Sen. Elizabeth Warren isn't so busy running for president that she can't keep tabs on the job she was elected to do, or keep an eye on the banksters or the Trump administration's crooked doings.
On Thursday, she and Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal demanded in a letter that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai explain why he's allowing big telecom to call the shots at his agency. "Having the FCC's policy-making process rely on input from individuals employed by, or affiliated with, the corporations that it is tasked with overseeing is the very definition of regulatory capture," the two wrote. "The FCC should be working on behalf of American consumers, not giant telecommunications companies." The letter follows a report from the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight alleging that 15 of the seats on the FCC's 22-person Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council are now held by people representing private companies or industry groups.
Also on Thursday, Warren teamed up with Rep. Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, an Illinois Democrat, to let her longtime foe Jamie Dimon know that she's not too busy to keep tabs on JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s efforts to cheat customers. Chase has revived a policy forcing credit card users to take disputes to arbitration rather than to the courts, a practice that Warren says lets companies "get away with scamming large numbers of customers out of relatively small amounts of money."
"We write to express our strong concern with reports that Chase has decided to reverse course and to urge you to reconsider your plans to resume exploiting its customers," she and Garcia wrote. Chase announced the switch to mandatory arbitration last month, notifying customers that they have to send—by snail mail, through the U.S. Postal Service—a letter opting out of forced arbitration by Aug. 9 to preserve their right to sue. In other words, they're not making it easy for customers.
Warren is on it. Which has to make Wall Street scared out of its wits. It's to her everlasting credit that she has no problem at all making that enemy.
(If you have a Chase account and want to preserve your potential day in court, your letter must include your name, account number, address, and personal signature and be sent to P.O. Box 15298, Wilmington, DE 19850-5298. "Rejection notices sent to any other address, or sent by electronic mail or communicated orally, will not be accepted or effective," the Chase updated account terms say.)