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MULTITUDES: The unauthorized memoirs of Sam Smith

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February 18, 2018

How the Trump regime is quietly destroying government

Salon -Mick Mulvaney warned us that it was coming. After all, in 2014 he called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the independent government agency he now temporarily heads, a "sick, sad joke."

Three years later, Mulvaney was installed as the head of the agency he once decried — a move that smelled like a hostile takeover by the the powerful financial institutions that are now running the show. It appeared calculated, and unmistakably placed Mulvaney at direct odds with the very purpose of the agency: to protect the consumer.

It certainly fits the broader theme of the Trump administration.

A few months prior, during a visit to CPAC — the pinnacle for conservatives in Washington — then-Trump aide Steve Bannon said that the administration's goal was "the destruction of the administrative state."

"Since he [Mulvaney] has taken this role on," Ruth Susswein, the deputy director of National Priorities at Consumer Action, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, told Salon, "he has actively chosen to do whatever is in his power to dismantle the agency from within. That's his goal."

She explained that Mulvaney would "abolish the agency if he could, but legally he can't." In the past, as a former Republican U.S. representative, Mulvaney co-sponsored legislation that would eliminate the agency.

As the acting brass, Mulvaney has taken several drastic steps to reduce the CFPB's authority and ability to hold powerful financial institutions, such as banks, payday lenders and credit card companies, accountable for fraudulent or otherwise predatory behavior. He has put on hold a rule that imposed restrictions on short-term payday loans, and dropped investigations into at least one company that donated to his political campaign in the past.

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