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.”
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.
VA [Veterans Affairs] in crisis: The Arizona Republic investigation
Dennis Wagner, Deaths at Phoenix VA hospital may be tied to delayed care. The Arizona Republic, 10 April 2014. Winner of the 2014 IRE [Investigative Reporters & Editors] Award for Print/Online–Meduim. “IRE Judges’ comments: While the story of poor care for veterans has been told well by media outlets across the country, reporting by the Arizona Republic propelled this story into a national scandal with sweeping results. The team’s stories revealed that veterans were dying while waiting for basic health care services at the Phoenix VA. Meanwhile, officials were manipulating records to hide the long wait times. Writing more than 100 stories during the year [2014], the reporters told the stories of individual veterans whose pleas for treatment were ignored until it was too late. This skillfully reported series helped lead to national reform, investigations and resignations, including U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki. The project demonstrates the benefits of solid beat reporting and not letting go of a story once the national media jumps in.”
Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle
Eli Saslow, Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle. Part 1 of a 6-part series in The Washington Post, beginning on 16 March 2013. Eli Saslow won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting “for his unsettling and nuanced reporting on the prevalence of food stamps in post-recession [United States], forcing readers to grapple with issues of poverty and dependency.”
The Voter-Fraud Myth: The man [Hans von Spakovsky] who has stoked fear about imposters at the polls
Jane Mayer, The Voter-Fraud Myth. The New Yorker, 29 October 2012. From Jane Mayer’s Notes on Voter Fraud, The New Yorker, 1 November 2012: “[W]hat [Hans von Spakovsky] and other such fearmongers are stubbornly wrong about, and won’t acknowledge no matter how much evidence piles up, is that there is virtually no modern record of individual voters trying to steal elections by impersonating others at the polls. It is this phantom threat that has fuelled the push for voter-I.D. laws over the past few years…. [A] nationwide study of legal records undertaken by the reporting consortium News21 found a grand total of only seven convictions for this type of voter fraud since 2000.”
The Lie Factory: How politics became a business
Jill Lepore, The Lie Factory: How politics became a business. The New Yorker, 24 September 2012. “The field of political consulting was unknown before Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker founded Campaigns, Inc., in 1933.”
State for Sale: Art Pope, a conservative multimillionaire, has taken control in North Carolina
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.”
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.”
Top Secret America: describes the huge national security buildup in the US after 11 September 2001
Dana Priest and William Arkin, Top Secret America. The Washington Post, Four-part series, 19, 20 and 21 July and 20 December 2010. “The government has built a national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it’s fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe.”