The Huffington Post
by: Alex Brant-Zawadzki

Former Supreme Court Justice John Brandeis said it best. When it comes to political skull-duggery, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he said.

On Sunday, Jan. 8, 2011, the old guard of San Francisco politics gathered in the Latino Room of the San Francisco Main Library to bring more light into the state’s political processes by kick-starting the campaign to support AB 1148, the California DISCLOSE Act. Hosted by the California Clean Money Campaign, the event included representatives from nearly every progressive political group in the city, from the Harvey Milk LGBT Club to the Older Women’s League to the SF Green Party to Progressive Democrats of America. All have united to try to minimize the impacts of the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United ruling.

(more…)

San Jose Merucury News
By Steve Johnson

Acknowledging they haven’t done enough to ensure companies such as PG&E operate safely, state regulators are considering major changes in the way they approve utility rate increases to reduce the chance of another catastrophe like the 2010 San Bruno natural gas explosion.

But the idea — due to be hashed out at a California Public Utilities Commission workshop on Wednesday — could wind up boosting customer bills, some consumer advocates fear. It could also force the agency to do more checking on how utilities spend the money they get.

(more…)

New York Times
By Aaron Glantz

Advocates say Cordray brings strong pro-consumer credentials to this important job.

Salem-News.Com
by: Tim King

(SALEM) – “Today I’m appointing Richard as America’s consumer watchdog,” U.S. President Barack Obama said today at Cleveland, Ohio’s Shaker Heights High School.

Richard Cordray, an American politician, is the former Attorney General of Ohio. President Barack Obama announced he would nominate Cordray to lead the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today.

(more…)

The Recorder
by: Cheryl Miller

SACRAMENTO — Screenwriters could hardly have scripted a better start for Kamala Harris’ first year as attorney general.

The San Francisco district attorney limped into office after barely surviving a bruising 2010 general election. But the state’s new top cop worked quickly to establish her tough-on-crime credentials by barnstorming the state to appear with law enforcement leaders and groups — many of whom backed her Republican opponent — and to highlight drug and gang busts aided by her own Department of Justice agents.

She reached out to consumer activists who felt slighted by then-Attorney General Jerry Brown’s more cautious, go-it-alone approach. She also reinvigorated her office’s legislative advocacy after her predecessor shunned the role.

And, of course, Harris made a name for herself in her office’s mortgage fraud investigations. Her decision in September to pull California from multistate settlement talks with banks earned her major kudos from consumer groups — and the national spotlight.

(more…)

Salon.com
By David Sirota

Black Americans have worse health and lower incomes. Why do so many white people refuse to believe it?

In the annals of contemporary American history, the power of white denialism and the “post-racial” fallacy is not to be underestimated. As race scholar Tim Wise has recounted, in the early 1960s, most white Americans told Gallup pollsters that African-Americans had equal economic and educational opportunities to get ahead.

Those were the results, mind you, at the height of the Jim Crow era, when discrimination and white-on-black racial violence were out in the open and, in many cases, celebrated. So it’s no surprise that with that kind of overt bigotry now underground, white denialism of persistent institutional racism is alive and well, according to new national survey data analyzed by the Greenlining Institute.
(more…)

CNN
By Stephanie Siek

A study that examines three years of opinion survey data says that black and white Americans are still miles apart regarding their perceptions of equality or inequality among blacks and whites. It identifies racial bias among whites as a potential reason for that difference in perception.

“Post-Racial? Americans and Race in the Age of Obama,” released Monday by the nonprofit Greenlining Institute, found a link between white survey respondents’ perception of blacks and whether they believed discriminition to be a major problem in today’s society.
(more…)

California Progress Report
By: Daniel Byrd, Ph.D. and Bruce Mirken

After Barack Obama’s election as president, a number of pundits rushed to declare that America had entered a “post-racial” era, and issues of race could go on the historical scrap heap next to the Cold War and typewriters. They were, it turns out, spectacularly wrong.
(more…)

S.F. Chronicle
by: Joe Garofoli

Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School is just a few blocks from the former Occupy Oakland encampment in Frank Ogawa Plaza and not far from the starting point for Monday’s Occupy demonstration at the Port of Oakland.

But to King parents like Charlene Adams, the Occupy movement couldn’t be farther away from her West Oakland neighborhood. And the reasons behind that distance help explain a disconnect between the larger Occupy Wall Street movement and the African American community.
(more…)

American Banker
By Preeti Vissa

It’s hard to pin down precise numbers, but anecdotal reports in news outlets across the country suggest that hundreds of thousands of Americans responded to “National Transfer Day” campaign by switching their deposits from major banks to credit unions.

But did those consumers accomplish what the campaign’s supporters wanted — to vote with their dollars for institutions with more concern and responsibility for their communities?

(more…)