White House adviser Elizabeth Warren is in charge of setting up the CFPB. Image: Leader Nancy Pelosi/Flickr/CC BY

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is set to open next month in spite of attempts by Republican Senators to stop it. The bureau, which is the result of last year’s Dodd-Frank Act, is seeking input as to which financial entities it needs to regulate in addition to banks.

Bureau to police the consumer financial industry

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which created the bureau, states that it will regulate banks with more than $10 billion in assets as well as payday lenders and non-bank providers of home and student loans. The act does not define, however, what other “larger participants” of the financial markets it should cover.

Created by the Dodd-Frank Act

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is a federal statute that President Obama signed into law July 21, 2010. The law seeks to regulate the financial services industry to an unprecedented degree. From it, the CFPB was born, under White House adviser Elizabeth Warren. The stated mission of the bureau is to “make markets for consumer financial products and services work for Americans — whether they are applying for a mortgage, choosing among credit cards, or using any number of other consumer financial products.”

“Consumers deserve the peace of mind that financial companies — both banks and non-banks — are following the rules,” said Warren. The bureau has until July 2012 to determine which industries will be regulated and in what ways.

Non-bank industries to be targeted

In a statement released Thursday, the bureau stated several “larger participants” that could be targeted. Those include consumer credit and related activities, consumer reporting, check-cashing, money transmitting, debt-relief services and prepaid cards. However, the bureau is also asking for input into which industries it should oversee.

Republican resistance

The bureau has met resistance from the start by Capitol Hill conservatives. The bureau can’t begin its work until a permanent director has been appointed, and some Senate Republicans have vowed to block anyone the president may nominate for the job. The bureau, however, is continuing to lay its foundation for the scheduled opening on July 21.

Bureau opposed by banks

Bank lobbies have also opposed the creation of the bureau, arguing that it will lead to fewer loans and fewer financial choices for consumers. They say it will have a negative effect on economic growth.

Sources

Reuters
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Rep. Barney Frank (Photo: commons.wikimedia.org)

For people who don’t have payday loans and installment loans to rub together, the concept of obtaining suitable health coverage is foreign. President Obama’s plan – should it maintain the single-payer element – will seek to level out that disparity.

In light of this, the raging debate over health care reform continues on at town halls across the nation. Supporters of change are now taking the fight back to belligerent protesters who seek to squash debate over affordable care for all. Not all Democratic politicians have been prepared for the vocal minority they’ve had to face, but if the Representative Barney Frank town hall is any indication, the fight is in good hands.

Working the room

One of the more colorful members of Congress, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts gave as well as he got at his recent town hall meeting on the health care topic. His responses were not only appropriately forceful, but entertaining. CNN reports that the two-hour meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts featured a rousing chorus of boos from the pre-coached (and in some cases pre-paid) protesters the moment that Rep. Frank took the podium, but Frank quickly proved that he could handle a tough crowd.

“You want me to talk about it or do you want to yell?” Frank asked numerous times as the uncivilized mob betrayed signs of their lack of intelligence or good breeding. Frank rebuked them when necessary, yet he was still able to address the important issues, no matter how much the dull, unwashed ghosts attempted to rattle their chains.

“Disruption never helps your cause.”

Mr. Frank called a spade a spade when he remarked that the heated rabble and their canned protests made it look “like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.” But perhaps the most offensive element that these protesters continued to try to bring to the debate was the inflammatory comparison between President Obama’s stance on health care and the tyrannical fascism of Nazi Germany. If you ask me, I’m sure the people who believe this (if they even make up their own minds) and brought it to the Barney Frank town hall did so because Frank is Jewish. “Ooooh, that’ll throw that Jew boy off,” they may have thought. But perhaps “thought” is too strong a term for the cranial activity of such protesters. They’re one coconut shy of being a doorstop.

And Frank knows this as well as you and I do. “When you ask me that question, I’m going to revert to my ethnic heritage and ask you a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time?” he asked. “You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis.”

“Contemptible” free speech

Yes, the protesters have the right to say such things, even if they have no educated understanding of what it is they’re truly revealing about themselves and their complete inability to grasp the importance of historical events. Rep. Frank knows there’s no reasoning with someone who hasn’t had the pleasure of reason’s acquaintance: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table,” he said to the Hitler invoker. “I have no interest in doing it.”

No free coverage for illegal immigrants

Despite the pathetic attempts of protesters to cloud the issues and silence those who would speak the truth about the president’s intended reform, Barney Frank forged ahead with his discussion of a range of topics that the reform bill would cover. One rumor he squelched is that illegal immigrants would have free care mandated by Obama’s program. Taxpayers can rest easy on that one. Furthermore, he addressed parts of the bill regarding non-discrimination based upon pre-existing health conditions.

Some cheered, others kept their minds closed

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I understand that the opposition believes that chaos tactics are the only way for them to fight back in this desperate hour for their corporate health insurance masters, but they make themselves look like fools when they shout maniacally – even when they are given the opportunity to speak. There is no rationality on display in such instances, and the Barney Frank town hall is yet another example of their mob mentality.

“What’s the matter with you all?” Frank asked them. “I don’t know if you get angrier when I answer the questions, or when you don’t think I do.”

In the end

Once their bankrollers spit them back out after the debates are over, will the “average Joe” protesters be in need of payday loans and installment loans to buy themselves some civility? If so, they are welcome to apply here… just click the button above. The Barney Frank town hall showed that there’s no reasoning with such people. Rep. Frank remained resolute and trudged on.

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Ready to serve! (Photo: www.instructables.com)

You’ve heard of those remedies that supposedly improve your memory, focus and thinking ability, right? Sometimes they’re natural substances like berries and roots, other times they’re not so natural (pharmaceutical would be the operative word). Whatever the case, these brain-boosting supplements are frequently expensive, so much so that using them long-term could eventually put you in a situation where one little emergency could put your budget in territory where no fax payday loans and cash advances are necessary to keep you on your feet.

However, if you’ve already given your life to the military by enlisting, I suppose they would consider that ample payment for them to experiment on you with the very latest DARPA technology that fosters brain optimization and synchronizes brain function. In a way, it’s mind control on the part of the military leaders enlisted men and women are programmed to trust. Once the sanctity of the mind is breached, however, you trust no one.

Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy

Katie Drummond reports for Wired that the U.S. military is determined to crack the mysteries of the human mind open like an egg. In 2008, your tax dollars funded Pentagon research into replicating the function of a cat’s brain. Why? So they could move on to higher levels, such as reproducing a monkey mind! Ostensibly, it was so that they could further understand how brain damage works, or so that the connection between thermodynamic energy and brain function could become more understood.

But what are they REALLY after?

Here’s what the Pentagon wants to do with DARPA’s help: they want to turn soldiers’ brains into hard drives. No, not exactly like Johnny Mnemonic; the military wants to “optimize human memory storage and recall by synchronizing neural brain waves.” Not only would syncing they up possibly bring about better retention, but it may also make troops EASIER TO CONTROL. Yes, I’m talking mind control, people. As if troops don’t give their country enough.

Looking at the scientific details

Forming memories and recalling them from long-term memory storage in our brains are both functions that depend upon how brain waves work together. First of all, Gamma waves facilitate help us make memories, while Theta waves write the immediate short-term memories into lasting information in our long-term memory. If they were to simply throw in some Alpha waves synchronization, we could be looking at the rudiments of mind control.

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Where DARPA wants to mess around with this system is as follows: they want to use technology to burn orders directly into brains via taking control of the Gamma and Theta waves. Their stated theory is that this would “optimize” brains and give troops the ability to absorb larger bits of information during stressful situations. DARPA, according to Drummond, wants to  “increase the total quantity of information reliably recalled from a given learning session over a minimum of three durations – 24 hours, one week, and one month, post exposure.”

What will this do to jobs?

DARPA is doing this to improve the efficiency of military forces. If fewer people are required to process large blocks of information, that means staff will be let go. If the technology were to reach beyond military sectors, a similar problem would occur in the commercial workforce. Better brains mean fewer employees.

But here’s one of my biggest problems… how much money is being spent on all this research? It isn’t entirely clear, as some of the applications would be rather black ops classified.  It’s a large amount, I believe it’s safe to say. This reminds me of what Barney Frank had to say recently about the F-22 jet fighter on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” President Obama recently discontinued production of it, largely because it was designed for Cold War combat. We no longer live in that era, and warfare has changed. Discontinuing the F-22 will likely save America a great deal in its defense budget, which prompted Frank to tell Maddow that if we were to cut out all of the extraneous projects from our defense budget, the money left over would be more than enough to ensure that every person in this country has good health insurance.

What do you say, Pentagon and DARPA? Drop the thinly-veiled brain optimization/mind control experiments and give back all that money? I’m sure you won’t need payday loans and cash advances afterward; you’ll still be sitting pretty.

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