By Alec MacGillis/ProPublica

The only thing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump seemed to agree upon in last Sunday’s debate – indeed, one of the few substantive policy exchanges they had – was the need to eliminate a tax benefit that collectively saves private equity, real estate, and venture capital partners billions of dollars each year.
But their exchange might have left viewers confused about the issue, not least because it included several misleading insinuations, particularly on the part of Trump.
(ProPublica has been covering this issue throughout the campaign, to explain the origins of the so-called carried-interest loophole and why it’s survived so long. See: How Philanthropist David Rubenstein Helped Save a Tax Break Billionaires Love and The Surreal Politics of a Billionaire’s Tax Loophole.)
During the debate, here’s what Trump had to say about the carried-interest break, which also goes by the “hedge-fund loophole,” though it benefits that industry less than others.

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Posted on October 14, 2016

By Tim McLaughlin/Reuters

The mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments, founded seven decades ago and run ever since by the Johnson family, has won the trust of tens of millions of investors.
The company’s tradition of putting clients’ interests “before our own is a big part of what makes Fidelity special,” the fund firm says in its mission statement.
In at least one lucrative field, however, the Johnson family’s interests come first. A private venture capital arm run on behalf of the Johnsons, F-Prime Capital Partners, competes directly with the stable of Fidelity mutual funds in which the public invests. It’s an arrangement that securities lawyers say poses an unusual conflict of interest.

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Posted on October 13, 2016

By Justin Elliott/ProPublica

Three years ago, the Obama administration unleashed its might on behalf of beleaguered American air travelers, filing suit to block a mega-merger between American Airlines and US Airways. The Justice Department laid out a case that went well beyond one merger.
“Increasing consolidation among large airlines has hurt passengers,” the lawsuit said. “The major airlines have copied each other in raising fares, imposing new fees on travelers, reducing or eliminating service on a number of city pairs, and downgrading amenities.”
The Obama administration itself had helped create that reality by approving two previous mergers in the industry, which had seen nine major players shrink to five in a decade. In the lawsuit, the government was effectively admitting it had been wrong. It was now making a stand.
Then a mere three months later, the government stunned observers by backing down.

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Posted on October 12, 2016

By Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay/Reuters

The Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year despite warnings from some officials that the United States could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians, according to government documents and the accounts of current and former officials.
State Department officials also were privately skeptical of the Saudi military’s ability to target Houthi militants without killing civilians and destroying “critical infrastructure” needed for Yemen to recover, according to the e-mails and other records obtained by Reuters and interviews with nearly a dozen officials with knowledge of those discussions.

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Posted on October 11, 2016

By Deirdre Fulton/Common Dreams

A dozen human rights, civil liberties, and faith groups are calling on President Barack Obama to follow through on the promise he made via executive order in July to transparently probe and address civilian deaths from drone strikes.
A letter sent Thursday from groups including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Reprieve lists “10 U.S. Strikes Requiring Investigation and Acknowledgement,” asking that Obama “direct the relevant agencies, at a minimum, to:

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Posted on October 10, 2016

Have A Little Fun, Chicago . . .

“Chicago may say goodbye to the ‘Honorary Trump Plaza’ street sign if Chicago aldermen have any say on the issue,” CBS Chicago (and everyone else) reports.
“The aldermen introduced an ordinance Wednesday to strip down the honorary street sign, which sits outside the Trump Tower on Wabash Avenue. They cited the presidential candidate’s “hateful and racist campaign against immigrants and minorities.”
“Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd Ward and 46 other aldermen called for the removal of the brown sign honoring ‘Trump Plaza.'”
Sounds good to us. But instead of simply removing the sign, we have some suggestions on replacing it:

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Posted on October 7, 2016

By The U.S. Public Interest Research Group

In 2015, more than 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies maintained subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, according to Offshore Shell Games, released this week by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Collectively, multinationals reported booking $2.5 trillion offshore, with just 30 companies accounting for 66 percent of this total. By indefinitely stashing profits in offshore tax havens, corporations are avoiding up to $717.8 billion in U.S. taxes.
Here in Illinois, Abbvie, Abbott Laboratories, Mondelez, Caterpillar, and McDonald’s combine to hold $98.5 billiion in offshore tax havens like the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, and Hong Kong.

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Posted on October 7, 2016

By Michael Grabell/ProPublica

A U.S. Department of Labor report released today details the bleak fate facing the nation’s injured workers, noting that those hurt on the job are at “great risk of falling into poverty” because state workers’ compensation systems are failing to provide them with adequate benefits.
The report lays the groundwork for renewed federal oversight of state workers’ comp programs, providing a detailed history of the government’s past efforts to step in when states fell short. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a statement Tuesday night that he was drafting legislation “to address many of the troubling findings laid out in this report” and hoped to advance it in the next Congress.

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Posted on October 5, 2016

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

We’re not going to “non-profit” our way out of poverty, housing affordability and economic injustice.
Historic discrimination and structural inequality have laid the groundwork for multiple life-sucking neighborhood factors that black children face every day: Neighborhood poverty, crime, unemployment, unaffordable housing, inaccessible health care and limited transportation make it difficult for children to learn.
The rise of the non-profit industrial complex is a necessary response to in-your-face suffering, but our investments in non-profits can’t shield us from the source-problem of bad policy.

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Posted on October 4, 2016

By Stephen Engelberg/ProPublica

Several years after I returned to New York from Oregon, I made a strange discovery. Bank accounts I was certain I had closed were inexplicably racking up service charges.
It seemed bizarre, particularly because I had gone in person to a newly opened local branch of my West Coast bank to make sure the accounts were shut down.
The failure to pay these charges (bills were sent to my old address and never caught up with me) resulted in penalties and a report to a credit agency.
After an increasingly frustrating series of exchanges at the local branch, the bank agreed to wipe out the charges but said I would have to deal with the credit agencies on my own.
It seemed outrageous, and as the editor-in-chief of an investigative news operation, I thought about asking Paul Kiel, ProPublica’s crack reporter on bank shenanigans, to take a look.
But I stopped myself. There’s an old saying in the journalism business for this sort of thinking: News is what happens to an editor. As with so many newsroom aphorisms, it’s meant to be proclaimed with an eyeroll and a tone of deep sarcasm. Reporters view editor-generated stories as the bane of their existence, and not without reason. Random events and pet peeves are not often a great starting point for serious stories.

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Posted on October 3, 2016