The Quiet Parts Loud
I know it would be BLACKMAIL to point this out, but the theory Trump’s election would be a blow to the neoliberal order may not be fully accurate:
Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives and lobbyists on Tuesday that they should increase their campaign donations to influence lawmakers, revealing that he would meet only with lobbyists who contributed to his campaign when he served in the House.
“We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress,” Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lobbyists at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.”
Mr. Mulvaney, who also runs the White House budget office, is a longtime critic of the Obama-era consumer bureau, including while serving in Congress. He was tapped by President Trump in November to temporarily run the bureau, in part because of his promise to sharply curtail its enforcement actions.
Since then, he has frozen all new investigations and slowed down existing inquiries by requiring career employees to produce detailed justifications for their work and by sharply restricting the bureau’s access to bank data, arguing that its investigations created unnecessary online security risks. And he has scaled back the agency’s efforts to go after payday lenders, auto lenders and other financial services companies accused of preying on vulnerable consumers.
“For the reasons explained above, we now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” — Justice Anthony Kennedy, Citizens United v. FEC. Also, dignity.