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- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Obama’s Secret Collaboration with ACORN BossesPosted By Matthew Vadum On October 17, 2013 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 1 Comment Former officers of the disgraced radical group ACORN are still advising the Obama administration and guiding its catastrophic far-left policies almost three years after the group filed bankruptcy.Former ACORN Housing public affairs director Bruce Dorpalen, who now runs the National Housing Resource Center (NHRC), has been meeting with and advising senior Obama administration officials on housing policy, according to good-government group Judicial Watch. The watchdog discovered the secret collaborations after filing a...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is looking to create a "Google Earth" of every financial transaction of every American, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) warned today in a Senate speech opposing confirmation of Richard Cordray as CFPB director. "This bill (creating the CFPB) was supposed to be about regulating Wall Street. Instead, it's creating a Google Earth on every financial transaction.

Sen. John McCain spent the weekend negotiating with Majority Leader Harry Reid on a deal to avert Reid's threatened use of the "nuclear option" to change Senate rules to eliminate filibusters on Presidential nominations. Through his efforts, McCain was able to secure a complete GOP capitulation on 7 pending nominations. Reid secured all the benefits of exercising the "nuclear option" without the political cost of actually using it. Under the McCain deal, the GOP will provide enough votes to secure the 60 votes needed for cloture and proceed to final consideration of the 7 nominees. In exchange, Reid agreed to...

Bowing to an ultimatum, Senate Republicans agreed Tuesday to drop objections to key Obama administration nominees, delivering a victory to Senate Democrats who said they will shelve — for now — their own plans to change the rules and curtail filibusters. The last-minute deal, announced just before the Senate was slated to hold a critical test vote, still leaves Democrats able to employ the so-called “nuclear option” and change the filibuster rules later this year if they think Republicans are obstructing appointments unfairly. Republicans said they got President Obama to withdraw two controversial nominees to the National Labor Relations Board,...

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ending a nearly two-year standoff in Congress and putting the new agency on sounder legal footing. Democrats overcame long-held Republican objections to approve Richard Cordray's nomination to head the bureau, which was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. Bureau advocates and consumer law experts said Senate confirmation clears up a number of questions, including Cordray's legal status as the temporary bureau director and the agency's authority to oversee certain financial sectors such as debt collection.

According to RealtyTrac, Akron Ohio is the leader in housing units per foreclosure filings. And Columbus Ohio is 6th on the list. The FC in Ohio? Rounding out the top 20 foreclosure metro areas are Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Canton. You know, pretty much the entire state. Huh. I would have thought that Richard Cordray, the current Robo-cop at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and former attorney general of Ohio, would have cleaned up the foreclosure mess before heading up the CFPB. Here is a chart of underwater mortgages in Ohio. Ohio is at 32.48% underwater. The striking thing...

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is fighting to protect her “brainchild”, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). She also wants to support the nominated of Richard Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, better known as “Robocop” for his attacks on banks and servicers over robosigning. True, robosigning foreclosures is sloppy, but there were apparently no economic harm to borrowers (that is, 100% of borrowers defaulted on their loans and the banks/servicers were trying to claim the house to mitigate losses). Yet the Attorneys’ General settlement went ahead despite no economic harm to borrowers. The settlement provides as much as $25...

Senate Republicans are renewing their vow to block any nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to its structure. In a letter sent to President Obama on Friday, 43 Republican senators committed to refusing approval of any nominee to head the consumer watchdog until the bureau underwent significant reform. Lawmakers signing on to the letter included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. "The CFPB as created by the deeply flawed Dodd-Frank Act is one of the least accountable in Washington,"...

President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board. The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions. The ruling also throws into question Obama's recess...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), built by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and run by “Robo Cop” Richard Cordray (the former Attorney General of Ohio), has issued its new list of mortgage feature bans for the “qualified mortgage.” Kerri Ann Panchuk from Housing Wire has a nice summary in her article. 201301_cfpb_ability-to-repay-factsheet Here are the features of Qualified Mortgages and what is banned: • No excess upfront points and fees • No toxic loan features o No interest-only loans, o No loans where the principal amount increases, such as a negative-amortization loan; and o No loans where the term is...

The companies that determine Americans' credit scores are about to come under government oversight for the first time. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Monday that it will start supervising the 30 largest firms that make up 94 percent of the industry. That includes the three big credit reporting firms: Equifax Inc., Experian and TransUnion. In remarks prepared for a speech Monday, Richard Cordray, the government agency's director, said that scorekeeping by credit bureaus plays such a large role in Americans' financial lives, it requires scrutiny.

Complete title: Consumer Protection Financial Bureau Director Richard Cordray Doubted Constitutionality of His Own Appointment, Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch Show “There is a chance…that the appointment would be invalidated by a court.” Cordray Told Staff His Short Stint “should give to each one of us…a fierce urgency to accomplish the work we are doing together.” (Washington, DC) –Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that indicate the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, doubted the constitutionality of his own appointment. On January 4, 2012,...

(CNSNews.com) - Richard Cordray did not face a threatened boycott by Republican senators during his appearance Tuesday before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, but Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) told Cordray that President Obama had unconstitutionally appointed him as director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Johanns said he did not intend to “revisit” and “stir up” the controversy surrounding Cordray’s possibly unconstitutional recess appointment, “because I think that’s going to happen. I think there’s going to be litigation that will make that happen.” But Johanns politely but firmly told Cordray he did not accept the validity of...

Did President Barack Obama’s appointment of Richard Cordray to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without a Senate confirmation vote violate the Constitution? The answer is plainly yes.Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution says the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Officers of the United States … but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone (and) … The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess...

Wicker to boycott Cordray hearing to protest Obama 'recess' appointmentsBy Pete Kasperowicz - 01/26/12 03:45 PM ET Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) on Thursday afternoon said he would boycott a planned hearing next week in which Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray will testify, as a way of protesting Cordray's recess appointment to that post when the Senate was not in recess. "Let me be explicitly clear," Wicker said on the Senate floor. "Richard Cordray is not the duly constituted director of the CFPB. His purported recess appointment does not comply with the Constitution, and is in fact a...

I called my rep on C-Span this morning, Steve Southerland (FL-2) My question was, "Did President Obama violate the Constitution when he appointed Richard Cordray to head the CFPB without consent of the Senate?" He said Obama crossed the line, yet it was okay because the Senate was in recess. My line went dead. So no, I was not allowed to tell him the Senate was not in recess and therefore any regulations from the CFPB were null and void. I listen to Leftist moonbats get 2-3 minutes to beat up pubbies over social justice, the mean corporations, the one...

Some legal experts, including those who have sided with President Obama on other constitutional issues, think there is a good chance the courts could overturn his recent recess appointments. Legal experts said courts could invalidate Obama’s appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) because there is scant precedent on the issue.  “It’s untested ground. If I were a judge, I could write out an opinion either way. There’s no clear precedent,” said Charles Fried, a constitutional expert at Harvard Law School who served as solicitor general under former President Reagan. The Justice Department...

The National Right to Work Foundation filed a motion Friday that challenges the legality of President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is a joint action with the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). It is the first legal action that questions the president’s recent recess appointments, which he made earlier this month over the fierce objections of Republican lawmakers. The president recess-appointed Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, along with three...

Calling the president’s illegal non-recess appointments “an escalation in a pattern of contempt for the elected representatives of the American people,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, dismissed a Justice Department memo on Thursday that sought to lend retroactive constitutional weight to the president’s move. Grassley hinted at Senate “action to check and balance” the president’s power grab, though he declined to go into specifics. The DOJ Office of Legal Counsel’s memo, also debunked by Heritage’s Todd Gaziano, claims that pro forma Senate sessions do not preclude the president from unilaterally appointing federal officials. That legal...

Republicans outraged over the recess appointments of Richard Cordray and three NLRB commissioners argue that the pro forma Senate sessions every three days means that the Senate has not recessed at all. The Congressional Research Service notes that no President in the 20 years prior to Barack Obama’s actions in the past two weeks has attempted a recess appointment unless Congress has been out of session more than nine days. Today, to no one’s great shock, Obama’s own Department of Justice says that these arguments aren’t good enough to stop the President from the exercise of his constitutional power: President...