…is the question raised by a New York Times expose this week. The Times reports that the U.S. Department of Education, despite a crackdown against what it calls “bad actors,” continues to hand over tens of millions of dollars every month to other for-profit schools that have been accused of predatory behavior, substandard practices or illegal […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
The CFPB announced today that it finalized a rule to improve information reported about the residential mortgage market. The rule will shed more light on consumers’ access to mortgage credit by updating the reporting requirements of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) regulation. The Bureau is working with other federal agencies to streamline the reporting […]
One of the issues at stake in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez, argued yesterday, is whether a defendant can moot a case (and thereby "pick off" a plaintiff who hopes to represent a class before the class has been certified) by offering the plaintiff complete relief even if the offer is not accepted. The issue, which is […]
A Times op-ed observes: [T]wo weeks ago, the Education Department released a trove of new data suggesting that the system is failing and that, at some colleges, the saddling of students with loans they cannot afford to pay down is far more dire than anyone knew. The loan crisis hits hardest at colleges enrolling large […]
Our country had a financial transaction tax for half a century, the report recounts, but it was repealed in 1965 even though it wasn't hindering growth. Reinstating such a tax would slow down the type of quick-trading speculation that caused the 2010 "flash crash" and it would have provided $22 billion in revenue per year […]
Read here the surprising story of a blogger who showed up at the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), having let the Commission know he was coming, to conduct an interview regarding the IOGCC's position on climate change. The only interview he got was with the police, as the result of a 9-1-1 call.
Read this fascinating investigative report from the L.A. Times, documenting the dissonance between Exxon's public position on global warming and its private studies undertaken to maintain competitiveness in a world they assumed would be warming. The upshot: As [an internal] team was closely studying the impact of climate change on the company’s operations, Exxon and […]
The text is available here. Public Citizen explains how bad it is for access to lifesaving medicines.
Represented by Public Citizen, CSPI filed suit yesterday in federal court in DC to compel action by FDA on CSPI's citizen petition to reduce the alarming amount of salt to which U.S. consumers are exposed. The petition has been pending for 10 years, and FDA's foot-dragging dates back far longer, explains CSPI in its press […]
The FDA had gotten 125 complaints prior to the recall, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Still, in an era when companies stubbornly resist potentially safe-saving recalls (think Takata air bags), it's good news that this recall was relatively expeditious.