net of tax is their property and does not belong to Washington, no matter how fervently Warren wishes otherwise.

To say Republicans spent money because they did not gather it in taxes implies that everyone’s wages and salaries are by rights at the disposal of politicians. This is feudal thinking. Warren and the Democrats are like medieval monarchs who governed on the theory that individual property was granted on sufferance by the king to his inferiors.
 
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INGSOC
PREMO Member

Elizabeth Warren Wants the Government To Save Batgirl​




They worried that the removal of content from HBO Max and the cancellation of projects like Batgirl "are merely a prelude of what could come."

While the letter stops short of calling for the DOJ to unwind the merger, it does ask that the government "take another look at the transaction" in light of Warner's business decisions.

The lawmakers' positions demonstrate both financial and media illiteracy, and they don't justify involving the government in a private company's affairs.

First, the letter singles out the shutdown of CNN+ and budget cuts at CNN, saying Warner Bros. Discovery was "reducing competition for news and hurting the broader ecosystem of journalism." But CNN+ was infamously a debacle: WarnerMedia ultimately sunk $300 million into the service after budgeting $1 billion for its first four years; it had fewer than 10,000 daily viewers; executives showed no clear understanding of the service's long-term business plan.

As for Batgirl, the lawmakers are on even shakier ground. Castro told the Los Angeles Times, "If there had been no merger, that movie would have ended up going to theaters and on the streaming platforms." But the movie was always intended to be a streaming exclusive. With the studio desperate to cut costs, it made little sense to move forward with a movie that wouldn't at least generate ticket sales. Other streaming platforms are embracing theatrical releases to help defray production costs.

And even if Warner decided to switch gears and release Batgirl in theaters, the cost to get it to that point would be considerable: In its current form, the film tested poorly, with audiences likening it to "a bad TV show." So even after spending millions more to get the film up to theater quality, Variety estimated that it would have cost the studio between $30 million and $50 million to market it domestically, plus tens of millions more for international marketing.
 
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INGSOC
PREMO Member

Elizabeth Warren wants the police at your door in 2024​



Warren and Marshall are planning to reignite that debate on Capitol Hill this summer and have enlisted law enforcement advocates to their cause. Prosecutors and federal agents doubtless support the bill, as they have every other bill that turns the one-way ratchet of financial surveillance. If they had their way, our personal bank account and credit card logins would rest on a central repository for the Department of Justice to access at will and without a warrant.

The Warren bill would require that anyone who designs a crypto wallet (a computer program designed to store the encryption code that helps to keep your crypto tokens secure) register as a money services business and, essentially, be regulated like a financial institution.

This means that any computer programmer entrepreneur who writes code to help customers control crypto investments from their phone — and to help keep the crypto secure from hackers — would need to register with the Treasury Department as if they were Western Union. Good luck with that, crypto startups.

Warren instigated the bill. The quiet part she is not saying out loud (and that Marshall doesn’t seem to understand) is that this blunt application of rules for Western Union, when applied to entrepreneur computer coders, doesn’t work. They can’t comply, and she knows it.

This bill is a Trojan horse designed to destroy the crypto markets under the false guise of a pro-national security bill. It’s a smart strategy. Convince national security conservatives that this is an answer to a perceived problem, particularly members with little background knowledge of how crypto works, and then let crypto development die off.
 
GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Elizabeth Warren Takes a Bold Stand Against 'Big Sandwich'​



Monopolies are a problem that have bedeviled economics and economies from time immemorial. On the one hand you ideally want a free market in which goods are able to be exchanged and companies are allowed to join or separate as they see fit, but along with that freedom comes a risk of having companies acquire so many of their competitors that they begin to exert undue control over the prevailing market prices of goods. Even the founding father of Capitalism himself, Adam Smith, worried about the how 'monopolies derange more or less the natural distribution of the stock of the society' (although it should be noted that Smith was writing about a different type of monopoly, government trade monopolies).

But what constitutes a true monopoly? Apparently to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren one company having too much control over the 'submarine' sandwich business is a real threat to a free and fair marketplace... because of course she thinks that.












 
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INGSOC
PREMO Member

What Elizabeth Warren's Fear of a 'Sandwich Shop Monopoly' Reveals About Democrats' Priorities​




As something of a fast-food aficionado, I've been amused by the raging and inconsistent arguments from progressives about the fast-food industry. For years, these professional scolds have depicted America as a Fast Food Nation, with cheap burger joints epitomizing our nation's consumerism, tackiness and fast pace. Why can't we all enjoy two-hour gourmet lunches at the café like they do in Europe?

[clip]

That brings me to the latest leftist obsession: fast-food acquisitions. In a tweet last week, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) harrumphed: "We don't need another private equity deal that could lead to higher food prices for consumers. The @FTC is right to investigate whether the purchase of @SUBWAY by the same firm that owns @jimmyjohns and @McAlistersDeli creates a sandwich shop monopoly."

This is ludicrous for various reasons. I appreciate the value of a nicely assembled sandwich—and as a free-market advocate understand the complexities of running any type of business—but slapping lunch meats and condiments on bread is not some high-barrier-to-entry endeavor. Should a federal government that is nearly $ 34 trillion in debt and can't manage basic operations be micromanaging fast-food business purchases?

A monopoly is defined as "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service." To apply it to sandwich shops is incomprehensible. Subway is large, but is dwarfed by the number of independent delis. Increasingly, the federal government is expanding that monopoly definition to include any business that has a lot of market power.

Many politicians and regulators—especially in the Biden administration—seem economically illiterate, but do they have to be actually illiterate, too?

Why are lefties so upset at the potential of rising fast-food prices when they want people to eat less of it? These ideologues, of course, specifically want to raise prices of nicotine products, fossil fuels, and other disliked substances to reduce reliance on them. For instance, a 2018 study from the federal Centers for Disease Control complained that nearly 37 percent of Americans eat fast food every day and that such habits are associated with obesity.

Regarding fast food, progressives have zeroed in on the fast-food industry to improve the living conditions of low-wage workers. As I explained on these pages last month, California Democrats passed a law creating a European-style sectoral-bargaining commission to set wages and working conditions on national-franchise fast-food restaurants.

They ultimately agreed to a deal (to avoid a statewide referendum) that limits the commission's power, but boosts wages to $20 an hour. That will harm the industry and raise prices, which could reduce salty french fry consumption, but that isn't their goal. It's just odd to pin the financial future of lower-income workers on an industry they believe to have such a maleficent influence. We don't see Gov. Gavin Newsom trying to help workers pursue careers in the oil and gas industry.

As an aside, President Joe Biden recently slammed businesses for high prices: "Let me be clear to any corporation that hasn't brought their prices back down even as inflation has come down: It's time to stop the price gouging." Never mind that his own administration's policies, and the policies of other Democratic politicians, are driving up the wages that are resulting in soaring restaurant prices. It's not gouging, but government policy.

It's pointless to look for consistency. Progressives dislike the private sector and are incapable of blaming inflationary government policies given they always want more government spending and meddling. There always has to be a bad guy, and fast-food restaurants fit that bill for any convenient reason relating to nutrition, wages, mergers, rising prices, or over-sized portions. Tech firms get this treatment, too, as the Federal Trade Commission is targeting Amazon for offering customers really good deals.
 
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