December 6, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

DOGE Needs to Look at Biden Justice Department abuse of power in Rocket Mortgage case

By Rick Manning

This afternoon, Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP leaders met with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to discuss their efforts to identify fraud, waste and abuse within the federal government.  Americans for Limited Government has been at the forefront of this fight to reduce the size and scope of the federal government since our inception more than twenty years ago, so this meeting and the emphasis on actually cutting government is refreshing and a validation of our multi-decade effort.

One of the more egregious abuses of power is the U.S. Department of Justice’s abuse of its power to harass citizens and companies through frivolous or dramatically expanded charges if that company/person pushes back against their legal threats.

An example of this is an October 21, 2024 lawsuit that the Biden administration brought against Rocket Mortgage because they followed the law.

That’s right, you read it correctly, Rocket Mortgage is having to spend millions of dollars in legal fees to defend itself against charges around actions they legally have no control over.

The DOJ lawsuit stems from a claim that a home was unfairly appraised and somehow that was Rocket Mortgages’ fault.

It is important to note that while a mortgage company may contract with the appraiser, the law requires that the appraisal be completely independent of the mortgage company. In other words, it is illegal for the mortgage company to put their thumb on the scale in the determination of the value of a house under consideration for financing. In fact, to ensure appraisal independence is maintained, mortgage lenders contract through third-party appraisal management companies and have no authority over the independent appraisers.

Yet, somehow, the Justice Department chose to splash Rocket Mortgage’s corporate name as the lead in their October 21, 2024 press release announcing a suit for racial discrimination in a clear attempt to grab headlines at the expense of the online mortgage innovator.  Rocket Mortgage has received numerous customer service satisfaction awards from J.D. Power, and the decision by DOJ to very publicly seek to do harm to this company through their news release headline is a demonstration of the soft power to destroy which an out of control Justice Department possesses. The DOJ isn’t alone – the agency’s lawsuit is piling on to charges levied earlier this year by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

What makes this abuse of power particularly difficult to accept is that the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act changed federal law to ensure that the mortgage provider and the appraiser are independent from one another in order to avoid a conflict of interest. 

In an Orwellian twist, the Biden DOJ is seeking to harm a company’s reputation using the argument that they should have broken that law by putting pressure on the appraiser to come up with the right number in direct violation of the law.

One has to assume that Justice Department lawyers have been updated on the 2010 changes in law, so one can only wonder why they would drag a company that is changing how mortgages are done through the mud with accusations of racism? 

If you follow the law, you should not find yourself on the wrong end of a federal government lawsuit.

The fact that the rule of law has been so contorted under the current Justice Department is why the culture at DOJ must be changed.  Whether it comes from the DOGE group, Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, HUD Secretary nominee Scott Turner, the House Judiciary Committee led by Chairman Jim Jordan or some combination of all four, there must be repercussions for those bureaucrats who abuse their positions and the law at the expense of those who follow it.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/12/doge-needs-to-look-at-biden-justice-department-abuse-of-power-in-rocket-mortgage-case/

Speaker Johnson: Kids online ‘safety’ bill will have ‘unintended consequences’. He’s right. It will increase government censorship.

By Robert Romano

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is blocking legislation in the House warning in an interview of “unintended consequences” that would result from dramatically reducing civil liability protections for online platforms, e-commerce stores, websites and other small businesses that are unable to comply with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations and/or withstand civil suits from states that would be made free to pursue litigation against websites.

On Sept. 18, the House Energy and Commerce Committee marked up the so-called Kids Online Safety Act and Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the proposed bills that erode some of the protections every website in the country with users enjoys under existing law including Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

In an interview with Punchbowl News, Johnson stated, “I love the principle, but the details of that are very problematic.”

Johnson’s statement came after House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) raised a similar warning in starker terms, warning in an interview with the Washington Reporter that the proposals would give “more power to the Biden administration over censorship… and [to] go [after] conservative organizations, like pro-life groups.”

Under current law, every website that has users is protected under 47 U.S.C. Section 230(c)(1) which states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This is the broad liability exemption that makes it possible for websites to host other people’s content without fear of being sued.

Subsections (c)(2)(a) and (c­)(2)(b) form the other part of that protection, stating, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described…” And this is the part that grants the companies power to remove content at their discretion they find objectionable, necessary to preserve First Amendment protections for the sites. 

But this would change in large part under the new proposals. In Section 110 of the Kids Online Safety Act, civil actions may be brought by states against any “public-facing website, online service, online application, or mobile application that predominantly provides a community forum for user-generated content” including perceived “harms” allegedly inflicted upon users including minors:  “In any case in which the attorney general of a State has reason to believe that a covered platform has violated or is violating section 103, 104, or 105, the State, as parens patriae, may bring a civil action on behalf of the residents of the State in a district court of the United States or a State court of appropriate jurisdiction…”

Some of those provisions that apply to every website with users would include Section 103’s providing that users the site “knows is a minor” the site must “limit the ability of other users or visitors to communicate with the minor” and to “limit design features that encourage or increase the frequency, time spent, or activity of minors on the covered platform” like “such as infinite scrolling, auto playing, rewards for time spent on the platform, notifications, badges, push alerts, and other interactive elements that result in compulsive usage of the covered platform by the minor…”

Since incentives to use websites, whether by adults or minors, are designed to facilitate commerce and ad revenue, and are standard practice, websites with users would be left with a choice: make two websites or applications, one for kids, and one for adults, bar kids from using the platform or go out of business.

This would require content filtration on behalf of minors and other highly expensive mechanisms that could harm small businesses from functioning on the internet at all and otherwise would raise serious First Amendment concerns because it would fundamentally alter the content being published on these websites and applications.

Scalise is right, by design, it will result in censorship and to Johnson’s point, it might not even be unintended.

And carrying out the provisions would be guidances and other regulations by the Federal Trade Commission against all websites and applications subject to the bill, which again, is any website with users, of which there are millions.

Websites and platforms might not know they were not properly complying until they are notified by the FTC or by a suit raised by a state, raising the specter of there being 51 different sets of rules governing 51 different internets in the country (50 states plus the federal version), wherein those rules will constantly be changing based on the next court case that came down. This will break the internet.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/10/speaker-johnson-kids-online-safety-bill-will-have-unintended-consequences-hes-right-it-will-increase-government-censorship/

ALG Urges Confirmation of Russ Vought as OMB Director

Dec. 5, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging the Senate to confirm President-elect Donald’s Trump nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought:

“Russ Vought is the best possible choice to head the Office of Management and Budget in President Trump’s second term. It should be remembered that Vought served in President Trump’s first term as the Acting OMB Director and during his confirmation was attacked by Senate Democrats for being a Christian, as strange as that sounds.

“But Mr. Vought’s importance to the Trump administration is really found in his dedication to limited, constitutional government principles.  As the Elon Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy led DOGE commission gets headlines, it will be Russ Vought and his crew at OMB who will be reviewing and ultimately approving every regulatory and budgetary change, doing the real hard work of putting into action what others propose.  If I were to personally choose a Director for the Office of Management and Budget, it would be Russ Vought, who I have known for years and has the competence, intelligence and experience to make the needed reorganization of the federal government to bring the deficit and out of control administrative state under control.

“Donald Trump was elected President to fundamentally transform administrative state abuses and overreaches, and Russ Vought will be the man who makes those promises happen. America needs Russ Vought as OMB Director and the Senate should move without delay to put him in place Day One of the Trump second term.”

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2024/12/alg-urges-confirmation-of-russ-vought-as-omb-director/