Everyday, we round up articles that are the most important to you and what could affect Tribal Lending and Indian Country.
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Reform, add oversight to consumer bureau
The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau created by the Dodd-Frank law that modified federal oversight of the financial industry needs some structural reforms. But the proposal released last week by acting Director Mick Mulvaney does not provide the independence needed by an agency subject to so much outside pressure.
In a message to Congress on April 2, Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina who also heads the White House Office of Management and Budget, said “the bureau is far too powerful, and with precious little oversight of its activities.”
For instance, the bureau does not have to go to Congress for funding like every other executive agency of the government. It gets automatic funding from the Federal Reserve system without congressional oversight. However, that system provides crucial protection from partisan politicians who accept contributions from some business groups that might not have consumer protection near the top of their to-do lists.
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FCC Releases Delayed Final Order Covering Tribal Broadband
I Michael Macagnone
The
Federal Communications Commission
increased the amount of funds that many operators on tribal lands can recover from the Universal Service Fund in an order released Thursday that several commissioners called a compromise.
The FCC policy change allows broadband and voice carriers that primarily serve tribal lands to recover a significantly larger percentage of their operating costs. It follows more than a year of disputes between the commissioners over the amount of operating costs that carriers can recover and which ones would be eligible for it.
Carriers serving tribal lands would be eligible for up to 2.5 standard deviations above a certain regression threshold for each carrier — which can result in an up to 85 percent reimbursement from USF — the FCC notice said. However, that comes with a caveat — carriers are only eligible for the new rate where they have no unsubsidized competitors.
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Men and women have very different relationships with their credit cards
I Maria LaMagna
There’s a gender payment gap when it comes to plastic.
Men and women use their credit cards for different purposes, according to a new study from researchers at American University, Hood College and McDaniel College in Maryland.
The researchers analyzed the
Survey of Consumer Finances
, which is conducted by the Federal Reserve, to determine how people feel about their debt. They looked at the responses of men and women, between the years 2004 and 2013, who had never been married.
“Everybody is pretty accepting of the idea that you can use credit to smooth your consumption,” said Mary Eschelbach Hansen, an author of the study who is a professor at American University.
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Ministers’ lobbying fueled growth of Florida payday loan industry
I Lawrence Mower
When state lawmakers voted on a payday loan bill this year, they heard from a group not normally associated with the financial industry: men of the cloth.
Pastors from churches around the state spoke in favor of payday loans, and they weren’t alone. A leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — the organization founded by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — supported it. Even the granddaughter of a celebrated Florida civil rights leader was an advocate.
The ministers managed the Tallahassee trek by flying on private jets chartered by Florida’s largest payday loan company, Amscot. They spread the payday gospel among black Democratic lawmakers, who were identified by Amscot’s CEO as critical to the bill’s success.
Amscot helped convince 23 of 26 black Democratic lawmakers to support the legislation. While that’s about the same success rate as Amscot had with the rest of the Legislature, black Democratic lawmakers represented constituents who studies showed could be most adversely affected by the bill.
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Congress' Fix To Tribal Sovereign Immunity Misses The Point
I Anthony Case
Recently, a
bill
was introduced in Congress to strip Native American tribes of tribal sovereign immunity on issues relating to patents. Under sovereign immunity, Native American tribes generally cannot be sued in federal court without their consent. The
U.S. Supreme Court
has ruled that Congress has the
power
to grant or revoke this immunity. It may well be a good idea to revoke this sovereign immunity in order to grant citizens a remedy when they claim they have been harmed by an action of an Native American tribe. However, this proposed law does not solve that problem. Instead, it only delays resolution of the confusion over a real problem on new attacks on pharmaceutical patents.
Today’s pharmaceuticals seem to be nothing short of “wonder drugs,” relieving suffering and offering cures that were not thought possible only a few years ago. These wonder drugs are, however, expensive. They are expensive for patients who need them, and they are expensive for pharmaceutical companies to develop. We need these wonder drugs to be both safe and effective. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies are extensively regulated and no new drug is allowed to come to market until it has been rigorously tested. Most new drugs never come to market because of problems discovered during this testing. This safety does not come without a price, however. Research, development, testing and safety protocols all add up to cost of between
2.6 and 5 billion dollars
to bring a new drug to market. No wonder, then, that the cost of new drugs for patients is so high.
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We're just Native puppets in some politician's game
I James Giago Davies
My friend Jeff Turning Heart is a man of principle and compassion, and he supports Billy Sutton for governor. I will vote for Billy come election day, not because my support is the same as Jeff’s, but because the Republican alternative is far worse. It’s all a matter of degrees. Noem is worse than Jackley and Jackley is worse than Sutton.
If the candidate prevailing in the GOP primary will defeat Sutton in the fall. I prefer that be Jackley, and I liked Jackley when I met him in Aberdeen, but I am still a social progressive against most of what he stands for, so I have to vote on principle for Sutton.
The problem here is all of these progressives the Lakota have been supporting all these years have stood against our core interests as much as any Republicans. Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, Stephanie Herseth, these folks were not your friends. They did not support us on the issues that mattered most, on issues about corps land, on the return of the Black Hills. They cynically weighed the political fallout with their favored Wasicu constituency, and found it too severe to risk over what some Indians might want or deserve.
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Native American Financial Services Association | nativefinance.org
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