Chicago -
By Matt Farmer
Shorter, sorrier than the one she did.
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Hurricane Katrina claimed over 1,800 lives. Kids lost parents. Grandparents lost grandchildren. Neighbors lost friends.
I knew the storm’s horrific death count when I sat down at my computer on Thursday to write an op-ed piece expressing my wish that such a storm hit Chicago.
I knew the death count, but for reasons I still can’t explain, I plowed ahead with my work.
Posted on August 14, 2015
By Alec MacGillis/ProPublica
This story was co-published with The Daily Beast.
When the former head of the U.S. government’s health insurance programs was hired in July to run a lobby that had spent tens of millions of dollars trying to derail Obamacare, it was more than just another spin of Washington’s revolving door.
Marilyn Tavenner, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, became chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s main lobbying group, which is known as AHIP. As the latest of a half-dozen prominent architects and overseers of Obamacare to move into the health industry, her move signified growing ties between health insurers and Democrats despite battles over the Affordable Care Act.
Posted on August 13, 2015
By Steve Rhodes
And I hate it. Plus: Mobster Cop & Me; Good Night, Knight Foundation; Get That Twitter Off My Lawn; That’s Shia!; Cowboys Will Be Boys?; Lil Herb & John Kerry; and Renaming Navy Pier.
Posted on August 9, 2015
By Steve Rhodes
Don’t go to school. Plus: A Subway Story; Are Those Articles In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?; Newspaper Stories: The Car Wash; Paid Influencer Opp!; Obama Caves On Human Trafficking; Pope Theo; Blackhawks Bullshit, and; Chicago’s Opening Ceremonies.
Posted on August 4, 2015
By Jason Szep and Matt Spetalnick/Reuters
In the weeks leading up to a critical annual U.S. report on human trafficking that publicly shames the world’s worst offenders, human rights experts at the State Department concluded that trafficking conditions hadn’t improved in Malaysia and Cuba. And in China, they found, things had grown worse.
The State Department’s senior political staff saw it differently – and they prevailed.
A Reuters examination, based on interviews with more than a dozen sources in Washington and foreign capitals, shows that the government office set up to independently grade global efforts to fight human trafficking was repeatedly overruled by senior American diplomats and pressured into inflating assessments of 14 strategically important countries in this year’s Trafficking in Persons report.
Posted on August 3, 2015
