Yesterday, we posted on President Obama's statement that if other means of curbing corporate election spending fail, he would consider a constitutional amendment to overrule the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The President thought it possible that the Court would itself overrule Citizens United, but that seems unlikely in the near term in light of […]
Read this AP story. Here's an excerpt: Patient after patient asked: Is eating organic food, which costs more, really better for me? Unsure, Stanford University doctors dug through reams of research to find out — and concluded there’s little evidence that going organic is much healthier, citing only a few differences involving pesticides and antibiotics. […]
As explained here, President Obama recently posted to the on-line community reddit that he could support a constitutional amendment to overrule the Supreme Court's controversial 2010 Citizens United ruling that unleased corporate campaign spending as never before. Here's what the President said: Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something […]
We have previously posted about the use of eminent domain as a tool for saving the homes of people whose mortages remain underwater as a result of the mortgage meltdown and the effects of the economic depression (go, for instance, here and here). Now, read this article by Ben Hallman about the political (and possibly […]
As this article by Jared Bernstein explains, corporate profits as a percentage of gross domestic product has passed where it was prior to the economic recession, but compensation as a percentage of gross domestic product is far lower that pre-recession levels. See the graph below.
by Jeff Sovern We have blogged many times about the Republican call for the CFPB to have a commission-structure, rather than a director (see, for example, here). That call has been spearheaded by Senator Shelby. So that makes it all the more surprising to note that during the Senate's consideration of what became the Dodd-Frank […]
Myriam E. Gilles of Cardozo has written Killing Them with Kindness: ‘Consumer-Friendly’ Arbitration Clauses after AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, forthcoming in Notre Dame Law Review. Herer’s the abstract: In AT&T v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court struck California’s so-called “Discover Bank rule” – a judge-made rule providing that arbitration agreements attended by class action waivers are […]
Here is a report on the pain involved in satisfying the "undue hardship" standard for discharging student loans in bankruptcy and here is a story about the case Scott Michelman blogged about earlier this week addressing debt collector liability for misleading borrowers about the dischargeability of student loans.
Daniel Schwarcz of Minnesota has written Transparently Opaque: Understanding the Lack of Transparency in Insurance Consumer Protection. Here's the abstract: Consumer protection in most domains of financial regulation centers on transparency. Broadly construed, transparency involves making relevant information available to consumers as well as others who might act on their behalf, such as academics, journalists, […]
by Paul Alan Levy Many groups at Public Citizen issue hard-hitting reports, but we are scrupulous about reviewing reports about particular companies and individuals to ensure their accuracy, not to speak of avoiding the prospect of libel litigation. This was certainly true with respect to letters to the FDA back in July, asking why it […]