Al Franken has a video out informing borrowers that they may be contacted if they’re eligible for a cash payment from a wrongful foreclosure or the opportunity to refinance or get a principal reduction on their loans. It’s more of a public service announcement than anything. Meanwhile, Tammy Baldwin joined others in criticizing Wisc. Gov. Scott Walker for proposing to divert settlement funds to the state treasury.

Another researcher has come out complaining about how a religious right “expert” distorted her work to stigmatize the lgbtq community.

Hot Coffee, the fast-paced, info-packed exploration of tort reform exposes the real story behind Stella Liebeck, who sued McDonalds after being badly burned by spilled coffee, an incident which wrongly entered the collective consciousness as a prime example of a “frivolous” lawsuit. First time director Susan Saladoff, a civil litigator with 25 years of experience, uses the McDonalds coffee case as the starting point and from there builds a strong case that tort reform, binding arbitration and non-economic damage caps subvert justice and benefit big business.

Sit down for this one. Because you’re just not going to believe it. It seems that the more credit rating agencies are paid by corporations and banks to rate their debt, the more favorable ratings they hand out! This goes against everything I know about the untainted, incorruptible hand of the free market, and comes very close to shaking my faith in the credibility of the rating agencies.

It turns out that the Justice Department is not only concerned with Standard and Poor’s but the entire credit rating agency industry, it appears. The reported investigation into the ratings of mortgage backed securities during the housing bubble is centered on S&P, but not limited to them.

The Senate Banking Committee claims to be gathering information on S&P, but as Manns says this is an industry-wide phenomenon. Long ago, the government gave the rating agencies a good deal of power, and now they’re using it to protect their core business. I’d love to see Congress defy the rating agencies and reduce their role in bond deals (through mandating AAA securities in them), but I don’t see it happening.

In exposing Mr Minnery’s basic error in understanding the definition of “nuclear family” in the HHS study Minnery cited, Senator Franken made clear that such a fundamental mistake in reading the report made all of Minnery’s testimony suspect and unworthy of consideration by the committee.

I talked to Franken via phone today, as he returned home from a funeral for a soldier killed overseas. His remarks tomorrow are really connected to the fear that we are seeing a flickering out of the American dream. “We have the greatest disparity in income since the 1920s. The middle class dream is fading, and we’re losing the argument on the economy. We need to gain back the initiative, and convince people that it’s ridiculous to be gutting Medicare, to essentially end it, in order to give huge tax cuts.”

Two and a half years after privatized auditors largely signed off on practices that contributed to the collapse of Wall Street, and a year after coziness between government inspectors and the oil industry they regulate allowed a massive oil spill in the gulf, the Obama Administration proposes relying on private auditors to ensure that private companies guard our nation’s cybersecurity.

We definitely need strong federal servicer standards, and CFPB is a great place to house them. All the more reason to recess-appoint Elizabeth Warren as soon as possible.