By Ed Hammer

April 17, 2006 – 10 years ago today – is a day of historical significance to Illinois citizens. It is a day that marks the victorious battle for the righteous over the perpetual culture of corruption. It is the day that George Ryan, former governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, was convicted by a federal jury on 18 counts of corruption spanning from 1992 to 2002.
I remember the day very well. I would have been in federal court to hear the announcement of the verdict were it not that I was a new assistant professor teaching criminal justice at Northwestern College and attending a mandatory faculty meeting. My boss let me know that they were about to announce a verdict on the radio. I excused myself, and while walking back to my office another department dean reprimanded me for not being in the meeting. I mumbled something back to her about this being an important part of my life. I bet she neither cared nor understood.

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Posted on April 17, 2016

By Liz Day/ProPublica

Originally published on March 26, 2013.
Update, April 14, 2016: In 2013, we detailed how Intuit has lobbied against allowing the government to estimate your taxes for you. So this week, we called Intuit and asked if they still oppose free, government-prepared returns. The answer: Yes.
“Our legislative, our policy position on that hasn’t changed,” said spokeswoman Julie Miller. She called Intuit “a staunch opponent to government-prepared tax returns.”
Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a bill Wednesday to allow free government-prepped returns. Her office also released a report on the tax industry’s opposition to simpler filing solutions. It cited the article below as well as another story we did on how a rabbi, civil rights activist, and others were misled into supporting Intuit’s campaign.
This story was co-produced with NPR.
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Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes – and for free. You’d open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.
It’s already a reality in Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The government-prepared return would estimate your taxes using information your employer and bank already send it.
Advocates say tens of millions of taxpayers could use such a system each year, saving them a collective $2 billion and 225 million hours in prep costs and time, according to one estimate.

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Posted on April 16, 2016

By Eric Umansky/ProPublica

As the Panama Papers continue to embarrass leaders across continents, one thought has kept occurring to me: How the hell did the organizers pull it off? I mean, how did they corral hundreds of reporters? How did they make sense of so many documents? And, most importantly, how did they stay sane during it all?
So I spoke with Marina Walker Guevara, who helped shepherd the project. Walker is deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism, which has a long history of collaborating with many, many far-flung partners. In early 2015, Walker and ICIJ were finishing up work on another big leak. “We’re never going to do this again,” Marina recalled thinking. “It’s great. But we’re exhausted and we need a vacation.”
Then ICIJ got a phone call from the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung about a way bigger file they wanted to share . . .

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Posted on April 13, 2016

By Patriotic Millionaires

EVERYWHERE, USA – As Americans across the country finalize their tax returns this week, the Patriotic Millionaires will be available for media appearances and on-the-record interviews in cities across the country.
The Patriotic Millionaires are a group of 200 high-net-worth Americans. They have appeared on hundreds of media outlets here and abroad including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the PBS NewsHour, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and many others. The appeared on stage with President Obama during his 2012 Tax Day address.

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Posted on April 12, 2016

By Joaquin Sapien/ProPublica

The Innocence Project has released a report alleging that prosecutors across the country are almost never punished when they withhold evidence or commit other forms of misconduct that land innocent people in prison.
The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal group that represents people seeking exonerations, examined records in Arizona, California, Texas, New York and Pennsylvania, and interviewed a wide assortment of defense lawyers, prosecutors and legal experts.
In each state, researchers examined court rulings from 2004 through 2008 in which judges found that prosecutors had committed violations such as mischaracterizing evidence or suborning perjury. All told, the researchers discovered 660 findings of prosecutorial error or misconduct. In the overwhelming majority of cases, 527, judges upheld the convictions, finding that the prosecutorial lapse did not impact the fairness of the defendant’s original trial. In 133 cases, convictions were thrown out.
Only one prosecutor was disciplined by any oversight authorities, the report asserts.

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Posted on April 11, 2016

By Larry Gordon/The Hechinger Report

Lupe Sanchez and Jacqueline Delgadillo have a lot in common.
Both were born in Mexico and were brought across the border into the United States as small children, without documents. Both did well in American public schools. And both were given at least temporary protection from deportation under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy, which applies to some undocumented immigrants who arrived before they were 16.
Then their paths diverged dramatically – mainly because of where they live.
Lupe Sanchez/Photos by Iris Schneider

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Posted on April 9, 2016

By Nika Knight/Common Dreams

The year-long campaign of Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen reached a new low last month with a deliberate attack on a marketplace full of civilians that killed over 100, including 25 children, and a new report has found that the bombs that did the killing came from the United States.
The market in Yemen that was destroyed by U.S.-made bombs on March 15. (Photo: Amal al-Yarisi/Human Rights Watch)
Human Rights Watch released the report on Thursday. Its findings detailed how the March 15 airstrike on a civilian target was made with U.S.-supplied weaponry, and renewed calls for an embargo on weapons to Saudi Arabia.
“One of the deadliest strikes against civilians in Yemen’s year-long war involved US-supplied weapons, illustrating tragically why countries should stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The U.S. and other coalition allies should send a clear message to Saudi Arabia that they want no part in unlawful killings of civilians.”

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Posted on April 8, 2016

By Kylie MacLellan and Elida Moreno/Reuters

LONDON/PANAMA CITY – Governments across the world began investigating possible financial wrongdoing by the rich and powerful on Monday after a leak of four decades of documents from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in setting up offshore companies.
The “Panama Papers” revealed financial arrangements of politicians and public figures including friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the prime ministers of Britain, Iceland and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine.
While holding money in offshore companies is not illegal, journalists who received the leaked documents said they could provide evidence of wealth hidden for tax evasion, money laundering, sanctions busting, drug deals or other crimes.

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Posted on April 5, 2016

By Paul Lashmar/The Conversation

With the Panama Papers exposé, perhaps we can now say the fortress walls of offshore secrecy are finally cracking. Such havens allow corruption and tax avoidance to take place on a massive international scale by some of the richest and most powerful people on Earth. Meanwhile, the poor get poorer.
Western politicians have huffed and puffed about clamping down on offshore havens, but in reality their collective breath would not have knocked over a little piggie’s straw house let alone bastions of vested interest. It is thanks to investigative reporters, whistleblowers and an unprecedented international media collaboration that the matter is being forced.

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Posted on April 4, 2016

By The Chicago Republican Party

The Chicago Department of Buildings has issued a “Notice of Violation and Summons” to the building that houses the Chicago Republican Party over a sign the party erected earlier this year. The notice raises a serious question of First Amendment rights.
(ENLARGE)

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Posted on April 1, 2016