RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Jan. 7 to Jan. 13
Featured Investigation
Concepts like the “deep state” and the “administrative state” have gained wider currency in recent years, but perhaps a better coinage is the “vague state.” That's governance made possible by intentionally ambiguous language in many statutes, allowing regulators to define their own legal authority.
As James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a poster child for the vague state. Created under President Obama in 2010 ostensibly to help prevent another financial meltdown, the bureau extended its reach to firms that seem to have little to do with financial services – including for-profit schools and a company that specializes in bonding services for detained immigrants.
One of the bureau’s most powerful tools is the “civil investigative demand,” which allows it to demand mountains of information to determine if broader action is required; some call such demands fishing expeditions. Varney reports that the Trump administration has much work ahead to rein them in:
In its brief history, the CFPB has employed deliberately vague language in civil investigative demands, citing myriad parts of the law in an attempt to expand its regulatory footprint, according to attorneys, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and some consumer groups. Critics also contend that the bureau has often directed its fire at progressive bêtes noires, such as the for-profit educational sector, making it seem more of an antagonist than a referee in narrowly proscribed financial matters. …
Like other agencies issuing CIDs, the consumer bureau is required to state the laws it believes the recipient may be violating. But the bureau’s own manual tells staff to craft their demands with deliberately vague and sweeping language, lawyers knowledgeable about bureau methods say. “As a matter of practice,” former CFPB attorney Ori Lev and a colleague, James K. Williams, wrote last April, “… the CFPB has typically provided this information in extremely broad terms that provided investigation objects with little insight into what conduct the CFPB believes may have violated the law.”
The two men, who now defend recipients of CFPB investigative demands in their private practice, quote the bureau’s regulatory manual: “The general approach of the model language is to describe the nature of the conduct and the potentially applicable law in very broad terms to preserve the Bureau’s ability to request a broad spectrum of information in any CIDs issued in the investigation, particularly since the direction and scope of the investigation might change.”
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Ex-Porn Star Got $130K for Silence About Trump
Wall Street Journal
The good news for President Trump is that he now has something to divert attention from reports that he described Haiti and African countries scatologically. The bad news is that the distraction is this: The revelation that his lawyer Michael Cohen arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as hush money regarding an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with the future president. In a statement, Cohen didn’t address the payment to Stephanie Clifford, 38 - whom those who follow her film career may know as Stormy Daniels - but he said of the alleged liaison that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”
Waiting for FISA
Washington Examiner, The Federalist
The Trump-Russia furor this week approached a defining moment centering on one issue: whether the Obama administration used the largely uncorroborated, Democratic-funded Steele dossier as justification to get approval from a secret court to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign. Congressional probers have already been shown the so-called FISA court material privately, so it seems only a matter of time for it to come out one way or another. When that happens, there will be intense focus on whether the intelligence community handled the dossier responsibly or flouted constitutional privacy protections. No one seems to have verified explosive charges within the dossier, as affirmed most recently this week with the release of a transcript of Senate testimony by Glenn Simpson, founder of the opposition research firm behind the work.
Why Going Easy on the Mullahs Could Hurt Ordinary Iranians
Lee Smith, RealClearInvestigations
The economic problems fueling protests across Iran might seem like a strong argument against President Trump’s wish to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and revive economic sanctions. But such a view – that sanctions would hurt the people far more than the regime – betrays a profound misunderstanding of Iran’s cronyistic economy. Still, Trump again waived penalties against Tehran on Friday, but only for now: The clock is ticking on tough negotiations with Washington’s European allies to alter the deal.
Mexico: Losing Faith in the State, Some Towns Break Away
New York Times
A novel independence movement is underway in Mexico. Instead on making loud claims based on history and ethnicity like the Catalonians in Spain, a handful of cities and states are essentially seceding from their nation in order to insulate themselves from their nation’s rampant violence and corruption. Self-policing and self-governing, they are trying to become sanctuaries from drug cartels as well as from the Mexican state, though they have also ceded often iron authority to wealthy landowners and corporations.
America's Rivers Getting Saltier, Threatening Water Supplies
The Atlantic
America’s rivers streams are getting saltier due to road salt, sewage, mining and fertilizers used in agriculture. While few people will be happy about saltier tasting water and its uncertain effects on wildlife, a clearer concern right now is that America’s aging water infrastructure was not built to handle saltier water. Just as road salts rust the metal of your car, dissolved salt in water reacts with the metal in water pipes.
Homeless, Illegal Campers Create Forest Dangers
5280 Magazine
More and more people experiencing homelessness in Colorado’s expensive cities are moving to the mountains. There, Forest Service land is a rent-free option where, theoretically, people are less likely to be bothered by law enforcement officials. But some of these permanent campers are causing challenges that go beyond the trash, human waste, and destruction of nature present in Gordon Gulch. The current heroin epidemic, for instance, has led to piles of used syringes cluttering fire rings in public campgrounds.
Unspoken: Sexual Assault of the Mentally Disabled
NPR
Unpublished Justice Department data on sex crimes show that people with intellectual disabilities — women and men — are the victims of sexual assaults at rates more than seven times those for people without disabilities. It's one of the highest rates of sexual assault of any group in America, and it's hardly talked about at all.
Gang Raped at 17, Therapy at 65
Tampa Bay Times
Evelyn Robinson was gang raped 48 years ago in St. Petersburg and then raped again six months later in New York. Poor, and living at a time when the medical community treated rape as an injury to the body, not the mind, she lived with stigma and shame. Consigned to find ways to cope on her own now, at 65, she is finally receiving professional help.
