propublica Posts

Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy?

ProPublica and other media organizations have put together a study dissecting Medicare data from 2012. The result: strong correlations between doctors that have been disciplined by the board for a variety of factors, and the propensity to overbill or commit fraud through Medicare.

Carson Luke Carson has autism and occasionally acts out in the classroom. But his mother Heather learned the shocking truth of how school administrators were restraining him after one major incident left Luke with a broken hand.

To grasp Medicare's staggering bill for ambulance rides in New Jersey, just visit the busy parking lot of the DaVita St. Joseph's dialysis clinic in the town of Paterson. More than 20 ambulances and a handful of wheelchair vans were parked outside on a recent morning there. Emergency medical technicians wheeled patients in and out on stretchers. As soon as one ambulance departed, another took its place. For each one-way ride, Medicare pays ambulance companies nearly $200, plus $6 a mile.

Online retailers are becoming increasingly sophisticated with their methods to track users. Cookies, emails, directed content, and massive databases are consistently and constantly invading shoppers' privacy.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo came to office pledging to eliminate campaign finance loopholes he himself used to stack millions in campaign cash. Here we are, years later, and Cuomo has not only refused to move on new regulations, he claims any new rules as unlikely.

After mass shootings, like the ones these past weeks in Las Vegas, Seattle and Santa Barbara, the national conversation often focuses on mental illness. So what do we actually know about the connections between mental illness, mass shootings and gun violence overall?

Mindi, a 25-year-old struggling new parent, experienced what doctors later concluded was a psychotic episode after an unexpected pregnancy and an abusive relationship. Her newborn was taken away from her by the state of Missouri. But though she's since recovered, with medication and therapy, the state refuses to give the kid back.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the health care programs, has found near $7 billion in overpayments. The problem is, the department doesn't have the money to investigate whether or not those overpayments are fraudulent.

There was some small hope that the IRS would effect some common sense rules changes prior to this year's elections, but those hopes have been dashed. Dark money groups will continue their unfettered spending after the IRS announced a delay in a reporting change for 'social welfare' nonprofits.

Twenty-eight-year-old Daniel Collazo was nearly done with his shift cleaning machines at the Tribe hummus plant in Taunton, Mass. when other workers heard his screams.

Collazo had become caught in the rotating screws that blend the hummus and struggled to free himself as slowly-winding 9-inch bl

Two Congressional Democrats unveiled legislation Wednesday morning that would restart the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's gun violence research efforts. Since 1996, when a small CDC-funded study on the risks of owning a firearm ignited opposition from Republicans, the CDC's budget for research on firearms injuries has shrunk to zero. The new legislation, introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) in the House, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the Senate, would give the CDC $10 million a year "for the purpose of conducting or supporting research on firearms safety or gun violence prevention."

The NRA has been very effective making sure no one knows just exactly how many people are shot each year, or what type of weapons they're shot with, or tracing the purchase of those guns, or knowing how they travel between states. An utter shame when a few rational rules would save so many lives.

Timothy Geithner admitted in his new book on the financial crisis that his oversight of Citigroup, the bank that received the largest bailout after the housing and financial markets collapsed in 2008, was a bit lax. The mea culpa comes too little, too late after the hundreds of millions of dollars lost, and millions of homes foreclosed upon.

Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. With the business of fracking waste only growing, legislators in 2013 had the chance to decide how best to monitor the state's vast amounts of toxic material, much of it being trucked into Ohio from neighboring states. But despite calls to require that the waste be rigorously tested for contamination, Gov. John Kasich and the state legislature signed off on measures that require just a fraction of the waste to be subjected to such oversight.

Adopting a tactic that has been used by officials ranging from Sarah Palin to staffers of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, aides to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are sending emails from private accounts to conduct official business. The tactic appears to be another item in the toolbox of an administration that, despite Cuomo's early vows of unprecedented transparency, has become known for an obsession with secrecy.

Freedom Path, one of a number of new dark money groups that don't have to disclose their donors, is suing the IRS for targeting them and investigating their application for tax-exempt status. Being investigated, they say, has caused them financial damage. Basically, they're whining because it's all just so unfair. Boo-hoo.

After the Supreme Court ruled on the side of big money – twice – the corrupt influence of unlimited cash seems all but inevitable. In a mostly symbolic gesture, Senate Dems have signed on to a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to regulate contributions. Oh, if only....

Since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, conservative groups have far outspent their liberal counterparts. In the 2012 federal election cycle alone, conservatives shelled out almost two and a half times the amount of outside money as liberal groups, including labor unions. But an early look at spending on television ads in North Carolina, home to a hotly contested Senate race and a number of competitive state races, shows that liberals are asserting themselves as never before. They are spending almost as much as conservatives in the Senate race and pouring funds into state contests that conservatives haven't yet spent a cent on.

Obama's new initiative to commute the sentences of long term non-violent prisoners, mostly drug offenders, has some glaring holes. It doesn't address George W. Bush's pardon attorney's glaring ethical lapses, nor does it attack racial disparities in any meaningful way.