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Stimulus for Cotton Candy, Tango and a Fish Orchestra? Wacky, or Actually Worthy?

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell - Nov. 07 (Investigative Report) - Breakfast at Fuddruckers: $19.24. Snow cone and cotton candy machine: $146.89. Six extra preview performances of “Little House on the Prairie – the Musical”: $50,000. Benefit to the economy? According to the recipients of this stimulus money: Priceless.

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Grading the Public Options That Already Exist

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sabrina Sahnkman - Oct. 28 (News Analysis) - Pundits and politicians from both sides of the fence have been hollering themselves blue about a potential public health care option. Instead of relying on private insurers, the government would insure people itself. The idea is that if a

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Stimulus Contracts Go to Companies Under Criminal Investigation

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell - Oct. 26 (Investigative Report) - The Department of Defense awarded nearly $30 million in stimulus contracts to six companies while they were under federal criminal investigation on suspicion of defrauding the government. According to Air Force documents, the companies claimed to be small, minority-owned businesses, which allowed them to gain special preference in bidding for government contracts. But investigators found that they were all part of a larger minority-owned enterprise in Southern California, making them ineligible for the contracts.

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Freddie Mac, Given Oversight of Mortgage Mod Program, Falls Down on Job

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Paul Kiel - Oct. 22 (News) - As ProPublica and others have reported, homeowners have frequently been rejected for loan mods even though they appear to qualify. The Treasury Department tapped Freddie to police just that kind of thing.

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Slate Follows-up on Our Katrina Hospital Investigation —And We Follow-up Too

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Sheri Fink - Sep. 04 (News) - Levin points many of those who died were patients of a separate long term acute care hospital, LifeCare Hospitals of New Orleans, that leased the 7th floor of Memorial. He argues that "this separation of authority and personnel caused chaos in the days

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Sometimes It’s Not Your War, But You Sacrifice Anyway

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By T. Christian Miller - Aug. 17 (News Report) - These low-paid foreign workers face many of the same risks soldiers do. Mortars have killed Filipinos who served meals in mess halls. Assassins have targeted Iraqis translating for soldiers. Roadside bombs have ripped into trucks driven by Turkish

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Obama Administration Redacts Contract Details for Recovery.gov

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Christopher Flavelle - Aug. 13 (Investigative Report) - Back in July, a software company named Smartronix landed an $18 million contract to build a Web site where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money. It was just another part of the Obama administration’s ongoing effort to bring transparency to stimulus spending, we were told. But it seems the drive for transparency doesn’t cover the contract itself. After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the Government Services Agency released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless. Don’t believe us? Take a look. ProPublica sought the contract under the Freedom of Information Act to find out what kind of site Smartronix planned to build and to assess whether it justified the cost, which Republican critics of the stimulus plan called “unreal.” Ed Pound, the director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, defended the redactions as “legitimate.” The Web site Smartronix is to build will replace Recovery.gov, the existing stimulus Web portal run by the transparency board. “I’m not concerned about whether journalists are concerned about this,” Pound said. “We have been very transparent.” The GSA declined to comment, but said in its response to ProPublica’s FOIA request that such redactions were allowed if material “involves substantial risk of competitive injury” to a contractor. But the blacked-out information includes material that seems harmless to the company, such as the names and backgrounds of key personnel and the number of visitors expected by the site during traffic spikes. Some sections of the contract were redacted in their entirety. They include: the project’s management structure; something called the “Strategic Advisory Council”; quality assurance procedures; five pages on user experience; site navigation; four unidentified pages on which everything, even section headings, have been redacted; every single piece of information in the document’s pricing table, including function, vendor, model, part ID, detail and quantity; the contract’s warranty agreement. In all, 25 pages of a 59-page technical proposal ? the main document in the package ? were redacted completely. Of the remaining pages, 14 had half or more of their content blacked out. The secrecy drew criticism from government transparency watchdogs. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, noted that information labeled “contractor proposed deliverables” had been completely redacted. “I think it’s on the one hand funny, but on the other hand frightening,” said Dalglish. “How are you going to keep these people’s feet to the fire? You can’t evaluate whether or not they delivered on the contract unless you know what they promised to deliver. That’s just nuts.” Dave Levinthal, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, agreed. “It’s difficult to make an accurate comparison with any other potential services when you can’t even see what the rates are for different types of programming services and job functions,” he said. “Sure, you get the overall number, but could there be a better deal out there? We don’t know.” A spokeswoman for Smartronix, headquartered in Maryland, confirmed that the company was given the chance to propose redactions in the documents, as allowed by the Freedom of Information Act. However, Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, faulted the GSA for allowing the documents to be redacted so extensively. “The government should have come back at the redaction and said, ‘Oh, for the love of god, nobody can tell anything from what you’ve redacted here,’” said Davis. “If you’re going to create a system designed ostensibly to provide greater transparency around a piece of the federal government, it would certainly be a great start to provide some transparency in the contract itself.” Clay Johnson, the director of the Sunlight Labs project at the Sunlight Foundation, called the level of redaction in the documents remarkable. “I think the people have a right to know what their money is being spent on,” he said. “We still don’t really know what the government’s buying here, other than that it’s a Web site.” The criticism from the Sunlight Foundation is notable. Smartronix claims in its proposal that it has “engaged the Sunlight Foundation as advisers on government transparency,” adding that the foundation “is willing to advise Team Smartronix on transparency.” Johnson disputed that characterization. He said that while he had spoken with one of Smartronix’s subcontractors and agreed to have Sunlight listed as an adviser, he had never spoken with anyone from the company itself and isn’t involved in the contract. “We’re willing to advise anybody on transparency,” said Johnson. ProPublica has filed an appeal with the GSA, arguing that the redactions were excessive and requesting that more of the information in the Smartronix documents be released. We’ll let you know what it says.

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Problem nurses stay on the job as patients suffer

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber, Maloy Moore - Jul. 12 (Special Report) - It's a high-stakes gamble that no one will be hurt as nurses with histories of drug abuse, negligence, violence and incompetence continue to provide care across the state. While the inquiries drag on, many nurses maintain spotless records. New employers and patients have no way of knowing the risks. Reporters examined the case of every nurse who faced disciplinary action from 2002 to 2008 -- more than 2,000 cases in all -- as well as hundreds of pages of court, personnel and regulatory reports. They interviewed scores of nurses, patients, families, hospital officials, regulators and experts.

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EPA Attorneys Criticize Obama Nominee

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Joaquin Sapien - Jul. 07 (News Report) - The Obama administration's nomination of Ignacia Moreno to head the environment division of the Department of Justice is moving quietly through the confirmation process, with hearings expected to begin in the next few weeks. Moreno has worked for the

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California Budget Cuts Could Cause ‘Public Safety Emergency'

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Emily Witt, Ben Protess - Jun. 23 (Investigative Report) - That may not sound like much alongside the hundreds of millions in proposed slashes to the state's education, prison and health care systems. But it's half the lab's budget and would likely halt or delay the testing of rape kits, DNA and other crucial crime scene evidence in many counties, law enforcement officials warn.

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Foreign workers for U.S. are casualties twice over

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By T. Christian Miller - Jun. 21 (Special Report) - Rey Torres dreamed of a better life for his wife and five children when he left a neighborhood of wooden shacks and burning trash piles to drive a bus on a U.S. military base near Baghdad. He hoped to send his children to college and build a new home with the $16,000 a year he earned in Iraq -- four times what he could make in the Philippines. Then, in April 2005, Torres, 31, was killed in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents. His widow and children were supposed to be protected by a war zone insurance system overseen by the U.S. government. They were eligible for about $300,000 in compensation.

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Industry Defends Federal Loophole for Drilling

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Abrahm Lustgarten - Jun. 05 (News Report) - In a packed and sometimes contentious hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, representatives of the oil and gas industry and their state regulators vigorously defended the practice of injecting toxic fluids underground without federal regulatory oversight.

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Stimulus money going to scofflaw companies

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Michael Grabell, David Epstein - May. 21 (Special Report) - One company paid nearly $1 million for destroying seagrass in the Florida Keys marine sanctuary. Another settled a discrimination case after federal investigators found it refused to hire black employees. A third firm was rebuked by the Army for poorly screening the interrogators it hired -- interrogators who later abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Despite those problems, the three companies have won millions of dollars in contracts under the economic stimulus package.

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14th Bank Returns TARP Money

Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Paul Keil - May. 19 (News Report) - On Friday, two more banks returned their TARP money: Alliance [1] of Syracuse, N.Y., ($26.9 million) and Texas Capital [2] of Dallas ($75 million). So far, 14 banks have returned a total of $1.3 billion, according to our running tally [3] of refunds. As we’ve noted before [4], the returns started coming in soon after Congress passed new restrictions on compensation for top employees at the banks.

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Lobbyists Skirt Disclosures on Stimulus Lobbying

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Olga Pierce, Brian Boyer - May. 15 (News Report) - We know that, like any giant pot of government money, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act attracted lobbyists’ interest. Lobbyists have long been required to give Congress quarterly disclosure reports outlining their lobbying efforts. In the latest quarterly reports, no less than 871 lobbyists [2] indicated lobbying on the stimulus. But only 12 of those lobbyists appear in the filings that agencies are now required to post online almost immediately after they speak to a lobbyist

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Nominee Ethics Promises May Prove Unrealistic

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Olga Pierce - May. 01 (News Analysis) - The ethics agreements that nominees for the Obama administration are required to file offer an unprecedented peek into the new president's high standards. But how high is too high? Last month, we posted a batch of these first-person letters, written and signed during the nomination process, outlining steps each nominee will take to avoid potential conflicts of interest and other ethical dilemmas.

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16 Cattle Drop Dead Near Mysterious Fluid at Gas Drilling Site

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Abrahm Lustgarten - Apr. 30 (News Report) - Sixteen cattle dropped dead in a northwestern Louisiana field this week after apparently drinking from a mysterious fluid adjacent to a natural gas drilling rig, according to Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality and a report in the Shreveport Times [3]. At least one worker told the newspaper that the fluids, which witnesses described as green and spewing into the air near the drilling derrick, were used for a drilling process called hydraulic fracturing [2]. But the company, Chesapeake Energy [4], has not identified exactly what chemicals are in those fluids and is insisting to state regulators that no spill occurred.

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Stimulus and Swine Flu: Where the Truth Lies

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell - Apr. 30 (Opinion) - The story about Republicans cutting stimulus money to fight swine flu has spread like, well, a pandemic flu. But there’s much more to this story.

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Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Dafna Linzer - Apr. 22 (News Report) - At least three dozen others who were held in the CIA's secret prisons overseas appear to be missing as well. Efforts by human rights organizations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them. (See the full list. [2])

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As Crisis Loomed, Geithner Pressed But Fell Short

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

ProPublica - By Jeff Gerth, Robert O'Harrow Jr. - Apr. 03 (Investigative Report) - In September 2005, Timothy Geithner made one of his most visible moves as a supervisor of the U.S. banking system. He summoned the nation's top financial firms and their regulators to streamline an antiquated system that threatened Wall Street's boom.

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In the Stimulus Bill: An Earmark by Any Other Name

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Michael Grabell, Christopher Weaver - Feb. 09 (Special Report) - In theory and publicity, the package is "earmark free." But it contains dozens of narrowly defined programs that send money to specific areas or cater to special interests, despite President Obama's pledge to pass "an economic recovery plan that is free from earmarks and pet projects."

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How Citigroup Unraveled Under Geithner’s Watch

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Jeff Gerth - Jan. 15 (Special Report) - Geithner's tenure at the New York Fed – which bore the major responsibility for supervising Citigroup – covers a tumultuous span in which the sprawling conglomerate spiraled from the country's biggest banking company to one of its largest welfare cases.

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Agencies Move to Restrict FOIA Access in Last-Minute Regs

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Jennifer LaFleur - Jan. 06 (News Report) - As one of the most secretive presidential administrations in history gets ready to close up shop, it's closing a few more things -- records. Over the past few months, some federal agencies have issued rules that would eliminate public disclosure of information -- or, in some cases, make it more difficult for requesters to get information.

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Burris sought death for innocent man

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Politico - By Ben Protess - Jan. 02 (News Report) - While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983.

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In 90’s, Burris Sought Death Penalty for Innocent Man

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

ProPublica - By Ben Protess - Dec. 31 (Special Report) - While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983. But by 1992, another man had confessed to the crime, and Burris’ own deputy attorney general was pleading with Burris to drop the case, then on appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court. Burris refused. He was running for governor.

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