July, 19 2018, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Mike Litt, Consumer Campaign Director, U.S. PIRG, 202-461-3830; 702-427-1608, mlitt@pirg.org
As Senators Consider Confirming Kathy Kraninger to Run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, More than 100 groups Release Online Video to Defend the CFPB
Video’s message: Kathy Kraninger lacks a pro-consumer track record, but the CFPB’s ability to protect consumers is still intact; Congress poses the long-term threat
WASHINGTON
As the Senate Banking Committee begins a scheduled confirmation hearing for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director nominee Kathy Kraninger, U.S. PIRG and 103 other groups representing consumers, small businesses, students, and workers, released an online video on Twitter and Facebook about the current state of the CFPB.
The nomination of Kraninger, who lacks a track record protecting consumers in the financial marketplace, follows troubling actions by the Bureau under Mick Mulvaney's interim directorship, including:
- announcing its intention to reconsider and delay its payday lending rule.
- dropping its lawsuit against four online lenders it had accused of deceiving consumers by collecting debts not legally owned.
- considering hiding its consumer complaint database from public view.
If the next CFPB director continues the Bureau's trajectory under Mr. Mulvaney, as documented in numerous articles, we can expect a slow-down in consumer protections at the Consumer Bureau over the next few years.
"What you might be missing from the bad headlines is that the ability of the Consumer Bureau to protect consumers is largely still intact. That's thanks to Americans voicing their concerns to Congress for the last seven years and making sure that enough senators block efforts funded by Wall Street to strip the Bureau of its ability to protect consumers," Mike Litt, U.S. PIRG's Consumer Campaign Director, explains in the video.
Some highlights of the CFPB's first seven years include:
- Returning $12.4 billion to more than 31 million consumers cheated by illegal practices conducted by credit card and mortgage companies, banks, debt collectors, and others.
- Processing more than 1.5 million consumer complaints across the country. Many of these complaints are published in the public database.
- Taking more than 180 legal actions against companies that broke the law, such as when Wells Fargo was caught creating millions of fake accounts.
- Creating special offices to protect students, seniors, servicemembers and persons at risk of unlawful discrimination.
- Posting guides on its website to help consumers make important financial decisions, including shopping for a home, taking out a loan, or planning for retirement.
The video points out that the long-term threat to consumers isn't whoever sits in the director's chair -- it's Congress, which has introduced more than a dozen bills designed to weaken or even get rid of the agency. Although this legislation hasn't passed on its own, anti-CFPB legislators are trying to sneak these provisions into budget bills.
"As long as we keep a filibuster in the Senate, a future director who believes in the Bureau's mission will still be able to carry that mission out. The Consumer Bureau will be able to keep Wall Street in check and ensure a fair and transparent marketplace for consumers and businesses alike, and without their hands tied behind their back. So let's keep speaking up," Litt said, to conclude the video.
U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), stands up to powerful special interests on behalf of the American public, working to win concrete results for our health and our well-being. With a strong network of researchers, advocates, organizers and students in state capitols across the country, we take on the special interests on issues, such as product safety,political corruption, prescription drugs and voting rights,where these interests stand in the way of reform and progress.
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"We will continue to stand in solidarity and fight together with our African comrades to stop EACOP, to stop the plunder of our homelands, to stop the displacement of our peoples, and to stop imperialist climate destruction."
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The "Summer of Heat" continues—both in terms of record-breaking temperatures driven by fossil fuels and a series of nonviolent direct actions targeting Wall Street for its contributions to the climate emergency.
After protests last month calling out Citibank for "financing the arsonists," climate campaigners on Friday set their sights on finance and insurance giant AIG for "stubbornly" refusing to join over two dozen other insurers that won't cover the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
EACOP is set to run nearly 900 miles from Uganda's Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Rights groups have sounded the alarm about how the project has devastated the lives and livelihoods of people in its path as well as violence endured by African activists, who have been "kidnapped, arbitrarily arrested, detained, or subjected to different forms of harassment."
Ugandan climate activist Hillary Taylor Seguya declared Friday that "EACOP is a carbon bomb being built in my backyard."
"Thousands of communities in Uganda are being displaced because of corporate greed," added the campaigner, who is affiliated with StopEACOP. "Today, as Ugandans, as Tanzanians, as Africans, we want to be loud and clear that we shall not allow any pipeline to put oil in our backyards."
Friday's demonstration targeting AIG's office in New York City was organized by activists from the Ugandan diaspora and groups including 350.org, the Black Hive, and Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM).
"I am here to ask AIG to refuse to insure EACOP, and to insure our future instead," said Joseph Senyonjo, a Ugandan diaspora activist. "AIG is one of the biggest insurance companies in the world, and they still haven't ruled out insuring EACOP. So we are here to say: We don't want carbon bombs, we don't want fossil fuels. We want renewable energy. Insure our futures instead."
Protesters held signs and banners with messaging that included: "AIG = Climate Crimes," "Protect Our Land," "People Not Profits," "Stop Funding Our Destruction," "Stop Insuring Climate Chaos," and "The People Say: Stop EACOP!"
Demonstrators hold banner that says, "Global South Diaspora for Reparations + Repair," while protesting AIG and EACOP in New York City on July 26, 2024. (Photo: 350.org)
"From the pipeline's path in East Africa, to the corporate offices here, to our government institutions, we need to make our message clear: Stop EACOP!" said Evan Bell of 350 Mass. "I am willing to do what it takes to make sure AIG does not insure EACOP."
Bell noted that he is afraid of the New York Police Department, "especially after their brutal response to campus protesters peacefully demonstrating for an end to genocide in Gaza."
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Molly Ornati of 350 Brooklyn emphasized that "the EACOP pipeline is a doubly destructive disaster—for the people of Uganda and Tanzania, and the planet. The construction of the 900-mile pipeline will disrupt and destroy the homes, land, and livelihood of 100,000 people along the route, as well as the surrounding water and ecosystems."
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DRUM's Mohiba Ahmed delivered a similar message of unity, saying that "we add our communities' voices to the growing international demand 'Stop EACOP!' because we know that our struggles are one and interconnected."
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Opponents of EACOP block AIG's office with a banner in New York City on July 26, 2024. (Photo: 350.org)
Beth Yirga of the Black Hive—part of the Movement for Black Lives—highlighted the frontline resistance to the pipeline, declaring that "we stand with Ugandans and Tanzanians, whose bravery and stories of resistance to stop EACOP are inspiring."
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Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
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"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
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Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
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Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
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Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
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In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
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The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
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