Eideard

President Barack Obama today warned that exempting auto dealers from a new consumer protection agency would hurt buyers and let dealers continue “deceptive practices.”

The nation’s 20,000 new-car dealers have blitzed Capitol Hill over the past two weeks seeking to be cut free from the agency that would oversee consumer lending, part of a package of financial reforms expected to move through the Senate over the next several days. They’re backing an amendment by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., that would exempt auto dealers’ lending from new oversight that would still apply to banks and finance companies like Ally Bank, the former GMAC.

In his statement, Obama said leaving dealers out of the bill would let them “inflate rates, insert hidden fees into the fine print of paperwork, and include expensive add-ons that catch purchasers by surprise.

“This amendment guts provisions that empower consumers with clear information that allows them to make the financial decisions that work best for them and simply encourages misleading sales tactics that hurt American consumers,” Obama said…

Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association, said the new rules would hurt loans to less-creditworthy customers, either forcing them to pay higher rates or not get financing at all…

The financial reform bill that passed the House last year excluded auto dealers after a similar lobbying push.

But a growing coalition of consumer advocates, community banks and the Defense Department has pushed back in recent days against the auto dealers’ efforts, saying dealers who craft loans for consumers should face the same kind of oversight that mortgage brokers, who make similar offers.

That these creeps muscled their way through the House last year speaks volumes about lobbying and corruption in Congress. Protection for consumers continues to take 2nd place – or lower – in the priorities of elected scumbags.

Car dealers already have the reputation of bottom-feeding parasites. Do you trust them to bring integrity to American business?

Aftermath of tornado in Manhattan, Kansas – last year

The Department of Homeland Security relied on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate a $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas, according to a government report.

The department’s analysis was not “scientifically defensible” in concluding that it could safely handle dangerous animal diseases in Kansas — or any other location on the U.S. mainland, according to a Government Accountability Office draft report obtained by The Washington Post. The GAO said DHS greatly underestimated the chance of accidental release and major contamination from such research, which has been conducted only on a remote island off the United States…

“Drawing conclusions about relocating research with highly infectious exotic animal pathogens from questionable methodology could result in regrettable consequences,” the GAO warned in its draft report. DHS’s review was too “limited” and “inadequate” to decide that any mainland labs were safe, the report found. GAO officials declined to comment on the findings…

The DHS lab would replace and expand upon the mission of a federal research facility on a remote island on the northern tip of Long Island, N.Y. Critics of moving the operation to the mainland argue that a release could lead to widespread contamination that could kill livestock, devastate a farm economy and endanger humans. Along with the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease, NBAF researchers plan to study African swine fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever and other viruses.

This project must have been designed by the same clowns who thought up the TSA for airport security.

Of course, the only howls about pork were from the Congress-critters who didn’t succeed in getting the facility for their own state.