Advocates Call Filibuster Unjustified, Bad For Consumers

WASHINGTON – The Greenlining Institute, the group that sounded the alarm about the subprime meltdown years before it became a crisis, today renewed its call for the Senate to approve Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. An attempt to bring the nomination to a vote could happen as soon as Thursday.
“This highly respected consumer advocate deserves immediate approval, and there is simply no justification for a filibuster,” said Greenlining Institute Community Reinvestment Director Preeti Vissa. “Communities of color were devastated by predatory lending and the foreclosure crisis, and any action that delays CFPB getting fully up and running constitutes a direct attack on America’s most vulnerable communities and on consumers in general.”

Greenlining’s Sept. 2 letter in support of Cordray is available online here.

Greenlining and other consumer advocates pushed for CFPB’s inclusion in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law as a way to curb the predatory practices that led to the housing crash. As documented in the Academy Award-winning documentary “Inside Job,” Greenlining warned Alan Greenspan and other federal regulators of problems with subprime lending that threatened disaster, but those warnings were ignored.

A group of 44 Senate Republicans sent a letter to President Obama earlier this year indicating that they would block any CFPB nominee unless actions were taken that would effectively cripple the bureau.

AT&T’s reported last-gasp effort to salvage its T-Mobile takeover isn’t likely to appease the Justice Department, another sign that the beleaguered $39 billion deal is on life support.

AT&T is preparing to offer DOJ to divest as much as 40 percent of T-Mobile USA’s assets, Bloomberg reported Friday. But such a concession would likely still fail to satisfy antitrust concerns, a person knowledgeable of the government’s position told POLITICO.

The continued standoff with DOJ comes as the telecom megadeal enters a critical week, with AT&T representatives set to meet with DOJ attorneys on Wednesday and FCC officials trying to decide whether — or how — to allow AT&T to withdraw its separate application with that agency.

FCC officials maintain they have several options for how to handle AT&T’s application. The FCC could grant AT&T’s request without prejudice so that AT&T could refile an amended application later, or the FCC could grant AT&T’s request with prejudice, meaning AT&T would not be able to refile its application.

Finally, officials say, the commission could decide that — since AT&T is still seeking approval of the deal at DOJ — it will continue its process and designate the case to an administrative hearing.

AT&T says it does not need the FCC’s permission to pull the plug on the proceeding because it withdrew the application before the commissioners formally voted on a hearing designation order. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated an order to the other commissioners to designate the case to an administrative law judge last Tuesday, but sources say the commissioners had not yet cast their formal votes.

The FCC did not comment on Sunday.

The agency’s decision could affect the direction of the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block the deal. Judge Ellen Huvelle, the federal judge hearing the case, has scheduled a status conference for Wednesday.

Representatives of Sprint and C Spire, which have filed separate lawsuits against AT&T/T-Mobile, will also be present at the meeting. AT&T and T-Mobile had requested an expedited trial. But if the companies are able to pull their application from the FCC and plan to refile at a later date, it is unclear if AT&T will continue to push for the fast-track schedule.

AT&T had asked for the expedited schedule because of the September 2012 closing deadline it had set with T-Mobile. “But with the FCC application withdrawn, it has no basis to demand that anymore,” said Justin Serafini, vice president of Height Analytics.

Since the trial date is already set, AT&T or DOJ would have to file a motion to delay. DOJ could probably make that request due to the complex discovery process, Serafini said, and AT&T might not object if it thinks it could negotiate a settlement with DOJ in the meantime.

“At this point, I can’t see a lot of reason for AT&T to actually want to proceed to trial in February,” Serafini said. “AT&T probably fully recognizes that at this point getting the full acquisition through clearance is probably impossible and is focusing on Plan B. It’s not like a win in the DOJ case would all of the sudden make their FCC problems disappear. It wants — needs — to cut a deal before then.”

Washington telecom lawyers agree it is an unusual situation, but are divided over whether the FCC’s rules require it to allow AT&T to withdraw the application.

One former FCC official said AT&T can pull its application without permission until a hearing order has actually been adopted, adding that other measures, like forbearance petitions, are routinely pulled without permission or consequence after a chairman begins circulating a denial.

According to Section 1.934 in the Code of Federal Regulations, the Commission is directed to grant an applicant’s withdrawal request unless the application “has been designated for a comparative hearing.”

But there may be some wiggle room. Christopher Wright, former general counsel at the FCC who is now partner at Wiltshire & Grannis, points to Section 4(j) of the Communications Act, which provides that “[t]he Commission may conduct its proceedings in such a manner as will best conduce to the proper dispatch of business and to the ends of justice.”

“Whether the FCC can prevent AT&T and T-Mobile from withdrawing their application is likely to depend on whether a court ultimately concludes that Section 4(j) … provides sufficient authority to the FCC so that it may require the parties to go forward or dismiss their application with prejudice,” Wright said.

Wiltshire Grannis represents Sprint and T-Mobile on other proceedings.

If the FCC decides to send the case to an administrative law judge, the agency would likely publish its hearing designation order that contains staff findings about the deal’s potential impact on the wireless market and consumers. But the FCC and the court process are independent of each other, so the order would have to be formally entered into the court proceeding for it to have immediate impact on the case, said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press.

“It makes sense for the FCC to get the order out there to show its findings,” said Wood, adding that regardless of whether AT&T has the right to withdraw its application, its latest maneuver is “disappointing.”

“It does seem unfortunate that AT&T would be able to attempt this and not face the FCC’s judgment after such a lengthy proceeding and all of the hours put in by the FCC’s transaction team,” he said.

How the FCC situation affects the court proceeding is ultimately up to Huvelle. She may also decide to dismiss the case under the reasoning that if AT&T resubmits its application to the FCC later, that deal would presumably differ from the current court case.

Two other events on Wednesday will help drive the deal’s direction politically. First, the FCC will hold its monthly open meeting Wednesday morning. While it is not scheduled to take any direct action regarding the deal, it may be the first opportunity for Genachowski to publicly address the situation if asked about it by reporters.

In addition, the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing on two new FCC nominees, Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai. Though the nominees probably won’t comment on the AT&T/T-Mobile proceeding, lawmakers very well might.

“A lot of politicians kept saying [the deal] is good for Americans before much information was known … now they are experiencing hubris,” said Samuel Kang, general counsel at the Greenlining Institute, which opposes the deal. “AT&T’s explicit supporters are going to be severely diminished as time goes along.”

Still, a few Republicans are bound to disapprove of the FCC’s effort to send the deal to a hearing. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) blasted the FCC in a statement over the weekend.

“The FCC’s order would condemn Americans to staying in an era of slower speeds, slower deployments of this revolutionary technology and fewer jobs,” Aderholt said. “While all mergers must be reviewed, I think the administration should rethink this decision and encourage the investment in high-speed wireless broadband, not deter investment by throwing up roadblocks.”

Telecom experts spent the weekend speculating about AT&T’s next move. AT&T is forced to pay T-Mobile a $4 billion break-up fee if the September 2012 closing deadline is not met, leaving little time to refile an amended deal application at the FCC.

And AT&T is unlikely to get a different outcome over the next year before the 2012 presidential election, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt told CNBC over the weekend.

“If you resubmit sometime, at the earliest, in the middle of next year and you add another six months, you have an FCC with pretty much the same leadership in the same time period which would do the same thing, which is to take a very, very hard and negative look at the merger,” said Hundt, now a consultant for Skadden Arps, which has represented Sprint.

The ball is in T-Mobile’s court, Hundt added. Although Germany-based Deutsche Telekom wanted to get out of the U.S. market when the deal was first conceived, the U.S. market may be more appealing than the turbulent European market these days, and the company has options to pair up with other suitors.

Craig Moffett, senior analyst at Bernstein Research, told CNBC that AT&T will probably stick with the deal through the trial that begins in February, “but I think after that, in all probability, they won’t prevail in that case and at that point they will drop the suit.”

Moffett added that, while the process has not worked in AT&T’s favor so far, the risk was worth it. The break-up fee may seem huge, but AT&T is “an extraordinarily large company and the potential value was tremendous,” he said. “They’ve probably gained quite a bit during this waiting period. … I don’t think it was a mistake to have tried.”

WASHINGTON — The nail barely thudded into the coffin of Congress’ failed super committee Monday before all sides launched a barrage of blame, signaling what may be a year-long showdown over fiscal responsibility and fairness amid the Occupy Wall Street movement.

A year ago, Republicans seemed — to progressives — to win all of the key negotiations over taxes and spending, with President Obama agreeing to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for two more years.

Many on the left feared that after Congress created the super committee with unprecedented powers to move legislation, they would get rolled again, with Congress enacting deep cuts to the social safety net and requiring nothing more from the rich and corporations.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the chopping block — Occupy Wall Street erupted, and made the idea of America’s historic levels of income inequality a central part of the political debate — and one that has potential to change the landscape. The death of the super committee may go down as the first evidence of that change.

“After Occupy Wall Street, a month later, you were getting a lot more attention to income inequality, and that’s a tremendous change in the politics of the country,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose district includes Wall Street.

Nadler would not say for certain that the new dynamic prompted Democrats to take a tougher stand in refusing to accept cuts to Social Security and Medicare unless they were accompanied by sacrifices from the wealthy. But still, he told HuffPost, “That may be.”

The movement’s rhetoric is certainly reflected more and more in Democratic arguments, with numerous appeals to help the 99 percent. Policy and and political advocates on the left say it stems from the phenomenon that started in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park in September.

“The general pattern was that the Democrats give more than they get, and their base was getting fed up,” said Bruce Mirken, with the non-partisan but left-leaning Greenlining Institute.

“I think they were finally hearing from their constituents, whether they were camping out in front of banks or sending in letters, email, or making phone calls,” Mirken said. “I think leaders in Congress who say they stand up for the middle class may have finally gotten a back bone from seeing all this support.”

“A super committee working to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits was an absurd anachronism in the era of Occupy Wall Street — in which the 99 percent are calling for Wall Street banks and the rich to finally pay their fair share,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Good bye and good riddance.”

Perhaps, but the debate will go on, and the reaction was starkly partisan. Even President Obama, who has often cast himself in the role of conciliator-in-chief at critical moments, didn’t shy away from laying blame.

“To their credit, many Democrats in Congress were willing to put politics aside and commit to reasonable adjustments that would have reduced the cost of Medicare, as long as they were part of a balanced approach,” Obama said in a speech early Monday night. “But despite the broad agreement that exists for such an approach, there are still too many Republicans in Congress who have refused to listen to the voices of reason and compromise.”

Other Democrats offered a harsh assessment, as well, with super committee member Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) declaring the ideological divide was greater than ever, and that Democrats could not give in. “We would not give another $550 billion tax cut to the wealthiest. Shifting the tax burden to the middle class was not the way to reduce the deficit,” he said.

Perhaps the the most-heated statements belonged to the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blamed Republicans for catering to the fringe of their base. “The American people are tired of their elected leaders listening to the extreme voices in their party instead of the voices of reason,” Reid said in a statement. “I am disappointed that Republicans never found the courage to ignore Tea Party extremists and millionaire lobbyists like Grover Norquist,” Reid added, referring the the head of the anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform.

His office also cut a video of Norquist to emphasize that he took credit for the GOP’s hard-line stance on taxes.

For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement that Democrats’ insistence on leaving the Bush-era cuts — which expire after 2012 — out of the equation amounts to a massive tax hike. He denigrated their position as “puzzling.”

“In the end, an agreement proved impossible not because Republicans were unwilling to compromise, but because Democrats would not accept any proposal that did not expand the size and scope of government or punish job creators,” McConnell argued in a line of attack often repeated by the GOP.

In a sign of how estranged and entrenched the sides are, none of the leaders thanked members of the super committee who were not in their own party for their efforts — a customary courtesy de rigueur in such standoffs.

And the campaign committees made it clear that both sides see the deficit debate as pivotal to 2012. The National Republican Congressional Campaign fired off campaign attacks against 50 Democrats over the super committee’s failure even before it was formally declared dead.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee head Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) waited for the official announcement, but didn’t hold back in his reaction.

“The American people want an end to this gridlock with a balanced approach to reducing the debt that creates jobs, protects the Medicare guarantee, and brings shared sacrifice from the ultra wealthy and Big Oil,” he said in a statement. “Voters have a chance to end this gridlock in November 2012.”

The hostile language likely foreshadows a tough final month of the year, when Congress must deal with several major, expensive problems, including funding the government and helping the unemployed.

It was in extending unemployment benefits last December that Democrats caved in to demands to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years. Occupy Wall Street may change that discussion this time around, and many on the left think that talk of economic fairness will shape the debate through 2012.

“It is a discussion that I think has finally gotten a place in the national spotlight that it deserves,” Mirken said. “And I think it will make a difference.”

UPDATE: Tuesday, 1:30 p.m. — Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement on an “Occupy the Highway” march to Washington, D.C. saw the super committee’s collapse as a victory, declaring in a press release as they arrived: “Super Committee Fail = Occupy Wall Street Win.”

“The so-called Super Committee was a failure from the beginning. It was an attempt to do something undemocratic. Thankfully it didn’t work,” said Michael Glazer, an organizer of Occupy the Highway. “No one has the courage to stand up inside our corrupt political system and fight for regular Americans. So, we will continue to take a stand outside the system.”

Committee Members Who Refused to Accept Bad Deal Deserve Applause, Greenlining Institute Says

WASHINGTON – Instead of hand-wringing over the supposed “failure” of the congressional deficit committee, ordinary Americans should applaud committee members who refused to make a bad deal, policy experts at The Greenlining Institute said today.

“Ordinary Americans should breathe a sigh of relief because we dodged a bullet,” said Greenlining Institute General Counsel Samuel S. Kang. “The committee was looking at cuts to vital programs for the elderly and other vulnerable Americans while doing next to nothing about the unfairness in our tax code. Any deal they could have reached would have been bad for everyone but the super-rich.”

Going down such a path was unnecessary, he added. “We could achieve most of the deficit reduction goal by simply shutting down offshore corporate tax havens, as we reported in July in our study, ‘Corporate America Untaxed.’ We should make America’s richest companies pay their fair share before even thinking about slashing vital programs.”

Greenlining wrote to the committee in August noting that simply closing offshore tax havens could reduce the deficit by as much as $1 trillion.

“It’s much more important to get this right than to bow to an arbitrary deadline,” Kang said. “Right now our tax system makes ordinary Americans pay over 20 percent of their income in federal taxes while companies like General Electric and Dupont pay nothing. That’s exactly what Occupy Wall Street is about. Instead of empty talk about standing with the 99 percent, Congress should go back to the drawing board and show they mean it.”

Feds to Require Independent Investigations, Compensation For Losses Due to Wrongdoing

WASHINGTON – In a move that offers a chance for relief to potentially millions of foreclosure victims, the Federal Reserve Board and Office of Comptroller of the Currency announced this week that they will require independent reviews of foreclosures that may have been mishandled by two dozen leading mortgage servicers. Borrowers whose primary residence was in foreclosure during 2009 or 2010 and who suffered financially due to “errors, misrepresentations, or other deficiencies,” can receive compensation for their losses, whether or not a foreclosure was actually completed.

The federal agencies’ action stems from the “robo-signing” scandal that came to light last year, in which millions of foreclosure documents were found to have been signed by individuals who never even read them, much less verified their accuracy.

“This action represents a tremendous opportunity for hard-hit families, especially in communities of color that have been disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis,” said Preeti Vissa, community reinvestment director at The Greenlining Institute. “While not a complete solution, this is a real opportunity for those who were mistreated to get relief. It’s good to see bank regulators finally showing they get it, and showing leadership in helping consumers. Financial institutions need to not only fix the mistakes of the past, but step forward and help Americans still struggling to keep their homes.”

Those seeking a review must apply by April 30, 2012. Further information, including a list of the financial institutions involved, is available at http://www.independentforeclosurereview.com or by calling 1-888-952-9105. Telephone assistance is available in English and Spanish.

New Commissioners Could Reinvigorate Investigation Into Proposed Acquisition of T-Mobile

WASHINGTON –The announcement of President Obama’s two nominees to the Federal Communications Commission provides an opportunity to accelerate the FCC’s investigation of AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile, the Greenlining Institute said today, urging the commission to look closely at claims made by AT&T regarding the deal’s impact on jobs.
 “These two nominees can help the commission move aggressively to scrutinize claims being made by AT&T, and in particular to closely examine both public and confidential claims the company is making regarding jobs,” said Greenlining Institute General Counsel Samuel S. Kang.

President Obama formally nominated Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Varadaraj Pai as FCC commissioners Monday night, shortly after AT&T gave the FCC a two-page letter accompanied by a 19-page redacted filing addressing the jobs impact of its proposed acquisition of T-Mobile.

Greenlining filed a memo today (available online here) with the California Public Utilities Commission addressing the deal’s impact on jobs, and will be filing a response to AT&T’s latest FCC filing shortly.

“AT&T’s arguments about the jobs issue have either been incomplete or veiled in secrecy, so the material they’ve filed privately needs the most exacting scrutiny,” said Kang. “For example, the company has talked about infrastructure investment that will supposedly create jobs, but has said nothing about the net impact on jobs after taking into account the investments that T-Mobile won’t be making and the resulting loss of employment. The FCC must examine every claim down to the last decimal point. So far we have every reason to think this will be a bad deal for American communities.”

But it wasn’t until a decade later that we had a game-changer. Ms. Moore’s ground-breaking legislation that eventually established GO 156 was the breakthrough that injected transparency, competition and opportunity into some of the largest corporations in the state.

It was another fifteen years later, however, that the breakthrough of Ms. Moore’s legislation found a leader who could steward this effort and build an institution to make supplier diversity a business priority. Under your leadership, President Peevey, supplier diversity with CPUC-regulated entities have gone from the millions into the billions. Diverse procurement has thrived, jumping from $1 billion per year to $5 billion per year.

At Crossorads
And today, we again find ourselves at a crossroads. And ‘though we are experiencing incredible challenges to our economy, in California, it is still an auspicious time, perhaps eerily so. It was 50 years ago, under then Governor Pat Brown that California became the Golden state – building a world class infrastructure that at the time was the envy of a changing nation.

Today, the son of Governor Pat Brown, and spearheaded by this Commission, is leading a sweeping change to our basic energy infrastructure that has the potential to put California at the cusp of another golden era. If past is prologue, we have much to look forward to.

But this future will not be realized with expectation alone. To borrow a line from one my favorite poets, “nature’s first green is gold.” In California, our green and gold is inherent in our ability to include black and brown. It is this opportunity that I would like to focus my comments on today.

The Future is Now
This past year, more than half of all persons born in the United States were ethnically diverse. 9 states and the District of Columbia have an under-15 population that is at least 50% ethnically diverse. In California, more than 70% of the state’s under-15 population is ethnically diverse.

These numbers starkly show how the state economy will succeed or fail depending on who is included and excluded. At the same time, it is California’s ratepayer base, who are mostly and increasingly becoming more diverse, that are paying billions of dollars to fund the technological and infrastructure overhaul.

So when we’re talking about return on investment, it is crucial that the ratepayers who fund these investments are deriving an economic benefit. Though we are getting closer, we are still not near delivering returns to the communities that are paying most into the system. Quite the contrary, though diverse ratepayers make up more than half of the utility ratepayer base in California, returns on investment to diverse businesses is around 20%.

But this deficiency is not just about reaching parity on investment returns. California’s ethnic population also wants to protect the environment.

Take the defeat of Proposition 23 as evidence. This was the state ballot initiative funded by Texas oil companies to roll back AB 32. This proposition was defeated in a landslide. What may surprise you, however, is how resounding the vote was for communities of color. 56% of white voters voted no. Among voters of color, 70% voted no. What this says is that Californians, especially voters of color, care about the environment.

There is a demand to fuel projects that will deliver a smarter, greener, and more sustainable infrastructure. Diverse constituencies want to contribute to this. But the build-out of the new infrastructure so far has provided inconsistent results to include them. If we want to effectively advance green policy, we must capture the energy and desire of the green diverse majority by investing in their businesses on green projects.

What’s Going Well
To that end, there are many things that the Big 6 are doing well, or at the very least, building a solid foundation from which to capture the momentum of the diverse majority.

First, Sempra’s launch of the SCORE program (Smaller Contractors Opportunity Realization Effort) is an initiative aimed at increasing the number of contracts, not just about RFPs but contracts, to small businesses. SCORE’s multi-disciplinary team promotes an entrepreneurial spirit within the Sempra utilities to identify projects ripe for small business involvement. It is aimed specifically at businesses that Sempra has not done business with to award new contracts. But from what I am learning, they are cultivating for the future and mentoring these small businesses for growth. Sempra is building its own farm system for vendors.

Second, AT&T has done a tremendous job over the past year to make ethnic businesses more aware of contracting opportunities in the technological field with matchmaking opportunities. Also, AT&T’s program entitled, “Operation Hand Salute”, like Sempra’s SCORE program has a mentoring program to identify and cultivate businesses for contracts. Only AT&T’s program is specifically aimed at an underserved population, disabled veterans, which AT&T should be commended for.

The last example I’ll offer is Southern California Edison’s Supplier University, which again has a mentoring program that teaches and cultivates growing businesses become vendors. And ‘though there is much work to be done in the specific business category of diverse women-owned enterprises, Edison had one of the most dramatic comebacks in this category from fiscal years 2009 to 2010, and they took special effort to target diverse, women-owned firms in their Supplier University.

The common thread binding these success stories is targeting new and growing businesses, probably businesses that have never landed a major contract, and mentorship. That’s what “Sprout to Stalk” (this year’s en banc theme) is all about – mentorship. Mentorship cultivates the seed so that it can grow. Mentorship is intended for a long-term return on investment.

Greenlining’s hope is to scale these programs, specifically where vendors can nab contracts impacting renewable energy and major infrastructure projects.

Tens of Billions in Smart Grid Being Missed
But as I mentioned earlier, there have been inconsistent efforts in cultivating long-term success.

First and foremost is the implementation (or lack thereof) of supplier diversity in the Smart Grid Deployment Plan. Then Commissioner Nancy Ryan authored a decision last year requiring supplier diversity blueprints in the electrical utilities’ smart grid plans (Decision 10-06-047). And Chairman Bradford, we worked together on your authorship of AB 2758, which requires all PUC-regulated entities to report all supplier diversity numbers specific to smart grid spend.

Unfortunately, when the electrical utilities filed their smart grid plans (for the record that proceeding number is Application 11-06-006), the most “robust” plan (if you want to call it that) was 2 pages, full of generalities and no specifics. The other two contained 2 paragraphs for a program that will require tens of billions of dollars of ratepayer investment. I found this highly disturbing. That can’t be what Commissioner Ryan had in mind. This can’t be what the Commission had in mind when voting unanimously for the decision. This lack of information is not be in compliance with Commissioner Ryan’s decision, and may be violating the spirit of Chairman Bradford’s legislation.

I urge the Commission to scrutinize this issue in its current proceeding and encourage the electrical utilities to resubmit their plans. And Chairman Bradford, this may be an issue ripe for a follow-up hearing, as it may threaten the ultimate impact of AB 2758.

Conclusion
I would like to conclude my remarks by commenting on a disturbing trend as it relates to our economy. Many have been saying that the state of unemployment may now be the “new normal”. My thoughts on the matter were best summarized by a term I heard when listening to Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Irvine School of Law, give a speech at the annual California Bar Association reception on diversity. He talked about the deplorable lack of diversity in the legal profession and summarized this situation in one word, shanda, a Yiddish term, loosely translated, meaning public shame.

It is impossible for Greenlining to accept the current economic climate as the new normal. A 10% average unemployment rate has translated into the shanda of a 15%, 20% or even higher unemployment rates in communities of color. Accepting a perpetual economic climate of depression will sink California’s economy. We cannot accept this shanda as the new normal.

But I’d like to end where I started, that’s with hope. GO 156 is the single most important policy cutting through the normalization, the shanda, of depression in California’s economy. Now we have an opportunity to grow the impact of supplier diversity to new heights by harnessing the myriad of green, smart, and renewable projects in the PUC’s queue. Communities of color want it and want to play a part in it. Green can be gold again in California with black and brown being the key shades. For the sake of our economy, we simply must. Thank you.

Telephone Press Briefing Tuesday 10/4, Press Conference and Testimony at Fed Hearing 10/5; Advocates Charge Capital One With Predatory Lending

SAN FRANCISCO –The Greenlining Institute, California Reinvestment Coalition and nearly 120 community groups will call on the Federal Reserve Board to block the proposed merger of Capital One Bank and ING at the Fed’s upcoming hearing in San Francisco. Capital One, one of the nation’s leading subprime and often predatory credit card companies, would become the nation’s fifth largest bank should the merger be approved.
The groups will host a telephone press briefing on Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Advocates as well as consumers who have been mistreated by Capital One will describe the firm’s unethical and predatory treatment of low-income and immigrant communities and the dangers posed by the creation of another “too big to fail” bank. Merger opponents will also speak at the Federal Reserve Board hearing Wednesday, Oct. 5, and hold a press conference at the Fed building at 10:30 a.m. Spanish language speakers will be available both days.

Despite making significant profits in California, Capital One has no branches in the state and has made no commitments to fill the lending and service needs of California’s low income communities and communities of color.

WHAT: Media briefing
WHEN: Tuesday, Oct. 4, 10 a.m. Pacific time
WHO: Representatives of The Greenlining Institute and California Reinvestment Coalition; Martha Montoya, business owner and board member, U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; other consumers and advocates.
WHAT: Press conference and testimony at the Federal Reserve
WHEN: Wednesday, October 5. Hearing begins at 8:30 a.m., press conference  at 10.30  a.m.
WHO: Representatives of The Greenlining Institute and California Reinvestment Coalition; Martha Montoya, business owner and board member, U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Other consumers and advocates.
WHERE: Federal Reserve, 101 Market Street, San Francisco
VISUALS: “Wanted” poster featuring Capital One CEO Richard D. Fairbank.

Thursday’s Hearing Must Look Beyond “Buffett Rule”

WASHINGTON – At Thursday’s hearing on reforming the tax code, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction should look beyond President Obama’s proposed “Buffett Rule” and crack down on offshore tax havens, policy experts at The Greenlining Institute said today. The growing use of offshore tax havens to avoid corporate income taxes – often by companies getting billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded federal contracts – was documented in Greenlining’s July report, “Corporate America Untaxed.”

“We applaud President Obama for bringing the issue of tax fairness into a discussion that’s been far too focused on cuts to life-saving programs, but his ‘Buffett Rule’ is just a start,” said report coauthor and Greenlining Institute General Counsel Samuel S. Kang. “U.S. corporations avoid between $60 billion and $100 billion in federal income taxes each year through offshore tax havens. Present law lets these companies invent something in the U.S. and transfer the patent rights to an offshore subsidiary, magically sending U.S. profits overseas and out of reach. If Congress closes these loopholes, we could collect up to $1 trillion in tax revenue between 2012 and 2021 just from these wealthy corporations.”

In an August letter to the committee, Kang and Greenlining Legal Associate Tuan Ngo noted that the money saved would be enough to pay the salaries of 1.2 million schoolteachers or fund the entire combined budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Energy and Labor.

“Instead of condemning any attempt to make the tax system fairer as ‘class warfare,’ Congress should stop the legalized money laundering that’s robbing the treasury of revenues from America’s wealthiest corporations,” Kang said. “It’s unpatriotic to evade taxes, and companies that do it shouldn’t receive federal contracts.”