Jane Mayer, State for Sale. The New Yorker, 10 October 2011. “A conservative multimillionaire [Art Pope] has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battlegrounds…. For years, Pope, like several other farsighted conservative corporate activists, has been spending millions in an attempt to change the direction of American politics. According to an analysis of tax records by Democracy NC, a progressive government watchdog group, in the past decade Pope, his family, his family foundation, and his business have spent more than forty million dollars in this effort.”
October 10, 2011
State for Sale: Art Pope, a conservative multimillionaire, has taken control in North Carolina
June 6, 2011
The Invisible Army: For foreign workers on U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, war can be hell
Sarah Stillman, The Invisible Army: For foreign workers on U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, war can be hell. The New Yorker, 6 June 2011. “More than seventy thousand ‘third-country nationals’ work for the American military in war zones; many report being held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by subcontractors who operate outside the law.”
August 30, 2010
Covert Operations: The billionaire [Koch] brothers who are waging a war against Obama
Jane Mayer, Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. The New Yorker, 30 August 2010. “The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.”
October 4, 2009
The Burger That Shattered Her Life: Trail of E. Coli Shows Flaws in Ground Beef Inspection System
Michael Moss, The Burger That Shattered Her Life. The New York Times, 3 October 2009. “Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes. Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed. Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.
Michael Moss and members of The New York Times Staff won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for nine articles published between 5 March 2009 and 9 February 2010 “for relentless reporting on contaminated hamburger and other food safety issues that, in print and online, spotlighted defects in federal regulation and led to improved practices.”
July 9, 2009
The Great American Bubble Machine: Goldman Sachs
Matt Taibbi, The Great American Bubble Machine. Rolling Stone, From the Archives Issue 1082, 9 July 2009. (Dated 5 April 2010 online.) “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression–and they’re about to do it again…. The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”
November 18, 2005
The Man Who Sold the [Iraq] War
James Bamford, The Man Who Sold the War. Rolling Stone, 18 November 2005. (Available on Common Dreams.) Democracy Now!, 21 November 2005: “Investigative journalist James Bamford examines how the Bush administration and Iraqi National Congress used the PR firm Rendon Group to feed journalists — including Judith Miller — fabricated stories in an effort to sell the [Iraq] war.”
May 1, 1996
The Man Who Knew Too Much: Jeffrey Wigand takes on Big Tobacco
Marie Brenner, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Vanity Fair, May 1996. “Angrily, painfully, Jeffrey Wigand emerged from the sealed world of Big Tobacco to confront the nation’s third-largest cigarette company, Brown & Williamson. Hailed as a hero by anti-smoking forces and vilified by the tobacco industry, Wigand is [1996] at the center of an epic multi-billion-dollar struggle that reaches from Capitol Hill to the hallowed journalistic halls of CBS’s 60 Minutes.”
August 1, 1992
The new free-trade heel: Nike’s profits jump on the backs of Asian workers
Jeffrey Ballinger, The new free-trade heel: Nike’s profits jump on the backs of Asian workers. Harper’s Magazine, August 1992. “Her only name is Sadisah, and it’s safe to say that she’s never heard of Michael Jordan. Nor is she spending her evenings watching him and his Olympic teammates gliding and dunking in prime time from Barcelona [1992]. But she has heard of the shoe company he endorses–Nike, whose logo can be seen on the shoes and uniforms of many American Olympic athletes this summer. Like Jordan, Sadisah works on behalf of Nike. You won’t see her, however, in the flashy TV images of freedom and individuality that smugly command us to JUST DO IT!–just spend upward of $130 for a pair of basketball shoes. Yet Sadisah is, in fact, one of the people who is doing it–making the actual shoes…
Update: Max Nisen, How Nike Solved Its Sweatshop Problem. Business Insider, 9 May 2013. “It wasn’t that long ago that Nike was being shamed in public for its labor practices to the point where it badly tarnished the company’s image and hurt sales. The recent factory collapse in Bangladesh was a reminder that even though Nike managed to turn around its image, large parts of the industry still haven’t changed much at all. Nike was an early target for the very reason it’s been so successful. Its business model was based on outsourcing its manufacturing, using the money it saved on aggressive marketing campaigns. Nike has managed to turn its image around. Nike hasn’t been completely successful in bringing factories into line, but there’s no denying that the company has executed one of the greatest image turnarounds in recent decades.”
September 1, 1977
Pinto Madness: the Ford Pinto’s fire-prone gas tank
Mark Dowie, Pinto Madness. Mother Jones, 1 September 1977. “For seven years the Ford Motor Company sold cars in which it knew hundreds of people would needlessly burn to death.”