NewsTrust - Corruption - Most Recent Stories

Everything Is Rigged, Continued: EU Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - May. 16 (News Report) - According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:

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The Real Scandal: Official Washington Goes Nuts Over IRS Doing Its Job

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steven Rosenfeld - May. 14 (News Analysis) - The IRS was doing its job. Its staff was overwhelmed by the thousands of obvious political groups that sought the cover of being designated as charities in the 2010 and 2012 elections; so they could raise money and hide their donors names. Some IRS employees spent far too much time or were assigned to spend time on lowest-hanging fruit—political amateur groups from the Tea Party movement—and not enough on the bigtime players, such as Karl Rove, who was lawyered up. And the IRS still has not ruled on the tactics and likes of the Roves ( Crossroads GPS), Koch brothers ( Americans for Prosperity) and the pro-Obama groups ( Organizing for America and Priorities USA) that put millions into thepresidential election via groups pretending to be charities.

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Large Corporations Seek U.S.–European 'Free Trade Agreement' to Further Global Dominance

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Andrew Gavin Marshall - May. 13 (Special Report) - A corporate world order is emerging, and like any parasite, it is slowly killing off its host. Unfortunately, the "host" happens to be the planet, and all life upon and within it. So, while the extinction of the species will be the end result of passively accepting a corporate-driven world, on the other hand, it’s very profitable for those corporations and their shareholders.

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Who Is Profiting From Charters? The Big Bucks Behind Charter School Secrecy, Financial Scandal and Corruption

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By kristin Rawls - May. 11 (Investigative Report) - Studies shows that charter schools don’t typically outperform public schools and they often tend to increase racial and class segregation. So one must wonder, what exactly is motivating these school “reformers”? And why have they pushed for more and more closure — and new charter schools — at such an unprecedented rate in recent years?

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Obama Embraces Plutocrats Again With His Billionaire Commerce Secretary Choice

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steven Rosenfeld - May. 07 (News Analysis) - her record as a businesswoman shares similarities with Mitt Romney’s. Her massive wealth is kept in tax-avoiding offshore accounts. Her family’s best-known business, the Hyatt hotel empire, is known for bitter and ongoing disputes with labor unions. Her resume includes running a bank that pioneered high-interest subprime loans and then failed miserably, leaving uninsured depositors with losses averaging $6,000.

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Your Retirement for a Bottle of Champagne: How Wall Street Fraudsters Ripped You Off, Again

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Lynn Stuart Parramore - May. 07 (Special Report) - LIBOR was, in the opinion of many, the con of the century. But is it a crime without punishment? About a month ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that a federal court judge had let several banks off the hook, dismissing claims that 16 banks targeted by lawsuits had broken federal antitrust laws by rigging LIBOR. As Matt Taibbi explained in his must-read article on the banking scandal, the federal judge bought the banks’ ridiculous blame-the-victim story that if cities and towns and other investors lost money over LIBOR rigging, it was their own fault.

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5 Ways That Raw, Unregulated Capitalism Is Acting Like a Cancer on American Society

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Paul Buchheit - May. 05 (Opinion) - The uncontrolled growth of investment wealth is diverting resources away from vital programs, effectively smothering them.

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Mel Watt Enjoys Close Ties to Financial Industries

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Alison Fitzgerald - May. 05 (Special Report) - Rep. Mel Watt has plenty of friends in the financial services industry: The North Carolina Democrat whom President Barack Obama has appointed to oversee mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has received more campaign money from financial interests than any other industry or special interest. Since he entered Congress in 1992, Watt has received $1.33 million in campaign contributions from the finance, real estate and insurance industries, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group that tracks money in politics. That’s almost a quarter of the total $5.47 million in total contributions he’s received through his career.

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NRA Leader Warns of Rising Cost of Senators

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Andy Borowitz - May. 05 (Comedy News) - "Over the past few years, we've seen the price of purchasing a Senator surge astronomically," he told the N.R.A. faithful. "Unless something is done to make Senators more affordable, the ability of a tiny lobbying group to overrule the wishes of ninety per cent of the American people will be in jeopardy." The days are over, he said, when "you could buy a Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for little more than pocket change."

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While Wronged Homeowners Got 300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got 2 Billion

Sat, 04 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - May. 04 (Investigative Report) - not only were these consultants not so independent, not only did they very likely skew the numbers seriously in favor of the banks, and not only were these few consultants paid over $2 billion (over 20 percent of the entire settlement amount) while the average homeowner only received $300 in the deal – in addition to all of that, it appears that federal regulators will not turn over the evidence of impropriety they discovered during these reviews to homeowners who may want to sue the banks

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How Two Secretive Global Trade Deals Will Further Enrich the American Elite

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Dean Baker - May. 02 (News Analysis) - the Obama administration is pursuing two major "free trade" agreements that in fact have very little to do with free trade and are likely to hurt those without the money and power to be part of the game. The deals in questions, the Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP) and the US-European Union "Free Trade" Agreement are both being pushed as major openings to trade that will increase growth and create jobs. In fact, eliminating trade restrictions is a relatively small part of both agreements

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China Is Plundering the Planet's Seas

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By - Gwynn Guilford - May. 01 (Special Report) - The average it told the UN Food and Agriculture Organization over the last decade was 368,000 tons each year. A recent European Parliament report puts that number at 4.6 million tons -- some 12.5 times more than what China reported

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Exposed: The Billionaire-Backed Group Strong-Arming Parents into Destroying Their Kids' Public Schools

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Yasha Levine - Apr. 30 (Investigative Report) - The parents told me that a Los Angeles-based group calling itself Parent Revolution organized a local campaign to harass and trick them into signing petitions that they thought were meant for simple school improvements. In fact those petitions turned out to be part of a sophisticated campaign to convert their children’s public school into a privately-run charter — something a majority of parents opposed. At times, locals say, the Parent Revolution volunteers’ tactics were so heavy-handed in gathering signatures that they crossed the line into harassment and intimidation. Many parents were misled about what the petition they signed actually meant. Some told me that the intimidation with some of the undocumented Latino residents included bribery and extortion

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U.S. Judges Admit to Jailing Children for Money

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

inquisitr.com - Apr. 30 (Opinion) -

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How the CIA's Bags of Cash Undermined the Afghanistan War

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Spencer Ackerman - Apr. 29 (Opinion) - It’s the most understandable, intuitive and tempting mistake in geopolitics: secretly pay a powerful foreigner to do what you want. The CIA, like many spy agencies, has done it throughout its history, and now we know it helped undermine the America’s longest war.

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When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic That’s Sweeping America

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Lynn Stuart Parramore - Apr. 29 (Special Report) - Americans like to think that a fair day’s work brings a fair day’s pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it’s back and taking a terrible toll. We’re talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they’re getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A conservative estimate of unpaid overtime alone shows that it costs workers at least $19 billion per year

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In Gasland sequel, fracking saga’s pressure ratchets up

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Sarah Laskow - Apr. 27 (Review) - Gasland Part II shows how much higher the stakes have grown in the battle over fracking since Josh Fox made its predecessor.

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Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Apr. 25 (Investigative Report) - Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game.

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Sixteen Years for Espionage; Life in Jail for Whistleblowing

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

truth-out.org - By Nathan Fuller - Apr. 20 (Special Report) - Millay “admitted to trying to pass on classified information to someone he believed was a Russian agent,” according to Reuters’ report. An FBI agent said, “Millay betrayed his nation’s trust by attempting to sell classified national defense information for profit to a foreign nation.” Contrast that motive with Bradley Manning’s. In chat logs with government informant Adrian Lamo, Manning hypothesized, “what if i were someone more malicious…i could’ve sold to russia or china, and made bank?”

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Why American CEOs Get Paid Way More Than CEOs Anywhere Else (Hint: It's Not Performance Based)

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Dean Baker - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - in the last three decades, the pay of CEOs has gone from just being high -- say 30 or 40 times the pay of typical workers -- to being in the stratosphere. The pay of CEOs at major corporations now averages several hundred times the pay of ordinary workers.

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Cooking the Books: State Department Ignores True Climate Impact of Keystone XL Pipeline

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - Apr. 17 (News Analysis) - A new report out today from environmental groups—Oil Change International, Natural Resources Defense Council, 350.org, Environment America, National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, Sierra Club, Greenpeace—shows that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would, if approved, be responsible for at least 181 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) each year,

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Saving Our Ravaged Planet ... and Ourselves

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Jim Hightower - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - Earth Day cometh — the 43rd year of this national focus on the state of our globe. So, how is Earth doing? Should we be weeping ... or cheering? Both.

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'War on Whistleblowers' Film Highlights Dangers of Crackdown

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By John Knefel - Apr. 17 (Review) - A still from Robert Greenwald's film 'War on Whistleblowers' Greenwald describes the philosophical underpinnings of the national security state as two-fold. The first is an ideological belief that extreme secrecy results in increased security – "a notion

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Dan Loeb Simultaneously Solicits, Betrays Pension Funds

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Apr. 14 (Special Report) - There's confidence. There's chutzpah. And then there's Dan Loeb, hedge fund king extraordinaire and head of Third Point Capital, who's getting set to claim the World Heavyweight Championship of Balls.

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5 Juicy Tax Breaks That Corporations Enjoy That the Public Can't Touch

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Scott Klinger - Apr. 10 (Investigative Report) - Corporations are quick to claim “corporate personhood” and their First Amendment rights when it comes to their ability to donate to political candidates, influence elections, and lobby or when it comes to advertising their products, especially those deemed dangerous or socially destructive. But on tax day, corporations are quite content with a tax code full of perks and privileges for corporations that are not available to living, breathing human beings.

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