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Cassandra Lista

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Oct 31, 2014, 5:37:08 PM10/31/14

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Fall 2014 Newsletter

California Public Interest Research Group
Citizen Agenda, Vol. 30 No. 2

From The Director

It’s sad but true: The time when I get most worried about our democracy is election season. This should be the time for regular citizens like you and me to have the loudest say over the direction our country is heading. Yet these days, it feels like we’re playing second fiddle to super PACs and mega-donors.

It shouldn’t be that wayand the good news is, it may not be for much longer. In addition to a new congressional milestone in the fight to overturn Citizens United, this year CALPIRG and our national federation launched a major new campaign to give small donors more power in elections. Groundbreaking small donor programs in places like New York City have proven that, by matching small contributions with public dollars, Main Street can have as much say as Wall Street in funding elections.

We’re also focused on engaging young people to participate in our democracy by helping them register to vote, and reminding them to vote this Election Day. This fall, CALPIRG will be working with 50 colleges across the state on their outreach plans to make sure that young peoplethe future of our democracyhave the opportunity to register and to vote.

Reclaiming our democracy won’t be easybut it’s a fight worth having.

Sincerely,

Emily Rusch
CALPIRG Executive Director

20,000 Californians: Protect Our Antibiotics

This summer, CALPIRG launched a citizen outreach campaign to call on the state Legislature to stop the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms, in order to stop the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections. We educated more than 60,000 Californians about the issue, and collected 20,000 petition signatures.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year at least 2 million Americans become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections. The World Health Organization has warned that, “Without urgent, coordinated action ... the world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.”

To keep our medicines working, CALPIRG is calling on the state Legislature to ban the use of antibiotics on animals that aren’t sick. Assemblyman Kevin Mullin (South San Francisco) introduced a bill this year that would do just that, but it faced stiff opposition from the livestock industry and failed to advance.

Doctors, Nurses Sign On
Public health experts are key to this fight, so we mobilized more than 1,000 doctors, nurses and other public health professionals in support of the campaign. And because this problem extends beyond California, we are also asking the federal government and companies to step up and do their part. In July, Federal Program Director Mike Russo testified before President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. We’ve also delivered 100,000 petitions to Trader Joe’s, asking them to stop selling meat raised with antibiotics.

Learn more

Read our report

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CALPIRG Outreach Helps Register Young Voters

Young people have a lot of challenges ahead of themsuch as the soaring levels of student debt, the impacts of global warming, or difficult job marketsso how our elected officials tackle these and other pressing issues will have a sizable impact on the world they inherit.

Yet despite this, young people often feel disconnected from our elected officials, and have lower voting rates than older Americans. For more than 40 years, CALPIRG has been working to engage young people in our democracy and remove barriers that prevent eligible young people from voting.

We are huge supporters of online voter registration, and in 2014, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen launched a new, improved online voter registration website that will work better on the mobile phones many young people will use when they register.

This summer, CALPIRG staff worked with more than 50 college campuses on their outreach plans to their students to make sure that young people have the opportunity to register and vote this Election Day. We helped more than 40,000 students register to vote before the 2012 election, and we hope to have similar success in 2014.

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WE SHOULDN'T BE LEFT IN THE DARKCALPIRG has been canvassing outside grocery stores, building the support we need to win corporate action and legislation to label GMOs.

Pressure Growing For GMO Labels

As consumers, we should have the right to know whether our food contains genetically modified ingredients (GMOs). This May, a bill that would have required GMO labels in California came for a vote on the floor of the state Senate. Unfortunately, despite receiving a majority of the votes recorded, the bill fell two votes short of the amount it needed for passage.

“Despite the fact that a majority of Californians support labeling, big agribusinesses and the biotech industry lobbied heavily to defeat this bill,” said CALPIRG Legislative Advocate Garo Manjikian, in the Los Angeles Times.

This year, we have been working to persuade leading grocery chains to follow Whole Foods’ example and adopt GMO labeling. In July, we worked with Green Century Capital Managementa fossil fuel-free mutual fund founded by PIRG in 1991to present a shareholder resolution urging Safeway Inc. to label its store-brand products. Typically these types of resolutions gain the support of 5 percent of shareholders in the first year filed. In this case, despite strong opposition from the Safeway board, more than 10 percent of the company’s shareholders supported the GMO labeling measure.

“It’s a start,” said CALPIRG Program Director Steve Blackledge, who presented the resolution at the board meeting. “As we keep pushing, we’re confident that more and more food companies will decide to give customers the right to know what’s in their food.”

Learn more

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Protecting Californians From Unjustified Rate Hikes

Since a CALPIRG-backed health insurance rate review law was established in 2011, the review process has saved California consumers and small businesses $349 million. But in order to fully protect consumers and small businesses from unreasonable rate hikes, rate review must be strengthened.

This summer, after rate review has had three full years to prove its effectiveness, a bill moving through the California State Legislature would allow for similar scrutiny of plans for large employers, meaning that more and more Californians could save money on unjustified health insurance rate hikes. SB 1182, introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno (San Francisco), passed the state Senate in May. However, when it reached the Assembly, the rate review provisions were stripped out of the bill. Despite this, the final bill, which was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, will bring more transparency to insurance claims data, with the overall goal of controlling rising health care costs.

$349 Million Saved
Under current law, health insurance carriers must publicly justify any proposed rate increase on individual or small group health plans. Health insurance carriers must submit rate filings to state officials for review, and the public is able to access the filings online and comment on them.

After this comment period, regulators meet with carriers, and can then request that they modify or reduce rate increases if they find that they are unjustified. However, carriers are not required to comply with the request, and those rate increases are declared “unreasonable.” According to a CALPIRG white paper released in April, since 2011, nearly 1 million Californians have been subject to these “unreasonable” rate hikes.

However, of the 369 rate filings reviewed since 2011, only 16 times did carriers move forward with “unreasonable” hikes. As a result of objections raised in the rate review process, carriers have reduced or withdrawn 44 rate hikes, saving money for an estimated 1.3 million Californians in each year rate review has been in effect.

In addition, Proposition 45, a measure on the ballot this November, would give the California Insurance Commissioner the authority to reject unjustified rate hikes.

Learn more

Read the report

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News Briefs

EMPOWERING SMALL DONORSCALPIRG Executive Director Emily Rusch (right) spoke at a forum about small donor empowerment with Reps. Jared Huffman (Calif.) and John Sarbanes (Md.).

Reclaim Our Democracy

California Court Blocks Citizens United Challenge

This November, Californians will no longer be able to vote on an advisory measure to overturn the wrongheaded Citizens United decision, after the state Supreme Court ruled to take it off the ballot. This came after CALPIRG’s advocacy helped put the initiative on the ballot, which would have urged Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.

Despite this setback, there is still progress to report. This summer marked an important milestone, when the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve a constitutional amendment to restore common sense to campaign finance. Although the amendment ultimately failed on the Senate floor, the vote is a marker of how far we’ve come. And we’ll keep working to build support in California and across the country to reclaim our democracy.

Learn more

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Higher Education

Protecting Students From High-Cost Campus Banking

As negotiations broke down between the U.S. Department of Education and financial firms over regulations for on-campus debit cards, CALPIRG pushed for legislation that would work to protect college students from aggressive and unfair banking practices. In July, CALPIRG Higher Education Program Director Chris Lindstrom testified before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee about the risks students face from campus debit cards.

“We found in our 2012 report, ‘The Campus Debit Card Trap,’ that two in five college students in the country are exposed to debit cards on campus that may drive up their costs,” said Lindstrom. “Students at some campuses are charged steep and unusual fees to get to their federal financial aid.”

This fall, CALPIRG will work with the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to establish more protections for students and improve campus debit card fairness.

Read the report

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Protecting The CFPB

Standing Up Against A “Death By 1,000 Cuts”

In May, CALPIRG Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski was a lead consumer witness at a House Financial Services hearing on 11 bills to weaken the PIRG-backed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mierzwinski called the bills an attempt to kill the CFPB with a “death by a thousand cuts.” While the bills are expected to pass the House, they have little Senate support.

In July, as the CFPB turned three years old, we achieved a major victory when the bureau proposed adding consumer stories to its Public Consumer Complaint Database. This has been a recommendation in five recent CALPIRG Education Fund/Frontier Group reports on the database, which now has more than 400,000 consumer complaints.

“Stories that compare how long a consumer complained, how many times she called, and what different creditor representatives told her will add a new dimension to analysis by PIRG,” said Mierzwinski.

Check out our consumer resources

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Consumer Protection

Report Shines Spotlight On Bad Actor Airlines

In April, CALPIRG Education Fund’s report, “ Unfriendly Skies,” ranked the nation’s largest airlines on five years of complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The airline receiving the most complaints, by far, was Spirit Airlines, which received nearly three times as many complaints as any other airline. The leading complaint category was flight problems, such as delays and cancellations. Other top problems included baggage and customer service.

The report called for the creation of a searchable public database of consumer airline complaints, similar to those already maintained by the CFPB, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“It’s critical for consumers to know their rights and make their voices heard when airlines provide substandard service,” said CALPIRG Consumer Associate Laura Murray.”

Read the report

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Support CALPIRG . Contributions by people just like you make our advocacy possible. Your contribution supports a staff of organizers, attorneys, scientists and other professionals who monitor government and corporate decisions and advocate on the public’s behalf.

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