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Blog Post | Democracy

Who Owns Big Oil? We Do! | Blair Bowie

The American Petroleum Institute has a new public image campaign: http://whoownsbigoil.org. The purpose of this website, presumably, is to convince us that if we raise taxes on hugely profitable corporations we will only be hurting ourselves. Why? Because we are all shareholders of those corporations and when they are taxed we suffer.

While I am skeptical of API’s conclusions, it’s right to say we own the oil companies. In fact, shareholders across the country are demanding accountability and disclosure from the corporations that they rightfully own and the effort could be the key to slowing the flow of corporate money in the 2012 election.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

CFPB Launches College Cost Tool; Its Investigations of Overdraft Fees and Auto Finance Escalate | Ed Mierzwinski

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has announced a "thought starter" beta test version of a tool to make it easier to calculate college debt burdens. "The goal is to give students and their families an easy-to-understand view of how their decisions today impact your debt burden after graduation."  Meanwhile, banks and an auto finance company have confirmed that the CFPB is investigating both the marketing of overdraft protection schemes and the practices of "buy here, pay here" auto dealers.

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Media Hit | Higher Ed

New York Times: Student Loan Interest Rates Loom as Political Battle

Rich Williams, the higher education advocate for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said he thought about 14 moderate Republican senators might support the effort to keep the interest rates down. “This should be a bipartisan issue,” he said. “It’s something everyone gets.”

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Blog Post | Food

FDA Sets Voluntary Limits of Antibiotic in Animal Feed, But What Does This Really Mean? | Nasima Hossain

The Food and Drug Administration announced last Wednesday that it had finalized a plan asking drug companies to voluntarily limit the use of certain antibiotics in animal feed.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

House launches latest "hypocritical" campaign to kill CFPB | Ed Mierzwinski

Today the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services will vote on a budget package that eliminates the budgetary independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) -- an effort to make it the only bank regulator subject to the political chicanery of the Appropriations process -- while simultaneously slashing its budget by 60%. Even the industry trade paper American Banker says: "Is GOP Push to Subject CFPB to Appropriations Hypocritical?"

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