Stolen identity.Kevin Drum's article ("You Own You," December 2005) provides a number of commonsense approaches for combating identity theft. At the same time, it fails in one crucial regard. Specifically, it fails to even mention the fact that the GOP-controlled Congress changed the law governing Credit Reporting Bureaus (CRBs), when it significantly amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is legislation embodied in title VI of the Consumer Credit Protection Act (15 U.S.C.A. § 1681 et seq. [1968]), which was enacted by Congress in 1970 to ensure that reporting activities relating to various consumer transactions are conducted in a (15 USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. 1681 et seq et seq. (et seek) n. abbreviation for the Latin phrase et sequentes meaning "and the following." It is commonly used by lawyers to include numbered lists, pages or sections after the first number is stated, as in "the rules of the road are found in Vehicle Code .). On Jan. 1, 2004, the so-called amended Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act Under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACT Act or FACTA, Pub.L. 108-159) which was passed by the United States Congress on December 4 2003 as an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumers can request and obtain a free credit report went into effect. Within the amendments, Congress essentially gave the CRBs immunity from any liability for their actions under state law. I know, because I was preparing to file a class action suit on behalf of the victims of identity theft under state law negligence theories, in the event that the act failed to pass into law. Congress dashed our hopes by specifically preempting CRBs from liability under state law, and so watered down the federal remedies as to render them useless. So much for the GOP's "small government federalists." Any advice to Democrats seeking to distinguish themselves from their GOP counterparts, such as those in Mr. Drum's article, should make this information the central argument, rather than excluding it entirely. Parenthetically par·en·thet·i·cal adj. also par·en·thet·ic 1. Set off within or as if within parentheses; qualifying or explanatory: a parenthetical remark. 2. Using or containing parentheses. , I note this is not the only place where the GOP has eviscerated state remedies and passed federal laws that do little to protect consumers. The so-called CAN SPAM act provides another shining example of how the GOP-controlled Congress stepped in and destroyed through preemption preemption U.S. policy that allowed the first settlers, or squatters, on public land to buy the land they had improved. Since improved land, coveted by speculators, was often priced too high for squatters to buy at auction, temporary preemptive laws allowed them to acquire any consumer remedies under state law, while at the same time making the federal law completely ineffective. If you don't believe it, ask yourself how effective CAN SPAM has been in stopping spam from going to your inbox. Douglas E. McKinley, Jr. Richland, Washington |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion