Supreme Court weakens a key consumer protector — perhaps with an ulterior motive

with the FTC, ordering the company to pay the commission $1.27 billion to reimburse AMG’s borrowers. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, teeing up the case for the Supreme Court.

The problem, the justices observed, is that the law doesn’t give the commission the authority to do what it did. Specifically, if the FTC wants to seek monetary penalties, it can’t go directly to court to obtain them. Instead, it has to seek a cease-and-desist order from an administrative law judge, then go to court and prove “a reasonable man would have known under the circumstances that the conduct at issue was ‘dishonest or fraudulent” — for example, by showing the loans were issued after a cease-anddesist order. The statute also allows the commission to reach back only three years to address violations.

Prior to Thursday’s ruling, a number of lower courts had upheld the FTC’s practice of going straight to court for monetary penalties alongside injunctions, which has resulted in billions of dollars in reimbursements for defrauded Americans.

The commission, consumer advocates and state attorneys general all had urged the court to let that practice continue, arguing that it’s hard to deter businesses from ripping off consumers if the penalty is an injunction that lets the deceptive operator keep the money.

That’s not the justices’ call, though. Lawmakers gave the FTC sweeping purview over U.S. business practices, but were more grudging when it came to the FTC’s power to do anything about the problems it finds. Not only is the process of clawing back the proceeds of deceptive practices cumbersome and hamstrung, the commission also has no authority to create rules, nor can it slap real financial penalties onto lawbreakers until their second offense — that is, until they violate an order issued in response to the first time they broke the law.

As with the robocall decision (which limited the Federal Communications Commission’s reach), the court in the AMG case is telling an independent agency that it can’t fill in the policy gaps left by Congress. It’s long past time for Congress to give the FTC real authority to deter unfair and deceptive practices by businesses, and Thursday’s ruling proved it.

Jon Healey is the deputy editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles Times

All the headlines about the Cuban Communist Party’s Eighth Congress have declared a supposed “change of leadership.” But everything about it is a fraud, even if some people still want to believe it.

Fraud begins with language:

It is not a party. The Communist Party of Cuba is not an organization made up of individuals who organize to win elections as any party would. Actually, they have never run in an election. All other political parties are prohibited on the island. The constitution puts party members forever above the state and society. The party, which claims its members are 10 percent of Cuba’s population, have no real say on the designation of their leadership. The party directorate does not even resemble the late Soviet Politburo. It was created only to serve the will of Fidel and Raúl Castro.

Cuba’s president is not a president. Miguel DiazCanel was not elected by the people to implement and enforce the law. Rather, he was appointed by Raúl Castro to be the civilian face of the government with no real power to make important decisions.

It was not a congress. The Eighth Congress of the Communist Party this month — where the supposed change of command took place — was not a convention where the members gather to elect the leadership and adopt a specific platform. The “congress,” rather, was a meeting where all decisions had been pre-determined. The attendees were only there to accept what was ordered. The rest of Cuba’s citizens were completely excluded from the decision-making process of the “superior ruling force,” imposed on Cuban society.

Finally, it is not change. The change of leadership, as declared in the headlines, is merely changing the nameplate on the presidency. The real power remains with the Castro family, now moving into the next generation, including Raúl’s former son-in-law, Luis López Callejas, and Raúl’s son, Alejandro Castro Espín, as well as, in some degree, a few chiefs who oversee the powerful military-business conglomerate and control Cuba’s intelligence apparatus. They are trying to put a civilian face on the military-run state that is Cuba.

Some have even speculated that Diaz-Canel will be a Cuban Gorbachev.

But that is naive, even more so than saying that Nicolas Maduro could have been a reformist after Hugo Chavez. In the past few years, political repression has intensified, and new laws penalize freedom of expression and entrepreneurship. For example, a decree on telecommunications in 2019 penalizes social-media posts denouncing regime injustices; the new constitution, imposed a few months before, establishes “the right to combat … through armed combat against any that intend” to change the rule of the one-party Communist system.

At the same time, there have been few moments where the Castro dictatorship has been quite so vulnerable. Decades of economic failure have produced a deep humanitarian crisis. The loss of Venezuelan oil, the pandemic and the loss of tourist revenue — as well as a currency reform — have plunged the country into food shortages and despair. In addition, the regime has implemented a currency exchange — to keep all the hard currency that enters the island — that has triggered inflation, making subsistence difficult for many Cuban families.

They know that no positive change will come from those in power, much less from the party congress. Only the people can save the people. In March alone, there were more than 180 protests on the streets of Cuba. The regime’s reply has been more repression and more violence. In the words of Luis Almagro, general secretary of the OAS,

“The dictatorship of Havana applies state terrorism against its citizens.”

On April 15, thousands of Cubans lit candles or held cell phones and flashlights in nonviolent protest of the party congress. The Luz de Alarma — alarm light — protest, promoted by the Cuba Decide initiative, lit up the neighborhoods to claim that the heads of the Communist Party cannot decide the future of the nation for the people.

Democratic change in Cuba will begin only when fundamental human rights are guaranteed and citizens have a real possibility to participate.

Now that Fidel is gone and Raúl receding, he and his heirs behind the whole Communist Party congress masquerade are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No matter how weak the dictatorship has become, it won’t just give way spontaneously to a democratic transition. It must be pushed. As recent history has shown, citizens cannot by themselves confront a criminal group holding totalitarian power; the support of the international community is necessary as well.

The United States should be careful not to weaken pressure on the Cuban regime just at the point when it could have consequences. The Biden administration, the European Union — and the entire free world — now have the opportunity to side with the Cuban people, supporting our legitimate rights and our demand to determine our future.

Rosa Maria Payá is the daughter of the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá.