Basically, the action in the next two years will be in the executive branch federal agencies, all of which will be under constant threat of defunding and harassment from the GOP.

But bipartisanship, in the Congress? Fuhgettaboutit.

I wasn’t the only one to deride the FHFA’s ingenious plan to end the foreclosure fraud crisis. Indeed, the reliance on internal reviews, and encouragement to engage in more foreclosures, raised the eyebrows of many housing advocates and prominent politicians. Now, six Senate Democrats have sent a letter to FHFA Acting Director Ed DeMarco and top regulators on the systemic risk council (including Geithner and Bernanke) calling for legitimate action on the servicers, who have no specific federal regulator.

The six Democrats – Sherrod Brown, Barbara Boxer, Sheldon Whitehouse, Debbie Stabenow, Tom Harkin and Mark Begich – pushed back on the idea that these are merely technical errors, as the FHFA letter intimates, rather than systematic violations of the law.

After the explosion that rocked a West Virginia mine, killing 29 workers, Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors have stepped up their efforts, using the regulatory tools already available to them to expand their enforcement activities.

Jon Cohn explores the egg recall in greater detail, and comes to a similar conclusion as I did: that it just shows a continuation of E. coli conservatism, particularly the fervor for deregulation that goes back 30 years

Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa, two Iowa-based dairy farms, have collectively recalled 550 million eggs due to a salmonella outbreak, the largest such recall in recent history. Both have close ties to Jack DeCoster, an agribusiness owner. Now, Rep. Rosa DeLauro wants to know more about DeCoster, and what federal regulators knew about them.

One of the smartest things I’ve heard in the Wall Street reform debate came from (predictably) Sen. Ted Kaufman, who said that financial regulations have a half-life. They only take so long before someone enterprising on the Street figures out how to circumvent them. The stronger they are, the longer that half-life – the Depression-era [...]

President Obama’s planning to “get mad” today at his partner BP over the continued Gulf oil gusher. This comes as we learn that oil is spurting out of the seabed much faster than estimated, perhaps by a factor of 14. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the [...]

I would hope as much progress is being made on the criminal side, too, as on stopping the underwater gusher. Because that’s what we have here: criminal negligence.

The one constant theme underlying all the elements that could have and/or did lead to the BP Gulf oil spill is the mendacious corporate servitude of the Republican party, their leaders and policies. The arrogance and recklessness of BP and its oily partners gestated wildly under the Bush/Cheney administration and little is changing significantly under Obama.

In a surprise press conference this afternoon, White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs announced the creation of a new regulatory agency, the Business Protection Agency, that will provide much-needed oversight of the federal government’s many abusive and out-of-control regulatory agencies.