Apparently there’s no such thing as a corporate criminal

Unless he profits at the Trump family’s expense, I suppose.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has canceled or halted a total of 159 enforcement actions against 166 corporations, according to a report from Public Citizen released (January 15). As a result of this retreat, at least 18 corporations accused of lawbreaking avoided paying a total of $3.1 billion in penalties for misconduct…

Public Citizen’s report found that corporations with close ties to Trump and the administration are benefiting from canceled and frozen enforcement. More than 30 made donations to fund Trump’s inauguration or White House ballroom. Seventeen have revolving door or insider connections with the administration. Twelve hired lobbyists who are closely allied with the administration. Ten have business relationships with Trump’s private companies. And nine made political contributions backing Trump’s presidential campaign. - Public Citizen

All the handouts Big Meat gets

And despite all the freebies being put into the system I understand that rump roast is pushing about a dollar a bite, these days.

The federal government allows livestock grazing across an area of publicly owned land more than twice the size of California, making ranching the largest land use in the West. Billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies support the system, which often harms the environment.

As President Donald Trump’s administration pushes a pro-ranching agenda, ProPublica and High Country News investigated how public lands ranching has evolved. We filed more than 100 public record requests and sued the Bureau of Land Management to pry free documents and data; we interviewed everyone from ranchers to conservationists; and we toured ranching operations in Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Nevada.

The resulting three-part investigation digs into the subsidies baked into ranching, the environmental impacts from livestock and the political clout that protects this status quo. - ProPublica

Challenging student loan wage garnishment

This has suggestions.

For the first time since the onset of COVID-19, the Trump administration is set to garnish U.S. workers’ wages for defaulted student loans. The Department of Education has announced that beginning this week it will send at least 1,000 borrowers a notice of intent to garnish wages, sending additional notices every month as it expands its efforts to forcibly collect money from millions of borrowers in default…

But debtors shouldn’t feel hopeless. The truth is, there are a host of options at debtors’ disposal that the Department of Education does not tell borrowers about. Many borrowers who receive default notices will actually be eligible for debt cancellation, whether they know it or not.

Cancellation programs like Total and Permanent Disability, False Certification, and Borrower Defense can provide relief for millions of borrowers who deserve it because their university cheated them or closed down while they were enrolled. Another little-known option that borrowers have is to apply for a hardship exemption if wage garnishment causes them financial hardship. While temporary, and certainly not a solution to the student debt crisis, debtors can apply to pause or reduce forced collections if they are in difficult circumstances. - Truthout

The private sector takeover of disaster recovery

This has been going on for a while. But it’s accelerating now.

But even before President Donald Trump took office with an eye toward diminishing the agency, recovery funds couldn’t keep up with victims’ needs. Now, as the administration slashes FEMA funding, withholds aid, and puts more of the onus of recovery onto individual states, victim-assistance organizations feel that they’ve been left totally unprepared, with too few case managers to go around. All of these issues are likely to grow more severe in the coming year, as a review board appointed to reform the agency prepares to make its recommendations…

The private sector’s creeping influence over disaster recovery has been noted since at least 2007, when Naomi Klein published The Shock Doctrine, the book that injected the term “disaster capitalism” into a broader lexicon. But as climate change accelerates and hammers the United States with more billion-dollar catastrophes than ever before, privatization has become more common — and complicated. Private interests can quickly mobilize huge volunteer networks, giving campaigns, and rebuilding efforts in the wake of extreme weather. But, whatever their intentions, such measures are a consequence — and sometimes a cause — of the corrosion of public institutions originally intended to safeguard Americans. - Grist