Judy Dugan

We've reported about what's wrong in the secrecy around BP's payments to Kenneth Feinberg and his law firm, which is doling out compensation for BP's devastating oil spill in the Gulf.

Monday, though, the Center for Justice and Democracy got deep into the guts of the matter.

Late last week, as the presidential oil spill commission’s co-chair and staff blamed BP’s cost-cutting and “failure of management” for the devastating spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP managers claimed that the government estimate of the amount of the spill by should be cut 20% to 50%, which would save the company billions in fines.

The wee island nation of Fiji managed Wednesday to back down a California-owned company and extract a fee of 8 US cents per liter on Fiji Water. The state of California can't even manage to back down Big Oil and charge a few cents a gallon on oil pumped out of its public lands. Jerry Brown, are you listening?

Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York, a veteran liberal representing Brooklyn, just issued a scary/hilarious dare to the conservative incoming House leaders who are "pledging" to repeal all of the federal health reform.

He's filing a series of bills during the lame duck session of Congress, each intended to repeal a popular and consumer-protective portion of the federal Patient Protection Act. The repeals will collectively be called the HIPA-CRIT Act.

The biggest political scandal of 2010 is an issue that nearly all Americans agree on, yet there's hardly a peep from the electorate. In large part that's because elected officials, particularly in Congress, want to keep it as far in the shadows as possible. Yet it's such a simple thing: Should the insurance industry, oil companies, the financial industry, other corporations and unions have to disclose the hundreds of millions of dollars they are spending to elect politicians who will do their bidding, and defeat those who resist ? 

Oregon has examined the federal health reform, raised an eyebrow and said "We're going to do better, and do it without forcing people to buy private insurance." Of all the states, it may be in the best position to lead the way. Sen. Ron Wyden, who is pushing the White House to let Oregon head in a different direction, says the loathed "individual mandate" will be the first thing in the trash bin.

Washington, DC — Federal rules issued today on how much health insurers must spend on health care vs. administration and profit are nearly unchanged from the proposals sent to the Department of Health and Human Services by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. HHS deserves credit for resisting a lobbyist onslaught demanding more loopholes in the law requiring the industry to spend 80% to 85% of premium dollars on health care, said Consumer Watchdog.