New York Times
By Aaron Glantz

Los Angeles Daily News
by: Orson Aguilar

The controversy President Barack Obama set off Wednesday when he made a “recess appointment” of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was as predictable as it was beside the point. What the Beltway talking heads missed, as usual, was how important this is for real people.

The pundit class and cable news shouting heads focused, as always, on the sniping between Republicans and Democrats over legal technicalities and the implications for the 2012 campaign.

A shocking number of news stories quoted only politicians and Capitol Hill staffers. Consumers got mostly left on the cutting-room floor.

Those of us who represent vulnerable communities know better. We’ve met the victims of the practices CFPB was created to protect.

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Advocates say Cordray brings strong pro-consumer credentials to this important job.

Salem-News.Com
by: Tim King

(SALEM) – “Today I’m appointing Richard as America’s consumer watchdog,” U.S. President Barack Obama said today at Cleveland, Ohio’s Shaker Heights High School.

Richard Cordray, an American politician, is the former Attorney General of Ohio. President Barack Obama announced he would nominate Cordray to lead the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today.

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Campaign Kick-Offs This Weekend in Oakland, Palo Alto, San Francisco With State Legislators and Local Officials

Contact: Bruce Mirken, Greenlining Institute Media Relations Coordinator, 510-926-4022; 415-846-7758 (cell)

SAN FRANCISCO – The Greenlining Institute today endorsed Assembly Bill 1148, the California DISCLOSE Act, to improve funder disclosure on political advertisements. Authored by Assemblymember Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) and sponsored by the California Clean Money Campaign, AB 1148 will require the largest funders of campaigns to be clearly identified in political advertisements. Wealthy special interests often fund political advertising while hiding behind deceptively named campaign committees. AB 1148 would require that top donors be listed by actual donor name.

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Contact: Bruce Mirken, Greenlining Institute Media Relations Coordinator, 415-846-7758 (cell)

WASHINGTON – The Greenlining Institute today applauded President Obama’s expected recess appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Greenlining Institute Executive Director Orson Aguilar commented:

“President Obama did absolutely the right thing, and the senators who blocked Mr. Cordray’s confirmation all year in an attempt to weaken protections for consumers should be ashamed of themselves. Creation of CFPB as a tough, independent consumer protection agency was best thing to come out of the financial crisis, and no one needs that protection more than the communities we represent. Communities of color got hammered by predatory and dishonest lending, and we’re relieved that the cop on the beat we’ve needed for so long is finally able to get to work.

“What’s been frustrating in all of this is that a majority of senators supported Cordray’s confirmation, but a minority was able to block the Senate from voting. It’s time for the Senate’s leadership to address the growing misuse of the filibuster. It is simply undemocratic to require a super-majority for everything, and it’s not what the framers of the constitution intended.”

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THE GREENLINING INSTITUTE
A Multi-Ethnic Public Policy, Research and Advocacy Institute
www.greenlining.org

The Recorder
by: Cheryl Miller

SACRAMENTO — Screenwriters could hardly have scripted a better start for Kamala Harris’ first year as attorney general.

The San Francisco district attorney limped into office after barely surviving a bruising 2010 general election. But the state’s new top cop worked quickly to establish her tough-on-crime credentials by barnstorming the state to appear with law enforcement leaders and groups — many of whom backed her Republican opponent — and to highlight drug and gang busts aided by her own Department of Justice agents.

She reached out to consumer activists who felt slighted by then-Attorney General Jerry Brown’s more cautious, go-it-alone approach. She also reinvigorated her office’s legislative advocacy after her predecessor shunned the role.

And, of course, Harris made a name for herself in her office’s mortgage fraud investigations. Her decision in September to pull California from multistate settlement talks with banks earned her major kudos from consumer groups — and the national spotlight.

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The Sun of Inland Empire and San Bernadino
by Blanca Hernandez and Michelle Romero

Just days after Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 131, known as the California Dream Act, Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, filed a referendum to overturn the law. If you’re asked to sign a petition to place this measure on the ballot, you might want to think carefully about its implications before you do.

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San Francisco Chronicle
by: Bruce Mirken

CEOs of wealthy Silicon Valley companies and other hugely profitable businesses that have avoided billions in federal taxes by hiding profits in offshore tax havens now want us to reward this tax evasion by cutting their tax rate by more than 85 percent (“Lower the tax on foreign earnings,” Open Forum, Dec. 22).

Really? Is this some sort of sick joke?

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Huffington Post
by: Preeti Vissa

I’m about to become a mom. If all goes as expected, I’ll be bringing a baby boy into the world sometime in the first week of January. To say it’s an overwhelming experience is both completely obvious and a pretty severe understatement.

In practical terms, it probably means I’ll be posting here a bit less often, as I’ll be taking some time off from my work at The Greenlining Institute. But I’ll still be sounding off from time to time — albeit on a schedule dictated by the newest and undoubtedly most vocal member of my family.

And there’s nothing like impending motherhood to get you thinking about what kind of world your child is coming into — and what sort of world you wish for. I don’t think I’m being naïve to hope for a world in which he can pursue his dreams and has a fair shot at going wherever his imagination, talents and dedication can take him.

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Salon.com
By David Sirota

Black Americans have worse health and lower incomes. Why do so many white people refuse to believe it?

In the annals of contemporary American history, the power of white denialism and the “post-racial” fallacy is not to be underestimated. As race scholar Tim Wise has recounted, in the early 1960s, most white Americans told Gallup pollsters that African-Americans had equal economic and educational opportunities to get ahead.

Those were the results, mind you, at the height of the Jim Crow era, when discrimination and white-on-black racial violence were out in the open and, in many cases, celebrated. So it’s no surprise that with that kind of overt bigotry now underground, white denialism of persistent institutional racism is alive and well, according to new national survey data analyzed by the Greenlining Institute.
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