A NYT story describes an FDA desiring to use its regulatory power and a White House dedicated to constraining them. When you look at the results, however, either some FDA officials are trying to tell their side of the story, or the article is dead-on about the White House’s love affair with deregulation or its fear of being seen as too zealous in regulation.

We all know about the Paul Ryan budget, which will get a vote on the House floor this week, because both sides feel they have a story to tell about that budget: Republicans because they’re passing a budget at all, Democrats because that budget is unnecessarily cruel, and should hurt the GOP in November. So Senate Democratic leadership is not above scheduling message votes for November themselves. Over the next couple weeks, they’re going to bring to the floor a series of votes, in particular on taxes, to force Republicans to side with corporations and the wealthy.

Everyone is looking forward to the three days of arguments next week in the Supreme Court on the individual mandate and the health care law. But regardless of that outcome, the court is well on its way to expanding the rights of corporations over the individual, and curtailing Americans’ access to the courts for redress.

Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimate that Wall Street speculation is now the second-largest contributor to oil prices, accounting for 15% of the increase in oil prices over the last decade – correlating strongly with the expansion of commodity trading and speculation in oil futures. This makes speculation perhaps the most fertile ground for actually reducing gas prices, but the Administration isn’t going there, preferring to promote more traditional supplies.

If Greg Smith wanted revenge on Goldman Sachs, he definitely got it. In one trading day, Goldman lost $2.2 billion in stock value, with shares dropping 3.4%. It was the third-biggest decline in the S&P 500 index yesterday.

Before we went into Afghanistan, I remember reading about a law there ruling that women couldn’t become doctors, and couldn’t be treated by a male doctor. And I thought to myself, that’s some creative hatred. You have to get up early and actually think about hatred like that.

This is what we’ve seen from our stateside version of the Taliban when it comes to abortion laws.

If anything, the foreclosure fraud settlement has shown a breakdown in the ability of regulatory agencies to deal with the aftermath of fraudulent conduct. They simply have no ability to offer a regulatory response that’s commensurate with the behavior. If the behavior does lead to a negotiated settlement, then it comes with unsatisfying “neither admit or deny” statements that judges have continued to question.

Too failed to be big? Today, Public Citizen will send a formal petition to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Financial Stability Oversight Council to break up Bank of America. The petition asks them to “recognize that the Bank of America Corporation . . . poses a ‘grave threat’ to the stability of the United States financial system and to mitigate that threat, as provided by section 121 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.”

The EPA has been under assault from the GOP for the past year, and this has led to some uncomfortable rollbacks and compromises. The Administration’s cancellation of new ozone standards was particularly galling. But today, the EPA came through with new rules on mercury and air toxics that will deliver massive public health benefits, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Until now, only the State Attorney General could bring action under the Martin Act, a securities fraud law in New York State that is much more expansive than federal statutes. Typically the plaintiff must prove intent to commit fraud; under the Martin Act the plaintiff need only prove that fraud was committed. Now, as a result of a new ruling, any aggrieved private actor can use the Martin Act as part of their lawsuit. This empowers investors of all sizes to go after the banks on securities fraud.