Friday, April 20, 2018

Republicans Stoke White Resentment Over Discrimination In The World Of Car Loans

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West Virginia is the Trumpiest state in the union. The PVI is R+19 and Trump beat Hillary 489,371 (68.5%) to 188,794 (26.4%). Trump won every single county in the state. (In the primary, Bernie also won every single county in the state and beat Hillary 124,700 (51.4%) to 86,914 (35.8%). In fact, on primary day, there were plenty of candidates where Bernie took more votes than Trump. West Virginia voters wanted change; they voted for change in the primary-- and took a gamble-- a bad one-- in the general.

Joe Manchin is a very popular politician in West Virginia and his popularity is despite him being a Democrat. so when he votes with the Republicans-- as he often does-- voters back home don't hold it against him. It helps bolster his popularity. Wednesday he took a very bad vote. He was the only Democrat to cross the aisle and vote with the Republicans on a bill that will hurt West Virginia voters. But it won't hurt his reelection chances; it will improve them. It shouldn't.

The Senate voted 51-47 to kill another pieces of Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This pieces was a policy warning auto lenders not to discriminate against minority borrowers. An old friend, Karl Frisch, the executive director of Allied Progress, a consumer watchdog group, said that "Many auto dealers are actively discriminating against people of color. This behavior is pervasive, and the CFPB’s guidance would help to end it. They may try to dress it up with political spin, but today the Senate endorsed discrimination."

The Washington Post reported that "The fight centers on guidance issued by the CFPB in 2013 that took aim at a common industry practice that allows auto dealers to mark up interest rates offered by finance companies. Finance firms such as Ally set an interest rate based on objective criteria-- including borrowers’ credit history and the size of their down payments. Auto dealers are then free to raise the interest rates within certain limits. The finance companies and the dealers split the extra profits.
The CFPB argued that auto dealers were using that discretionary markup to charge black and Hispanic borrowers more than white ones, even if they had the same credit scores. Over several years, the agency fined several auto lenders millions of dollars for discriminating against minority borrowers, and some lenders stopped allowing discretionary markups, cutting into auto dealer profits.

The guidance quickly became one of the CFPB’s most controversial campaigns. House Republicans launched a multiyear investigation into the matter, arguing that the CFPB used faulty data to support the policy. The guidance, auto dealers said, made it more difficult to offer consumers discounts on their car purchases out of fear they would be accused of discrimination.
House Republicans are eager to follow suit. The grotesquely crooked chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Jeb Hensarling (R-TX),-- who sits safely in an uber-gerrymandered district that stretches from Mesquite and the suburbs east of Dallas all the way into the most backward and racist part of the state where Louie Gohmert's, Kevin Brady's and Brian Babin's districts meet (PVI is R+16) turned reality upside down with his statement on stoking white resentment: "Studies showed that the rule could lead to many credit-worthy borrowers paying more for their auto loans."

Goal ThermometerAntoinette Sedillo Lopez is a former University of New Mexico law professor who has used her legal background to fight for social justice. This outrageous GOP action in the Senate is in her wheelhouse... so I asked her about it. She told me that "If Congress votes to kill these provisions that protect consumers, it is effectively voting to enable discrimination in auto lending. The ECOA (Equal Credit Opportunity Act) exists for the express purpose of preventing the types of systemic discrimination that existed in the industry prior to the CFPB being created. The reversal flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence that when African Americans or Latinos go to purchase a vehicle, dealerships are twice as likely to add a markup to a loan than compared to their white counterparts. Congress should be in the business of protecting consumers and ultimately regulating systemic market problems like these, and not in the business of reversing important evidence-based reforms."

Hopefully, Alan Grayson, no fan of the sleazy kind of racism Hensarling practices, will be back in Congress in January-- working on issues like this again. After the vote he told us flatly that "This reflects a deep divide in America politics and society. You can be for an unfettered 'free market,' or you can be against discrimination, but not both. Many Americans had hoped that we had decisively chosen the latter over the former when we integrated lunch counters, but apparently not."

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8 Comments:

At 2:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

And here is why it is harder to be a democrap than a republican. Republicans will always ratfuck nonwhites and the nonwealthy (and women, kids, elderly, gays...) for bigger profits for their corporate donors. they will do so openly and proudly, which is why they are the regional (southern) party they are. Sadly, they also do very well in the ignorant white rural areas everywhere -- certainly a result of education being an empty shell for the past 40 years.

Democraps, otoh, will always support their corporate donors (a virtually identical list to the Nazis) but must do enough kvetching about those donors ratfucking nonwhites, nonwealthy and the rest.

So far, the democraps have not, ever as long as I can remember, prevented that ratfucking beforehand. Occasionally, they pretend to do something after the fact, as when the CFPB "fined" Wells-Fargo after they committed millions of cases of fraud which ratfucked millions of non-wealthy consumer bank customers.

So, yes, Rs stoke racist hate, as they always do. But the democraps are posturing here. Their oligarchy could not care less about the ratfucking. They only care about the appearance of caring.

This is a whole lot of nothing. Voters are stupid. They'll fall for it as they always do.

 
At 3:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So when does the DSCC begin its campaign to replace Manchin with a Democrat? I'd even settle for a "democrat" over Manchin!

 
At 3:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's fucking WV, 3:00. They would never elect a true lefty. Their definition of "elite" is anyone who graduated High School in 4 years and has all their teeth.
Manchin is a Nazi pos, but that's as good as you can expect from WV.

If a meteor hit WV and left only a big crater, the cost to humanity would actually be measured as a net profit.

 
At 7:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous Democrap is losing credibility with each of her/his new posts. Let's reminisce. Who was it who created CFPB in the first place? Medicare? Social Security? Medicaid? Head Start? Food assistance programs> Women, Infants & Children? The list goes on and on. Sure fault can be found in all or many such programs. But when the opposition Republicans want you to have NONE OF THE ABOVE, the best you can achieve is bound to be limited. But Anonymous Democrap wants you to not vote for any Democrats. Anonymous Democrap only wants to denigrate Democrats. My suspicion is raised higher with each comment by Anonymous Democrap that he/she is merely a verbose troll (for whom, I wonder. His/her ego?). Or maybe a bot? I know Anonymous Democrap is right about the Democrats not doing well enough by the country. But they do well or at least do some good. And they're all we have to fight the real uber-fascist party in this country. And don't buy any presidential third-party nonsense, as that only elects Republicans nationally.

 
At 7:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Re my above (7:19pm) comment, yes Ross Perot's candidacy likely helped elect Clinton the first time, but times and the electorate have changed. Lefty splinter parties, no matter how well-intentioned, undermine their own agendas by splitting the Democratic vote and electing Republicans.

 
At 6:57 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

7:19, the only item in your list that was created by 'craps is the CFPB. I would point out that:
1) it's charter is redundant with that of the DOJ and of congressional oversight
2) it is currently unfunded in the budget
3) when created by Warren, obamanation refused to name Warren to head it.

So, if the DOJ actually did its damn job under obamanation, the CFPB would not have had anything to do wrt wells-fargo.

All the rest of your list were created when the party was DEMOCRATIC, the party of FDR, HST, JFK and LBJ, and not the 'crap they've been since, well, Reagan/clinton.

And, yes, Perot helped elect Clinton TWICE by peeling off far more R voters (the libertarians) than Ds. The long view of this is that by having 2 terms, Clinton was able to dereg telecoms and banks, craft and pass the foundations of the 2008 crash and create the vacuum that gave us cheney/bush. The irony of Perot is that the issues he was warning us/US about SHOULD have appealed more to D voters. In fact, Perot was the "Democratic" candidate while Clinton and bush (and dole) were all republican candidates. We elected the republican. And you can consult with Michael Moore about that. He called Clinton the best republican president ever... or since Lincoln.

 
At 10:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Lefty splinter parties, no matter how well-intentioned, undermine their own agendas by splitting the Democratic vote and electing Republicans. "

lefty splinter party? The issue is the destruction of the Democratic party by corporate interest/money. Again & again the problem is the republicanization of a once democratic party and the inability to recognize that the Democratic party has essentially become a righty splinter group. Nixon is today to the left of the Democrats and like the frog in the hot water you're clueless.

 
At 2:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

10:21, right on. The left has been abandoned by the 'craps. And it happened over 35 years ago, yet still nobody knows they're gone.

The bushbaby is, in many respects, to the left of the 'craps. He actually put CEOs in jail for their fraud. And all the evil from that cheney/bush admin was normalized and/or expanded by obamanation.

Any left party from here on will be the ONLY LEFT PARTY.

 

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