FREEPORT — A stimulus loan and grant will pay to upgrade Freeport’s water and wastewater systems, according to Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.
Freeport will get a $1.35 million loan and a $1.17 million grant to finance the upgrades, Franken’s office reported.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture funding comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus act.
There are many issues in the financial reform debate that are hard. For example, breaking up the “too big to fail” banks, as proposed in the Brown-Kaufman amendment to the Senate bill, is really hard. This would have meant taking away implicit government subsidies worth tens of billions of dollars annually to the nation’s biggest banks. They kill in Washington to prevent things like this.
But Senator Franken had one that in principle was very easy. One big piece of the financial mess was the fact the bond rating agencies blessed every piece of garbage coming out of Wall Street as investment grade. This blessing allowed packages of extremely questionable subprime mortgages to be sold all over the world at top prices.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Al Franken and Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Friday pledged to help the victims of the June 17 tornadoes in Minnesota.
Franken on Friday said he is in touch with the mayors of Wadena, Minn. and Albert Lea, Minn. – two communities among the hardest hit by tornadoes on Thursday. Franken pledged to help the families of the three people killed in the tornadoes and said the senators said they are working with state and local officials on the rebuilding process.
Sen. Al Franken Statement
“First and foremost, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the three people killed in Thursday’s tornadoes that hit communities across Minnesota. My office will assist those families in any way it can.
“My thoughts are also with the many other residents and communities whose property and homes were uprooted by these storms. In response, I have sent staff to work with local and state officials on the ground in these communities to not only assess the extent of the damage, but also to begin the recovery and rebuilding process.
“As soon as we learn the extent of the damage caused by these tornadoes, I stand ready to work with local, state, and federal officials to bring assistance to those hurt by the tornadoes.”
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) railed against the Supreme Court in a speech to progressive legal scholars Thursday night, declaring that “the Roberts Court has systematically dismantled the legal protections that help ordinary people find justice when wronged by the economically powerful.”
Franken in particular decried the way conservative legal scholars have changed the popular perception of what Supreme Court justices do — and what justice is.
One of the great mysteries of modern politics today is how the state of Minnesota could have produced both Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) and Democrat Sen. Al Franken. While Bachmann this week was accusing the Obama administration of “fleecing” BP, urging its execs not to be “chumps,” and suggesting that a $20 billion escrow fund for oil spill victims was a form of “wealth redistribution,” Franken Thursday night was wowing an audience of lawyers with a remarkably pointed critique of the Roberts court and its efforts to enhance the power of already powerful corporations. The contrast couldn’t be more different.
The U.S. Senate approved an amendment sponsored by Sen. Al Franken that would create an office to investigate complaints by homeowners who believe their mortgage handlers are breaking the law. The amendment would create an Office of the Homeowner Advocate using money from the TARP program.
“This victory means help for the many Minnesotans who are in danger of losing their homes through no fault of their own,” said Franken. “These families are doing their best in a tough economy that they didn’t create. And they need to know there’s someone who has their back when they’re trying to navigate the already stressful system of avoiding foreclosure.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken (D-Minn.) today (Thursday, June 17) announced $5,428,173 in stimulus funding to support advanced energy-efficient building technology projects for three Minnesota-based companies, Honeywell International, Inc., SAGE Electrochromics, Inc., and the 3M Company.
Funding was awarded through the Department of Energy from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The projects selected will help make the nation’s buildings more energy efficient and cost-effective.
House and Senate negotiators voted on Tuesday to strip new conflict-of-interest rules for credit rating agencies out of a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system, leaving in place a process that many analysts say contributed to the proliferation of troubled mortgage-backed securities that were a cause of the 2008 financial crisis.
Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, had championed a proposal that would end a longstanding practice of banks choosing the rating agencies, like Moody’s Investors Service or Standard & Poor’s, that evaluate the securities they issue. Mr. Franken and other critics of the process said having the banks choose and pay the ratings companies created a direct conflict of interest.
The Senate approved an amendment Wednesday to create an advocacy office within the Treasury Department that would investigate complaints from homeowners that lenders have unfairly excluded them from the government’s foreclosure prevention program.
Consumer advocates and homeowners have complained that there is no appeals process when lenders don’t follow the program’s rules, for example, by improperly excluding some borrowers from the plan, losing their documents or incorrectly calculating how much mortgage help a borrower should receive. The program, known as Making Home Affordable, has helped about 300,000 homeowners so far lower their mortgage payments by an average of $500 a month. But it has failed to make a significant impact on the housing crisis.
WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) – Credit rating agencies like Moody’s Corp and Standard & Poor’s hoped to win a reprieve on Tuesday from a proposal that would upend their business model as U.S. lawmakers sat down to craft a final rewrite of financial regulations
Lawmakers from the Senate and the House of Representatives could strip a provision designed to eliminate perceived conflicts of interest between the credit rating agencies and the companies whose debt they rate as they resolve differences between their two Wall Street reform bills.
