THE BATTLE TO PREVENT THE DEATH OF NET NEUTRALITY

August 27, 2018 post

Kudos to the Los Angeles Times for the below brief but informative article on the issue of net neutrality and California’s effort to provide protection from exclusionary practices by Internet Service Providers. These protections, instituted by the Obama Federal Communications Commission, were removed by the Trump Federal Communications Commission in June.

The two bills in the California state legislature up for a vote this week are being closely monitored by other states and governing bodies to see what effect they may have on future regulation to provide net neutrality on a national basis.

Please take the time to read the entire article. California residents, let your Assemblymen and State Senators know that you support the unimpeded access to the internet provided in the two bills.

Note that the industry has poured huge contributions to kill the bills. The last thing Verizon and other providers want is regulations that may inhibit their bottom line profit.

LA Times 8-27-2018

Will State’s Internet Rules Go Viral? State’s Net Neutrality Fight Heats up

Net neutrality backers push for two bills that may be gold standard for other states. Tech firms aim to kill them.

By Jazmine Ulloa

SACRAMENTO — When federal regulators voted late last year to roll back net neutrality protections, state Democratic leaders pledged to wage a fight with the Trump administration to preserve fair and open access to the internet in California.

Now two bills facing final approval in the Assembly and Senate this week have become a proxy battle in the larger national fight to reshape the internet.

The ambitious proposals would establish the strongest net neutrality rules in the nation, safeguards that advocates say would be stronger than those rejected by the White House. One would prevent internet service providers from blocking or slowing down websites and video streams or charging websites fees for faster speeds. The other would deny public contracts to companies that fail to follow the new state regulations.

Calls in support of the legislation intensified last week after reports that Santa Clara County firefighters were hindered by inadequate internet service as they helped battle the massive Mendocino Complex fire in July. (See August 23, 2018 article and comment below)

But pushing the bills through to passage hasn’t been as easy as proponents had hoped in a state controlled by Democrats with a distaste for Trump administration policies. Over the last year, a powerful tech industry has sunk millions into killing the state’s net neutrality efforts, while supporters have responded in kind with aggressive public advocacy campaigns.

“Everyone is waiting to see what happens with this bill,” Evan Greer of the tech advocacy nonprofit Fight for the Future said of the proposal to bar internet service providers from slowing access or charging fees for faster speeds. “If California can’t pass net neutrality protections, opponents will use it as fodder to kill any net neutrality efforts at the federal level moving forward.… If the bill passes, it would create the gold standard for other states to follow suit.”

Net neutrality has been the most closely watched telecom issue taken up by the Federal Communications Commission over the last decade. The most recent set of rules were implemented in a February 2015 order under the Obama administration. They barred broadband and wireless companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. from selling faster delivery of some data, slowing speeds for certain content or favoring selected websites over others.

But the federal agency voted to reverse the regulations last year, with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was appointed by President Trump, and Republicans calling for an end to the utility-like oversight of internet service providers. The vote and the official repeal of the rules in June sparked protests across the state and nationwide.

Net neutrality has since become a rallying issue for Democrats to stir young voters in House races across the country, though opposition to the rollback of the rules has remained overwhelmingly bipartisan. A March survey of 997 registered voters by the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland found 82% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats were against the move.

With that national conversation as a backdrop, California is one of 29 states that have since considered net neutrality protections in the last year. Governors in six states — including Hawaii, New York and Montana — have signed executive orders to reinstate some form of net neutrality. Three states — Oregon, Vermont and Washington — passed legislation to ensure such protections for government agencies and consumers.

State Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) are working together to establish rules that go beyond those adopted under the Obama administration. Wiener’s Senate Bill 822 would, in effect, reestablish the Obama-era rules. Senate Bill 460 by De León bars companies that violate them from receiving public dollars.

But SB 822 also would place new limits on zero-rated data plans, or package deals that allow companies such as Verizon or Comcast to exempt some calls, texts or other content from counting against a customer’s data plan.

Unlimited phone plans that give customers “free nights and weekends” would be permitted. Data plans that exempt the same type of content from some companies over others — video streamed on YouTube but not Hulu, for example — would not.

The bill also would prohibit broadband companies from evading net neutrality rules not only as data travels through their networks but also as it enters them. That would prevent internet service providers from slowing down content from websites that refuse to pay for delivering the data to their customers.

Neither issue was fully addressed in the 2015 federal net neutrality order , which allowed the FCC to further study zero-rated data plans and internet traffic exchange practices “without adopting prescriptive rules.”

But proponents — including former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who was appointed by President Obama, and smaller to mid-level broadband companies — argue the state legislation mostly mirrors the 2015 order in language and approach, tasking the state attorney general with evaluating potential violations on a case-by-case basis. Former FCC officials say the new limits on zero-rated data plans are based on policy analysis that the federal agency undertook in 2016.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers paint a grim picture of the internet without net neutrality rules. They say providers would be able to sell bundled packages with only select sports, entertainment and shopping sites for consumers, or slow readers’ access to news sites that refuse to pay more for faster service. Start-ups would suffer.

SB 822 would ensure “that we all get to decide for ourselves where we go on the internet, as opposed to having internet service providers tell us where we are allowed to go,” Wiener said.

High-profile court cases have underscored their concerns. From 2013 until the 2015 order, six major internet service providers were accused of slowing down content from companies that refused to pay for access to their customers. Troubles with Netflix made the most headlines as customers experienced delays watching movies and TV shows.

Many more companies felt the effect, said Stanford Law School professor Barbara van Schewick, who has studied the issue for more than a decade.

“Employees couldn’t connect to their company’s network,” she said. “Schools couldn’t upload their payload data. Skype calls dropped.”

But major telecom companies and broadband service providers contend the legislation reaches far beyond the scope of the rolled-back federal regulations. Tech industry lobbyists say the rules could lead to costly litigation against the state and would create a patchwork of state and federal laws governing the internet.

“There are a bunch of folks that didn’t get what they wanted in the 2015 order and are trying to get it here in California,” Steve Carlson, general counsel for the Computing Technology Industry Assn., said at a recent committee hearing.

Bill Devine, a Sacramento lobbyist for AT&T, has suggested Wiener’s bill would hurt tech innovation and last week called it “a radical departure from historical internet policy.”

“We believe this bill is anti-competitive and anti-consumer, and is surely going to be challenged,” he said.

The debate in California has drawn national attention. When the Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee tried to scale back SB 822 in June, it retreated amid backlash from net neutrality proponents. The committee’s chairman, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), faced a barrage of tweets condemning the move, and his committee’s vote was captured in a video that went viral. Some took family photos from Santiago’s social media profiles and used them to create critical memes.

Fight for the Future raised more than $15,000 through a crowdfunding site and Reddit campaigns to put a billboard in Santiago’s district urging him to restore the bill. On Friday, Santiago said the committee had always intended to keep working on the legislation, and called claims that members tried to rewrite it at the behest of the tech industry false.

“At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding,” said Santiago, who has signed on as a coauthor of both bills. “We put together the strongest net neutrality bill in the country. The tech industry opposed it then, it opposes it now — and they will continue to oppose it. But I feel good about our chances.”

The bills passed out of his committee last week, hours after Verizon was reported to have slowed the speed of the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s wireless data transmission. The revelation was detailed in an addendum to a federal lawsuit filed by states including California to challenge the repeal of net neutrality rules.

Verizon general counsel Heidi Barsuglia called it a customer service mistake and said the company was investigating the incident.

“This particular situation has nothing to do with net neutrality,” she told lawmakers. “Net neutrality addresses content discrimination. This was content neutral.”

But Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez (D-Pomona) wondered what could happen to consumers without protections if even firefighters could face difficulty accessing the internet while “protecting our people and saving lives.”

Wiener said that at the very least it was evidence of “how critical internet access is to everything.”

jazmine.ulloa@latimes.com

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August 25, 2018 Comment

Verizon has reacted as anticipated to a situation that caused peril to life and limb by “fixing the problem” that should not have even existed. Limiting emergency services vital infrastructure, such as unfettered internet access, at the expense of public safety is unpardonable.

It is abundantly clear that the communications industry cannot regulate itself. Considering critical internet access to emergency services without the specter of a disaster should be evidence enough of the need for net neutrality on  a federal basis.

LA Times 8-25-2018

Verizon won’t slow data of first responders Data slowdown affected firefighting efforts

The practice affected the battle against the Mendocino Complex blaze, firefighters say.

By Hannah Fry

Verizon Wireless on Friday said it will immediately stop imposing data speed restrictions on first responders throughout the West Coast and Hawaii after facing intense criticism for reducing service to firefighters battling California’s largest-ever wildfire.

The telecommunication giant also said it will move forward in the coming weeks on a plan that will feature unlimited data without restrictions for public safety officials.

The announcement comes in a summer of epic fires in California and as Hawaii is grappling with torrential rainfall, flooding and power outages stemming from Hurricane Lane .

Verizon’s plan, which was discussed among Assembly members during a committee meeting Friday, was made public on the heels of revelations that the company slowed the speed of Santa Clara County firefighters’ data as they helped battle the massive Mendocino Complex fire in July.

The incident grabbed headlines and sparked outrage this week when Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden chronicled the incident in an addendum to a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules.

“This was not a fire drill,” Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael) said during the Natural Disaster Response, Recovery, and Rebuilding committee meeting Friday. “I think we were all surprised that such an incident could occur. I’m grateful that Verizon has recognized they need to change the way they do business.”

Dave Hickey, Verizon vice president of business and government sales, told lawmakers that the company would roll out a new $37.99 service plan for public safety personnel that will feature unlimited data with no caps and will automatically give them priority access on congested networks.

The company also will remove throttling — which he referred to as speed-capping — for emergency responders during future natural disasters that may occur nationwide, Hickey said.

Verizon officials said this week that Santa Clara County Fire Department’s plan featured unlimited high-speed wireless data, but data speeds were reduced when the agency reached a specific threshold, as is customary on their service plans.

However, the company has a practice to remove data speed restrictions for emergency responders — regardless of the plan they have chosen — in emergency situations. Verizon called the situation a “customer support mistake” and has apologized.

“In supporting first responders in the Mendocino fire, we didn’t live up to our own promise of service and performance excellence when our process failed some first responders on the line, battling a massive California wildfire,” Mike Maiorana, Verizon senior vice president of public sector, said in a statement. “For that, we are truly sorry. And we’re making every effort to ensure that it never happens again.”

Bowden wrote in the addendum to the lawsuit that the data-slowing during the Mendocino Complex fire specifically hampered OES 5262, a department command vehicle that acts as a mobile emergency operations center and requires “near-real-time information exchange” to coordinate resources and staff during emergencies like large wildfires.

“Dated or stale information regarding the availability or need for resources can slow response times and render them far less effective,” Bowden wrote. “Resources could be deployed to the wrong fire, the wrong part of the fire, or fail to be deployed at all. Even small delays in response translate into devastating effects, including loss of property, and, in some cases, loss of life.”

Fire crews that worked in the command vehicle faced email delays and challenges updating web-based documents with critical information about deployment because of the data-slowing, which impeded their ability to communicate with one another, fire officials said.

Assemblywoman Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) said she’s eager to hear how other internet service providers plan to tackle this issue, opening the door for further discussions.

Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) was concise in her request. “I’m not going to point fingers, but I don’t want this to happen again,” she said.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

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August 23, 2018 Comment:
The actions of the current administration that negated internet access protections, initiated by the Obama administration to protect the citizens interest, are neither trivial nor inconsequential. The risk to life and limb presented by the throttling of internet availability to critical services in such a cataclysmic local event is immeasurable. Though Verizon called this a “Customer Support Mistake” the lack of regulation addressing net neutrality that depends on industry policing itself has cost immeasurably in this situation.

If national net neutrality can’t be reinstated, it is incumbent on our legislative bodies to provide for unfettered internet access to emergency services agencies that protect property, life and limb.

California residents, support Senate Bill 822 which reinstates net neutrality similar to the Obama administration neutrality rules to assure that this situation is not repeated in future, disasters in the state.

LA Times 8-23-2018

Fire agency felt the squeeze as Verizon slowed its data speeds A ‘customer support mistake’

A VERIZON representative says it should have lifted the restriction and “will fix any issues going forward.” (Marcus Yam Los Angeles Times)

By Hannah Fryda

A crew of firefighters from Silicon Valley had arrived in Lake County to help battle the largest blaze in California history when suddenly their mobile internet service slowed to a crawl.

Officials coordinating the firefighting effort inside the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s command vehicle faced email delays and challenges updating web-based documents with critical information about deployment, Capt. Bill Murphy said.

They quickly learned that their provider, Verizon Wireless, had throttled down the department’s connection to 1/200 or less than previous speeds because the agency had exceeded its data plan limit.

“It essentially rendered those very routine communications almost useless or completely ineffective,” Murphy said. “They were essentially dealing with dial-up type speeds.”

A Verizon representative told them the only way they could make the service faster immediately was to upgrade their plan at a higher cost. So, they did, and service improved.

The breakdown occurred several weeks ago during the massive Mendocino Complex fire, which has destroyed more than 150 homes and killed one firefighter. But the incident only become public this week, sparking widespread outrage both from fire officials and the public.

Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden chronicled the incident in an addendum to a federal lawsuit filed Monday by 21 states — including California — and the District of Columbia seeking to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules.

The repeal, which went into effect in June, scrapped Obama-era rules that prevented internet service providers from blocking content they didn’t like or charging content providers more for speeding up delivery of certain material.

Verizon spokeswoman Heidi Flato wrote in a statement Wednesday that the situation with the Santa Clara County Fire Department was a “customer support mistake” and “has nothing to do with net neutrality or the current proceeding in court.”

“This customer purchased a government contract plan for a high-speed wireless data allotment at a set monthly cost,” she wrote. “Under this plan, users get an unlimited amount of data but speeds are reduced when they exceed their allotment until the next billing cycle.”

However, Flato wrote that the company has a practice to remove data speed restrictions for emergency responders — regardless of the plan chosen — in emergency situations.

“In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us,” she said. “We are reviewing the situation and will fix any issues going forward.”

Murphy said officials felt compelled to join in the lawsuit in hopes of ensuring that reduced data speeds won’t affect the public’s access to information such as evacuation routes and fire maps disseminated online during emergencies.

The necessity of prompt communication during disasters was highlighted during the 2017 wine country fires in Northern California; officials have debated whether more could have been done to give residents earlier warnings before the fires swept in, killing 44 people.

For the firefighters battling the Mendocino Complex, Bowden wrote that data-slowing affected a department command vehicle that acts as a mobile emergency operations center. The van requires “near-real-time information exchange” to coordinate resources during emergencies, he wrote.

“Dated or stale information regarding the availability or need for resources can slow response times and render them far less effective,” he wrote. “Resources could be deployed to the wrong fire, the wrong part of the fire, or fail to be deployed at all. Even small delays in response translate into devastating effects, including loss of property, and, in some cases, loss of life.”

The Santa Clara County department now uses FirstNet, a service that provides wireless network service to public safety agencies, as a supplement to Verizon to avoid future issues, Murphy said.

Emails between fire officials and Verizon representatives filed in court show that the department has been having issues with data throttling since December 2017. Fire crews noticed the problem again in June, as they fought the Pawnee fire, which burned 15,185 acres in Lake County. During that fire, Verizon suggested a $2-a-month upgrade to the department’s plan to restore data speeds.

Data speeds continued to be an issue as Santa Clara County firefighters deployed to the Mendocino Complex fire, which began July 27 and had charred 410,482 acres in Mendocino, Lake, Colusa and Glenn counties as of Wednesday.

“Please work with us,” a fire official wrote to Verizon on July 30. “All we need is a plan that does not offer throttling or caps of any kind.”

In response, Verizon suggested the department upgrade to a $99.99 per month plan, which would have more than doubled its bill, to remove the data throttling. Before the department subscribed to the new plan, county fire personnel used other agencies’ internet service and their personal devices to deploy fire resources, Bowden wrote.

“In light of our experience, county fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher cost plans, ultimately paying significantly more for mission critical service, even if that means risking harm to public safety during negotiations,” he wrote.

Katharine Trendacosta, a policy analyst with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the department’s experience “is an example of why actions like this are so dangerous and why we need to pay attention to how we’re getting our internet.”

Concerns over the incident were raised Wednesday by members of the Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee, which advanced legislation to reinstate net neutrality protections in California. If it receives full legislative approval, Senate Bill 822 would bar internet service providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down websites and video.

Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez (D-Pomona) said he was troubled by what happened to the Santa Clara County firefighters.

“If it is happening to them … [while] doing their job and protecting our people and saving lives, I am having a problem with that,” said Rodriguez.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Times staff writer Jasmine Ulloa in Sacramento contributed to this report.

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 December 14, 2017 Comment:

The FCC passed the death knell for unfettered access to the Internet by passing the modification to the net neutrality legislation passed under the last administration. Enjoy another adventure into financial exploitation by a critical infrastructure industry.

You won’t really appreciate the effect of this new FCC ruling until you notice that your internet access seems to be slowing down and you hear from your provider that you were notified that you had to “upgrade” your connection at an additional cost. When you notice that you can’t stream the services you pay for (think Netflix, Amazon, etc.) unless you pay a provider “premium fee” to be able to use the streaming services you subscribe to today.

There is no universe where the deregulation of a critical infrastructure service like Internet Access will not be exploited by those who provide it. This move again affects those who can least afford to pay for services that have become the foundation of our daily lives. Medical Services, social services, Financial services and simple communications are increasingly dependent on reliable and cheap inernet access for the masses. As the service availability for internet access diminishes for the less fortunate, remember that this day as the day the current administration accommodated unfettered exploitation of the masses for corporate profit.

Another win for the rich guys.
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November 24, 2017 Comment:

 The below linked editorial by a member of the FCC regarding net neutrality briefly explains the impact of the pending vote by the FCC. It is important for everyone who uses the internet to understand that their access is being sorely threatened by the action proposed that will affect the Internet providers ability to limit your access to the internet. Get the word out that the gutting of the current regulations will allow providers to charge as much as they wish and control unfettered access to the Internet.

LA Times 11-24-2017

More Lies and Maniplation by our President to Sway the Midterm Voters

Please, Please, Please consider the implications of the details presented below BEFORE you go to the polls on November 6! You are being lied to and lead down a path that will ultimately turn the USA into a paradise for the wealthy and purgatory for those who can’t seem to realize that lies are lies. There are no “alternate facts” only lies propagated to further the agenda of overt corruption and an egomaniac who wishes to destroy our way of life. Don’t get take in by promises that have yet to be realized and those outright lies now being forwarded at political rallies that are commanding the entire attention span of the President. A man whose only concern is keeping control of Congress by the lackies who do his bidding regardless of the harm showered upon the citizens. We are the ones who pay the toll of an unbelievably authoritarian leader with a cowardly Congress as his minions.

2018 MIDTERM ELECTION (From the LA Times October 25, 2018

Salesman Trump pitches fear, promises and riches

Anything to make the sale to GOP voters — never mind if it’s true

By Eli Stokols and Noah Bierman

WASHINGTON — Literally everyone in Washington’s political world knew President Trump was making a false and implausible promise when he said he’d cut taxes for the middle class before next month’s midterm election — reporters, fact checkers, Congress’ Republican leaders, even his own staff.

Yet there was Trump on the White House lawn Monday, promising away as reporters confronted him. He mistakenly described the legislative process and dismissed the time-consuming realities of passing a complicated tax package in Congress, as well as the simple fact that lawmakers have left town until after the election. Even as his claims fell flat, he stood his ground.

“No, no. We’re putting in a resolution sometime in the next week, or week and a half, two weeks,” he said. He meant “bill,” not a nonbinding resolution, but by any name the measure would be meaningless with no one at the Capitol to vote on it.

Undaunted, that night at a rally in Texas, Trump told supporters the tax cuts would happen next week.

This is Trump at his most Trumpy, two weeks before an election. The salesman is out pitching promises, fear, riches — anything to make the sale, never mind if it’s true, and to get Republicans out to vote.

The caravan of migrants heading north toward the border includes terrorists organized by Democrats handing out money, Trump falsely claims, despite denials by national security officials. Californians, he insists, are rioting over local pro-immigration policies. And he describes Democrats as a “mob” intent on stripping away Americans’ healthcare coverage, tax cuts, 401(k)s, guns and their newfound national greatness.

Trump not only presents himself and his party as the safeguard against the Democratic dystopia he conjures, he also promises to lower drug prices, end opioid addiction and hand out additional tax cuts.

Aides say Trump is trying to shake satisfied Republican voters out of any complacency — as the president himself, aware of the historical pattern of midterm losses for a president’s party, put into his own unique parlance Monday night.

“I don’t know why. I guess you get a little sedate,” Trump told his Texas fans. “I guess you get a little something — who knows? You lose something.”

Marc Short, Trump’s former legislative director, suggested the president isn’t doing anything different, but rather the media are covering him through the prism of an election campaign. As for Trump “throwing everything at the wall,” Short said, “The president wants it that way. He wants us to be doing multiple things at one time.”

The president is also leaning into the nationalism that propelled his 2016 campaign, declaring for the first time in Texas that he’s proud of a controversial label that’s often associated with white supremacists: “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist.”

Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign strategist and White House advisor, approvingly called the president’s embrace of that label “a seminal moment in American politics.”

Bannon lauded Trump for his preelection campaign arguments: “He closes better than anybody. The reason we beat them in 2016 was that he closed strong. He understands in sports and politics, it’s about momentum and he’s clearly got the momentum.”

Trump associates note the sharp difference between 2016, when many Republican candidates wanted nothing to do with him, and this year, when many depend on him given his hold on party voters. That will give Trump, despite his occasional protests, even more ownership of the election results, for better or worse.

The president and his allies also see the threat in losing majority control of the House or Senate, allowing newly empowered Democrats to open investigations. The allies tend to dismiss the false statements he makes, or argue that his supporters see in them the truths Trump intends.

“The caravan is a great example of that,” Short said. “There’s a lot of questions about the accuracy of who’s embedded in the caravan. What most Americans are seeing in the caravan is the question of who is doing more to secure the border now.”

Matt Schlapp, a Trump loyalist who is chairman of the American Conservative Union and whose wife is a top White House communications aide, said, “I think he is a marketer and I think he is testing ideas all the time. He’s testing phrases and he’s testing policies all the time.”

A former aide, who would not be identified to avoid alienating the president, said Trump just repeats threads of information he sees in conservative media, ignoring advisors who tell him they’re not true. Even in public, Trump laughs off his battles with independent fact checkers.

Pressed by reporters to explain his claim about riots in California, Trump on Monday insisted without specifics that there have been riots “in some cases.” On Tuesday, during a long exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, he again batted away a request for proof that the migrant caravan includes “Middle Easterners,” saying, “There’s no proof of anything.”

In Bannon’s view, fact checkers parsing the president’s words miss the point: “This is a base election. He’s not trying to make arguments to convince anybody about his policies. These are motivational speeches to get his base a sense of urgency.”

Trump’s indifference to facts, however, concerns many. “Most of what Mr. Trump says these days is literally made up,” Peter Wehner, a veteran of both Bush administrations, wrote in a tweet following Trump’s Houston rally. “He’s trying to construct a world of make believe and fairy tales, of myth and fiction, of illusion and hallucination. It’s a world increasingly detached from reality. The rest of us must refuse to live within the lie.”

While current and former Trump aides, like Bannon, egg the president on, other advisors contribute to his political narratives in more subtle ways, and with just enough truth to escape the fact checkers’ censure.

On Tuesday, Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, presented a report critical of socialism, using the typically academic White House office to amplify one of Trump’s favorite campaign talking points — that, under Democrats, the U.S. would turn to socialism and go the way of Venezuela.

Hours later, the White House held another conference call for reporters to emphasize statistics related to apprehensions of people crossing the border. One of the senior administration officials on the call, who would not allow their names to be used despite reporters’ objections, accused Democrats of wanting to abandon American sovereignty.

The officials dodged repeated questions asking for evidence of Trump’s assertion that terrorists are embedded in the migrant caravans. “The president has made his comments on it,” one said. “We’re not going to speak for him.”

Trump, one former campaign advisor said, is intent on motivating all Republican factions by his rhetoric: establishment conservatives, moderates and the more populist “Trump wing” of the party.

“Right now, they’re unified in their passion to turn out on election day, but for different reasons that Trump has given them. For some, it’s jobs and tax cuts and the judges. For others, it’s more ‘America first’ and a lot of the immigration rhetoric,” the advisor said.

Even as critics denounce his falsehoods, Trump is unflappable. As he left the White House for Texas, to campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican rival during the 2016 campaign, reporters asked whether he regretted his false claim during their presidential primary contest that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

“I don’t regret anything honestly,” Trump said. “It all worked out very nicely.”

eli.stokols@latimes.com

noah.bierman

@latimes.com

Protection of The Freedom of The Press is Everyone's Responsibility

Freedom of expression and a free press are only as strong as the actions of those whose freedoms are being threatened. The current administrations' attitude toward the free press is deplorable and a real threat to the transparency of the actions by those we elect to public office. The idea that the press is the "enemy of the people" is the first step in silencing the critics of compromised government officials in the highest offices of the land. We must speak out against the atrocious actions of the Administration toward those who keep us informed.

OK, NOW IT'S YOUR TURN TO DEFEND PRESS FREEDOM

By Alex Kotlowitz (LA Times Opinion 8-17-18)

President Trump’s constant attacks against the news media have made it dangerous to practice journalism, and not just for the White House press corps.

The opinion editor at the Tennessean in Nashville, David Plazas, recently received an email that read, in part: “Most of us are armed and sworn to protect the President and The Constitution against ALL enemies foreign and DOMESTIC and we will do so.”

At the Chicago Tribune, columnist Rex Huppke has received two direct threats in recent months, including a letter sent to his home that read: “You’re going to look awfully stupid trying to keyboard with two broken arms.” For the first time in his 18-year journalism career, Huppke was concerned enough to call the police.

Journalists are fighting back, in large part by keeping their heads down and reporting doggedly and intrepidly. Some are responding to Trump’s rhetorical assault more directly. At a White House meeting a few weeks ago, the publisher of the New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, implored the president to stop calling the press “the enemy of the people.” And on Thursday, more than 300 newspapers ran editorials denouncing the administration’s war on the press.

Journalists are doing a remarkable job defending their profession. Where is everyone else?

All this has me thinking about Elijah Lovejoy , but not for the obvious reason. Lovejoy was a 19th century newspaper publisher and abolitionist who was killed by a mob while defending his printing press. The Newseum has described him as the “first American martyr for the press.” Former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, himself a former newspaperman, wrote a book about Lovejoy called “Freedom’s Champion.”

Lovejoy’s story feels deeply relevant today. In the 1830s, he put out a small newspaper in St. Louis called the Observer. He used the paper to report on and decry the institution of slavery, and at one point, a mob of citizens destroyed his printing press. A local judge condoned the attack, saying he could “see no reason why the Press should be a means of widespread mischief.” The judge also asked: “Are we to be the victims of those sanctimonious madmen?”

Lovejoy fled to the other side of the Mississippi River and settled in the town of Alton, Ill. Unlike Missouri, Illinois was a free state. But he met resistance there too. Again citizens destroyed his press, throwing parts of it in the river.

Townspeople in Alton drafted a resolution that, on the one hand, condemned the violence against the Observer, but, on the other, requested that Lovejoy discontinue his anti-slavery editorials, which they called “incendiary doctrines which alone have a tendency to disturb the quiet of our citizens and neighbors.”

In response, Lovejoy took to task not those who opposed his views, but rather those who questioned his right to speak his mind and to publish the truth. At a community gathering, he admonished his neighbors.

“I know that I have the right to freely speak and publish my sentiments,” Lovejoy said. “What I wish to know of you is whether you will protect me in the exercise of this right?”

Few came forward. Four days later, while trying to protect his new printing press from being set on fire, Lovejoy was shot and killed by a mob. In his final days, what so distressed Lovejoy was not his ideological opponents but rather the decent people of Alton who refused to take a stand.

Lovejoy recognized the need for citizens to speak out in defense of a free press. That need has become urgent once again.

There are countless contemporary examples of reporters watching out for ordinary Americans who don’t have access to wealth or power.

Coal miners could celebrate the Center for Public Integrity’s work exposing unsavory ties between doctors and coal companies and their efforts to deny healthcare for workers with black lung disease. Veterans could extol the Colorado Springs Gazette series about the military’s practice of dishonorably discharging injured soldiers. Female athletes could publicly applaud the Indianapolis Star’s reporting on Dr. Lawrence G. Nassar’s serial sexual abuse at Michigan State University and beyond.

The list of examples is endless, because the core mission of a free press is holding people in power accountable and keeping an eye out for the rest of us.

After Lovejoy gave his speech at the town meeting, a young man, Dr. Benjamin K. Hart, wanted to say something that might turn the tide and rally support for Lovejoy. But he didn’t.

“I hesitated,” Hart said in an interview many years later. “And hesitated a moment too long. I have never forgiven myself for my hesitation.”

Journalism is not an easy institution to rally around. But if there were ever a time for citizens to defend the press, this is it.

Earlier this month, at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Trump called reporters “horrible, horrendous people,” and his supporters chanted “CNN sucks.” That same week, the Chicago Tribune held a training session to teach its reporters what they should do in the event of an active shooter. What’s more to be said?

Alex Kotlowitz teaches at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He is the author of four books, including the forthcoming “An American Summer.”

More Assault on an Independent Judiciary

Everyone really needs to understand the contents and implications of the below article* regarding the latest undermining of the judicial system within the federal government. Trump, by executive order, has eliminated the requirement for competency and merit in consideration for selection of Federal Administrative Law Judges. The executive order relieves the requirements for competency and merit utilized in the current appointment methods. This should be a major concern to everyone of the United States as it is another step in politicizing a fair and unbiased judiciary (before the executive order). Please absorb the impact of this action on the foundations of a democratic system of checks and balances. Why would a sitting President continue to make rules that infect the very foundation of an impartial judiciary?

*LA Times Editorial 7-20-2018

"Trump politicizes justice

In what looks like a political power play, President Trump has decided that administrative law judges — officials within federal agencies who resolve complaints about regulations, compliance or benefits — will no longer be chosen on the basis of merit. Unless the administration reconsiders this unnecessary and potentially harmful action, Congress should consider mandating a return to the old system.

There are nearly 1,900 administrative law judges in the federal government, the vast majority at the Social Security Administration ruling on disability and other claims. In the past, the so-called ALJs were chosen from a list compiled by a civil service agency that evaluates applicants on such neutral criteria as their performance on a competitive examination.

That will change under an executive order issued by Trump this month. ALJs hired in the future will no longer have “competitive service” status. That means agency officials can appoint whom they like, based on a subjective assessment of the applicant’s “temperament, legal acumen, impartiality and judgment.”

Administrative-law experts fear this could lead to a politicization of the adjudication process or even a return to old-fashioned patronage, elevating loyalty over competence. The new policy also introduces the possibility of ideological litmus tests by this and future presidents. While Trump might choose ALJs who would be expected to take a restrictive view of eligibility for disability benefits, for example, a Democratic president might seek the opposite quality.

The administration hasn’t offered a persuasive justification for the change. In his executive order, Trump cited a decision by the Supreme Court last month holding that ALJs in the Securities and Exchange Commission had been improperly appointed because they were chosen by the agency’s staff rather than by the commission itself, as the Constitution requires for “officers of the United States.”

But the court didn’t say that it was unconstitutional for ALJs to be appointed through a competitive examination process, so long as the actual appointment was made by the head of the agency.

Rather than a prudent response to the court’s decision, the president’s order looks like an opportunistic attempt to disguise a politicizing policy change as compliance with a court decree. If he persists in this course, Congress should move to restore the previous system with its emphasis on merit and professionalism."

Real time look at the beginning of Hitler's reign of terror

If this doesn't shake you up, you better get your head out of the sand before you are buried in it!

Trump's Sense of Omnipotance

For all of you who elected Trump to the presidency because things “needed to be shaken up”, how does this suit your need for chaos. I am profoundly “shaken up” by the fact that we have a sitting President who pronounces himself the law and his definition of the law is immutable. It also “shakes things up” to consider what acts Trump envisions being prosecuted for that would plant the seed of such an egregious act as forgiving himself in the name of the American people.

Educate yourself and consider bringing the people’s voice back to our government.

The below op-ed piece appeared in the Los Angeles Times on June 5, 2018

TRUMP’S UNPARDONABLE HUBRIS

He thinks he’s like a king or an emperor: He can’t violate the law because, after all, he is the law.

Donald Trump once said during the 2016 presidential campaign that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and still not lose any voters. And who knows? He may have been right.

Now that he’s president, could he also be protected from prosecution for pulling the trigger? Trump seems to believe so. That’s the essence of his assertion Monday morning that he has the absolute right to pardon himself.

Of course the context of his tweet was not a New York shooting but the ongoing special investigation into alleged Russian interference in the election. But the claim would seem to be no more or less valid for one presidential action than any other.

If federal prosecutions are merely extensions of the president’s executive power, and if he could pardon himself as readily as he could pardon Joe Arpaio or Dinesh D'Souza , then it’s hard to see how he could be held to answer for breaking any federal law. Prosecute me, Trump seems to be saying, and I will just pardon myself and we’ll move on. So why bother prosecuting me in the first place?

In this view the president is like kings and emperors of ages past. By definition, he cannot violate the law. It’s not that he is above the law. As president, the argument goes, he is the law.

That notion is foreign and unpardonable — a structurally monarchical presidency constrained by nothing but the president himself. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ later statement that “no one is above the law” offers little comfort, given that the president apparently believes that he is.

Trump is correct when he says that there are some legal scholars who back his assertion that the president can pardon himself. It is a claim not yet vetted in the courts because there has never before been a president willing to push the question very far. Richard Nixon fired his prosecutor but ultimately resigned because he knew he faced impeachment, not because of impending criminal prosecution. President Gerald Ford did pardon Nixon and shielded him from criminal accountability for his actions, but by then Nixon was out of the White House, no longer a danger to the nation or a threat to the rule of law or the checks and balances of government.

So perhaps impeachment, replete with the trappings of legal procedure but at heart a political action, is the proper check on the otherwise unfettered power of a president over how, or even whether, the law is enforced? But then there is no check at all on any president who is sufficiently popular that he can, say, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without fear from Congress, because it’s not in the political interests of the GOP majority to stand up to him. That would make us a nation of men (and women) and not of laws. And that’s not what we are.

After Florida Mass Shooting, Trump Suggests He will Act On Gun Control Unlike Other Presidents

Mr. President,
The terrible tragedy at Douglas Stoneman High School in Florida happened two weeks before your discussion (click on the below link) at the White House regarding what you will do regarding gun control and protecting our schools that other Presidents, both Democrat and Republicans failed to do.
It took two weeks for you to assemble stakeholders who you think can affect the change you have purported to make an immediate priority.
This blog entry will keep a record of how long it takes you to address this vital issue.


CALENDAR (June 28, 2018)

DAYS SINCE STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL ATTACK........................................114

DAYS SINCE YOU PROMISED TO INITIATE REASONABLE GUN LAWS...........................100


Trump Stating that he will act on Gun Control Where Other Presidents Have Not

Erasing rules that aid public A push to deregulate at any cost

“Last Friday night (February 23, 2018), when the White House figured no one was looking, it quietly released a congressionally mandated report from the Office of Management and Budget spelling out both the costs of government regulations on the private sector and the estimated monetary benefits to the public.”

“In former President Obama’s final year in office — the period covered by the report — 16 “major rules” were fully quantifiable, meaning their total costs and benefits were capable of being measured.

What Trump’s budget office found was that these rules cost up to $4.9 billion to impose on businesses and resulted in up to $27.3 billion in benefits to the American people.

That means taxpayers got nearly six times as much in benefits as was spent regulating businesses.

And that, by any yardstick, is a hell of a good investment.”

Below is the complete article from the LA Times by David Lazarus regarding an analysis and report required of the Administration regarding the cost of some current regulations that show a different picture than the Administration has painted of too much regulation needing to be eliminated. The excerpted section below is the crux of the facts derived from the review.

Please read the document and decide for yourself just how far our Administration is willing to accommodate Wall Street, Big Business and financial interests of the wealthy at the expense of our health and welfare.

PRESIDENT TRUMP at an event on federal regulations in December vowed to “cut the red tape.” (Evan Vucci Associated Press)  (Photo not included)

DAVID LAZARUS, Los Angeles Times

President Trump recently patted himself on the back for the “most far-reaching regulatory reform” in U.S. history, which wasn’t true but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Trump has made eliminating government regulations one of his top priorities.

“We have decades of excess regulation to remove,” he said, calling on his Cabinet members “to find and remove every single outdated, unlawful and excessive regulation currently on the books.”

Trump and his Cabinet may want to rethink that proposition.

Last Friday night, when the White House figured no one was looking, it quietly released a congressionally mandated report from the Office of Management and Budget spelling out both the costs of government regulations on the private sector and the estimated monetary benefits to the public.

For example, the cost of imposing clean-air and clean-water rules on factories versus the benefit to ordinary people of not getting cancer and running up huge hospital bills.

In former President Obama’s final year in office — the period covered by the report — 16 “major rules” were fully quantifiable, meaning their total costs and benefits were capable of being measured.

What Trump’s budget office found was that these rules cost up to $4.9 billion to impose on businesses and resulted in up to $27.3 billion in benefits to the American people.

That means taxpayers got nearly six times as much in benefits as was spent regulating businesses.

And that, by any yardstick, is a hell of a good investment.

Amit Narang, a regulatory policy advocate with Public Citizen, told me the report was released by the White House with no fanfare around 7 p.m. Friday. He noted that the Trump administration missed its Dec. 31 deadline for the report by two months.

“It seems like they don’t want people to know that the benefits of government regulations in Obama’s last year far exceeded the costs,” Narang said.

I reached out to the White House for comment. No one got back to me.

Narang crunched the numbers for the last decade and estimated that the net benefit to Americans from regulations was as much as $833 billion, or 12 times what these rules cost industry to impose.

“Much of these benefits are in the form of health and safety,” he said. “So one way to look at this is that if you don’t control emissions from factories, you’re looking at all sorts of added costs to society, such as cancer, children’s asthma and serious respiratory illnesses.”

The Trump administration’s report completely undercuts its argument that regulations are bad for the country because they stifle job growth and innovation. In fact, the U.S. economy logged steady if unspectacular growth throughout the Obama years.

This week, we learned that despite Trump’s deregulatory push, economic growth slowed more than initially thought over the final three months of 2017, down to 2.5% from 3.2% during the previous quarter.

Perhaps that can be traced to Trump’s arbitrary and reckless policy that for every new government regulation, two existing ones have to be thrown out. He’s fond of saying this both limits new rule-making and cleans house of older rules that don’t jibe with his policy agenda.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Don’t need that. Environmental Protection Agency? It can get by with 23% less funding. School safety? We can cut spending there by $425 million.

What Trump isn’t saying — but which his own numbers clearly spell out: Take away rules and regulations, and all you end up doing is shortchanging the American people.

Net neutrality

Speaking of regulations, here’s the latest on net neutrality — and AT&T’s acrobatic efforts to simultaneously support and oppose the Trump administration’s doing away with oversight of high-speed internet service.

A federal appeals court ruled this week that the Federal Trade Commission could continue pursuing a lawsuit against AT&T over internet speeds.

This is a big deal because, if AT&T had its way, no one in Washington would be telling it what to do.

The unanimous decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco came as the Federal Communications Commission proceeds with plans to chuck net neutrality out the window.

Those are the rules put in place under the Obama administration that prohibit internet service companies such as AT&T from interfering with the content flowing over their networks or charging extra for more reliable access.

Unless Congress or the courts act, net neutrality will officially end April 23.

One of the key arguments made by the FCC for abandoning net neutrality is that the Federal Trade Commission can do a good enough job protecting consumers from unsavory telecom industry practices.

The FTC sued AT&T in 2014, charging the company with deliberately slowing the internet speeds of millions of customers who paid for unlimited data plans — a practice known as “throttling.”

AT&T countered that the FTC had no business telling it what to do because only the Federal Communications Commission has jurisdiction over internet service providers.

Yes, that would be the same FCC that’s trying to get out of the internet regulation business, which AT&T and other telecom companies support.

In effect, AT&T was trying to create a loophole whereby no federal agency would be looking over its shoulder.

The 9th Circuit decided that “common sense” suggests the line between phone and internet companies has become blurry. “A phone company is no longer just a phone company,” the judges ruled. So the FTC’s lawsuit can move forward.

Ajit Pai, President Trump’s appointee as chairman of the FCC and a former Verizon lawyer, said the ruling means the Federal Trade Commission “will once again be able to police internet service providers.”

Well, sort of. The FTC enforces rules on fraud and deception — in this case, accusations that AT&T reduced customers’ data speeds after selling them “unlimited” data plans.

The agency is not empowered to address other issues raised by net neutrality, such as an internet service provider’s treatment of content. That’s why Democrats in the U.S. Senate this week introduced a bill to repeal the FCC’s net neutrality repeal.

“President Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai might want to end the internet as we know it, but we won’t agonize, we will organize,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in introducing the legislation.

“The internet is for all — the students, teachers, innovators, hardworking families, small businesses and activists — not just Verizon, Charter, AT&T and Comcast and corporate interests,” he said.

That, undoubtedly, will come as a surprise to Verizon, Charter, AT&T and Comcast and corporate interests.

David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz . Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com .

Federal Border Protection and Immigration Services 'Pulled Out' of California By Trump?

A President with no idea how gang prevention works or about advances made by our local authorities, Trump now suggests it is his sole decision to remove federal services from California's borders and deny the State ICE protection.

Is it now in the California's best interest for Governor Brown to place contingency plans for mobilizing the Calif. National Guard to provide border protection if our "fearless leader" decides he can cut off this protection?

Note to the rest of the USA outside of California. He believes he could do the same to you if he believes he can do it to California

Just how far can our legislators allow this man with no leadership skills to continue to even voice such veiled threats without calling him out. The very idea that Trump expresses some perceived autonomous ability to deny border protections for any state is absurd and should be treated as such by every voting citizen in this country. Pay Attention everyone and stay informed. the current administration is a threat to our way of life!

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Trump rebukes state on anti-gang policing Police rebut Trump remark

Escalating feud with California, president says authorities aren’t doing enough against MS-13, other groups.

By Kate Mather, Cindy Chang and Christi Parsons

President Trump on Thursday accused California law enforcement of being soft on street gangs and suggested he might pull immigration agents out of the state, prompting a strong rebuke from local officials who said the president doesn’t understand their war on gangs.

Trump’s remarks are an escalation of a yearlong battle between his administration and California on a variety of topics including illegal immigration and law enforcement. Trump has criticized California for being a “sanctuary” for those here illegally, and federal officials have vowed immigration crackdowns in the state.

On Thursday, Trump stepped up the war, predicting gangs would wreak havoc if federal authorities withdrew from Los Angeles and other parts of the state.

“I mean, frankly, if I wanted to pull our people from California, you would have a crime mess like you’ve never seen in California,” Trump said. “You'd be inundated. You would see crime like no one’s ever seen crime in this country. And yet we get no help from the state of California. They’re doing a lousy management job, they have the highest taxes in the nation, and they don’t know what’s happening out there.”

Los Angeles officials expressed puzzlement and concern over Trump’s comments, saying local police have made significant strides against gang violence in recent years.

“Nobody takes gang enforcement more seriously than I do or the Los Angeles Police Department does,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said in an interview Thursday. “I believe that we’re better at it than anybody in the nation.”

Los Angeles was the birthplace of infamous gangs like the Crips and the Bloods, inspiring countless movie renditions. Today, it is far safer than it was during the height of the gang wars.

Street gangs are still active, with more than 60% of the city’s homicides classified as gang-related last year.

But gang members are no longer a fixture on street corners and in city parks — due in part to the efforts of the LAPD and other local agencies, which sometimes partner with federal officials but handle much of day-to-day gang enforcement on their own.

LAPD officers chat up gang members to obtain inside information. Older men who have left the gang lifestyle work with police detectives to prevent disputes from escalating into killings.

Homicides in Los Angeles have declined nearly fourfold in the last few decades, with 282 people killed last year, compared with 1,094 in 1992.

The tactics of the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies to crack down on gangs — notably gang injunctions that restrict where and when gang members can congregate — have prompted criticism from some community groups and civil libertarians.

“I think they do too much,” said Alex Alonso, a gang expert and adjunct professor at Cal State Long Beach. “They cast a large net over the quote-unquote gang problem and criminalize a lot of youth who shouldn’t get involved in the criminal justice system.”

Last year, L.A. County prosecutors announced that thousands of Angelenos whose movements, clothing and even relationships were tightly restricted had been freed from the gang injunctions. The move came after an audit found that many on those lists were no longer active gang members and no longer posed a threat to the community. Over the last two decades, Los Angeles had enforced injunctions against 79 separate gang sets, encompassing roughly 8,900 people.

In his remarks Thursday, Trump singled out the Mara Salvatrucha gang, also called MS-13, as well as the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in combating gang violence.

Gang members “come in, they’re smart, they actually have franchises going to Los Angeles. No help from the state of California,” Trump said.

In the past, Trump has seized on crimes allegedly committed by MS-13 members as evidence that deportation efforts should be stepped up.

ICE officers focus on deporting immigrants who are in the country illegally and do not usually work on criminal matters.

After federal officials arrested over 200 MS-13 members around the country last November, Trump called for police and immigration officials to be “rough” with suspected gang members to get rid of “animals” he described as terrorizing communities.

The MS-13 gang, which has ties to El Salvador, was formed in Los Angeles decades ago.

Last May, a task force led by LAPD and FBI officials arrested 21 MS-13 members for crimes including murder and racketeering. The lead defendant, Jose “Porky” Balmore Romero, oversaw the gang’s drug trafficking activities, collecting “taxes” through extortion and splitting the proceeds with the Mexican Mafia, the federal indictment alleged.

But in Los Angeles, MS-13 is not the force it once was. It does not crack the top five of the city’s most active gangs, Beck said.

Connecting MS-13 to immigration enforcement is “a false narrative,” he said.

At one point, authorities tried to tamp down MS-13 by deporting members to El Salvador. But the deportees joined forces with anti-government rebels and sneaked back into the U.S., creating “a much stronger, more deadly gang,” Beck said this month. Sending them to prison for the rest of their lives in the U.S. is a more effective strategy, he said.

There are 700 to 800 MS-13 members in L.A., compared with more than 1,000 in 2011, according to Beck.

The chief stressed that he still considers gang violence a serious problem and that there is still important work to do.

“That doesn’t mean that we can’t get better.… It just means that we have been experiencing this on the front line for literally 100 years in the city of Los Angeles,” he said. “And because of that, we have developed some strategies that I think are very effective, and one of those strategies is not mass civil deportation.”

Alex Sanchez is a former MS-13 member who left the gang nearly two decades ago. He credits the drop in violence in Los Angeles to enforcement by local police as well as efforts to steer youth away from gangs.

Sanchez, 45, who is an anti-gang activist and executive director of Homies Unidos, said most young gang members are U.S. born.

Sal LaBarbera, a longtime LAPD detective who retired in 2015, said he often worked with federal officials, citing a joint operation with the FBI that helped solve 32 homicides.

But if federal agencies were to leave California, the LAPD could pick up the slack — “I don’t think it would be the end of the world,” he said.

Local agencies like the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department “have their finger on the button” of gang activity, he said, pointing to a decrease in crime in the MacArthur Park area over the past 15 years.

“Look at it, now we can walk our dogs,” he said.

kate.mather@latimes.com

cindy.chang@latimes.com

christi.parsons@latimes.com

Mather and Chang reported from Los Angeles, Parsons from Washington. Times staff writers Nicole Santa Cruz and Joel Rubin contributed to this report from Los Angeles. Staff writer Cindy Carcamo contributed from Santa Ana.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Neutered by Trump

The administration has absolutely no shame in gutting any and all programs that offer a modicum of protection for the working electorate. Trumps ridiculous  claim that credit protections from predatory lenders "that unduly burden the financial industry" is more proof that the wealthy elite and corporate America have a free hand in pillaging the poor and working class at will. How much more will our elected officials have us bleed before stepping up to their job. NOVEMBER IS COMING, arm yourself with knowledge and vote for your betterment and fair treatment.

A do-nothing tactic at CFPB CFBP’s bare-minimum tack

WHITE HOUSE budget director Mick Mulvaney testifies before the Senate Budget Committee last week. He plans to make the CFPB more business-friendly. (Susan Walsh Associated Press)

DAVID LAZARUS LA Times

Let’s say there was a federal agency charged solely with protecting consumers from financial abuse. And let’s say that agency was so good at its job, it succeeded in returning $12 billion to consumers who had been ripped off by greedy banks and lenders.

How would you reward that agency?

If you’re President Trump, the answer is to slash its funding by 23% and get rid of rules “that unduly burden the financial industry.”

The $4.4-trillion White House budget proposal unveiled last week drew heat for its generous allotments to the military at the expense of social programs, as well as its ridiculous pretense that $1.5 trillion in much-needed infrastructure spending would be provided mainly by state and local governments.

I also pointed out that the budget plan included only halfhearted measures to fulfill Trump’s stated goal of reducing sky-high prescription drug prices.

Nearly overshadowed by these developments was the budget’s defenestration of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Trump has made a top policy goal.

It’s been clear since our businessman-in-chief took office that he had no love for a federal consumer watchdog — and that his administration was more than happy to dance to the tune of financial-services industry lobbyists who wanted it dead.

After White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney became the bureau’s interim director in November, he systematically reined in the CFPB’s enforcement actions and openly declared his intention of creating a more business-friendly agency.

The administration’s middle finger to consumers was on full display last week when Mulvaney, in presenting the CFPB’s latest five-year strategic plan, said that “we have committed to fulfill the bureau’s statutory responsibilities, but go no further.”

That’s the regulatory equivalent of a supermarket saying, “Yeah, we’ll ring you up but bag your own damn groceries.”

And if Trump has his way, that supermarket will close down as soon as he can get away with it.

“It’s open season on consumers,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League. “The most predatory actors — payday lenders, student loan companies, the debt collection industry — can operate with virtual impunity from federal regulators at the bureau.”

The agency’s new mantra of “don’t worry, be happy” was spelled out last month when Mulvaney said the CFPB would “reconsider” its oversight of payday and car title loans. For good measure, he dropped a lawsuit against a group of payday lenders that allegedly duped customers by failing to reveal annual interest rates of nearly 1,000%.

Mulvaney also has issued a series of invitations for businesses to submit feedback on the bureau’s operations and suggest “constructive” changes.

Last week, banks and other companies falling under the CFPB’s oversight were asked to assess “the overall efficiency and effectiveness of its supervision program and whether any changes to the program would be appropriate.”

I compared Mulvaney’s strategic plan for 2018 through 2022 to the last such document , issued under the Obama administration and covering 2013 through 2017.

These could be two completely different government agencies.

Under Obama, the bureau’s top goal was to “prevent financial harm to consumers while promoting good practices that benefit them.”

Under Trump, the No. 1 goal is to “ensure that all consumers have access to markets for consumer financial products and services.”

The CFPB’s secondary goal under Obama was to “empower consumers to live better financial lives.” Under Trump, it’s to “implement and enforce the law consistently to ensure that markets for consumer financial products and services are fair, transparent and competitive.”

“What happened to protecting consumers from financial harm?” asked Joe Ridout, a spokesman for the advocacy group Consumer Action. “The implicit message of the new plan is that the CFPB will wave through whatever predatory practices companies can come up with.”

He described Mulvaney as “an arsonist burning down every consumer protection he can find.”

In his introduction to the new strategic plan, Mulvaney said any federal agency that strives to go above and beyond the call of duty “ignores the will of the American people.”

“Pushing the envelope,” he said, “risks trampling upon the liberties of our citizens.… I have resolved that this will not happen at the bureau.”

To accomplish this regime of low expectations, he’s capping the CFPB’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year at $485 million, or about as much as the agency spent in 2015. Its annual budget is currently more than $630 million.

Mulvaney is already off to a great start in terms of emptying the bureau’s coffers by requesting no new funds for the current quarter. Instead, he’ll deplete a “reserve fund” intended to help pay for investigative work, which the bureau won’t be doing much of anymore.

By 2020, the Trump administration wants the CFPB to no longer be funded by the Federal Reserve. It wants funding to be controlled by Congress, which would mean more influence by lobbyists.

In its budget proposal, the White House says its objectives for the bureau are to “impose financial discipline, reduce wasteful spending and ensure appropriate congressional oversight.”

“These changes,” it says, “would allow CFPB to focus its efforts on enforcing enacted consumer protection laws and eliminate the functions that allowed the agency to become an unaccountable bureaucracy with unchecked regulatory authority.”

As I said, that “unchecked regulatory authority” resulted in $12 billion being returned to consumers. It forced mortgage lenders and credit card companies to be more transparent.

Oh, and it slapped Wells Fargo with a $100-million fine after the bank opened millions of accounts without customers’ knowledge.

Christine Hines, legislative director for the National Assn. of Consumer Advocates, said Trump’s budget and Mulvaney’s strategic plan make clear their aim “is to hamstring the CFPB and make it impossible for it to fulfill its mission to protect consumers from financial rip-offs.”

“It is a solid wink to payday lenders, credit bureaus and big banks that they are free to cheat and scam regular people with impunity,” she said.

Trump talks a lot about “winning.”

Now you know whom he’s thinking of.

David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz . Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com

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