All the finalists at the Oakland Indie Awards were proud businesses and artists of Oakland that do wonderful things here in our community.  But some go beyond our East Bay city-some do work that impacts the United States as a whole.

Sungevity is one of those nominees.  Sungevity is a solar panel business based in Jack London Square that allows clients to lease solar panels for their roof as well as purchase them.  In doing so, Sungevity hopes to democratize solar panels by providing access to solar energy to a wider-based clientele.  Sungevity hopes this will make solar panels more widely used throughout the United States.

Another way Sungevity is working to spread interest and awareness about solar panels is to get them back on the White House.  Solar panels used to be on the White House during the Carter administration, but came down during the first Bush administration.  Sungevity wants to get them back on.  They sent a letter to the Obamas and started a website, http://solaronthewhitehouse.com/, where you can learn more and sign a petition to get involved.  According to Sungevity, the goal of this campaign and petition is “to drive awareness of the ease and affordability now available to homeowners and the dramatic effects it can have on not only slowing global warming, but also saving consumers money on their monthly power bill.”

You can learn more about Sungevity on their website.  And to learn about their push to get solar on the White House, check out solaronthewhitehouse.com.

Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign made many promises about change. Now, he is attempting to deliver on some of these campaign promises by proposing legislation that will create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). In early July, Obama introduced legislation to create the CFPA in the hopes of regulating the financial services industry to protect consumers from predatory and sneaky practices. The CFPA would be in charge of “writing and enforcing consumer protection rules, continuously monitoring the market for risks to consumers and publishing significant findings at least once a year, and streamlining regulatory requirements and making sure financial product disclosures are understandable and helpful.” This organization is being created not only to increase consumer protection in the financial industry, but also to centralize the responsibility in the wake of many regulatory lapses. Obama hopes that the CFPA “will have the power to set standards so that companies compete by offering innovative products that consumers actually want — and actually understand. Those ridiculous contracts with pages of fine print that no one can figure out — those things will be a thing of the past. And enforcement will be the rule, not the exception.” To read more about Obama’s CFPA proposal, click here.

Despite the good intentions of Obama’s CFPA, many claim that it would only make the regulatory process more difficult and thus hurt consumers in the long run. The CFPA could end up harming consumers by suppressing innovation, increasing operating costs, and damaging the integrity of various institutions. In order to ease the concerns of critics, House Financial Services Representative Barney Frank has delayed action on the agency until September to give consumer advocates and the financial industry more time to offer input and respond. To read more about opposition to the CFPA, click here.