The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Extra Extra
Schools not made aware of tainted food supplies
An investigation by Blake Morrison and Peter Eisler of USA Today illustrates failures in food safety programs as schools unknowingly continued to receive food from suppliers with a history of tainted products. Del Rey Tortilleria of Chicago was linked to illness outbreaks at over a dozen schools between 2003 and 2007. “And in a 2006…
Read MoreProbation system profits on the poor at unfair price
A report by Sandy Hodson of The Augusta Chronicle shows that private probation companies profit while unfairly punishing those who cannot pay their court debts. “Someone who can afford to pay off fines assessed for traffic and other misdemeanor offenses can usually walk out of court a free person. Anyone who can’t pay might find…
Read MoreTulsa County’s poorest spend most on lottery tickets
Using Oklahoma Lottery Commission sales data and U.S. Census Bureau data, the Tulsa World found that some of Tulsa County’s poorest areas spend the most money on lottery tickets per capita, according to a report by Gavin Off. An interactive map showing income vs. lottery spending can be found here.
Read MorePuerto Rican refinery had history of problems, neglect
Mc Nelly Torres, a freelance journalist, and Omaya Sosa Pascual, of El Centro Periodistico Investigativo de Puerto Rico, report decades of environmental violations, financial distress and neglect behind the company that owns the refinery where the Oct. 23 deadly explosion took place in Puerto Rico. The stories, a collaboration between journalists in Miami and Puerto…
Read MoreU.S. contracts fund Taliban-affiliated insurgents
Aram Roston of The Nation reports hundreds of millions of American tax dollars are going directly to Taliban-affiliated insurgents in Afghanistan. According to the article, US military officials in Kabul estimate the U.S. pays about 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts to insurgents. One source told Roston the payments are necessary “because none of…
Read MoreBig Pharma’s Crime Spree
Pfizer and Lilly lead a parade of U.S. companies that have paid $7 billion in penalties after promoting drugs for uses not approved by the FDA, according to a report by David Evans for the December issue of Bloomberg Markets. This unlawful behavior may not end until prosecutors force a drug company into bankruptcy.
Read MorePaid fundraisers come at great cost to nonprofits
An investigation by Tim Darragh of The Morning Call (Allentown, Penn.) shows that the majority of money raised by paid fundraisers hired by Pennsylvaina nonprofits went to the fundraisers, not the charities. “Of the 2,716 campaigns using professional fundraisers reported to the state since 2002, fundraiser costs exceeded the amount left for the nonprofit nearly…
Read MoreStimulus job reports riddled with errors, inflated numbers
“A stimulus job report that says more than 10,000 jobs were saved or created in Wisconsin is rife with errors, double counting and inflated numbers based more on satisfying federal formulas than creating real jobs,” according to a report by Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. One of the problems is linked to cases…
Read MoreFelon awarded $1 million to supply AIDS/HIV services
In the third part of “Wasting Away,” an investigation of D.C.’s AIDS program,The Washington Post found the city awarded a $1 million AIDS contract to a woman who had just been convicted in federal court for a mortgage fraud scheme that bilked lenders out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over three years, the city…
Read MoreEducation, Inc. series
A three-day series by The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Ind.) examined the local charter schools run by national, for-profit Imagine Schools Inc., the largest charter school management company in the nation. The series found that the idea of local, independent control – demanded by IRS rules governing non-profits – is non-existent, as the hired management…
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