Senate passes rollback of banking rules enacted after financial crisis

The Senate on Wednesday passed the biggest loosening of financial regulations since the economic crisis a decade ago, delivering wide bipartisan support for weakening banking rules despite bitter divisions among Democrats.

The bill, which passed 67 votes to 31, would free more than two dozen banks from the toughest regulatory scrutiny put in place after the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite President Trump’s promise to do a “big number” on the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, the new measure leaves key aspects of the earlier law in place. Nonetheless, it amounts to a significant rollback of banking rules aimed at protecting taxpayers from another financial crisis and future bailouts.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders praised the legislation’s passage. “The bill provides much-needed relief from the Dodd-Frank Act for thousands of community banks and credit unions and will spur lending and economic growth without creating risks to the financial system,” she said.

Given the bipartisan support for the bill, Wednesday’s passage was expected. But for the first time since Trump became president, the divisions lurking within the Senate Democratic Caucus burst into full view, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) leading vehement opposition to the bill, even as supporters — including Democrats up for reelection in states Trump won — supported it with equal vigor.

Warren and Brown argued the bill amounts to a gift to Wall Street that increases taxpayer risk while boosting the chances of another financial crisis. Supporters of the legislation — including endangered Democratic Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) — disputed that characterization, contending that the bill’s aim is to loosen onerous regulations on local banks and credit unions, freeing them to focus more on community lending, particularly in rural states.....

New bill in Congress would hand your data to cops.

Some lawmakers are trying to sneak the CLOUD Act through by attaching it to a must-pass government funding bill.

Lawmakers behind a new anti-privacy bill are trying to sneak it through Congress by attaching it to the must-pass government spending bill.

The CLOUD Act would hand police in the U.S., and other countries, extreme new powers to obtain and monitor data directly from tech companies instead of requiring a warrant and judicial review.

Congressional leadership will decide whether the CLOUD Act gets attached to the omnibus government spending bill sometime this week, potentially as early as tomorrow, so we need to flood our lawmakers with messages and calls right now.

Click here to tell your lawmakers to oppose the CLOUD Act and reject any attempts to attach it to a must-pass government spending bill.

If passed, this bill would give law enforcement the power to go directly to tech companies, no matter where they or their servers are, to obtain our data. They wouldn’t need a warrant or court oversight, and we’ll be left with no protections to ensure law enforcement isn’t violating our rights.

The CLOUD Act makes the relationship between big tech companies and governments even cozier. It puts our sensitive personal information at risk by making it readily accessible to cops.

Lawyer charges grieving family thousands for time spent responding to complaint against him

A grieving daughter was blindsided when the lawyer hired to settle her father's estate charged thousands of dollars for time he spent responding to a complaint the family filed against him.

But lawyers are not allowed to bill for hours spent responding to complaints, according to the Law Society of Ontario. A legal ethics expert says responding to complaints is a cost of doing business and a lawyer's professional obligation, and clients shouldn't be "punished" for asking the law society to investigate a potential problem.

The lawyer, Jim McIlhargey from the Goderich, Ont., firm Troyan & Fincher, told Go Public the complaint was "unfounded, devoid of merit, and spurious" and said he's entitled to compensation for his time.

Brittany Baechler and her family hired McIlhargey to settle her father's estate after he died of cancer in 2013.

The family wasn't happy with how the lawyer was handling things, so they submitted a complaint with the Law Society of Ontario.

Former coal baron Don Blankenship is now in a dead heat in the GOP’s West Virginia Senate primary — even though he’s still on probation after serving one year in federal prison for conspiring to violate mine safety standards.

A poll conducted for the Senate campaign of Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R-WV) in advance of the May 8 primary put Morrisey and Blankenship in a statistical tie, with Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-WV) several points behind. The winner will probably face Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) in November, who is widely seen as vulnerable in a state President Trump won in 2016 by 40 percent.

But as Politico reported Tuesday morning, “National Republicans — on the heels of the Roy Moore and Rick Saccone debacles — worry they’re staring down their latest potential midterm election fiasco.”

Blankenship is the former CEO of Massey Energy and has been a major figure in state politics for decades, helping turn West Virginia from solid blue to deep red in recent years with $200,000 in donations to GOP candidates and party committees. But his candidacy was originally viewed with some skepticism when he first announced he was running in November.

After all, Blankenship had recently finished a one-year sentence in federal prison for ignoring federal mine safety regulations in the lead up to the 2010 tragedy in Massey’s Upper Big Branch, which killed 29 miners, making it the worst coal mining disaster in decades.

Indeed, one post-disaster profile of Blankenship called him “the Snidely Whiplash of coal, a larger-than-life figure so swaggering and creepy that his each next outrageous claim as chairman and C.E.O. of Massey Energy makes wonderful copy.”

But Blankenship is wealthy enough to self-finance, and has so far outspent both his rivals on TV ads by 30-to-1. In one ad, he slams Jenkins — who had been a Democrat House member before switching parties in 2013 — for supporting the 2009 House climate bill rather than Trump’s position that climate change is a hoax.

While the New York Times reported last month that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he did not want to see Blankenship win the nomination, the national party hasn’t decided yet whether they will formally oppose him, as they did Roy Moore in Alabama.

But they will need to make up their minds soon. The primary is only seven weeks away.

Just when you think they can't fall any lower into depravity, the Tea Party Mammon-worshiping GOP manages to sink to a new depth, placing their hopes on a convicted criminal who killed twenty-nine of his own mine workers:

https://thinkprogress.org/national-repu ... 4f9c57817/



I can easily see Trump on a stage somewhere with Blankenship in front of a rally - "America needs more Donny Blankenships, he makes a lot of money, which is just great, isn't that terrific!".

Ecuador's government said Wednesday it has cut off WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's internet connection at the nation's London embassy after his recent activity on social media decrying the arrest of a Catalonian separatist leader.

In a statement, officials said Assange's recent posts "put at risk" the good relations Ecuador maintains with nations throughout Europe and had decided as of Tuesday to suspend his internet access "in order to prevent any potential harm."

Assange has since gone silent on social media.

Ecuador granted Assange asylum in the South American nation's London embassy in 2012, where he has remained cooped up ever since. Ecuador has repeatedly tried to find a solution that would allow Assange to leave without the threat of arrest, but with no success.

He remains subject to arrest in Britain for jumping bail and also fears a possible U.S. extradition request based on his leaking of classified State Department documents.

Relations between Assange and his host nation have often grown prickly. Ecuador suspended his internet access in 2016 after a WikiLeaks dump targeting Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Former President Rafael Correa hailed Assange's work but the nation's current head of state has called him a hacker and warned him not to meddle in politics.

T-Mobile deceived customers with “false ring tones” on failed phone calls


T-Mobile USA has agreed to pay a $40 million fine after admitting that it failed to complete phone calls in rural areas and used "false ring tones" that created the appearance that the calls were going through and no one was picking up.

"To settle this matter, T-Mobile admits that it violated the Commission's prohibition against the insertion of false ring tones and that it did not correct problems with delivery of calls to certain rural areas," states an order issued by the Federal Communications Commission today.

T-Mobile will pay the $40 million fine into the US Treasury. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn criticized the commission for not getting refunds for customers.

T-Mobile admitted that it used the fake ring tones on "hundreds of millions of calls" each year, the FCC said. It's not clear how many of these calls weren't completed at all, because T-Mobile used the fake ring tones on many types of calls that took longer than usual to complete.

The FCC order explains why fake ring tones are a violation of a commission rule that has been in effect since January 2014:

Doctors tried to lower $148K cancer drug cost; makers triple price of pill

A drug that treats a variety of white blood cell cancers typically costs about $148,000 a year, and doctors can customize and quickly adjust doses by adjusting how many small-dose pills of it patients should take each day—generally up to four pills. At least, that was the case until now.

Last year, doctors presented results from a small pilot trial hinting that smaller doses could work just as well as the larger dose—dropping patients down from three pills a day to just one. Taking just one pill a day could dramatically reduce costs to around $50,000 a year. And it could lessen unpleasant side-effects, such as diarrhea, muscle and bone pain, and tiredness. But just as doctors were gearing up for more trials on the lower dosages, the makers of the drug revealed plans that torpedoed the doctors’ efforts: they were tripling the price of the drug and changing pill dosages.

The drug, ibrutinib (brand name Imbruvica), typically came in 140mg capsules, of which patients took doses from 140mg per day to 560mg per day depending on their cancer and individual medical situation. (There were also 70mg capsules for patients taking certain treatment combinations or having liver complications.) The pills treat a variety of cancers involving a type of white blood cell called B cells. The cancers include mantle cell lymphoma, which was approved for treatment with four 140mg pills per day, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, approved to be treated with three 140mg pills per day. Each 140mg pill costs somewhere around $133—for now.

Imbruvica’s makers, Janssen and Pharmacyclics, have now gotten approval to sell four different tablets of varying strengths: 140mg, 280mg, 420mg, and 560mg. But the new pills will all be the same price—around $400 each—even the 140mg dose pill. The makers will stop selling the old, cheaper 140mg pill within three months, according to a report by the Washington Post.

The plan nixes any chance to lower costs with lower dosages. Even if patients can drop down to just 140mg a day, they’ll pay three times what they pay now for each 140mg pill.

Multiple sources told CNNMoney that they believed conservative critics of President Trump were the writers targeted for removal.

"Insufficiently partisan" was the phrase one writer used in a RedState group chat.

"They fired everybody who was insufficiently supportive of Trump," one of the sources who spoke with CNNMoney said, adding, "how do you define being 'sufficiently supportive' of Trump?"

NRA names convicted traitor Ollie North its new President

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/07/politics ... index.html

On the eve of Trump canceling the Iran deal a declaring that Iran is evil incarnate, just remember that North is the guy who literally sold thousands of missiles to the same evil Iran for Reagan.