Memo To Reporters: in the future, any reference by the president* to "our wonderful vets" should be translated into "our wonderful campaign props." The Management.

From The New York Times:

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, intends to scrap the use of so-called supervisory examinations of lenders, arguing that such proactive oversight is not explicitly laid out in the legislation, the main consumer measure protecting active-duty service members, according to a two-page draft of the change. The agency’s move comes as a Senate committee prepares to vote on the nomination of Kathleen Kraninger to succeed Mr. Mulvaney as chief of the consumer watchdog, which is responsible for protecting consumers from financial abuse. The proposal surprised advocates for military families, who have urged the government to use its powers to crack down harder on unscrupulous lenders. The consumer bureau conducted dozens of investigations into payday and other lenders during the Obama administration without any significant legal opposition, and no lenders are currently challenging its oversight based on the law, according to administration officials.

Yes, it is purely a jurisdictional issue and has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Mulvaney hoovered up more than $60,000 from the payday loan industry while he was a congresscritter. And I am the Tsar of all the Russias. In addition, Mulvaney's predecessor, Richard Cordray, stands accused, again, of the unpardonable sin of doing his job too well.

The bureau will still bring individual cases against lenders who are found to charge in excess of the annual interest rate cap of 36 percent mandated under the law, and continue to supervise lenders under other statutes. But it will scrap supervisory examinations, which are the most powerful tool for proactively uncovering abuses and patterns of illegal practices by companies suspected of wrongdoing, former consumer bureau enforcement officials said. John Czwartacki, a spokesman for Mr. Mulvaney, said the rule change came from a top-to-bottom review of the bureau’s procedures geared at curtailing what the administration, along with lending industry executives, have criticized as overly aggressive enforcement by the bureau’s first director, Richard Cordray.

You've got to be eight kinds of swine to prey on teenage recruits, and their families, while they're vulnerable and, in many cases, deployed overseas. But that's exactly the kind of scam that Mick Mulvaney sees as having been inconvenienced by the activities of the CFPB. From Military.com:



The report said these lenders damage morale and hurt our military preparedness.Payday lenders typically require borrowers to endorse a postdated check and then trap them into rolling the loan over repeatedly at annual percentage rates that can top 400 percent. The average payday borrower pays back $827 on a $339 loan."I applaud the Defense Department's report," Mr. Calhoun said. "Military families need protection from these predators. We must protect the people who protect us."

The report also admits that the Department of Defense is ill-equipped to deal with this problem itself, that it needs the kind of help the CFPB was designed specifically to provide.



Pool Getty Images

And, of course, Mulvaney is not alone in his desire to turn the oversight functions of the federal government into a reasonable facsimile of the president*'s own practices regarding the payment of vendors. Secretary of Education—and owner of ugly McMansions and wandering yachts—Betsy DeVos is in on the game, too. Again, from the NYT:



In a written announcement posted on its website, the Education Department laid out its plans to eliminate the so-called gainful employment rule, which sought to hold for-profit and career college programs accountable for graduating students with poor job prospects and overwhelming debt. The Obama-era rule would have revoked federal funding and access to financial aid for poor-performing schools. After a 30-day comment period, the rule is expected to be eliminated July 1, 2019. Instead Ms. DeVos would provide students with more data about all of the nation’s higher education institutions — not just career and for-profit college programs — including debt, expected earnings after graduation, completion rates, program cost, accreditation and other measures.

“Students deserve useful and relevant data when making important decisions about their education post-high school,” Ms. DeVos said in a statement. “That’s why instead of targeting schools simply by their tax status, this administration is working to ensure students have transparent, meaningful information about all colleges and all programs. Our new approach will aid students across all sectors of higher education and improve accountability."

This would be a compelling argument if a) DeVos wasn't completely unqualified for the job she holds, and b) as a measure of her devotion to the department's misson, she hadn't larded its upper echelons with exactly the kind of swindlers the now-repealed regulations were designed to punish.



Ms. DeVos has brought into her administration former for-profit leaders who are known for their strong opposition to the industry’s regulation. Ethics filings show that Diane Auer Jones, a senior adviser on postsecondary education, lobbied against funding the rule while working for an operator of for-profit schools, Career Education Corporation. Another top-ranking official, Robert S. Eitel, who joined the department from a for-profit operator, Bridgepoint Education Inc., when it faced multiple government investigations. Mr. Eitel, who has also opposed the gainful employment regulations, recused himself from weighing in on the rule.

I'm sure he has. Look, flying pigs!



After all, what good is "eliminating the administrative state" if you can't make a buck on it?

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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