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Lobbyists banned from Obama’s transition
While banning lobbyists from a role in the transition, President-Elect Barack Obama is keeping many of his large fundraisers on his advisory board, according to a report by Bloomberg‘s Jonathan Salant. Five of the 12 members of the transition advisory board raised over $50,000 for Obama in his presidential campaign. “Transition co-Chairman John Podesta yesterday…
Read MoreDisabled patient was repeatedly victim of abuse
An investigation by Ruth Teichroeb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer explored the case of a profoundly developmentally disabled woman who was raped and impregnated in her own home. A nursing assistant was charged with rape. The investigation found that it was the second time in two years a male nursing assistant was suspected of sexually assaulting…
Read MoreDumping in Louisiana’s Red River
An environmental investigation by The Times (Shreveport, La.) culled through data from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and identified “at least 83 permitted dischargers within Bossier, Bienville, Caddo, Claiborne, DeSoto, Natchitoches, Red River, Sabine and Webster parishes that put wastewater into Red River or a nearby tributary.” At least…
Read MoreLawyers, doctors profiting from farm subsidies in Oklahoma
An investigation by Gavin Off of the Tulsa World revealed serious issues in the allocation of farm subsidy dollars. By cross-referencing the USDA’s farm subsidy data with the Federal Elections Committee database, Off found “more than 100 lawyers and dozens of doctors, teachers, car salesmen and insurance agents have received U.S. Department of Agriculture farm…
Read MoreThe Cruelest Cuts series
On Sunday and Monday, The Charlotte Observer published a two-part series detailing the risks to young workers in dangerous jobs. The stories showed that federal child labor enforcement has waned despite new evidence that many employers are ignoring the rules. Observer reporters also spoke to more than 20 current and former workers at House of…
Read MoreDietary supplements contain undisclosed amounts of prescription drugs
Alison Young of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that some dietary supplements, which are not subject to government regulation, contain amounts of undisclosed prescription drugs, as well as food allergens, bacteria and human placenta. Journal-Constitution reporters were able to obtain one dietary supplement containing prescription drugs, despite the fact that it had been the subject of…
Read MoreDeKalb county loses thousands of traffic tickets
Cameron McWhirter of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that DeKalb County’s traffic court has lost the hundreds of thousands of citations. While no one knows how much the misplaced records could cost the county, estimates range from $90 million to $135 million. In response to inquiries made by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the county has set up…
Read MoreHealth care system allows immigrants to fall through the cracks
Deborah Sontag of The New York Times continued the paper’s “Getting Tough” series with an examination of some hospitals’ practice of repatriating immigrant patients to their native countries without consent. The article offers several vignettes of the difficulties patients and hospitals face in such situations, including the story of Antonio Torres, a nineteen year-old legal…
Read MoreSurge in Democrats turns Dutchess County, N.Y. blue
In October, Dutchess County went from having a Republican majority among registered voters to a Democratic one for the first time in the county’s history. On Nov. 2, the Poughkeepsie Journal published an analysis that not only showed which municipalities were responsible for that growth, but drilled down to see which individual districts had the…
Read MoreCharter schools paid millions for absent students
An investigation by Thomas Hargrove and Gavin Off of Scripps News Service found that “taxpayers pay millions of dollars every month to educate tens of thousands of high school students who rarely or never show up for class, part of a growing trend of high absenteeism at privately operated schools.” Most charter schools are funded…
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