Trump And Ryan-- The Destroyers Of Regulations That Protect Americans From Greed And Avarice

Did anyone ever really believe Trump's idiotic campaign promises to drain the swamp that he personifies or hold Wall Street-- which now runs his regime-- accountable? If so... how tragic! Late Tuesday evening Trump had Mike Pence break the 50-50 tie in the Senate that will now allow banks more leeway to prey on their customers without fear of sanctions. That it even got to a point where the GOP-controlled Senate needed a tie-breaking vote from Pence was strange. And it wasn't because McCain, Flake or Corker, who had spent the day warning about the existential threat of Trumpism to America had decided to stop rubber-stamping his agenda-- they all voted with him as usual-- or because "the moderates" like Murkowski and Collins had decided to represent their incumbents back in Alaska and Maine instead of their campaign donors on Wall Street. No it was because ex-Democrat John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) and flitty Lindsey Graham (R-SC) crossed the aisle and voted with all the Democrats against the GOP proposal.

Maddow's blogger, Steve Benen, pointed out that "it’s easy to forget that there were voters last year who helped elect Donald Trump and a Republican Congress because they were concerned that Hillary Clinton might not be tough enough on Wall Street. As regular readers may recall, Trump swore up and down for months that it was Clinton who’d do Wall Street’s bidding, while Americans could expect his administration to stand up to the finance industry and its lobbyists. Though millions of voters actually believed all of this, the claims appear quite ridiculous now." It appeared quote ridiculous then as well. A new poll from Morning Consult shows that 53% of voters say Trump is not trustworthy; only 33% of voters think he is. 51% say he's dishonest and only 35% disagree. Yesterday Ipsos released a new poll through Reuters indicating that less than a third of Americans agree with the Trump-Ryan tax proposals.

As the 2018 midterm congressional election campaigns grow nearer, the poll found that more than two-thirds of registered voters said reducing the U.S. federal budget deficit is more important than cutting taxes for the wealthy or for corporations.

Trump’s plan would balloon the deficit and add to the $20 trillion national debt, according to critics and independent analysts, but Republicans say the tax cuts proposed in the plan would be offset by economic growth that would generate new tax revenue.

Among Republicans surveyed, 63 percent said deficit reduction should take priority over tax cuts for corporations, while 75 percent said deficit reduction should take priority over tax cuts for the wealthy.

But Trump and his rubber-stamp Republican Congress is moving ahead in reshaping the financial environment anyway, part of which was the successful vote Tuesday night neutering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Benen summed up the vote by writing that he had "naively thought Republicans would want to avoid being seen doing Equifax’s bidding so soon after last month’s controversy. Evidently, the party doesn’t care."

Ian Millhiser put it like this: "Tuesday night, as many Americans were preparing to go to bed, an evenly divided Senate voted to give broad lawsuit immunity to credit card companies, auto lenders, credit reporting companies like Equifax, and many other financial firms. The 50-50 tie in the Senate was broken by Vice President Mike Pence (R), and the House approved the lawsuit immunity measure. President Trump is expected to sign it. The resolution passed by the Senate overrides a rule created by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which prevents many financial firms from engaging in two abusive practices. The rule prohibited much of the financial industry from using “forced arbitration” agreements-- a common tactic where a company refuses to do business with consumers who will not sign away their right to sue the company in a real court. Consumers who sign away their right to sue must resolve any disputes with the company in a privatized arbitration system that favors corporate parties. Additionally, the CFPB rule prohibited credit card companies and many other financial firms from requiring consumers to sign away their right to bring class action lawsuits, a form of litigation that ensures that companies that charge certain illegal fees to consumers face a consequence for their actions."

The progressive Blue America-endorsed Democrat running in Indiana's flippable 9th district, Dan Canon, is an attorney who fights against this kind of regulatory capture that puts consumers at legal disadvantage and at the mercy of DC-connected corporate power. "This is yet another transparent sellout of the working class to the financial industry," he told us this morning. "There is simply no such thing as frivolous class-action litigation of consumer claims. The courts are the only place where citizens can be an even remotely equal footing with big business. Congressional Republicans and their donors know that, so they've been working to restrict meaningful access to the courts for American consumers for decades. This is just another step toward the Trump/GOP agenda of total corporate supremacy."

I was discussing the vote with the progressive Democrat running for the Maine second district seat held by Wall Street puppet Bruce Poliquin-- who takes bankster bribery bucks while sitting on the House Financial Services Committee-- and he pointed me to something he had written last month when the Republican plan was just being debated in the committee. "Earlier this month," he wrote, "the Credit reporting company Equifax announced a data breach that exposed the credit information for 143 million Americans, including Social Security numbers, birthdates and home addresses." And then he went after Poliquin and his cronies in Washington:

Equifax discovered the hack in July but waited more than a month to make news of the breach public. In response the company offered free credit monitoring services for one year, but the offer came with fine print that would have resulted in consumers who accepted the services giving away their ancient right to a trial in court by a jury of peers.

This term buried in the fine print is called an arbitration clause. Usually when we click a box to agree to terms of service, we are agreeing that any disputes will be taken to an arbitrator instead of a court on an individual basis, and we cannot band together with other victims to bring in a class action. But it can cost thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer to bring a claim to arbitration, so it never makes sense when a corporation rips us off by a few dollars here or there.

Without the threat that they will have to face a jury, corporations have every profit-making incentive to cut corners and take risks. Why invest in data security if nobody is going to hold you accountable for a breach? Only when corporations know that consumers can band together to enforce their rights, will they act as responsible stewards or our information.

We need to ban compulsory arbitration in these form contracts, but Bruce Poliquin is doing everything he can to protect the corporations. In June of this year, Bruce Poliquin voted for HR 10, which would block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) from finalizing a rule to prohibit credit card, bank account, and other financial contracts from having fine print forced arbitration clauses with class action bans.

On the day that the Equifax data breach was made public, the House Financial Services Committee, on which Bruce Poliquin serves, considered a bill to cap statutory damages in lawsuits against credit-reporting companies at $500,000, and entirely prohibit punitive damages.

Bruce Poliquin’s support of the financial sector at the expense of his constituents is yet another example of how he continues to fail to represent the people of Maine’s Second Congressional District... He should be working to protect everyday people from data breaches and ensure they are fairly compensated when they fall victim. Instead, he’s working to limit the damages and fall out for the institutions that allow the breaches to happen. That’s unacceptable to me and in Congress I promise to protect people’s right to a day in court against banks and corporations like Equifax that fail to protect consumers’ sensitive information.

And he's been fighting with Poliquin about it ever since. The Sun Journal has called it a "hot campaign issue." While Poliquin puts all his energy into collecting bribes from Wall Street and smearing Jared as "a liberal," Jared was explaining to the media how Poliquin puts the desires of the country’s financial sector ahead of his constituents including the vote "to allow financial firms to force their customers into arbitration instead of allowing them to file lawsuits against firms such as Equifax... Golden, who is the assistant majority leader in the state House, said Poliquin'should be working to protect everyday people from data breaches and ensure they are fairly compensated when they fall victim. Instead, he’s working to limit the damages and fallout for the institutions that allow the breaches to happen.'"

The State Stands Guard Over Equifax

Protecting the very very rich from the rest of us (source)

by Gaius Publius

In an earlier piece on the Equifax data hack and its consequences, I predicted this:

This breach and its likely consequences represents three acts of violence inflicted on the population of the U.S....

The third act of violence is about to be committed by the bipartisan wealth-protecting neoliberal state, which sees as its duty — is paid in fact to see as its duty — the protection of corporate profits, including Equifax's, at the expense of its citizens. If Equifax is protected by government and business-friendly conservative judges, in all likelihood, the company will suffer no damage at all beyond a temporary PR "speed bump." Government protection of Equifax will guarantee that the maximum possible cost will be passed to you....

Will Equifax risk going out of business for this massive data breach, or will its "runway be foamed" by government protection so it can recover as a company pretty much intact?

In other words, not only would Equifax not be disciplined by the government, but it would be protected by the government from harm cause either by the so-called "free market" or by federal courts.

In the immediate wake of the data breach news we saw a round of announced, outraged congressional investigations. But time has passed, the major shock is over, and now we see the start of government protection. The IRS has announced that it's awarding Equifax a multi-million dollar no-bid exclusive contract to aid the agency with "fraud prevention."

No, this is not The Onion:

IRS awards multimillion-dollar fraud-prevention contract to Equifax

The no-bid contract was issued last week, as the company continued facing fallout from its massive security breach. 

The IRS will pay Equifax $7.25 million to verify taxpayer identities and help prevent fraud under a no-bid contract issued last week, even as lawmakers lash the embattled company about a massive security breach that exposed personal information of as many as 145.5 million Americans.

A contract award for Equifax's data services was posted to the Federal Business Opportunities database Sept. 30 — the final day of the fiscal year. The credit agency will "verify taxpayer identity" and "assist in ongoing identity verification and validations" at the IRS, according to the award.

The notice describes the contract as a "sole source order," meaning Equifax is the only company deemed capable of providing the service. It says the order was issued to prevent a lapse in identity checks while officials resolve a dispute over a separate contract.

A $7.5 million dollar cash infusion is not that great for a company with nearly $500 million in net income (pdf), but it's not nothing either, especially coming from the federal government, and the timing will help restore confidence in the stock price, which has been rising. This is the government saying, "We're not going to let Equifax go away, despite their demonstrated dangerous incompetence."

The optics, of course, are terrible, but if you think this happened because the Republicans are in the White House, think again. A Democratic administration under any neoliberal president would do the same — protect Equifax from market harm. Ask yourself if Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or Chuck Schumer allow Equifax to twist in the free market wind. Of course not. They'd treat that company like they treated the Wall Street banks — chasten them, then offer whatever bailout is needed to "preserve an indispensable market giant."

The Failed Revolt of 2016

This is why the failed revolt we now call the "2016 election" — a failed revolution really — will inevitably continue, whichever pit or paradise it leads us to as a country. Does the voting public think a Democratic president-not-named-Sanders would act differently, or just more circumspectly?

Democrats in Congress would like you to think they'd be different. Sen. Ron Wyden:

"The Finance Committee will be looking into why Equifax was the only company to apply for and be rewarded with this. I will continue to take every measure possible to prevent taxpayer data from being compromised as this arrangement moves forward."

But then, the Republicans are saying the same thing. Sen. Orrin Hatch:

"In the wake of one of the most massive data breaches in a decade, it’s irresponsible for the IRS to turn over millions in taxpayer dollars to a company that has yet to offer a succinct answer on how at least 145 million Americans had personally identifiable information exposed,"

Which party will independent voters believe — one, both, or neither — as the failed revolt of 2016 rolls to the 2018 races? We'll soon find out.

GP
  

Getting Rid of Equifax

Negligent data-breach victim Equifax ironically warning its corporate customers that their data could be breached

by Gaius Publius

The massive data breach suffered by Equifax, one of the nation's three credit data reporting agencies, caused by what looks for all the world like negligence (see below), has gotten everyone's attention, including the other two credit agencies. Experian is running commercials as we speak offering to help.

But concerns about protecting financial data deal with only half the story. Why do companies like Equifax, TransUnion and Experian exist to begin with?

After all, as many writers have recently pointed out, you the consumer are not their customer — you're their product. It's you and your data that's being sold to their actual customers, anyone who wants it and will pay.

You actually have no financial relationship with any of these companies at all, and they have no — repeat, no — obligation to serve your interest. Equifax, in fact, suffered a prior data breach last March and told no one about. After the most recent breach, their corporate executives sold several million in stock and options before reporting it. And despite the fact that the "fix" for the current data vulnerability was available months before the breach, Equifax didn't install it. Negligence, in other words, but with no possibility of recourse by those injured — you.

Consumers have no rights at all with respect to these companies — no right to forbid them access to their financial data, no right to force them to correct errors, and no right to limit where they sell their collected data (to your employer, for example).

One can only conclude that Equifax — and in fact that whole industry — performs a private service, but no public service whatsoever, and arguably does public harm, all for the profit of its CEO and shareholder class.

Why do they exist at all? The answer lies in their history.

Why Does Equifax Exist?

The reason Equifax exists is revealed by a look into its history. Via writer Bryce Covert at the New York Times (emphasis mine):

Equifax is the oldest of the Big Three credit reporting bureaus, and it got its start as a private investigator in the late 1800s. A client — a business or a bank — would ask it about a consumer, and it would go about digging up dirt on things like marital problems and convictions. That client would then pay it for its services.

This questionable business model raised eyebrows in the 1960s, when the companies were still compiling information on people’s “moral character” such as affairs or drinking problems. At the time, the reports weren’t available at all to the subjects themselves. That changed with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which was signed in 1970. But even that reform put virtually no oversight on the bureaus’ practices.

Things haven’t changed all that much. Those who want to dig up dirt via a credit report pay one of the Big Three companies and voilà, they have a dossier of financial information.

In other words, Equifax, TransUnion and Experian exist to "dig up dirt" on ordinary people so people with money can decide what to do with them — whether to loan them money, to employ them, to insure them, to sue them, or not. This industry acts as a protection agency for the wealthy, in that it serves only to protect their wealth.

Equifax et al are like the sleazy private detective loitering about with a camera wherever you go, checking to see if you're seeing someone other than your spouse — except that the dirt these companies are digging up can do much more damage than a divorce. This dirt can keep you unemployed and unemployable for more than a decade.

Are Credit Data Collection Agencies Needed?

The answer to that question is Yes, but they don't have to exist as for-profit companies accountable to no one but their owners and top executives. Collecting credit data can most easily — and accurately — be done be a government agency. It is in fact done by government agencies in the largest countries in Europe.

Covert again:

In at least 40 other countries — including Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — credit reporting can be done by a public credit registry. It is usually operated by a central bank that already oversees the financial institutions that feed information into the reports. These reports tend to be more accurate because the operators have a legal right to demand data from banks as well as a mandate to ensure it’s correct and that errors are fixed. Data on late payments and defaults are erased once a consumer has settled up.

Many of these public registries leave out things like medical debt, tax information and personal details like marital status, focusing only on loan amounts. Only about 40 percent of registries collect consumers’ addresses, and two-thirds collect taxpayer IDs — the kind of information leaked in the Equifax breach. [emphasis mine]

The benefit to government taking over this function would not just be greater accuracy, but social responsibility. Do you want your employer — or potential employers — to access your credit data? After all, nothing about your credit data predicts how you will perform on the job. Government control of this function would limit who can request this information to those who actually need it, not those who merely want it.

The Neoliberal Profit-Protection Racket

Of course, the opposition to such a proposal is the same as the opposition to Medicare For All, despite its obvious cost- and outcome-benefit to American citizens. Post-war neoliberals in both parties see the job of government as proactively protecting the profit of large companies and investors (click if you don't see why; the link takes you to an excellent interview with Philip Mirowski, Economics professor at the University of Notre Dame and an expert on this subject).

On the Republican side of the neoliberal sales job, it's called "freedom." On the Democratic side it's called "wealth creation," with the (deliberately false) implication that jobs will follow.

Would the nation be better off without the jobs in the credit reporting industry? Of course; the industry is not that large an employer to begin with, and if they could lay off half of their employees tomorrow and still make money, they would. Every large company in America, in fact, would do the same at the drop of a hat.

In the same way, the nation would be better off without the jobs in the health insurance industry — and there would be one huge added bonus. The net effect of Medicare For All would be a financial stimulus so large that those lost jobs would be more than offset by the giant economic stimulus the nation would experience every year due to the very large net savings — a net increase in each family's bottom line of thousands of dollars per year.

Elizabeth Warren has introduced a bill that would make it illegal for employers to request credit data on employees or prospective employees. A start, but that solves only the edges of the problem. Someone should introduce a bill making credit data collection and reporting a public function.

Any progressive Congress people willing to take that risk and reap the reward in massive public support? Now's the time to step up.

GP
  

Violence and the State: Equifax

White-collar criminologist Bill Black and Aaron Mate discuss the massive Equifax data breach on The Real News Network (source)

by Gaius Publius

According to the Associated Press the credit reporting and data storage agency Equifax has suffered a massive data breach, and information on 143 million people — including "credit card and Social Security numbers, addresses and birth dates," plus potentially a whole lot more — have been lost forever to thieves.

The date Equifax said it first learned the breach is July 29. The date it reported this to the public was Thursday, September 7. The data breach(es), according to Equifax, occurred "from mid-May through July 2017."

That information is now "out there" and will be out there, sold and traded between gangs of cyber-criminals, for the next 30 years. The number of U.S. citizens is about 325 million people, of which about 23% are under 18 years of age. The number of U.S. adults is thus about 250 million people.

Equifax has, in other words, through neglect and/or error, disclosed identity data on 44% of the U.S. population, and more critically, on 57% of the adult population. If there are at least two adults in your family, the odds great are that at least one of you is in the affected group.

This is clearly the most serious data breach in U.S. history, one that compromises the financial integrity of more than half of all adults — and will continue to compromise their integrity for the next generation, until they are either dead or the data contains so few living individuals as to be worthless.

You can read more about the Equifax data loss here (AP) and here (NBC News).

This is not about the data loss per se, however damaging it will prove to be, but about the company, the culture of its CEO class, and indeed the CEO class of very large companies in general. It's also about the U.S. government's likely response and how that response will prove to be yet another instance of the violence of the neoliberal (wealth-protecting) state in its service to the very rich.

What To Do

But first, before a taking look at the implications of this data breach, here are two things to consider as a next step for you. The first comes from the invaluable Wolf Richter (h/t Naked Capitalism; italics mine):

But here is the most effective way to prevent identity theft:

Put a “security freeze” on each of the three major credit bureaus

A security freeze (aka “credit freeze”) will prevent the credit bureaus from selling your data to anyone. It will not prevent hackers from stealing that info, but it will make it very difficult for them – or for those who buy that data from them – to use this data to open credit accounts in your name and steal your identity. If they submit your data to a credit card company to apply in your name for a credit card, the credit card company checks with credit bureaus to confirm this information and review your credit. But since there is a credit freeze on your account, Equifax cannot disclose that information, and the credit card company will not open an account in your name.

Note: Even if you try to open a new bank account or credit account, you will not be able to, unless you first remove the credit freeze. Credit freezes do not impact current banking and credit relationships; they continue as normal.

Here are the pages of the three major credit bureaus where you can request or lift a security freeze: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.

Credit bureaus are required by law to provide this service, otherwise they wouldn’t. They hate it. Selling your data is how they get revenues. Locking this data eliminates those revenues. But it’s the most effective way to protect yourself.

And remember: you’re not their customer; you’re their product.

The last statement is important — you are not an Equifax customer. That means you haven't signed any agreements with Equifax ... yet.

A second recommendation going forward: Don't sign any agreements with Equifax. See below for why.

If a "Mom and Pop" Store Had Suffered a Similar Data Breach...

And now a look beneath the news to the implications. If a "mom and pop" store had suffered a data breach of this kind, one would reasonably expect the following to be done or required:

• A timely alert to all customers that the breach had occurred.

• A list of the kinds data that had been compromised — for example, "only Social Security numbers," or "Social Security numbers plus login passwords," and so on. 

• A timely, proactive and free notification to affected customers that they specifically were in the affected group. 

• Disclosure of the vulnerability that permitted the breach and a demonstration that the vulnerability had been effectively addressed. 

• Some form of restitution — implicit within which is an admission of liability — to customers who experience material harm. 

Were any of those items not part of the store's response, one would expect lawsuits to force the store's compliance. If the store, for example, were to charge customers a fee to find out if they were in the affected group — or attempted to profit by the breach in any other way — a class action lawsuit would immediately follow.

One would also expect, if the financial harm to the store of this breach were great enough, that the store could be forced out of business. After all it is a "free market" and customers could always take their business elsewhere for any reason at all. In other words, one of the costs of doing business in a "free market" is failure, and stores and restaurants fail every day.

The Equifax CEO Class Responds to Its Massive Data Breach

Almost none of the above-listed responses has occurred in the Equifax case, nor is any branch of national government expected to force those responses.

According to Professor Bill Black (see the transcript or the video above), here's what the Equifax CEO class did do (or in the case of front-running stock and option dumping, probably did do).

• The breach was undisclosed for more than a month.

• During that time, three Equifax executives dumped more than $2 million in stock and a great many more sold stock options, clearly, if not yet provably, ahead of the expected fall in Equifax stock price.

AARON MATE: It took more than a month for Equifax to publicly disclose it, and during that time, just days after it happened, three company executives sold nearly $2 million worth of stock. Equifax claims they were unaware the intrusion had occurred....

BILL BLACK: On top of that, there was also an immediate … in the same time period that these senior executives were selling their stock, there was a massive increase in sales of stock options compared to the normal for Equifax, and that almost certainly was again because people had been tipped about what had happened in the breach.

Here's a chart of the Equifax stock price for the last three months. The 52-week high was $147.02. On Friday, September 9, the day the market reacted to the announced breach, the stock opened at $141.45 and closed down almost 14%, at 123.23.

Equifax stock price for the three months prior to the data breach announcement (source; click to enlarge). Note the two drops in late July and a week later on low volume, and the deep drop on very high volume on September 8. The small circled price rise is discussed below. 

In other words, the Equifax CEO class arguably withheld the information from the public long enough to protect much of their personal wealth in company stock. It appears from the chart above that by mid-August, most insiders who were "in the know" had sold all the stock and options they intended to. (Note the two low-volume drops in very late September and early-mid-August.) The small spike on August 22 (circled) looks like a market reaction by those not "in the know" to a price considered too low. The price from that point to the Friday announcement-collapse is basically flat.

• You will have to pay to find out if you're one of the affected. You will have to pay twice, in fact. First, Equifax won't tell you if you're affected unless you sign away your right to sue or to join to join a class action suit. From the International Business Times:

If you want to know if you were one of the 143 million people whose data was breached in a hack of Equifax’s data, the company has a website you can use to find out — but there appears to be a catch: To check, you have to agree to give up your legal right to sue the company for damages. ...

On Friday, social media users spotlighted fine print on Equifax’s website that appears to force users to agree to waive their class action rights if they use the company’s website to see if their personal data was exposed by the recent hack. It is precisely the kind of arbitration clause that a pending Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule is designed to outlaw — if Republicans and the Trump administration allow it to go into effect as scheduled later this month.

About that last point — "if Republicans and the Trump administration allow it to go into effect" — look for quite a number of finance industry–friendly Democrats to be put on the spot as well if this comes for a vote in Congress. Finance is where the money is, and finance industry money flows through a virtual firehose to both parties.

If your credit becomes indeed compromised by this breach, there's a measurable cost to not being able to sue to recover damages for harm done — the dollar cost of the harm itself being just a start.

• The second way you may have to pay is more insidious. If you sign up at their website to find out if you're affected, you get one year of free "data protection" that automatically converts to a product you pay for if you don't opt out after a year.

Bill Black, from the interview above:

BILL BLACK: ... On top of that, they immediately saw an opportunity, A, to protect themselves, that you talked about, and B, to make a profit. As you say, they said, “We will provide you with one year of protection.” Now first, the information lost, in addition to the types that you talked about, included Social Security numbers, which of course do not change normally, so that information will be commercially valuable to other frauds for 10 to 30 years, so one year of protection, A, doesn’t do it. B, as you said, they said … “they” being Equifax … “If you … ” and this is in the fine print, mind you, “If you sign up for this protection, you have to give up any right to bring a class action suit.” ...

That isn’t it, because they also said, “Hey, this is a chance to make money on the victims.” It turns out, if you sign up for this one-year of free protection, it’s automatically renewed, and they charge you for it after year one. Again, they know that if they do this to some tens of millions of people, that most people will simply not track that it’s a year later and that they have to kill this protection, and so they’ve turned this massive abuse, this greed upon greed upon greed, into yet another opportunity to make money off the customers who they’re treating in the most atrocious fashion possible.

Black concludes this section by making an excellent point: "This is like a bad novel that someone wrote who hated corporations, except all of it’s coming from the senior leadership of the corporation."

"Greed upon Greed" from the Senior Leadership of Equifax

This makes two more general point about the culture of Equifax senior leadership, their CEO class:

• Personal greed. By delaying release of the breach, they added to the harm done simply to protect, in all likelihood, their personal wealth.

• Corporate predation. By charging people for information that should be available for free —  by charging for protection beyond a one-year time frame for damage that could occur anytime in the future — the company and its CEO class is using this disaster as a profit opportunity.

How is that not a text book definition of clinically pathological greed and predatory behavior? Were the owners of a "mom and pop" store to respond in this fashion, they'd not only be forced out of business and into bankruptcy, they'd likely be forced to live on a different coast under different names.

Violence and the State

Which leads to a final point. This breach and its likely consequences represents three acts of violence inflicted on the population of the U.S.

The first act of violence, of course, was committed by the hackers and will be perpetuated by whoever they sell their data stash to.

The second act of violence is being committed now by Equifax and its CEO class. They're denying Americans information they need to assess their vulnerability — or charging for it in any of several ways. In other words, if Equifax has harmed you, Equifax is trying to pass much of the cost back to you.

The third act of violence is about to be committed by the bipartisan wealth-protecting neoliberal state, which sees as its duty — is paid in fact to see as its duty — the protection of corporate profits, including Equifax's, at the expense of its citizens. If Equifax is protected by government and business-friendly conservative judges, in all likelihood, the company will suffer no damage at all beyond a temporary PR "speed bump." Government protection of Equifax will guarantee that the maximum possible cost will be passed to you.

If you need any evidence that this characterization of government is correct, consider NAFTA, TPP, and all the other "trade" deals our government has attempted or engaged in — all of which are bipartisan, neoliberal, and put profit before people in each of their many provisions and clauses.

If you wish, you watch this play out yourself. As you do, ask these questions and observe the answers:

Will Equifax be forced to disclose, at no cost to Americans, which Americans are affected?

Will Equifax be forced to make restitution, at no cost to Americans, for damage incurred further into the future than one year?

Will Equifax risk going out of business for this massive data breach, or will its "runway be foamed" by government protection so it can recover as a company pretty much intact?

Finally, will Equifax senior management see criminal prosecution for profiting from harm on such a massive scale?

If you think the answers to the questions above are sure to be No, you've been watching a painful sight — the bipartisan U.S. government in the post-Reagan era.

Violence and the state — this is why the failed revolution we now call the "2016 election" will inevitably continue, whichever pit or paradise it leads us to as a country. The profit-before-people racket we call the U.S. government is now under grave assault, and has been since the 2016 Democratic primary and the general election that produced a President Trump. The response to this massive data breach, if it plays out as all others have, will add to the fuel under that revolution.

Will the electoral situation improve in 2018 and 2020? Not unless one of the following occurs — the U.S. government grows a conscience, or a Sanders-like president is nominated. I wouldn't bet on the first, and the 2016 primary spoke wonders about the second. Stay tuned.

GP