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Featured

The Price of Pickel: The LADWP's Ratepayer Watchdog Comes With A $7 Billion Price Tag

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest, most powerful municipal utility in the country.

  • Read more about The Price of Pickel: The LADWP's Ratepayer Watchdog Comes With A $7 Billion Price Tag

Home Invasion: Google, Amazon Patent Filings Reveal Digital Home Assistant Privacy Problems

A new study reveals that Amazon and Google have filed patent applications for a number of technologies that would dramatically expand surveillance of consumers’ private lives.

  • Read more about Home Invasion: Google, Amazon Patent Filings Reveal Digital Home Assistant Privacy Problems

Self-Driving Vehicles: The Threat to Consumers

Self-driving vehicles have become a cultural and political phenomenon.

  • Read more about Self-Driving Vehicles: The Threat to Consumers

Pilot Error : How CalRecycle's New CRV Refund Pilots are Crashing and Burning

CalRecycle is banking on pilot programs around the state, including “mobile” return pilots, to make it easier for consumers to get California Redemption Value (CRV) refunds as the bottle deposit sy

  • Read more about Pilot Error : How CalRecycle's New CRV Refund Pilots are Crashing and Burning

Up In Smoke: How Insurance Companies and the Insurance Commissioner Burn Wildfire Victims

A Consumer Watchdog examination of public filings reveals that insurance companies have inserted provisions into the fine print of their home, condo and renters’ insurance policies that allow them

  • Read more about Up In Smoke: How Insurance Companies and the Insurance Commissioner Burn Wildfire Victims

Connected Cars and the Threat to Your Privacy

A new report details the privacy problems posed for consumers from connected cars and points to new rules to be developed in California as a potential model across the country, if the rules can wit

  • Read more about Connected Cars and the Threat to Your Privacy

Cash For Trash: Recycling Fraud In California

Recycling fraud is costing Californians hundreds of millions of dollars annually. This report explains the problem and how to fix it.

  • Read more about Cash For Trash: Recycling Fraud In California

Waste Haulers: The Square Peg in the Circular Economy

 

  • Read more about Waste Haulers: The Square Peg in the Circular Economy

Rate Regulation: The Rx For Medical Malpractice Insurance Rates

  • Read more about Rate Regulation: The Rx For Medical Malpractice Insurance Rates

Connected Car Report 2020: The Models Most Open To Hacks

“Connected Car Report 2020: The Models Most Open To Hacks," finds all of Car and Driver’s top 10 best-selling cars for 2020 clearly have features that allow wireless connectivity with safe

  • Read more about Connected Car Report 2020: The Models Most Open To Hacks

Sea Change in Sacramento: How Electronic Ballot Signatures Empower Voters

The report finds that high signature costs have put the initiative process out of reach for all but the wealthy.

  • Read more about Sea Change in Sacramento: How Electronic Ballot Signatures Empower Voters

LA Times Op-Ed Pages Don't Reflect LA

A Consumer Watchdog review of one year’s worth of the authors published on the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times found that it failed to represent the people that make up Los Angeles.

  • Read more about LA Times Op-Ed Pages Don't Reflect LA

TRASHED: How California Recycling Failed and How To Fix It

  • Read more about TRASHED: How California Recycling Failed and How To Fix It

KILL SWITCH: Why Connected Cars Can Be Killing Machines And How To Turn Them Off

Developed with the help of car industry technologists, "Kill Switch" finds all the top 2020 cars have Internet connections to safety critical systems that leave them vulnerable to fleet wide hacks.

  • Read more about KILL SWITCH: Why Connected Cars Can Be Killing Machines And How To Turn Them Off

Half a Nickel: How California Consumers Get Ripped Off On Every Bottle Deposit They Pay.

For every nickel bottle deposit that California consumers pay in the checkout line, they only get back 2.65 cents. A three-month investigation by Consumer Watchdog found the reason is a failing sta

  • Read more about Half a Nickel: How California Consumers Get Ripped Off On Every Bottle Deposit They Pay.

Power Play: How the Governor's Sister Makes A Million Dollars From SEMPRA While His Appointees Let SEMPRA Bilk Ratepayers For Billions

Consumer Watchdog's Liza Tucker authored a new report on Gov. Jerry Brown and his sister's relationship with Sempra Energy, entitled, Power Play.

  • Read more about Power Play: How the Governor's Sister Makes A Million Dollars From SEMPRA While His Appointees Let SEMPRA Bilk Ratepayers For Billions

Amazon Slime: Amazon's New Consumer Deception

Two Consumer Watchdog reports show that Amazon is deceiving its customers by putting fake crossed-out prices next to its products.  It’s a deceptive marketing ploy meant to trick consumers into thi

  • Read more about Amazon Slime: Amazon's New Consumer Deception

How Google's Backing of Backpage Protects Child Sex Trafficking

Details of Backpage’s victims have filled multiple lawsuits, legal actions and government investigations: A 13-year-old girl in Miami whose pimp tattooed his name on her eyelids; a 15-year-old in S

  • Read more about How Google's Backing of Backpage Protects Child Sex Trafficking

How Green Is Jerry Brown?

This review fact-checks the perception of Jerry Brown as an environmentalist against his actions since taking office as Governor in 2011 to answer the question: “How Green Is Brown?” On a continuum

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Brown's Dirty Hands

Governor Jerry Brown paints himself a foe of climate change.

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Against The Tide: How Missing Tankers Pumped Up Gas Prices and Refiner Profits

Consumer Watchdog analyzed data from the shipping market and state sources to study the impact of gasoline imports and exports on gas prices in California during the first nine months of 2015, when

  • Read more about Against The Tide: How Missing Tankers Pumped Up Gas Prices and Refiner Profits

Keystone XL: Oil Industry Cash Machine

Consumer Watchdog investigated the impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline on gasoline prices and consumers.

  • Read more about Keystone XL: Oil Industry Cash Machine

Oil Slicked: How Refiners Spend Millions to Protect Billions in Record Profits.

Californians have paid $7.5 billion more than they should have for their gasoline since California’s record gasoline price spike began in February of 2015, according to a Consumer Watchdog analysis

  • Read more about Oil Slicked: How Refiners Spend Millions to Protect Billions in Record Profits.

Golden State Gouge: The Summer of Record Refining Profits

In the six months since California’s record gasoline price spike began in February, Californians have paid $4.8 billion more than the rest of the country for regular gasoline at the pump, according

  • Read more about Golden State Gouge: The Summer of Record Refining Profits

Refining Profits: How Californians Get Fleeced at the Pump

This analysis, “Refining Profits,” looks at how oil refiners in California fared over the last decade in their refining operaDons and compared the companies’ refining profits during periods of gaso

  • Read more about Refining Profits: How Californians Get Fleeced at the Pump

Price Spiked: How Oil Refiners Gouge Californians on their Gasoline and What it Costs

Californians have perennially experienced steep gasoline price spikes since 1999 when California’s Attorney General formed a Gasoline Pricing Taskforce that identified market consolidation and limi

  • Read more about Price Spiked: How Oil Refiners Gouge Californians on their Gasoline and What it Costs

Pump Jacking California’s Climate Protection: The Threat Of Oil Industry Influence & Market Manipulation

Internal documents obtained from the oil industry’s lobbying arm, the Western States Petroleum Association, show that the companies have made stopping California’s landmark climate change laws thei

  • Read more about Pump Jacking California’s Climate Protection: The Threat Of Oil Industry Influence & Market Manipulation

Projected Savings From Prop 45

Proposition 45 will require health insurance companies to open their books and publicly justify their rates under penalty of perjury before they are permitted to change rates for consumers in the i

  • Read more about Projected Savings From Prop 45

Inside Job: How Boeing Fixers Captured Regulators And Derailed A Nuclear And Chemical Cleanup in LA's Backyard

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has been a historically troubled agency, far too often failing to effectively fulfill its mission of protecting the public from toxic ha

  • Read more about Inside Job: How Boeing Fixers Captured Regulators And Derailed A Nuclear And Chemical Cleanup in LA's Backyard

Consumers Are Charged More As A Result of Google’s Search Monopoly

  • Read more about Consumers Are Charged More As A Result of Google’s Search Monopoly

Google+: A Playground for Online Predators

From March to September 2013, an investigation was undertaken to detail the significant privacy issues Google+ users may encounter when using the service.

  • Read more about Google+: A Playground for Online Predators

What Works: A Review of Auto Insurance Rate Regulation in America and How Best Practices Save Billions of Dollars

Over the past quarter century, auto insurance expenditures in America have risen by more than 40 percent.

  • Read more about What Works: A Review of Auto Insurance Rate Regulation in America and How Best Practices Save Billions of Dollars

Health Reform and Insurance Regulation: Can't Have One Without the Other

Health insurance premiums are increasing at a rate faster than medical inflation, especially in the volatile individual and small group markets, and worker incomes have not kept pace.

  • Read more about Health Reform and Insurance Regulation: Can't Have One Without the Other

Golden Wasteland: Regulating Toxics or Toxic Regulation

California produces more than four billion pounds of hazardous waste every year. That’s enough to fill 727 Olympic-sized pools.

  • Read more about Golden Wasteland: Regulating Toxics or Toxic Regulation

Liars and Loans: How Deceptive Advertisers Use Google

Google has been a prominent beneficiary of the national home loan and foreclosure crisis of the past two years.

  • Read more about Liars and Loans: How Deceptive Advertisers Use Google

Lost in the Cloud: Google and the U.S. Government

An ambitious quest for influence with the U.S. government is starting to pay off for tech giant Google, a Consumer Watchdog investigation has found. 

  • Read more about Lost in the Cloud: Google and the U.S. Government

Valero Energy and Its California Profit Pipeline

A review of profit, shareholder and government reports from the last decade show that Valero reaped extraordinary profits from its refining operations in the Golden State, while drivers emptied the

  • Read more about Valero Energy and Its California Profit Pipeline

Traffic Report: How Google Is Squeezing Out Competitors and Muscling Into New Markets

Google has been muscling into new web markets and greatly expanding its dominance of other web commerce sectors since 2007, when the web search giant adopted a controversial new business practice a

  • Read more about Traffic Report: How Google Is Squeezing Out Competitors and Muscling Into New Markets

Cleaner & Cheaper:A Handbook of Transportation and Related Energy Choices 2009 and Beyond

This handbook offers solutions for the most visible and perva- sive sector of the current oil/environmental crisis: transportation by automobile.

  • Read more about Cleaner & Cheaper:A Handbook of Transportation and Related Energy Choices 2009 and Beyond

The Causes And Effects Of The Record Breaking Price Of Diesel

Diesel fuel is the engine of American commerce and public life. Oil companies, by manipulat- ing supply, put sugar in the tank of a whole economy this spring.

  • Read more about The Causes And Effects Of The Record Breaking Price Of Diesel

The Changing Relationship Between the Price of Crude Oil and the Price At the Pump

Crude oil prices, gasoline prices, and consumer protection

  • Read more about The Changing Relationship Between the Price of Crude Oil and the Price At the Pump

The "Katrina Syndrome": What Oil Companies Learned From a Disaster

The oil industry is reporting second-quarter profits this week, and has signaled that refining profits will again be at record or near-record levels.

  • Read more about The "Katrina Syndrome": What Oil Companies Learned From a Disaster

False Accounting: How Medical Malpractice Insurance Companies Inflate Losses to Justify Sudden Surges in Rates and Tort Reform

In this study, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR)1 reviews the loss projections of medical malpractice insurance companies, beginning with the “insurance crisis” of the mid-1980

  • Read more about False Accounting: How Medical Malpractice Insurance Companies Inflate Losses to Justify Sudden Surges in Rates and Tort Reform

How Insurance Reform Lowered Doctors’ Medical Malpractice Rates in California

This report shows how California’s landmark Proposition 103 has lowered Medical Malpractice rates for doctors across the state.

  • Read more about How Insurance Reform Lowered Doctors’ Medical Malpractice Rates in California

Hoax

How deregulation let the energy industry steal billions from Californians.

  • Read more about Hoax

Consumer Imposters: The Big Business Deception Behind Props 200, 201, & 202

Who is really behind propositions 200, 201, and 202?

  • Read more about Consumer Imposters: The Big Business Deception Behind Props 200, 201, & 202
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Energy
oil
CA’s Big 5 Oil Refiner Profits Top $26 Billion, $1 Per Gallon; Watchdog To Make Case For Profits Disclosure Bill And Windfall Profits Tax To Assembly Gas Pricing Committee
Insurance
insurance
Consumer Watchdog Challenges $268 Million GEICO Auto Insurance Rate Hike & Job- and Education-Based Insurance Rate Discrimination
Insurance
CSAA
CSAA Took Advantage of Pandemic, Overcharged Policyholders by at Least $150 Million for Auto Insurance, Policyholder Lawsuit Says
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Discrimination Suit Brought By “John Doe” HIV-Positive Plaintiffs May Proceed, A San Francisco Federal Court Ruled Friday
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