Jennifer Gollan and Matt Smith, Techsploitation, Part Two: Federal tech contracts awarded to job brokers with labor violations. The Center for Investigative Reporting, 27 October 2014. This “yearlong probe by The Center for Investigative Reporting found that porous federal oversight allows these labor brokers to financially exploit workers with little fear of detection. It turns out that those that are caught can continue to survive and thrive–including on the taxpayers’ dime.” Published with The Guardian and NBC Bay Area. [Read more…]
October 27, 2014
Techsploitation, Part One: Modern-day indentured servants: Job brokers steal wages, entrap Indian tech workers in US
Matt Smith, Jennifer Gollan and Adithya Sambamurthy, Techsploitation, Part One: Job brokers steal wages, entrap Indian tech workers in US. The Center for Investigative Reporting, 27 October 2014. “Labor brokers providing Indian high-tech workers to American companies are gaming a professional visa program, creating a shadow world that can turn a worker’s dream of self-betterment into a financial nightmare.” This story was published with The Guardian and NBC Bay Area.
October 6, 2014
Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life. A rare account of life inside the notorious jail for adolescents on Rikers Island
Jennifer Gonnerman, Before the Law: A boy was accused of taking a backpack. The courts took the next three years of his life. The New Yorker, 6 October 2014. “In the early hours of Saturday, May 15, 2010, ten days before his seventeenth birthday, Kalief Browder and a friend were returning home from a party in the Belmont section of the Bronx. They walked along Arthur Avenue, the main street of Little Italy, past bakeries and cafés with their metal shutters pulled down for the night. As they passed East 186th Street, Browder saw a police car driving toward them. More squad cars arrived, and soon Browder and his friend found themselves squinting in the glare of a police spotlight. An officer said that a man had just reported that they had robbed him. ‘I didn’t rob anybody,’ Browder replied. ‘You can check my pockets.'”
September 28, 2014
Undue Force (Used by the Baltimore Police Department)
Mark Puente, Undue Force. The Baltimore Sun, 28 September 2014. “The city has paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects. One hidden cost: The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police.”
September 26, 2014
Inside the New York Fed: Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra and a Culture Clash
Jake Bernstein, Inside the New York Fed: Secret Recordings and a Culture Clash. ProPublica, 26 September 2014. “A confidential report and a fired examiner’s hidden recorder penetrate the cloistered world of Wall Street’s top regulator–and its history of deference to banks.” This story was co-published with This American Life, from WBEZ Chicago: “536: The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra,” 26 September 2014. Listen to the radio version here. And read the transcript of the radio version here.
September 24, 2014
Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire
Tim Dickinson, Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire. Rolling Stone, 24 September 2014. “Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world’s largest fortunes, which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don’t want you to know is how they made all that money…. The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today’s GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year’s midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate. What is less clear is where all that money comes from.”
September 6, 2014
Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks
Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams and Nicholas Confessore, Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks. The New York Times, 6 September 2014. “More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.” Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
July 3, 2014
Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven for Money Laundering into Real Estate
Michael Hudson, Ionut Stanescu and Samuel Adler-Bell, Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze: Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven. International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. 3 July 2014. “Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments…. Government officials and their families and associates in China, Azerbaijan, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries have embraced the use of covert companies and bank accounts. The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.” Winner of the 2014 George Polk Award for Business Reporting.
May 21, 2014
The Case for Reparations
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic, 21 May 2014. “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.”