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The latest round of exhorbitant rate increases nationally has helped more and more people recognize what Consumer Watchdog has been arguing for the last year: Congress cannot require all Americans to purchase insurance from the for-profit insurance industry without real oversight of what they charge ...

Antitrust regulators are reported by Bloomberg news service to be seeking sworn statements from Google's competitors and advertisers as they continue to investigate the the Internet giant's proposed $750 million deal to buy AdMob.

Consumer Watchdog's calls for tough and open health insurance rate regulation are being echoed and amplified. The latest instance is in Connecticut, the home state of insurance companies, where Attorney General Earl Blumenthal recently proposed major reforms that would require the state to review and reject, modify or allow a rate change before it goes into effect. No more shrugging and letting it happen without a public review.

When the US Supreme Court decided to allow corporations to spend money directly on campaign advertising, they opened the floodgates to excessive spending by companies to change the outcome of elections. The long-term solution is a...

A video produced by Hungry Beast, a weekly news show on Australian television puts Internet giant ...

I recently delved into Google's 10-K filing covering 2009 with the Securities and Exchange...

Sarah Palin, the Cruella DeVille of anti-government-health care, caught everyone's attention with the story of her family hopping the border from Skagway, Alaska, into the Yukon Territory for Canadian government health care when Palin was a child. Canadian newspapers noted cattily that Palin previously described going to Juneau, Alaska, for the same treatment for her brother's burned foot. Whatever. I wanted to know whether other Alaskans went to Canada for medical care--and still do.

Harvey Rosenfield, the founder of Consumer Watchdog and the author of California's landmark insurance regulation, is the original expert on making insurance companies friendlier to consumers. So when he outlines a plan to make health insurance more affordable--and combat price spikes like the recent 39% annual increase by Anthem Blue Cross--he's got 20 years in the trenches making insurance companies toe the line, to back him up.

Interesting that it took a New York newspaper to tell Californians that a couple of giant Texas oil refining companies are bankrolling a ballot initiative to kill the state's popular climate change/green energy law. The whole saga is much like Oklahoma oilman T. Boone Pickens' failed effort in 2008 to make California taxpayers subsidize his natural gas business. Except that Pickens was honest about paying for his own ballot initiative.

I have heard of full page advertising, but until I got my Los Angeles Times from the driveway this morning I never heard of Front Page As Advertising.