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U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog
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October 08, 2007
New consumer sheriff in town-- Ohio AG Marc Dann
A story by Aaron Lucchetti -- A New Mortgage 'Cop' -- in today's Wall Street Journal (pd. subs. req'd) profiles Marc Dann, Ohio's attorney general elected in 2006 on a campaign against predatory mortgage lending. Mr. Dann says he wants to "punish" not only out-and-out criminal fraudsters, but also deep-pocketed parties that benefited from the problem and helped enable it. I met the AG briefly last week at an event and wished him well. We need 51 consumer cops, especially when the "1" cop here in Washington -- that is, whichever agency has authority over an industry -- tends to be captive to its regulated firms and moves slowly, if at all, to protect consumers. But as I noted here last week and also here last year, the battle by the business lobby to de-fang state attorneys general continues.
More and more, we not only face fights over whether state consumer laws should be preempted when Congress passes a federal law, no matter how weak, but also over whether state attorneys general should maintain their long-standing right to be co-enforcers of federal consumer and environmental laws.
At a markup (voting session) of the House Financial Services Committee last year, one member claimed that "uneven" enforcement by a "rogue" state attorney general could even jeopardize a system of business-friendly uniform national laws. Not-so-thoughtful but politically connected and cash-rich "think tanks" such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute even have campaign pages ( here's one and here's one more) attacking state attorneys general. It even held a pseudo-academic conference in 2005.
The business lobby has an organized strategy: It isn't merely interested in preempting state legislatures from passing new laws. That's so last week. It also wants to take away our right to protect ourselves from hazards or crimes under state common laws. Using its crony allies in the Bush administration, it has also convinced FDA, NHTSA and CPSC to attempt to assert regulatory preemption protecting corporate wrongdoers from stronger state laws. And, as above, it is also organizing to eliminate the right of state attorneys general from protecting us, too.
These are bad trends worth watching, and worth organizing to stop. Here's more information.
Posted by Ed Mierzwinski at October 8, 2007 07:21 AM
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