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Media Hit | Budget

The Conversation: Tax havens let billions vanish into thin air

Pulitzer Prize wining author David Cay Johnston uses our report for the theme in his op-ed, explaining how ordinary taxpayers bear the cost of tax havens and loopholes "through higher state taxes, fewer services or the state taking on more debt to fund current operations".
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/02/17/5194645/tax-havens-let-billions-vanish....

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Health Care

Anthem hikes rates 22%

Anthem Blue Cross is moving forward with a new rate hike on California consumers which will leave hundreds of thousands of individuals paying an average 22 percent more for insurance this year. Anthem had proposed raising rates 26 percent, but trimmed the rate to 22 percent after the California Department of Insurance (CDI) found the original increase unreasonable.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection, Food

Dangers on Our Dinner Tables | Ed Mierzwinski

Sequestration is one of the hottest topics in D.C. right now, but one consequence that has been largely overlooked is the impact that these budget cuts would have on our dinner tables and our health.

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Media Hit | Health Care

Letter to the Editor: Why healthcare costs so much

Wesley Samms' letter to the editor regarding the recent LA Times article: "Small surgery, huge markup," Business, Jan. 31

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Tax

Offshore Tax Dodging Blows a $7 Billion Hole in California Budget:

Sacramento, February 5th – With California “on the move” with its budget CALPIRG released a new study revealing that California lost $7.147 Billion due to offshore tax dodging in 2012. Many of America’s wealthiest individuals and largest corporations, including Wells Fargo in California, use tax loopholes to shift profits made in America to offshore tax havens, where they pay little to no taxes.

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News Release | CALPIRG | Consumer Protection

CALPIRG Applauds FTC’s New Privacy Guidelines for Online Apps

“When less than one-third of Americans feel that they are in control of their personal information on their mobile devices, clearly there is a problem,” said Jon Fox, consumer advocate with CALPIRG.

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News Release | CALPIRG | Consumer Protection

Facebook Search Puts Privacy at Risk

CALPIRG calls on consumers to update privacy settings in light of Facebook's new social search engine, Graph Search.

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Budget, Democracy, Tax

California Cities Are Nation’s Best & Worst for Spending Transparency

New report reviews and grades the nation’s thirty largest cities on how effectively they allow the public to track budgets, contracting, subsidies, grants and requests for quality-of-life services.

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Consumer Protection

CALPIRG Applauds AG’s New Privacy Guidelines for Online Apps

New guidelines urge mobile app developers to be judicious in the data they collect while being mindful of user privacy - shining the spotlight on consumer privacy.

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News Release | CALPIRG Education Fund | Health Care

Aetna reduces rate following CALPIRG Ed Fund's review

 This week, Aetna Life Insurance Company announced plans to reduce its proposed increase in health insurance premiums. In November, CALPIRG Education Fund completed a review of the rate hike and recommended that the California Department of Insurance declare it unreasonable. Now, 68,000 small business employees impacted by the rate hike will see a significantly smaller increase in their health insurance premiums.

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Health Care

At Stake: What’s on the Line for Health Care Consumers in the Pending Supreme Court Case

The outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have far reaching impacts on consumers. The law is already working to improve the quality of care and reduce costs, with millions of Americans experiencing concrete improvements in their coverage.

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Consumer Protection, Higher Ed

The Campus Debit Card Trap

Banks and other financial firms take advantage of partnerships with colleges and universities, harming students.

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Report | CalPIRG Education Fund & Frontier Group | Budget, Transportation

Transportation and the New Generation

A new report released today by the CalPIRG Education Fund with Frontier Group demonstrates that Americans have been driving less since the middle of last decade.

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Consumer Protection

Making the Right Call

CALPIRG Education Fund releases new cell phone shoppers’ guide offering simple tips consumers can take to save money when buying a new cell phone.

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Report | CALPIRG Education Fund | Safe Energy

Too Close to Home

In the United States, 49 million Americans, including 2.3 million Californians, receive their drinking water from surface sources located within 50 miles of an active nuclear power plant —inside the boundary the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses to assess risk to food and water supplies.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

Do Not Track gets another push | Jon Fox

FTC tells congress of need for meaningful Do Not Track policies.

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Blog Post | Budget, Consumer Protection, Higher Ed

New FCC rules to prevent cramming on landline phone bills | Jon Fox

FCC announces new rules to stop “Cramming” on land lines, ignores wireless phone lines.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

LA Times highlights failure to provide cheap broadband Internet | Jon Fox

LA Times columnist David Lazarus highlights the fact that the USA is falling behind the rest of the world in providing access to low coast quality Internet service.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

CFPB Release new tools to help students manage debt | Jon Fox

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launches a beta version of the Financial Aid Comparison Shopper - an interactive online tool designed to help students plan for the costs of higher education.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

CFPB to announce mortgage servicing rules and other consumer news of the week | Ed Mierzwinski

(Update: phottos added.) Today, U.S. PIRG will be an invited guest as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposes new mortgage servicing rules to prevent, among other things, a recurrence of the robo-signing scandal. Among the other important news items of the week, in case you missed it, Ohio has made it harder for aggrieved consumers to obtain redress when ripped off.

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  • Apples To Twinkies
    Find out how government subsidies disproportionately benefit junk food over fresh fruit and vegetables.
    Get the report
  • Bigger Banks, Bigger Fees
    Our survey found that more than half of banks are not entirely upfront about their fees. Some even broke the law.
    Get the report
  • DANGEROUS TOYS ON STORE SHELVES?
    Find out what to watch out for — from toxic chemicals to choking hazards — in our “Trouble In Toyland” report.
    Get the report

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