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Despite the urban legends about ACORN and dead people voting in Chicago, the fact is that there is practically no voter fraud in the US. In it’s July 10, 2012 edition, the Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News reported that “the Republican National Lawyers Association last year published a report showing 400 election fraud prosecutions had happened over a decade nationwide. That is not even one per state per year.” Not even one whole case per state per year! That’s what the Republicans say.
And here’s the smoking gun: in court filings in the lawsuit brought against it for its voter ID law, the state of Pennsylvania made these stipulations:

“There have been no investigations or prosecutions of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania; and the parties do not have direct personal knowledge of any such investigations or prosecutions in other states.” The state further stipulated that it “will not offer any evidence in this action that in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania and elsewhere,” nor will it “offer argument or evidence that in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the Photo ID law.”

In other words, not only could they not find fraud that would be corrected by ID laws in PA, they don’t claim it exists anywhere in the nation! Implementation of these laws will cost PA taxpayers $8 million to correct a problem not even proponents claim exists.

So, why these laws? Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai, in a speech celebrating GOP accomplishments, provided the answer:

“Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

In my opinion, we should all be outraged at this attempted misuse of election law to gain unfair political advantage for one party over the other.

It is certainly true that the Dodd-Frank Act is quite large and extensive (and typically labyrinthian in many ways), and it has been pointed out that the legislation in response to the financial crisis was enacted in a bit of “ready, fire, aim” attempt to provide remedies to financial instability by simply trying to “make it so” ( a la Captain Picard) by mandating measures to do so in legislation.

However, the Office of Financial Research does not deserve such Orwellian fear-mongering that Fox News has hyperbolized. The establishment of the OFR constitutes some of the Dodd-Frank Act provisions that have the most potential to actually contribute to maintaining the health of the financial industry for the benefit of both the public good and the financial industry itself.

The OFR has two main divisions: a research division and a data division. True, the OFR has some notable powers to request/require that a greater level of information about financial positions and transactions be reported to federal regulators. But this power existed in the numerous separate regulatory agencies prior to the establishment of the OFR !

Although it is true that certain entities and activities of the financial sector that were not included in regulatory oversight have been included in the federal oversight umbrella as a result of Dodd Frank (e.g., the so-called shadow banking system comprised of investment bankers and bilateral financial derivatives contracts), who could argue that including the formerly opaque and unknown financial activities of systemically important financial actors is not a reasonable step to take in light of what has transpired ?

Furthermore, the FDIC, formerly tasked with oversight of member banks with deposit accounts backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. Government, now has responsibility for managing work-outs of the largest financial institutions, the so-called Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs) — of which the largest institutions are those commonly called Too Big To Fail.

The Too Big To Fail financial institutions have only gotten BIGGER as a result of the industry consolidations that took place when Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, and Bear Stearns all failed and were absorbed into Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase. Efforts to stay on top of the risks (to both the taxpayer and the financial system) of the TBTF institutions on the part of the FDIC (one of the best agencies of the lot) should be applauded, in my opinion.

The role of the Office of Financial Research is not to be some stealth overlord with infinite powers, but rather as a consolidator and coordinator of accurate and consistent data and financial analysis with regards to the makeup and behavior of the financial system — and to provide that consistent and more accurate view of the financial system to the other specialized regulators. This is a daunting enough task to seek to accomplish even in an objective and rational climate that recognizes the benefits that come with such an initiative.

Even though it is also important to prevent bureaucratic sprawl and inefficiency in government as a general rule, harping about every initiative to address financial regulation and reform in a reasonable way — particularly those designed to reduce redundancy and inefficiency in the regulatory oversight process (as is the OFR) — is a disservice to the important goal of enabling responsible free enterprise under some kind of ‘adult supervision’. Fox News is barking up the wrong tree here, and is shooting itself, and its viewers, in the foot.