Pacemaker Defect

Tags: None

Buying the Election

“Never Mind the Super PACs: How Big Business Is Buying the Election” investigates previously unreported ways that businesses have taken advantage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which overturned a century of campaign finance law and allowed corporations to spend directly on behalf of candidates. The piece debunks a common misperception that businesses have taken advantage of their new political spending powers primarily through so-called Super PACs. In fact, most Super PAC donations have come from extremely wealthy individuals, not corporations. The investigation shows how corporations have instead used a variety of 501(c) nonprofits, primarily 501(c)(6) “trade associations,” to direct substantial corporate money on federal elections. As one prominent advisor to GOP candidates as well as corporations points out, "many corporations will not risk running ads on their own," for fear of the reputational damage, but the trade groups make these ad buys nearly anonymous. In 2010, 501(c)(6) trade associations and 501(c)(4) issue-advocacy groups outspent Super PACs $141 million to $65 million. The investigation shows that the growth of trade association political spending has had a number of significant ramifications, such as increased leverage during beltway lobbying campaigns. Most troublingly, legal loopholes allow foreign interests to use trade associations to directly influence American elections. One of the most significant revelations in the piece was that the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for the oil and gas industry, had funneled corporate cash to groups that had run hard-hitting campaign ads while being led in part by a lobbyist for the Saudi Arabian government, Tofiq Al-Gabsani. As an API board member, Al-Gabsani was part of the team that directed these efforts, which helped defeat candidates who supported legislation that would move American energy policy away from its focus on fossil fuels. Federal law prevents Al-Gabsani, as a foreign national, from leading a political action committee, or PAC. But nothing in the law stopped him from leading a trade group that made campaign expenditures just as a PAC would.

Tags: Elections; campaign finance; corporations; Super PACs

Failure to Protect

The two-day series “A Failure to Protect” examined what went wrong in the case of a Central Minnesota family that grew to 26 through a mix of biological, adopted and foster children, but eventually was torn apart by sexual abuse charges. Reporters David Unze and Kirsti Marohn uncovered how Minnesota’s child protection system allows either counties or nonprofits to license foster homes with little oversight.

Tags: Adoption; foster home; sexual abuse

The Deadliest Place in Mexico

The Juarez Valley, a narrow corridor of green farmland carved from the Chihuahuan desert along the Rio Grande, was once known for its cotton, which rivaled Egypt’s. But that was before the Juarez cartel moved in to set up a lucrative drug smuggling trade. “The Deadliest Place in Mexico” explores untold aspects of Mexico’s drug war as it has played out in the small farming communities of this valley. The violence began in 2008, when the Sinaloa cartel moved in to take over the Juarez cartel’s turf. The Mexican government sent in the military to quell the violence — but instead the murder rate exploded. While the bloodshed in the nearby City of Juarez attracted widespread media attention, the violence spilling into the rural Juarez Valley received far less, eve as the killings began to escalate in brutal ways. Community advocates, elected officials, even police officers were shot down in the streets. Several residents were stabbed in the face with ice picks. By 2009, the valley, with a population of 20,000, had a murder rate six times higher than Juarez itself. Newspapers began to call the rural farming region the “Valley of Death.” This investigation uses extensive Freedom of Information Act requests, court documents, and difficult-to-obtain interviews in Spanish and English with current and former Juarez Valley residents, Mexican officials, narcotraffickers and U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials, to reveal that many of these shocking deaths were perpetrated with the participation of Mexican authorities. It shows scenes of devastation — households where six members of a single family were killed, without a single police investigation. It uncovers targeted killings by masked gunmen of community activists and innocent residents for speaking out against violence and repression facilitated by corrupt military and government officials. And it gathers multiple witnesses who describe soldiers themselves, working in league with the Sinaloa cartel, perpetrating violence against civilians. "The cemeteries are all full. There isn't anywhere left to bury the bodies," one former resident said. "You'll find nothing there but ghost towns and soldiers."

Tags: Drugs; violence; shootings; murders; Mexico

America's Great State Payroll Giveaway

A state-employed psychiatrist in California made $822,000 by clocking in 17 hours every day last year, including Sundays and holidays. An employee cashed out with $609,000 for unused vacation when she retired, claiming she never took vacations in a 30-year career. A highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in salary, pension and leave payments. The chief money manager at a Texas pension fund got $1 million in salary and bonuses while posting investment returns that trailed those of peers who earned a quarter as much. Bloomberg News used freedom-of-information laws to obtain 1.4 million payroll records from the 12 largest states and show how taxpayers funded these out-of-control expenses and more, while at the same time states cut funding for universities, public safety, health care, schools and services aimed at the neediest residents.

Tags: Payroll; taxes; taxpayers

Green Inc., Environmentalism for Profit

With the groundbreaking series Green Inc., USA Today for the first time uncovers the truth behind the soaring movement toward constructing buildings that are certified as environmentally friendly. The series shows how "green" buildings often are barely different from their supposedly conventional counterparts -- except that green-building designers and owners often win huge tax breaks, zoning waivers and other valuable perks from government agencies. The series involves an unprecedented analysis of records for 7,100 green-certified buildings to show how the designers follow the easiest and cheapest steps to get certified. Numerous freedom-of-information requests revealed the enormous tax breaks awards to the building designers and owners, and also show how some buildings are falling far short of their environmental promise.

Tags: Environmental friendly; taxes; green buildings; certificated

Wilmington's Street Wars

Wilmington, Del., has become one of the most violent cities of its size in America. Nothing dramatized that fact more than several spectacular shootings in 2012, including one day in June when three people were shot to death in separate incidents, and a shootout a few weeks later at a soccer tournament that killed three people -- including a teenager waiting to play the game he loved. To document and study the violence he and other News Journal colleagues were covering, senior reporter Cris Barrish gathered information for a database detailing the 158 shootings, including 42 homicides, over a 20-month period. He learned that police made arrests in only one-third of the cases, many of which collapsed in court. His research into why police could not solve cases led to the revelation that both shooting suspects and victims had been arrested an average of about two dozen times, with many qualifying as habitual criminals -- a phenomenon that some authorities call "thugicide.'' His stories also explored the “don’t snitch’’ code of the streets that cripples prosecution of these cases, not only by the men on both sides of the gun barrel, but also by residents who are terrified of the gunmen and distrustful of law enforcement.

Tags: Shootings; homicides; arrests; criminals; thugicide

Counting Kids Out

"Counting Kids Out" exposed years of systemic cheating in Columbus City Schools, Ohio's largest school district. The rolling investigation has uncovered widespread fraud that likely resulted in higher-than-deserved report-card grades; inflated graduation rates; and bonuses for school workers who did not actually deserve them.

Tags: Columbus City Schools; cheating; fraud; graduation retes

The Dalí Sculpture Mess

The story describes the burgeoning industry in posthumous sculptures attributed to Salvador Dalí and the continuing difficulties experienced by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation in Spain, which has responsibility for managing Dalí’s estate and legacy, in slowing the spread of these questionable works. The sculptures are often bought and sold as original works by the artist. The story demonstrates that, in fact, most of the sculptures were authorized by Dalí’s wife and business managers, either posthumously or when the artist and his wife were old and infirm, and continue to be produced long after the artist’s death, in 1989. Dalí had little or no direct involvement in the creation of many of them. The story also demonstrates that new, apparently fake versions of the sculptures continue to appear, some of them openly marketed by a Chinese foundry that has no license to make the sculptures. The story updates an investigation published in ARTnews in December 2008 that for the first time described the Dalí sculpture industry and identified the producers of the sculptures.

Tags: Sculptures; Salvador Dali; estate

Failed to Death

Since 2007, 72 children who were under supervision of the state of Colorado died at the hands of their caregivers. They were beaten, starved, suffocated or burned to death. An investigation by The Denver Post and 9News uncovered the failings of the system that was there to protect those children. The report included voices from the state, the counties, overworked caseworkers, law enforcement and family members, along with details on each child's death.

Tags: Caregivers; children; abuse; deaths