An Open Letter to Republicans and Conservatives about the CFPB

Dear Fellow American,

When I was admitted to the Washington State Bar Association in 2005, I took an oath to support the United States Constitution.

My education on how to do that, however, did not begin when I studied for the bar exam. It did not begin in law school, either.

It began at home, when I was a little kid. With my parents.

American values were instilled in me at a very young age.

I was very young during the Reagan years, during last years of the Cold War. I recall asking, as a child would, why we didn’t like Russia.

My parents explained to me as best as they could to a five-year-old that the people in charge of Russia had a different kind of government that didn’t let people be free. Where the government would tell you what you had to do for work, and where to live.

And that that Americans didn’t like Russia, because Russia wanted to tell other people that they had to be like Russia, too.

But it wasn’t just about our enemies. My parents also taught me a lot about what Americans are for, not just what they were against.

My mom in particular thought many Americans’ fascination with the British royal family was incredibly frivolous and stupid, and that the idea of royalty itself was pretty stupid too, and refused to buy tabloid magazines about Princess Diana.

My dad told me that his mother, my grandma, had been a member of the DAR, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and that our family went all the way back to Revolutionary War times and had fought as Patriots. (True; a cousin of mine back in the day fired the first shot, the one “heard round the world.”)

Later in my elementary school years, when I had trouble sleeping due to some bullies, my dad entertained me with bedtime stories that he made up on the spot (thanks to being an avid paperback novel reader) where I was a spy for Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, and helped to win the war.

My education about our Constitution and what it means to be American went beyond my home, in my very run-of-the-mill public education system during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years.

In my public K-12 education, I learned about American history and the Constitution.

In school, we learned about the American Revolution, and why the colonies wanted to get away from the monarchy, so they weren’t paying for some self-anointed extravagant leaders to parade around on the public dime and rip off the regular people.

In other words, we were tired of them popping bottles in the club and leaving us with the tab.

We also learned about the Articles of Federation, and why they were a flop, because they weren’t strong enough to support the common interests of the States now freed from the overhead of a monarchy.

We learned about the Constitutional Convention, and how wildly divided the delegates from different states were, and how incredibly elegant it was that they all found ways to compromise, work together, and reason through their differences until they created the Constitution.

We learned that some people were really afraid that a centralized, “federal” system would lead to the very kind of oppression we had when we were under the thumb of the monarchy. Some people were afraid that an executive leader without much power wouldn’t be effective.

We learned all about the brilliant solution the Framers came up with. The checks and balances: three distinct branches of government, each with their own job to do, but unable to exist without the others, like an ultimate never-ending friendly game of “rock, paper, scissors.”

Congress represented the people, and through the people, had the “power of the purse,” so that wouldn’t be some single individual tyrant pulling the purse strings. Oh, but the president could veto, so that was the president’s way of keeping tabs on Congress. And then the judicial branch would be a check on the actions of the other branches to evaluate whether their actions were lawful.

We learned then that the Bill of Rights filled in some gaps that were pretty important. Among other things, and not in any particular order, we were guaranteed to be free to think as we please, hang out with whomever we want to hang out with, not be forced to go to someone else’s (or anyone’s) church, not get shaken down by law enforcement without good reason, own a gun, not have to testify against ourselves, and have our civil disputes be decided by a jury.

I think this stuff is still pretty important. I still believe in what I was taught as a kid about what it means to be an American.

My pro-American upbringing and education led to my work in consumer protection law.

What I was taught about what it means to be American had such a great influence on me that I hardly had any free will to pursue anything else other than service to those ideals. Just like the rest of my family. We are a family of attorneys, public educators, diplomats, military officers, small businesspeople, property owners, landlords, and all hard-working taxpayers.

Since 2010, I have been a solo attorney. I sort of fell into the work of consumer protection, but given my upbringing so steeped in a home and public education on American history, fairness, and freedom, it was an instant fit.

I’m helping people who have been price-gouged, ripped off, lied to, lied about, treated unfairly, or had their privacy violated. I’ve represented young people, old people, civilians, military servicemembers, and people of all economic, racial, religious and family backgrounds.

Seems like everybody has a consumer issue these days.

Many of the laws that are my clients’ only effective weapon to get their stolen money back, their reputation back, their loan to close on time, or the refund they deserve — are statutes, laws created by Congress or state legislatures.

Yes, these are laws passed by the representatives of the people in response to issues that people complain about to their elected officials. It takes a lot of people squeaking over a long period of time to be a good loud collective squeaky wheel to make some problem a topic of discussion. And then it takes a lot to get a bill passed (some people will remember Schoolhouse Rock). But here are some bills that made it into law and are still on the books:

Congress created consumer statutes as a response to pleas from people. Half a century later, they’re still important.

Somebody comes to me because some false information on their credit report or background check is keeping them from a mortgage, an apartment, or a job? Well, I’ve tried to handle these things nicely, but have found myself up against the same brick wall as my clients. Using these consumer laws to help my clients solve their problem is my modern equivalent of throwing tea in the Boston Harbor.

Am I wholly anti-corporation? No. Corporations do a lot, quite efficiently. But like different families can have different values, one industry is not the same as the next. And some industries are super out of line, and we need these laws.

Violations of privacy are worse these days. Data gets leaked by big corporations that are supposed to take care of it. It gets in the hands of criminals. Next thing you know, it’s you, or someone you love, getting some scam call or surprise fraudulent charges on your credit card.

And, we need juries of regular people to decide what should happen, as guaranteed by the Constitution. We have federal judges to hopefully follow the laws and Constitution, because no corporation is paying for some federal judge’s election campaign (they’re nominated by the executive and then approved by the legislature — more checks and balances).

Judges are meant to be loyal to no-one — and nothing — but the law.

I have been astonished over the years just how much I have seen the statutes I use to protect people get equated with a bunch of other unrelated “social” type issues, and become a partisan or ideological touchstone when one shouldn’t really be there.

Way back in 2008, when I was a “baby lawyer,” you might remember there was a big issue with “mortgage backed securities.” Mortgage companies sold loans to people who couldn’t afford those loans, without any due diligence about who was borrowing ridiculous amounts of money in a housing bubble. If you have ever been in the situation where you felt you had no choice but to borrow a bit more than you were comfortable with in order to be in a safe neighborhood, you might have a little more understanding for those people.

Repackaging and bundling these loans into “new financial products” didn’t make it any better. When the risky loans defaulted, the whole thing blew up and took our economy down with it.

Out of that debacle came the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. An agency to regulate lenders so financial products would come with adequate warnings, and if a certain lender refused to play fairly with people, they could get in trouble for it.

I gotta admit, when it was first created, I was a little skeptical. I was hungry for good cases at the time, and afraid maybe the CFPB would gobble up the good ones. I was so wrong. The CFPB did a lot of things that I didn’t have the resources to do, and when the CFPB took action, it made my job easier to go represent an individual harmed by some careless lender or credit reporting agency.

When the CFPB would take action against some lender for doing things like making inappropriate threats to active duty servicemembers, or leaving the barn door open for thieves to take your social security number on the dark web, I could point to that action and say, “see??? my client is not just some random whiner.”

Sometimes, these multi-billion-dollar industries are just not going to keep themselves in check.

Some people just want to cheat at the game. That’s what rules, and their enforcement, are for.

Conservatives and Republicans are generally skeptical of “regulation.” Regulation interferes with the free market. Regulation adds red tape and cost. Regulation slows down the economy. Regulation is expensive, and we have to stop and make sure we are complying with arbitrary things, and often the people regulating us are so blind to the realities of our industry that they have no idea how pointless their rules are.

I get it. That’s real. Believe me, I have my own issues with certain types of red tape that interfere with my ability to pursue things outside my law practice simply according to my conscience and desire to do right by people, like in my pursuits as an Airbnb host. I’m also a landlord, and keeping up with different rules at different levels of government is frustrating, and not all of those rules effectively protect tenants from the real problems in housing. It triggers that part of me that does not want Big Brother to tell me what to do; I’m an adult who knows how to treat people fairly.

But, if you are still reading this, I imagine that you are not a C-level person at some fintech, bank, debt collector or credit reporting agency. You’re in some other industry.

I’m here to tell you that not all industries are the same.

Not all federal agencies that regulate are the same.

Not everything warrants throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Especially not if the Constitution says you can’t touch that baby, or that bathwater, unless you are Congress.

The president is throwing many babies out of many baths full of water in ways that are not in strict adherence to what our founders said was the proper procedure to do things.

And I don’t believe that it was what his voters actually wanted him to do.

Here’s what I think — and correct me if I’m wrong — here’s what I think people wanted him to do. Not do away with the CFPB, or social security, or keeping ebola virus away from our shores, but stuff like this:

I don’t see anything about banks or judges in that list.

For a number of reasons, consumer protection is adverse to banks and powerful financial institutions, and so the champions of consumer protection laws have usually been moderate-to-liberal people, and Democratic lawmakers. Even though consumer issues are far broader than race, gender, immigration or other hotly divided issues, they get thrown into the same bus and then get labeled and not examined individually. Because the way the chips have fallen, it has generally been Republicans and conservative lawmakers who have sided with the very industries who harm my clients, me, and you.

And so you probably have heard very little about consumer statutes, unless you’ve had an issue and had to find someone like me.

You are right. Nobody was listening to you.

But unlike what most folks on “my side” of issues appear to think about you, I don’t think you are stupid. I think you — you who secretly voted for Trump, or who wear MAGA hats everywhere, or who feel very uncomfortable with how much the culture around you seems to have changed in ways that are hostile to you — all of you have legitimate concerns that were not adequately heard by people on the “liberal” side of many topics, and nobody on “my side” was talking about them other than to insult you. I’m sorry. That’s a terrible way to build unity.

And in all that noise created by those other hot-button topics, few people on either side have refocused the conversation on issues that could create more common ground among people. Finding common ground is historically a defining trait of being American.

And what else does it mean to be American? It means telling the truth, playing by the rules, standing up to authority when it abuses its power, and insisting on fairness, even if you risk your neck for it.

I am finally speaking out after years of remaining politely and publicly neutral.

I am speaking out now about what I, in my years of professional experience, upbringing and generations of American heritage and education know to be disturbing, unconstitutional and unfair actions by the president that harm middle class people:

The manner of the changes offend the basic notions of believing in freedom. They violate the checks and balances that the Framers put in place to prevent “monarchy” -type abuses of power. Even if some of the goals are worth considering, the manner in which they are being pursued is not constitutional.

The means do not justify the ends in a free country.

I’ll repeat: the means do not justify the ends in a free country. If that’s how it’s done, we cease to be free.

And I never, until the current climate, thought that saying all this would make me a target for potential canceling, censorship, or worse. But I am seeing this start to happen to people not much more “big time” than I am, and so I worry. But I was raised by generations of Americans who stand up for what is right and true, so if I suffer for what I am saying, at least I can say my parents did not raise a coward.

I have so many people come to me who tell themselves they are stupid for “falling for” a scam. I tell them they are never, ever stupid for believing a lie.

Because this is America, and we are actually allowed to believe that the person we are doing business with is telling us the truth. Most people are telling the truth. And some liars tell really, really good lies.

Conservatives and Republicans, I am deeply sorry that you were lied to. I want your values, your voice, and your concerns to be heard. I know that what we are all seeing now is not exactly what you thought you were going to get.

Speak up. Tell your representatives they can speak up, too.

My only hope now is that you have the courage to say so. Throw the tea in to the harbor. Tell the emperor he has no clothes.

You don’t need to become woke, or politically correct, or a snowflake to speak up when something is wrong. In fact, it will make you the opposite.

It will just underscore that you are American. Just like me, your friendly consumer lawyer.