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Government Corruption News Articles
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Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.


Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.


As inequality grows, so does the political influence of the rich
2018-07-21, The Economist
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/07/21/as-inequality-grow...

With few exceptions, today’s populist insurgents are more concerned with immigration and sovereignty than with the top rate of income tax. This disconnect may be more than an oddity. It may be a sign of the corrupting influence of inequality on democracy. Rather than straightforwardly increasing pressure on politicians to do something about skewed income distributions ... rising inequality might instead boost the power of the rich, thus enabling them to counter the popular will. Research in political science gives substance to the impression that America’s rich wield outsize influence. The relation between concentrated wealth and the political power of the rich is scarcely limited to political spending, or to America. The rich have many means to shape public opinion: financing nominally apolitical think-tanks, for instance, or buying media outlets. Although their power may sometimes be used to influence the result of a particular vote, it is often deployed more subtly, to shape public narratives about which problems deserve attention. Rising inequality ... is associated with political agendas more focused on matters related to “social order”, such as crime and immigration. Issues such as economic justice are crowded out. As their wealth increases, [the rich] have a greater ability to press politicians to emphasise some topics rather than others. The rich are powerful, but not all-powerful. If political leaders tried it, they might well find that redistribution is a winner at the ballot box.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and income inequality.


Top Ecuador court upholds $9 billion ruling against Chevron
2018-07-11, Miami Herald/Associated Press
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article214688105.html

Ecuador's highest court has upheld a $9.5 billion judgment against oil giant Chevron for decades of rainforest damage. Plaintiffs celebrated the constitutional court's decision announced Tuesday night, saying it should pave the way for indigenous tribes to receive compensation for oil spills that contaminated groundwater and soil in their Amazon home. But the ruling is largely symbolic as Chevron no longer operates in the South American country. That means Ecuador's government will have to pursue assets owned by the ... company in foreign courts, where it so far has had little luck. Last week, an appeals court in Argentina rejected an attempt by Ecuador to collect on its award, echoing earlier rulings by courts in Canada, Gibraltar and Brazil. In 2014, a U.S. court of appeals ... also denied Ecuador's request, arguing that the original judgment was obtained through bribery, coercion and fraud. In an added twist, the American lawyer who for years represented Ecuador in the matter was barred Tuesday from practicing law in New York state. The New York state appeals court found Steven Donziger guilty of professional misconduct, saying that in his appeal of the 2014 ruling he did not challenge the judge's findings of bribery, witness tampering, and the ghostwriting of a court opinion.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


A migrant child was returned to his mother covered in lice
2018-07-06, MSN
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-migrant-child-was-returned-to-his-mother-...

One of the children separated from his parents at the US-Mexico border was returned months later with lice, looking as if he hadn’t been bathed in weeks, and with irrevocable changes to his personality ... according to documents filed in a lawsuit against the Trump administration. The lawsuit, from 17 states and the District of Columbia, calls for an end to Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy and demands the administration reunite all families that were separated at the border. One mother, Olivia Caceres, alleged that she was separated from her son in November at a legal point entry ... and wasn’t with him for 12 weeks. When he was returned to her custody, Caceres’s son was infested with lice and appeared as though he had not been bathed for the entirety of their separation. "[My son] is not the same since we were reunited. I thought that, because he is so young he would not be traumatized by this experience, but he does not separate from me. He cries when he does not see me. That behavior is not normal.” The stories about what happens to children who are reunited with their families are playing out as still hundreds more kids remain separated from their parents. On June 26, HHS was given a deadline to reunite children under the age of 5 to their families within 14 days and all children within 30 days. HHS Secretary Alex Azar ... admitted that they don’t know which of the nearly 3,000 migrant children in HHS’s custody have been separated from their parents.


The Equal Rights Amendment has been dead for 36 years. Why it might be on the verge of a comeback.
2018-06-18, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/06/18/the-equal-r...

On May 30, Illinois became the 37th state to pass the Equal Right Amendment (ERA), which says, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Next, advocates aim to secure the final state needed to ratify the amendment. They will probably target Virginia, North Carolina or Georgia. The law is overdue. Many Americans assume that the United States already has gender-equality rules. The Civil Rights Act, Title IX and the Equal Pay Act all offer protections against discrimination. But these are pieces of legislation. New laws and Supreme Court rulings can diminish their power. An amendment, by contrast, would force a constitutional reckoning for sex-based discrimination. Activists lobbied, marched, went on strike and persuaded Congress to pass the amendment in 1972. Within just two years, 34 states ratified it. Then the momentum faltered. The amendment failed to secure ratification from the four additional states needed before 1982, the expiration date set by Congress. Passing the ERA will not be easy. Fierce opposition has long accompanied feminist surges, and this is already happening today. In Illinois, Republicans largely spoke out against the amendment. The dominant party could block the ERA’s path at the federal level, and other states could rescind their decades-old ratification. Securing the final state to pass the ERA will probably prove as challenging as it was to secure the final state to pass the 19th Amendment a century ago.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles from reliable major media sources.


EPAs Pruitt spent $1,560 on 12 customized fountain pens from Washington jewelry store
2018-06-01, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/06/01/epas-pru...

Tiny Jewel Box, which calls itself Washingtons premier destination for fine jewelry and watches, had promised to expedite the order of a dozen customized silver fountain pens each emblazoned with the seal of the Environmental Protection Agency and the signature of its leader, Scott Pruitt. Now all that the EPA staff member working with the store needed was for a top Pruitt aide to sign off on the $3,230 order. The cost of the Qty. 12 Fountain Pens will be around $1,560.00, the staffer emailed Aug. 14 to Millan Hupp, Pruitts head of scheduling. All the other items total cost is around $1,670.00 ... Please advise. Yes, please order, Hupp responded. The exchange, included among thousands of pages of emails released this week as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Sierra Club, offered another glimpse of the high-end tastes of the EPA chief, who has faced months of scrutiny over his expenditures of taxpayer money on first-class travel, an unprecedented security detail, a $43,000 phone booth, a top-of-the-line SUV and other office upgrades. In a Senate hearing last month, Pruitt came as close as he ever has to publicly acknowledging any personal fault in the ethical decisions that have triggered a dozen federal inquiries, including probes by the EPAs inspector general, the Government Accountability Office and the White House itself. There have been decisions over the past 16 months that, as I look back, I would not make the same decisions again, Pruitt told lawmakers.

Note: EPA scientists have been leaving the agency in droves. The EPA is one of three federal agencies reported to have been "gagged" by the Trump administration. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the scientific community.


U.S. Navy Reserve Doctor on Gina Haspel Torture Victim: “One of the Most Severely Traumatized Individuals I have Ever Seen”
2018-05-17, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2018/05/17/gina-haspel-cia-director-torture/

An American doctor and Naval reserve officer who has done extensive medical evaluation of a high-profile prisoner who was tortured under the supervision of Gina Haspel privately urged Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to oppose Haspel’s confirmation as CIA director. “I have evaluated Mr. Abdal Rahim al-Nashiri, as well as close to 20 other men who were tortured” in U.S. custody, including several who were tortured “as part of the CIA’s RDI [Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation] program. I am one of the only health professionals he has ever talked to about his torture,” Dr. Sondra Crosby, a professor ... at Boston University, wrote to Warner’s legislative director. “He is irreversibly damaged by torture that was unusually cruel. In my over 20 years of experience treating torture victims from around the world, including Syria, Iraq, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. al-Nashiri presents as one of the most severely traumatized individuals I have ever seen.” Nashiri was ... “rendered” to Afghanistan by the CIA and eventually taken to the Cat’s Eye prison in Thailand that was run by Haspel from October to December 2002. On Monday, The Intercept reported that a ... classified memo compiled by the [Senate Intelligence Committee] and aimed at examining Haspel’s full involvement with torture and destruction of evidence was removed from the Senate. It was supposed to be housed in a secure facility inside Congress, so senators and their staff could read it.

Note: The above article contains graphic descriptions of torture overseen and then covered up by Gina Haspel. Another article, by a former CIA counterterrorism officer who was imprisoned for blowing the whistle on the CIA torture, referred to Haspel's actions as "war crimes, crimes against humanity". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Ecuador cuts off Julian Assange's internet access at London embassy
2018-03-28, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/28/julian-assange-internet-connect...

Ecuador has cut Julian Assange’s communications with the outside world from its London embassy, where the founder of the whistleblowing WikiLeaks website has been living for nearly six years. The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”. The move came after Assange tweeted on Monday challenging Britain’s accusation that Russia was responsible for the nerve agent poisoning of a Russian former double agent and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury earlier this month. Ecuador previously cut Assange’s internet access in the embassy in October 2016 over fears he was using it to interfere in the US presidential election following Wikileaks’ publication of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign adviser, John Podesta. In May 2017 the Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, again asked Assange to refrain from commenting on Spain’s dispute with the separatist region of Catalonia. Assange had tweeted that Madrid was guilty of “repression”. As part of a subsequent agreement between Assange and the Ecuadorian government, he is not permitted to send any messages that could interfere with Ecuador’s relations with other countries.

Note: Despite the "legal limbo" and propaganda campaign carried out against Assange and Wikileaks, Assange was recently granted Ecuadorian citizenship. A 2016 United Nations panel found that authorities in Sweden and the UK have acted unlawfully with regard to Assange. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


N Carolina: Sterilization Victims to Get Final Payment Soon
2018-01-18, US News & World Report/Associated Press
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-carolina/articles/2018-01-18/n-...

North Carolina officials say the third and final compensation payment to sterilization victims should be mailed soon, marking the end of a 15-year pursuit of financial help for them. A spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration tells the Winston-Salem Journal that officials are verifying the final number of qualified claimants and confirming addresses. Spokeswoman Gena Renfrow says payments will be prepared once that's done. About 7,600 people were sterilized under North Carolina's eugenics program before it ended in 1974. The N.C. Industrial Commission has certified more than 200 victims, who have received two previous payments of $20,000 and $15,000. The payments are being finalized nearly two months after a decision by the N.C. Court of Appeals rejecting arguments from the heirs of some victims about the law.

Note: North Carolina was one of 31 US states to run a eugenics program. An estimated 65,000 people were sterilized by these programs. Female prison inmates in California were sterilized without consent as recently as 2010. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Mystery Surrounds Metal Towers Popping Up In Tunnels & Bridges
2017-09-27, CBS News (New York City affiliate)
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/09/27/mysterious-metal-towers/

Mysterious metal towers are popping up at local tunnels, and soon they’ll start appearing at bridges, too. But even people on the MTA board in charge of the towers can’t say why they’re being used or what’s in them. It’s a $100 million MTA project shrouded in secrecy, with 18 of them for tunnels and bridges. So what are they exactly? The MTA’s man in charge of the bridges and tunnels, Cedrick Fulton, dodged Carlin’s questions Wednesday. “I said no comment,” he said. Some MTA board members, including New York City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, say they know too little about the towers - even with half the money already spent and some of the towers already up. “A lot of the board members felt they didn’t have all the details they would have wanted, myself included,” she said. Residents suspect there is much more going on in the towers than meets the eye and wonder if they’ll ever really know what’s going on inside of them. CBS2 demanded answers from MTA Chairman Joe Lhota. Carlin: “Some of your own board members say they don’t know the specifics.” Lhota: “The base of these new pieces that are going up include whatever fiber optics are necessary for those Homeland Security items.” In other words, anti-terror technology. Could that one day include facial recognition? We don’t know and Lhota won’t say. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he told Carlin. Lhota said all necessary Homeland Security technology remains in place at all crossings, even the ones that don’t have the new towers yet.

Note: See video of these strange new towers containing secret Homeland Security technology at the link above. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy.


How a Crackdown on Leaks Threatens Confidential Sources
2017-09-04, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/insider/how-a-crackdown-on-leaks-threatens...

It was just four years ago that roughly two dozen representatives of major news organizations crowded around a conference table at the Justice Department for a meeting with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Our agenda? Strengthening the Justice Department’s guidelines that limit when federal prosecutors can serve subpoenas on the news media. It had just been revealed that federal investigators had secretly seized the phone records of The Associated Press and the emails of a Fox News correspondent during leak investigations. The result was important: The Justice Department revised its internal guidelines to make it harder for prosecutors to obtain subpoenas for reporters’ testimony and records. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, after being chided by President Trump for being weak, recently declared a war on leakers and made clear that the news media was also on his mind. It seems all but certain that the Justice Department will try to chip away at the subpoena guidelines, [which] say that prosecutors are to seek testimony and evidence from journalists only as a last resort, and that news organizations should have a chance to go to court to challenge any subpoenas. The guidelines are far from ironclad. If a prosecutor were to ignore them, a journalist would have no right to go into court and demand they be followed. When federal courts dial back protection for reporters, the guidelines become an essential first line of defense against overzealous prosecutors.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


KKK leader claims hate group has grown at record pace since Trump became President
2017-08-23, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/kkk-trump-member...

The Ku Klux Klan has grown faster since Donald Trump’s inauguration than any time in recent memory, a Klan leader has claimed. “I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I haven’t seen the Klan grow at the pace it’s growing now,” Chris Barker, an Imperial Wizard of the KKK, told The Independent. Mr Barker said that after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville he received 50 applications to join his group in one day. The next day, he received 80. Mr Barker leads the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, which has less than 200 members. As one of the most active Klan groups in the US, the group takes part in “activism” such as burning crosses, advocating for the murder of immigrants, and distributing leaflets claiming, among other things, “transgender is an abomination”. Mr Barker contacted The Independent about a previous article, from which he had gained notoriety for calling a Univision journalist a “n*****” and threatening to burn her out of the country. Approximately 30 KKK groups were active over the course of 2016 – a decrease from the year before. That number has since risen to 40. This summer also marked a departure from the trend of small, scattered, and sparsely attended KKK demonstrations. Several different Klan groups turned out for the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists from around the country protested the removal of a Confederate statue. The rally, which Mr Barker’s group also participated in, was said to be the largest white supremacist gathering in the US in decades.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing civil liberties news articles from reliable major media sources.


Why Martin Shkreli Won’t Be the Last Pharma Bro
2017-08-08, Fortune
http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/martin-shkreli-pharma-bro-pharmaceutical-compan...

Martin Shkreli - famously known as the guy that jacked up the price of a lifesaving AIDS treatment by 5,000% - finally saw his day in court, albeit for a completely unrelated case involving an unrelated company. The trial ... found Shkreli guilty of three counts of fraud for essentially lying to his investors about how he would invest their money and when they would be paid back. The conviction, carrying a potential 20 years in prison, is no joke. Yet the notorious self-promoter took the opportunity to ... let the world know he wasn’t fazed. And why should he be? How Shkreli got rich in the first place remains not just legal but celebrated. The real crime of the Pharma Bro is the unrepentant greed that drives him, as well as the industry he’s thrived in. Sen. Bernie Sanders has attempted to put a stop to this greed with recently introduced legislation to cap prices for pharmaceuticals developed by government-funded research. Far from a new idea, Sanders has been pushing for a bill like this for decades. While raising the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000% rightfully drew the scorn of millions of people, price gouging is all too common for the industry. Take the EpiPen, the lifesaving device for kids and adults with severe allergies, whose price was famously hiked up over 500% ... after it was acquired by Mylan. Laws that protect investors in these companies are what landed Shkreli in court. Yet until there are laws to protect patients from drug company extortion, like the one proposed by Sanders, the line of Pharma Bros ready to take his place is already queued up.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering and corporate corruption.


Feds Crack Trump Protesters’ Phones to Charge Them With Felony Rioting
2017-07-26, Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/feds-crack-trump-protesters-phones-to-charge-the...

Officials seized Trump protesters’ cell phones, cracked their passwords, and are now attempting to use the contents to convict them of conspiracy to riot at the presidential inauguration. Prosecutors have indicted over 200 people on felony riot charges for protests in Washington, D.C. on January 20. Some defendants face up to 75 years in prison. Evidence against the defendants has been scant from the moment of their arrest. As demonstrators, journalists, and observers marched through the city, D.C. police officers channelled hundreds of people into a narrow, blockaded corner, where they carried out mass arrests. Some of those people ... are now suing for wrongful arrest. Police also seized more than 100 cell phones. All of the ... phones were locked. But a July 21 court document shows that investigators were successful in opening the locked phones. Prosecutors moved to use a wealth of information from the phones as evidence, including the phones’ “call detail records,” “SMS or MMS messages,” “contact logs/email logs,” “chats or other messaging applications,” “website search history and website history,” and “images or videos.” One of the more than 200 defendants has pleaded guilty to riot charges after being named extensively in a superseding indictment. But the case against most defendants is less clear; in the superseding indictment, prosecutors accuse hundreds defendants of conspiracy to riot, based on “overt acts” as banal as chanting anti-capitalist slogans or wearing dark clothing.

Note: In May, United Nations officials said that the US treatment of activists was increasingly "incompatible with US obligations under international human rights law". For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.


Google now highest-spending company for federal lobbying
2017-07-21, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-now-highest-spending-company-fo...

Google spent the most it ever has in a single quarter trying to influence elected officials in Washington, according to lobbying disclosures made public late Thursday. The past three months have also seen record spending on lobbying by several other major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple and Uber. Google Inc., according to the disclosure forms, spent $5.93 million between April 1 and June 30. That’s about 40 percent more than it had spent during the same period last year. The only three entities that doled out more money were large business organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($11.68 million), the National Association of Realtors ($10.92 million) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America ($6 million). Since the 2016 election, the tech industry has had to navigate ... an administration whose decisions have often cut against Silicon Valley’s business interests. The combined lobbying efforts of some of the most influential tech companies - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft - totaled $15.79 million. Google’s lobbying efforts come as it faces the largest fine the European Union has ever levied against a company for abusing its dominant market position. In June, the European Union’s antitrust chief hit Google with a $2.7 billion fine, saying the company illegally steered users toward its comparison shopping site. If the ruling is not overturned, it could reshape the company’s behavior and direct the evolving boundaries of tech-industry regulation.

Note: Check out the intriguing, well researched article "How the CIA Made Google." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing corporate corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Trump Administration Starts Returning Copies of C.I.A. Torture Report to Congress
2017-06-02, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/us/politics/cia-torture-report-trump.html?...

Senators, spies and a president spent years in a pitched battle over how the history is told of one of the most controversial chapters of America’s campaign against terrorism, the detention and interrogation of prisoners in secret C.I.A. jails. Congressional officials said on Friday that the [Trump] administration had begun returning to Congress copies of a 6,700-page Senate report from 2014 about the C.I.A. program. The move raises the possibility that most of the copies could be locked in Senate vaults indefinitely or even destroyed. The classified report [tells] the story of how ... the C.I.A. began capturing terrorism suspects and interrogating them ... beyond the reach of the American judicial and military legal systems. The central conclusion of the report is that the spy agency’s interrogation methods - including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other kinds of torture - were far more brutal and less effective than the C.I.A. described to policy makers, Congress and the public. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which was run by Democrats when the executive summary was released, sent copies of the entire report to at least eight federal agencies, asking that they incorporate it into their records — a move that would have made the documents subject to requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The agencies all refused to add the report to their records, and instead kept their copies locked up, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the C.I.A. for access to the full report.

Note: See a revealing New York Times article listing seven key points from this torture report. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles about corruption in government and in the intelligence community.


Donald Trump exempts 17 senior White House staff including Steve Bannon from ethics rules
2017-06-01, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-white-house-sta...

The White House disclosed Wednesday evening that it has granted ethics waivers to 17 specific appointees who work for President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, including four former lobbyists. The waivers exempt the appointees from certain portions of ethics rules aimed at barring potential conflicts of interest. In addition, a blanket waiver was given to all executive office appointees to interact with news organisations. Three of the former lobbyists given waivers to work in the White House serve as staffers to the National Economic Council, headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn. (Cohn himself did not need a waiver because he recuses himself from participating in matters specific to Goldman Sachs, according to a White House official.) His aides that received ethics exemptions include Michael Catanzaro, a domestic energy and environmental policy adviser. Catanzaro was granted permission to work on ... matters of interest to his former energy sector clients, including emissions regulations, clear air standards and renewable fuel standards. Shahira Knight, a White House adviser on tax and retirement policy, received a waiver to participate in a range of tax and financial policy matters. Knight, a former tax lobbyist, served as vice president of Fidelity Investments' public affairs and policy group. Trump's predecessors also issued ethics waivers to appointees who had potential conflicts of interest. The Obama administration handed out at least 66 such exemptions.

Note: Despite the White House's assurances to the contrary, the NEC's Gary Cohn is reportedly spearheading a plan to sell US infrastructure to large financial firms, including his former employer Goldman Sachs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing government corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


Crowdfunding for medical expenses is rising — when it should be eradicated
2017-04-28, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-crowdfunding-medical-20...

Public appeals by families or individuals for help paying basic medical bills seem to be on the rise in the United States. Crowdfunding websites such as GoFundMe.com report that medical expenses rank as their largest single category of appeals; other sites such as HelpHopeLive have sprung up specifically for medical expense appeals. [This points] to a crisis in the American healthcare system in two ways. One involves the gaps and other problems with U.S. healthcare that make crowdfunding campaigns necessary. Lawmakers who support policies that drive people to expose their personal lives in order to obtain desperately needed care should be ashamed of themselves. The other crisis underscored by the rise of crowdfunding concerns the ethical issues raised by public appeals for medical care itself. Those are addressed in a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.. Crowdfunding for expenses that should be met by private insurers or government healthcare programs ... can make the delivery of healthcare fundamentally unfair. They can direct resources away from patients who need them the most toward those whose campaigns are merely “more vocal, photogenic, or emotionally appealing.”

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality and health.


Panic spreads in Iraq, Syria as record numbers of civilians are reported killed in U.S. strikes
2017-03-28, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/panic-spreads-in-iraq-syria-...

A sharp rise in the number of civilians reported killed in U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria is spreading panic, deepening mistrust and triggering accusations that the United States and its partners may be acting without sufficient regard for lives of noncombatants. Residents desperately trying to flee ... are being blocked by the militants, who frequently use civilians as human shields. Figures compiled by monitoring organizations and interviews with residents paint an increasingly bloody picture, with the number of casualties in March already surpassing records for a single month. The worst alleged attack was in Mosul, where rescue teams are still digging out bodies after what residents describe as a hellish onslaught. Iraqi officials and residents say as many as 200 died in U.S.-led strikes, with more than 100 bodies recovered from a single building. The escalation of U.S. strikes around the city of Raqqa occurred in February. In March, the tempo increased further, with more sites being targeted that have no obvious military value, according to a Syrian ... from Raqqa. “They are hitting everything that isn’t a small house,” including the barges that ferry passengers across the river dividing the city now that the bridges have been disabled, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of concern for his family.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing war news articles from reliable major media sources.


Countries where Trump does business are not hit by new travel restrictions
2017-01-28, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/countries-where-trump-does-business-a...

The seven nations targeted for new visitation restrictions by President Trump on Friday all have something in common: They are places he does not appear to have any business interests. The executive order he signed Friday bars all entry for the next 90 days by travelers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Libya. Excluded from the lists are several majority-Muslim nations where the Trump Organization is active. The restriction applies to countries that have already been excluded from programs allowing people to travel to the United States without a visa because of concerns over terrorism. Trump’s order makes no mention of Turkey. On Wednesday, the State Department updated a travel warning for Americans visiting Turkey, noting that “an increase in anti-American rhetoric has the potential to inspire independent actors to carry out acts of violence against US citizens.” Trump has licensed his name to two luxury towers in Istanbul. A Turkish company also manufactures a line of Trump-branded home furnishings. The executive order makes no mention of Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks. The Trump Organization had incorporated several limited liability companies in preparation for an attempt to build a hotel in Saudi Arabia, showing an interest in expansion in the country. The company canceled those incorporations in December.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and terrorism.


State Election Systems to Get More Federal Aid for Security
2017-01-07, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/state-election-systems-federal-aid-s...

Citing increasingly sophisticated cyber bad actors and an election infrastructure that's "vital to our national interests," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is designating U.S. election systems critical infrastructure. The determination came after months of review and despite opposition from many states worried that the designation would lead to increased federal regulation or oversight on the many decentralized and locally run voting systems across the country. A 2013 presidential directive identified 16 sectors as critical infrastructures, including energy, financial services, health care, transportation, food and agriculture and communications. Discussions about whether to designate elections systems as critical infrastructure surfaced after hackers targeted the voter registration systems of more than 20 states in the months prior to the November election. While the designation puts responsibilities on the Department of Homeland Security, it does not require entities that are determined "critical infrastructure" to participate. Much of the nation's critical infrastructure is in the private sector. The designation allows for information to be withheld from the public when state, local and private partners meet to discuss election infrastructure security - potentially injecting secrecy into an election process that's traditionally and expressly a transparent process.

Note: It doesn't take much to read between the lines on this one and see this claim that elections are vital to the national interest as the first step in the DHS taking power away from the states and getting directly involved in US elections. Pay close attention to this one. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.


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