Category Archives: Uncategorized
Utilities Spend Lots Of Public’s Money To Influence State Politics
by Teri Sforza, The Orange County Register
“Your No. 1 example, PG&E, is textbook!” [said Chapman University political science professor Mark Chapin Johnson.] “They answer to the state through the PUC, not their shareholders. … Whenever PG&E wishes to contribute vast sums of ratepayers’ monthly payments to the political process, all PG&E needs do is gain permission to raise rates with the PUC to cover such contributions. Public shareholders or ratepayers have no say in the process. Is this a great system or what? Talk about incestuous!” Read More ›
FBI Hits Nursing Home With Search Warrants
by Marjie Lundstrom, The Sacramento Bee
California’s largest nursing home owner is facing a new round of government scrutiny as the FBI served search warrants last week at his Riverside facility. … The latest investigations shine the spotlight again on [Shlomo] Rechnitz, a 44-year-old Los Angeles entrepreneur whose facilities have been the focus of multiple local, state and federal probes, along with stepped-up scrutiny by health officials. The Bee found that homes he owned for all of last year were tagged with nearly triple as many serious deficiencies per 1,000 beds as the statewide average in 2014. Read More ›
Corinthian College Students Sort Through Confusion, Bureaucracy After Company’s Fall
by Katy Murphy, Contra Costa Times
The Department of Education created a special claim form for students who as far back as 2010 attended Heald programs it found to have inflated job-placement numbers – about 80 percent of all of the chain’s offerings. Roughly 6,100 such claims had been filed as of mid-October compared with only a handful in the past. … The department has estimated that roughly 40,000 former Heald students alone were defrauded because of their programs’ phony job placement rates and are eligible for the relief. Read More ›
A Fiat Chrysler Discount Will Cost You Your Right To Sue
by David Lazarus, Los Angeles Times
Until now, experts say, no major car manufacturer has sought to encourage customers to forgo their right to sue. … Many large businesses prefer arbitration because settlements are limited and because professional arbitrators often favor the corporate side. Arbitrators’ fees are typically paid by the company in a dispute. A 2007 report by Public Citizen found that over a four-year period, arbitrators ruled in favor of banks and credit card companies 94 percent of the time in disputes with California consumers. Read More ›
More Trouble For ITT Education Services: Agency Restricts For-Profit’s Use Of Federal Student Aid
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
The new restrictions from the Dept. of Education are just the latest regulatory and legal issue for ITT Educational Services. Last month, the company revealed that the Department of Justice was looking into whether the company defrauded the federal government. … Back in May, the SEC filed fraud charges against current and former executives with the company for their part in concealing problems with company-run student loan programs. … The company has faced actions from several states, including the suspension of GI Bill Eligibility in the state of California in May of this year. Read More ›
Judge Consulted Edison On San Onofre Deal
by Jeff McDonald, San Diego Union-Tribune
The utilities commission is unique among state agencies in that it employs judges who serve as arbiters, even when people have a beef with the agency itself. Members of the public cannot take action in Superior Court to challenge a utilities commission decision, but must appear before a commission employee. … The commission tasked an outside attorney to review its record on such private dealings, and the firm in June reported that violations are common and tilt the process in favor of utility companies. Legislators passed a slate of reform bills, which were vetoed earlier this month by Gov. Jerry Brown, who said they contained conflicting provisions that made them unworkable. Read More ›
Rise Of The Business Democrat
by Laurel Rosenhall, CalMatters
Since 2013, the group’s political action committee has taken in more than $4 million, with nearly one-third of that coming from Chevron, PG&E and other oil and gas companies. Other major donors include Wal-Mart, a hospital association and a realtors group. … Overall, the moderate Democrat committee has spent $2.3 million on campaign efforts since 2013 – more than half of it focused on five legislative races in the Central Valley, Orange County and Los Angeles. Voters elected three of the five candidates on which the committee spent the most in the last election. Read More ›
Geico Agrees To $6-Million Settlement In Discriminatory Pricing Case
by Nick Shively, Los Angeles Times
The agreement stems from a petition filed by the Consumer Federation of California asking the department to take action against the Chevy Chase, Md.-based insurer on the grounds that it was discriminating based on occupation, education level and other personal characteristics. The federation had tested Geico’s website and found the insurer misrepresented information for customers who were unmarried, unemployed or employed in a low-wage occupation, had not obtained a four-year college degree and had gaps in insurance coverage, according to the petition documents. Read More ›
AT&T Making It Even Harder For You To Protect Your Privacy
by David Lazarus, Los Angeles TImes
In completing his company’s $49-billion acquisition of DirecTV last month, AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said it was “all about giving customers more choices.” He meant entertainment and service choices, but he could just as easily have been referring to the myriad of decisions customers will encounter … Read More ›
Con Artist Exploits A Grandmother’s Love Of Family
by Nancy Peverini, commentary in The Sacramento Bee
Even though the plot was foiled, it destroyed my mother’s sense of independence. She felt guilty and embarrassed – a common reaction that allows these scams to continue because many of our elderly do not want others to know that they fell for a scam. … We need to ring the bell more so our parents will be protected. According to some estimates, seniors account for 30 percent of all financial fraud. Consumer groups have tips to avoid getting ripped off. …Definitely don’t provide your credit card information. Read More ›
Report Blasts Secret Talks Between Utilities, CPUC
by Jaxon Van Derbeken, San Francisco Chronicle
The ability of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and other utilities to engage in back-channel talks with top California Public Utilities Commission officials unfairly skews decisions in favor of big-money interests, and the practice should be banned in rate cases, a review requested by the state agency concluded Monday. Such back-door communications became notorious last year when e-mails showed that a PG&E executive had engaged in a secret campaign to obtain a preferred judge in a $1.3 billion rate-setting case before the utilities commission. Those and other back-channel contacts — known as ex parte communications — are the focus of federal and state criminal investigations. Read More ›
Appeals Court OKs Record Penalty Against PG&E
by Vanessa Blum, The Recorder
A California appeals court on Tuesday upheld a $14.35 million fine levied against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. by the California Public Utilities Commission for providing false information to the commission in the wake of the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion. … “Although the amount is large, so is the real and potential harm caused by PG&E’s inaction,” Justice James Richman wrote in a decision joined by J. Anthony Kline and Marla Miller. “PG&E does not argue that it lacks the ability to pay the fine.” The company said in a statement Tuesday evening that it does not plan to appeal the court’s ruling. Read More ›
How Recalls Work (And Don’t) And Why They’re All So Different
by Kate Cox, Consumerist
Where do recalls come from, and how are they handled? … The government maintains a one-stop shop website for listing recalls, but there is no National Bureau of Recalls… as much as it might help consumers if there were. Instead, a patchwork arrangement of four independent agencies is responsible for consumers’ health and safety. The agencies each cover a different aspect of health and safety — food, cars, medicines, household goods, and so on — and each of the four has a different process for initiating recalls and notifying consumers. Here’s how it all works. Read More ›