Financial Regulation, Mandatory Voting, and Class Action Lawsuits
The Senate votes on Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s financial regulation bill.
The town of Ridgeway, Colorado votes on whether to make voting mandatory for all residents.
The Center for Class Action Fairness files a brief appealing the approval of a class action settlement in which attorneys received a $850,000 fee without recovering anything for their clients.
1. FINANCE
The Senate votes on Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd’s financial regulation bill.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs John Berlau on the coalition letter he signed opposing the bill’s bailouts, taxes, and overregulation.
“The letter, included below, highlights what it calls a ‘by-no-means exclusive’ list of major concerns with the bill. These include the bill’s broad definition of ‘nonbank financial company’ that would mean that many ‘Main Street non-financial businesses would be hit with taxation, regulation, and possible nationalization by the Federal Reserve’; the proxy-access mandates that would usurp state incorporation law and ‘empower union pension funds and other progressives by forcing companies to fund their Saul Alinsky–style campaigns for a company’s board of directors’; and the lack of any reforms in the bill of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-created mortgage giants that were ‘primary causes of the crisis.’”
2. POLITICS
The town of Ridgeway, Colorado votes on whether to make voting mandatory for all residents.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Warren Brookes Fellow Ryan Young on why the proposal is a bad idea.
“There are three things wrong with Mr. Hennessy’s proposed regulation. One is that mandatory voting is a violation of personal freedom. To vote or not is an important choice that people make for themselves. […]The second thing wrong with mandatory voting is that it violates freedom of speech. […]The third point is that, maybe, some people shouldn’t vote.”
3. LEGAL
The Center for Class Action Fairness files a brief appealing the approval of a class action settlement in which attorneys received a $850,000 fee without recovering anything for their clients.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Counsel Hans Bader on following the trail of money in class action lawsuits.
“Earlier, I wrote in the Washington Post about how class-action lawsuit ‘settlements intended to benefit consumers get paid instead to groups that lobby for affirmative action, hate-crimes laws, undocumented immigrants, and public funding for abortions.’ The practice seems to be even worse in state court than federal court. As I noted in 2007, ‘In California state court, leftover money from a consumer class action settlement is commonly given not to consumer groups, but to groups that have nothing to do with consumers, like the left-wing La Raza Legal Center; the politically correct Employment Law Center of the San Francisco Legal Aid Society (which seeks to curb employers’ First Amendment rights); the ever-litigious Lawyers’ Committee; and groups that specialize in advocating affirmative action, broader definitions of ‘hate crimes’ (at the expense of civil liberties), or expanded access to welfare programs for illegal aliens.’”