Left In Lowell

So cool. It looks like Elizabeth Warren’s baby, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is doing a lot of good work (via dkos) for a department in its infancy:

In the first six months of its existence, the CFPB fielded 13,210 complaints from consumers via its phone line and online submission forms, as well as referrals from other regulators, the report said. Of those complaints, 9,307 were tied to credit cards, with another 2,326 pertaining to mortgages.

On credit cards, billing disputes were the most common complaint, totaling 13.7 percent of responses for that financial product. Under the mortgages category, 38.2 percent of complaints deal with a situation where someone is unable to make their mortgage payment.
…
The team at the CFPB devoted to responding to consumer concerns processes the complaints, and then sends them along to the company that is the subject of the complaint to offer a chance to respond.

So far, a little over half of the complaints received have been settled between the company and the consumer “with relief.” Another 30.6 percent have been settled without a mutually agreed upon remedy, while companies are still reviewing another 11.9 percent.

Remember, this is an agency hobbled by Republicans who prevented Obama from appointing a director until he out of frustration did a recess appointment (arguably, despite the “open session” the Republicans “kept” during the holiday break). It’s an agency which is already somewhat underfunded and under severe attack by Republicans who’d love to totally starve it, if they stay in any sort of power.
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Here’s a personal account of a woman who needed the CFPB’s help, with rave reviews.
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And here is a front-page dkos post outlining how fast Scott Brown is running from his nearly-lockstep Republican voting record. Because, you know, a moment talking to Obama and agreeing with him on politician “insider trading” makes him a total independent/liberal/moderate.

There are two issues here. One is that Scott Brown is running scared from Elizabeth Warren. This is not how it was supposed to play out for Senator 41, the hot new Republican celebrity of the big Republican year of 2010. Massachusetts Democrats were not supposed to be able to find a candidate with a compelling biography, a strong voice on economic issues, exceptional media skills and enormous fundraising ability… But then Elizabeth Warren emerged, and Scott Brown had to start fighting for his political future—and if that means cozying up to Obama, he’ll do it.

Of course, as the post says, the lazy media will probably try to let him get away with that. So we can’t let them do it.

Please, if you can spare some change, donate to Elizabeth Warren via our Lowell for Warren page!!

The extended interview with Elizabeth Warren on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In two parts.

The time looms upon us for the cycle of choosing our Senate candidate for the Democratic party. First stop, the February 18th caucuses in Lowell.

If you are interested in being a Lowell delegate for Warren to the Democratic convention, and in other volunteer opportunities, there’s a meeting Thursday (tomorrow) night, Jan 26, at the Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack St from 7:00-8:30pm. You need to have been registered as a Democrat by the beginning of January to be eligible to be a delegate or to vote at the caucus. Please email Geoff at Geoff.feldman.2012@gmail.com or call the campaign, 617-286-6715, if you are coming so they can get a head count.

Please note: this is an organizational meeting for interested potential volunteers, not an open campaign event. Hope to see some familiar (and not familiar) faces there!

While Colbert and Stewart lambaste our Citizen United world with hilarious satire and extreme tactics, the Senate race in Massachusetts is having a quiet discussion all its own, with a pact between Brown and Warren (both sort of take credit, though it does appear Warren is the one to suggest something more binding). The pact, in case you live under a rock, is that any money spent for or against a candidate in the race by outside groups will be matched 50% from the candidate it benefited towards a charity of the other candidate’s choosing (thereby hurting the candidate it was supposed to help).

Even though this whole back-and-forth seemed a little gimmicky, and I felt at first that all we really needed was a strong, unequivocal condemnation from both sides, this pact does have some pretty interesting implications. For one thing, it’s an unprecedented candidate-driven pushback against the CU ruling, an acknowledgement of the damage of unregulated, unknown spending. We expect there to be a legislative pushback (so far, unsuccessful) or maybe eventually a constitutional one, but to be coming from two major candidates, that says something particular - a “we don’t want your help, your money, get out” from the parties involved.

There are concerns about whether or not certain deep pockets could get sneaky, create a SuperPAC that pretends to be for, say, Warren that runs ads against Brown, thereby costing the Warren campaign 50% of that ad buy - but I don’t think this will happen. For one thing, that SPAC has to spend double what it’d cost the candidate to make ads in support of them, and even if you make it kind of heavy-handed hoping it will backfire (look totally Rovian, for instance), you’d still be taking a risk of making a big ad buy that hurts the candidate you truly support.

Even more interesting, is will this stop the outside money? The Globe ran an interesting comparison of this pact to the 1996 Kerry-Weld agreement to not spend more than $5M on TV ads. Kerry broke that pact, claiming Weld already broke it by having an unfair low cost to his ad buys. Whoever did break actually it, it got broken.

Leaving us to wonder, is this really going to work?

[Weld’s communication director] Gray projected outside groups will spend up to $20 million in what is being pegged as a $60 million race - $20 million apiece by Brown and Warren, assuming she wins the Democratic nomination, and another $20 million from groups interested in their candidacies.
[…]
The League of Women Voters and the League of Conservation voters have already aired over $3 million worth of ads attacking Brown’s record, while a conservative group, Crossroads GPS, has aired over $1 million in ads attacking Warren’s.

If we’re already $4M into possibly $20M or more in ad buys for or against candidates from outside groups, can a pact like this stem the tide?

I think it will, at least for a little while. I’m certain the pact will get tested, though, so the question remains, will both sides stick to it to the detriment of their campaign, since the numbers here are not small? I’m less cynical about this, because the backlash from breaking this one is not one either campaign can afford. Warren, because she banks her campaign on her commitment to the middle and working class and to fairness, openness, and transparency - a break from her would undermine that. And Brown, whose poll numbers are not where they should be for an incumbent, can ill afford to look like the schmuck in all this.

I doubt Warren, at least, entered into this lightly. Brown either, for that matter. It’s a test of resolve against the tide of insanity that is the money flow in campaigns these days. In the end, I think I’m just glad someone’s willing to appear to put up or shut up. So, kudos to both sides. Now, let’s have the real, substantive debate from the candidates that Massachusetts deserves. Something that might well be possible when we’re not drowning in ads from outside groups.

There’s a good discussion at BMG, and also, what do YOU think? Gimmick, unenforceable, brave move, or something in between?

Did you know, you make more than 250K a year in a lot of cases? I mean, you teachers, you firefighters, you police officers…you’re almost part of the 1%! Feel wealthy yet?

Cuz Scott Brown sure thinks you are. Great catch and commentary by BMG’s David, who also has the real numbers that Brown apparently failed to look up. Touché, David, playing in my backyard. ^_^

Update: Via Marie (on Facebook), Talking Points Memo has picked it up…way to go Sen. “Wall St” Brown! (Edit: sorry, BMG quotes TPM, so obviously TPM got there first. So David, there goes my respect for your timely reading of our erstwhile newspaper…sorry!)

Here’s a shocker - two, count-em, two pieces in the Lowell Sun about Scott “Wall St” Brown’s campaign kickoff kickoff, and not a peep on the Sun’s page about Warren’s amazing almost-$1.2 million raised in the last week. This, despite plenty of lead time for the news that Elizabeth Warren raised over a million in her online money bomb (and the fact that local voters might find it relevant, and that the reason for the money bomb was Scott “Wall St” Brown’s kickoff).

But then, that’s about what I’d expect from our “paper of record [for Republicans].”

Elizabeth’s money bomb drive, which started roughly a week ago, topped the one million dollar mark as of this writing. I’ve got a screen shot here that I just took - she in fact is near 1.2 million.

I don’t think this counts any money brought in by other venues, like ActBlue pages - just the stuff coming in through the official moneybomb website (I think it’d be tough, logistically, to add in money from other sites and be accurate in real time) so I am guessing we’ll find out that she actually made quite a bit more in the last week.

Not only does this show a hunger to unelect Senator Scott “Wall Street” Brown, but it also keeps Elizabeth Warren competitive on the money front. Since Senator Wall Street Brown has a lot of money in his war chest (and a lot of it from 1%ers), we can’t just rest on the enthusiastic and growing grassroots organization, but have to compete on all fronts. And do we really think Karl Rove is going to stay off our airwaves with his attack ads just because finally, Senator Wall Street Brown officially asked him to? (Of course, if I were him, I’d ask Karl Rove to stop “helping” too, since he really wasn’t.)

We’re celebrating the two year anniversary of Scott Brown’s win with donations to help him lose in less than 10 months. Give a little or give a lot, but give to Elizabeth Warren today!

It’s not an exaggeration to say that no web content maker on the internet should NOT be in total fear of SOPA. (Edit: I meant no web content maker should NOT be in fear…) I knew it was bad, but BoingBoing put it into real perspective:

Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we’d have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.

If we failed to take this precaution, our finances could be frozen, our ad broker forced to pull ads from our site, and depending on which version of the bill goes to the vote, our domains confiscated, and, because our server is in Canada, our IP address would be added to a US-wide blacklist that every ISP in the country would be required to censor.

So LeftinLowell is going to join the one-day blackout tomorrow, Jan 18th, from 8am to 8pm. Lest we go dark permanently under a SOPA world. If you have a website, you might want to consider the simple steps that the website gives you to do so - a simple javascript that goes into your head tag.

OK, so like, I guess Mr. Scott Brown has not bothered to officially announce that he’s officially announcing his reelection campaign that we’ve known for months that he’s been already doing, or something. Got that?

This Thursday, January 19th, on the two-year anniversary of the special election where we made the mistake of electing him, Scott Brown will be doing some sort of anticlimactic kickoff event or other, and we’ll be raising money for Elizabeth Warren.

Now, there’s an official money bomb page, where you can put in your pledge and have it automatically process your contribution on the 19th, but where the heck’s the fun in all that? If you like me, and want me to get credit for the donations (and if you don’t, that’s OK, go click on the official money bomb page link above), then either send me an email with your pledge amount for Thursday (lynne-at-leftinlowell.com if you don’t want to make it publicly) or in comments of this blog (if you don’t care), and then on Thursday come back to the blog and make a donation through my super fabulous, thermostaty, Left in Lowell for Warren page.

You know what, I changed my mind. Let’s use the official pledge site just this once, so we can all count towards whatever announcement of money raised the Warren campaign will make right after. So, go pledge, NOW. I’ll meet you over there. Just promise me that you’ll help me raise money for my little thermometer later on this spring. ^_^