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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Tips for fixing credit report errors yourself (don't ever use a credit repair doctor) | Ed Mierzwinski

Fox Business reporter Kelly Dilworth has a detailed "how-to" called "10 surefire steps to get errors off your credit reports." Don't go to a credit repair doctor, don't read a bunch of wacky advice on self-help websites, don't do any of that, Do what she says.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

FTC slams Equifax as Senate joins House inquiry into credit bureaus' data broker cousins | Ed Mierzwinski

This week the FTC ordered the massive credit bureau Equifax to disgorge $393,000 in profits and its customer, Direct Lending Source, to pay a $1.2 million civil penalty for selling lists of credit reports for illegal marketing purposes. Meanwhile, Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller has announced his own investigation into the practice of unregulated data brokers, the close cousins of the credit bureaus that are already the subject of a bi-partisan House inquiry.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

State Attorneys General Oppose Payday Lender Protection Bill In Congress | Ed Mierzwinski

Last week a bi-partisan group of 41 state Attorneys General announced their joint opposition to misguided legislation to take both the CFPB and the states off the payday lender crime beat. Nevertheless, the payday lenders continue to invest in the political process.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Consumers want "Do not track" privacy right but powerful firms fight back | Ed Mierzwinski

A new study shows that web surfers want an easy-to-use Do-Not-Track right to stop online tracking and collection of information about their web choices. But a powerful coalition of web advertisers and web publishers is fighting back, here and abroad, and it claims that such targeted advertising is what makes the Internet "free."

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Media Hit | Financial Reform

JPMorgan Chase is sued in 2008 Bear Stearns mortgage case

“You can make a lot of money doing corporate crime and unfortunately the risks are very low, as seen by how few people have gone to jail and how little money has been returned to people harmed in the fiscal crisis,” said Ed Mierzwinski, the consumer program director for advocacy group U.S. PIRG.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Budget

Report Card Ranks 50 States on Transparency of Spending

In Following the Money 2012: How the States Rank on Providing Online Access to Government Spending Data, researchers at the United States Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) graded all 50 states on how well they provide online access to information about government spending. States were given “A” to “F” grades based on the characteristics of the online transparency systems they have created to provide information on contracts, subsidies and spending at quasi-public agencies.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Higher Ed

Students To Congress: Don’t Double Student Debt Rates

Washington, D.C. – With the student loan interest rate about to double this July for almost 8 million loan borrowers, US PIRG and coalition partners deliver over 130,000 letters to Congress urging a different plan.

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News Release | Budget

WISPIRG Report: Taxpayer Protections at Risk

As the Wisconsin state senate and assembly consider bills removing the requirement for cost benefit analyses for all WISDOT projects over $25,000, a new WISPIRG report finds that numerous government ventures in privatizing or outsourcing public work have ended up being a bad deal for taxpayers and costing more in the long run.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Health Care

New Health Exchange Rules Help States Move Forward

The rules released today by the federal Department of Health and Human Services put states in the driver’s seat when it comes to setting up new health benefits exchanges.  

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Budget, Tax

Amendment Passes to Crack Down on Offshore Tax Cheats

 

Statement of U.S. PIRG Tax and Budget Associate Dan Smith on the passage of the Senate Amendment 1818 to crack down on offshore tax evaders, introduced by Senators Levin, Conrad, and Whitehouse to the Transportation Bill.

 

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Report | U.S. PIRG | Democracy

Honest Enforcement

Some argue that last year’s scandals, which lead to the conviction of two congressmen and several top aides, are evidence that ethics enforcement in Congress works. The actual facts leading up to the convictions, however, are more an indictment of the current process than a testament to its success.

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Report | MASSPIRG | Higher Ed

Exposing the Textbook Industry

MASSPIRG conducted a survey of 287 professors from a variety of disciplines at Massachusetts colleges and universities over the fall semester of 2006 to get their views on textbook industry practices that drive up prices.

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Report | U.S. PIRG | Higher Ed

Cutting Interest Rates, Lowering Student Debt 2007

Some in Congress have proposed lowering student loan interest rates to reduce the debt burden facing students and families.  This report addresses one specific proposal to cut interest rates on undergraduate subsidized Stafford student loans in half, from 6.8% to 3.4%, over a period of five years.

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Report | NJPIRG | Budget, Transportation

Caution on New Jersey Turnpike and Parkway Deal

A deal to “monetize” the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway should not be signed if it violates the public interest. No deal should be approved that fails to uphold any of six basic principles: public control, fair value, no deal longer than 30 years, state-of-the-art safety and maintenance standards, complete transparency and accountability, and no budget gimmicks.

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Report | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Consumer Protection

Trouble In Toyland 2006

The 2006 Trouble in Toyland report is the 21st annual Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) survey of toy safety. This report provides safety guidelines for parents when purchasing toys for small children and provides examples of toys currently on store shelves that may pose potential safety hazards. This year, we focused on four categories of toys: toys that may pose choking hazards, magnetic toys, toys that are excessively loud, and toys that contain potentially toxic chemicals.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

Encouraging news on HUD/state AG settlement with big mortgage servicers | Ed Mierzwinski

Update: The terms of the settlement, which was announced this morning, are at the page http://www.nationalmortgagesettlement.com. We are reading it now. Original: If I am reading the overnight news stories correctly (NY TIMES and Politico and Boston Globe), it appears that negotiators have clarified that the well-publicized settlement between HUD and state AGs and the nation's 5 largest mortgage servicers will not release the big banks from claims related to their activities with the mysterious entity known as MERS that aided and abetted their illegal foreclosures. If so, this is a big deal in ultimately holding the big banks fully accountable.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

Airline passenger rights reforms finally take off, heading to President's desk | Ed Mierzwinski

PIRG-backed reforms designed to guarantee that passengers stranded in planes sitting on runways are not treated like cattle have been passed by the House and Senate and are expected to be signed by the president as part of FAA reauthorization (New York Times story). The reforms are largely based on the work of former stranded passenger Kate Hanni and her flyersrights.org campaign for an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights (Kate's statement).

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Blog Post | Transportation

House Transportation Bills Strikes First as Tragedy, Then as Dangerous Farce | Phineas Baxandall

The House introduced additional legislation proposing that new revenue for the Transportation Fund would come through increased volumes of oil drilling and that public transit would be kicked out of the transportation fund. This breaks with three decades of public transit being supported by a small portion of the federal gas tax. The House measure would instead funnel all these funds to highways, and leave mass transit to search for new money from Congress at a time when debt reduction rules require massive cuts to the general budget. If you were trying to make America as addicted to oil as possible, you might design legislation like this.

 

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

Should Facebook And Google Be Regulated As Credit Bureaus? | Ed Mierzwinski

In a series of joint privacy petitions to the Federal Trade Commission beginning in 2006 and extended more recently to include behavioral targeting, as well as medical and mobile marketing, U.S. PIRG and the Center for Digital Democracy (sometimes with allies) have argued for greater scrutiny and regulation of the online digital marketing and behavioral targeting ecosystem that involves companies you do business with, social networking tools, third-party advertisers and other players. Today, in the New York Times, Professor Lori Andrews says that "Facebook is Using You."

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

Some Consumer News of the Week, In Case You Missed It | Ed Mierzwinski

It's hard to keep up, so here are some key consumer news stories I am following that you may have missed this week. We start with CALPIRG Education Fund's new "Cell Phone Guide," look at the Consumer Federation of America's report on auto insurance discrimination and take you all the way to the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign survey on what's "good, bad and ugly (rats!)" in NYC subway stations.

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