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Privatization fails: Nebraska tries again to reform child welfare | The Center for Public Integrity
Foster parent Jenae VanEvery got a call around midnight one day in September 2011 asking if she could take in two sisters — ages 2 and 3 — who had been found living in filth and squalor by Lincoln, Neb. police.By: Paul Solman A copy of the original IRS form from 1913. Image from the National Archives.
The Income Tax in 1913: A Way to 'Soak the Rich' | PBS NewsHour
Defender of the Capitalist System: Department of Defense Worst in Competitive Contracts | Truthout
The Department of Defense (DoD) came in the lowest in the government on competing their procurement contracts. According to the Center for Public Integrity : While the Pentagon says its level of competition has remained steady over the past 10 years, data available through the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation, which provides competition data on federal agencies, show that the dollars flowing into single-bid contracts have almost tripled since the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
By Jeff Price Now that CD sales have gone the way of Zima , the entire old school industry sits and wrings it hands around how/if it will make money in the new digital industry.
Can Artists Get Rich In A Streaming Music Industry?
We've all seen the studies trumpeting massive losses to the US economy from piracy. One famous figure, used literally for decades by rightsholders and the government, said that 750,000 jobs and up to $250 billion a year could be lost in the US economy thanks to IP infringement. A couple years ago, we thoroughly debunked that figure . For years, Business Software Alliance reports on software piracy assumed that each illicit copy was a lost sale . And the MPAA's own commissioned study on movie piracy turned out to overstate collegiate downloading by a factor of three .
US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus
Report: data caps just a “cash cow” for Internet providers
Why do so many Americans now live with Internet data caps—and what are these caps doing to the future of broadband? Those are the questions posed by a new paper from the New America Foundation, which wants to shake up the lethargy that has descended over the data caps debate by pointing out just how odd the caps truly are. "Internet service and mobile providers appear to be one of the few industries that seek to discourage their customers from consuming more of their product," write the paper's authors.
By Frank Knapp, Jr., president and CEO, South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce - 02/01/12 12:28 PM ET
Small business polls reject anti-regulation rhetoric - The Hill's Congress Blog
In Shift, Prosecutors Are Lenient as Companies Break the Law
Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times “Traditionally, a bank would tell the Department of Justice when an employee engaged in crimes, but what do you do when the bank itself is run by a criminal enterprise?” said Solomon L.
Confidential Federal Audits Accuse Five Biggest Mortgage Firms Of Defrauding Taxpayers [EXCLUSIVE]
WASHINGTON -- A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post. The five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general and examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, the sources said. The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government.
American Airlines, Bankruptcy, and the Housing Bubble
We normally say that a company “went bankrupt,” implying that it had no choice. But when, recently, American Airlines filed for bankruptcy, it did so deliberately. The airline had four billion dollars in the bank and could have kept paying its bills. But it has been losing money for a while, and its board decided that it was foolish to keep throwing good money after bad. Declaring bankruptcy will trim American’s debt load and allow it to break its union contracts, so that it can slim down and cut costs. American wasn’t stigmatized for the move.
Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales
In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts. “I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.” Enlarge image Koch Industries Executive Vice President David H.July 10, 2009 Last month, testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by a former health insurance insider named Wendell Potter made news even before it occurred: CBS NEWS headlined: "Cigna Whistleblower to Testify ." After Potter's testimony the industry scrambled to do damage control: " Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency ." In his first extended television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years, and particularly back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan."
Bill Moyers Journal . Wendell Potter on Profits Before Patients
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US debt & deficit
WallSt
The Best Inequality Graph « Consider the Evidence
Note: An updated version of this graph is here . Income inequality in the United States has been rising since the 1970s. What is the most effective way to succinctly convey this fact? Here is my choice (a pdf version is available here ): The chart shows average inflation-adjusted incomes of the poorest 20%, middle 60%, and top 1% of households since the 1970s.Posted at 6:14 PM ET, 12/ 6/2010 By Ezra Klein The White House and the Republicans are pretty close to a final deal on the Bush tax cuts. Here are the specifics, though it's worth saying that as near as this is to completion, it's still not done, and so it could change:
Ezra Klein - An imperfect, but not-that-bad, deal on the tax cuts
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