The Donald Trump administration is likely to be headed to the courts again, this time over the leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This was an agency set up to police the consumer financial markets and protect the rights of consumers against big banks and was championed by senator Elizabeth Warren as one means of preventing another financial crisis. Its first director Richard Cordray was quite effective in that role but his term ended in 2018 and he wanted to step down this year, reportedly to run for the governorship of Ohio.
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We are learning that sexual harassment knows no boundaries. It takes on all forms and the perpetrators span ideologies, professions, ages, everything. Those waves are now lapping at the feet of members of Congress. So far there has been only a trickle of information about sexual abuse there with senator Al Franken and congressman John Conyers being named but it is only a matter of time before more names come out, given that the nature and culture of that institution is ripe for abuse. One member of congress Jackie Speier has spoken from her own experience as a young intern about what goes on and said that there are at least two others, whom she did not name, who are culpable.
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We are drearily familiar with the police in the US using excessive force to deal with even the most routine and non-violent situations. So on one level, this news item, about a 50 SWAT officers invading a home in 2015 in search of a suspect Robert Jonathan Seacat who had broken into the home to hide while being chased by police, was not a surprise.
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Vijay Prashad writes that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) of Saudi Arabia has decided to take the country into uncharted waters with his internal crackdown on corruption, that has resulted in 11 princes and about 200 businessmen that include people who control sources of power (such as the National Guard) that might challenge him, arrested and detained in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, and his military adventurism in the region. He has also challenged the power of the clerical class in that country by decreeing that women can drive.
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US congressman Joe Barton of Texas is a member of the Republican Freedom Caucus which means that he has notoriously reactionary views on pretty much everything, all wrapped up in smug religious piety. He is a strong advocate for the oil and coal industries and a vehement climate change denier, using the Bible to argue against the science and even suggesting that wind energy is not a renewable resource.
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The Tax Policy Center has analyzed the tax proposal and who pays less and who pays more. Spoiler alert! The rich pay less and the rest pay more. While everyone would pay less in the first year (enabling the Republicans to claim that everyone gets a tax cut), the rich will pay a lot less and there is a time delay in the bill that results in tax increases for lower income people down the road.
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… where people can be denied the right to vote if they happen to be too poor to pay court costs and fines.

Randi Lynn Williams assumes she will never be able to afford to vote again.

The 38-year-old Dothan resident lost her right to vote in 2008, when she was convicted of fraudulent use of a credit card.

She was on probation for over two years, then served a few months behind bars ending in early 2011, at which point she would have been eligible to vote in most states. In Maine and Vermont, she would have never lost that right in the first place.
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