Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights
Public interest lawyer and founder of Consumer Watchdog, formerly known as the foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, and author of Proposition 103 (1988), which rolled back rates and regulated the auto insurance industry
Time Warner, Comcast and the Urge to Merge Yesterday in downtown Los Angeles, two members of California's Public Utilities Commission heard arguments about the massive merger proposed by Comcast and Time Warner. Comcast is big in Northern California. Time Warner has about two million customers in the Southland.
CA Insurance Commissioner Race Boils Down to Power Debate Democrat Dave Jones is running for re-election as California Insurance Commissioner . His opponents are Republican State Senator Ted Gaines and Peace and Freedom candidate Nathalie Hrizi . There's not much interest in next week's primary, but there's a lot at stake for November.
Next Week's Election… and Your Money Whoever's elected as California’s Insurance Commissioner next week will have a lot to say about how much you pay to insure your property. We look at the candidates.
Healthcare Reform Is about to Begin in California Republicans might want to repeal federal healthcare reform, or at least chip away at it while President Obama is still in office. In the meantime, officials in many states will be about the business of putting it into effect. In California, that task falls to Insurance Commissioner-elect Dave Jones , a Democrat who defeated Mike Villines , a Republican whose campaign was financed indirectly by insurance companies through “independent” TV ads by the state Chamber of Commerce. The Insurance Commissioner was made an elected officer when California voters approved Proposition 103 in 1988.
The Politics of California Car Insurance State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner says the Mercury Insurance Group has illegally denied auto coverage to bartenders, liquor-store owners, cocktail servers and artists by using standards it doesn't apply to people in other professions. He also claims that Mercury has failed to correct other violations going back more than ten years. The company could face millions of dollars in fines if it doesn't correct each violation in ten days.
Can the Initiative Process be Changed? In the June election, California voters will be confronted once again with dueling initiatives — two different measures dealing with the same subject in different ways. This time it’s the government taking of land by eminent domain. In the meantime, the confusion voters will undoubtedly face is a classic example of what we’re addressing today, which is the initiative process itself. When voters directly set policy as Prop 13 did with the property tax, they essentially become a fourth branch of government. But the measures they’re asked to decide are often extremely complex.
Trump's new look at civil rights and global warming President Trump is reportedly ready to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. We look at the possible consequences. On the second half of the program, we hear about cuts in Obama-Era civil rights programs called for by the Trump Administration's first budget plan.
What happens when America retreats from the world? Is President Trump taking his "America First" agenda to extremes, withdrawing the country from the international stage on trade and climate change, distancing America from its traditional allies across the Atlantic and even threatening to physically isolate the country through the building of a wall along its southern border? León Krauze guest hosts.
White House budget proposal slashes and burns President Trump's first budget request is considered dead on arrival in Congress — a familiar development in Capitol Hill. We hear what it reveals about the priorities of the new administration. What's likely to die… and what might survive?
Trump plays scolder-in-chief with NATO allies At the opening of NATO’s dramatic new headquarters in Brussels today, President Trump acknowledged that Article 5 — promising that “an attack on one nation is an attack on all” -- has only been invoked one time: in the aftermath of September 11. But the President failed to provide what 27 other Alliance members have been waiting for: a re-commitment by America’s new leader to Article 5. Instead, they got a scolding.
