Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Senators to protect your right to day in court against your bank by rejecting H.J.Res. 111. What would H.J. Res. 111 do? It would nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's recent rule banning forced arbitration clauses in contracts between consumers and banks. These clauses keep you out of court and force you to go to arbitration with your bank, and arbitrators are (as the Economic Policy Institute reminded us recently) far, far more likely to rule in the bank's favor than in yours. So when some corporate hack tells you that folks who win arbitration cases with their banks win a lot more money than folks do in class action lawsuits, just remember that you have less than a 1 in 10 chance of winning that arbitration case to begin with -- which means you're very likely to win zero dollars. Also, your bank can file a counterclaim, which they'll win more than 9 times out of 10 -- and then you'll have to pay them thousands of dollars on average. Does any of that sound like justice? No, it does not. So tell your Senators to stop serving banksters and start serving their constituents again by rejecting H.J. Res. 111.
Meanwhile, the New York Times has lately said that "the United States is not directly involved" in the Saudi Arabia/Yemen war that's causing "the world's largest humanitarian crisis," one which won't get better "unless the war ends." But a year ago, the Times told us, in a headline no less, that "Support for Saudi Arabia Gives U.S. Direct Role in Yemen Conflict." And, as The Intercept informed us last month, our government has provided Saudi planes with twice as much fuel since October, and those planes ain't carrying tourists. Moreover, the American military advisors who work directly on the Saudi bombing campaign now work in Riyadh, ostensibly, I suppose, so we can better "advise" the Saudis not to kill so many Yemeni civilians. Even if that were working, that sure seems to comprise "direct involvement" in the war that's starving good Yemeni citizens and punishing the Houthi rebels are some of the world's best ISIS-fighters, all to preserve some obscure power-sharing arrangement that collapsed in 2009. If we can't stop this war right now, but let's at least encourage our paper of record to get the record straight, as Just Foreign Policy and MoveOn help you do.
Comments