Legal battles over taxpayer support for religious schools are taking place in both red and blue states. The ACLU is suing Hawaii over the Preschool Open Doors program, where it says tax dollars are being used to send kids to private parochial schools, with no oversight. A similar fight is underway in Georgia, where a state tax credit program results in public money going into scholarships so children can attend religious schools.   read more

Thirteen states have some kind of restrictions on aggregate donations to candidates. Massachusetts was the first of these to strike its rule limiting donations to specific candidates to $12,500. Other states with aggregate limits are Maryland, Alaska, Connecticut, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.   read more

Anadarko tried to get out of paying for Kerr-McGee’s mess by claiming the subsidiary, before it was purchased, set up a spinoff company (Tronox) that was legally responsible for all of the environmental liabilities. But a judge dismissed this argument after concluding that Tronox, which subsequently went bankrupt, was nothing more than a scheme to shield Kerr-McGee (or its new owner, Anadarko) from being liable.   read more

JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $13 billion to settle its mortgage violations. But nearly $4 billion of this amount will be reclaimed through a tax deduction. BP, responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history, received a $10 billion tax break after writing off its settlement. “Americans don’t deduct their parking tickets or library fines from their taxes. Corporations like JPMorgan or BP shouldn’t be able to deduct their settlements for wrongdoing, either,” said Phineas Baxandall.   read more

Motorola has padded its corporate board with law enforcement and national intelligence chiefs and won friends by using its foundations to donate more than $26 million over a six-year period to nonprofits formed by police and firefighters. In addition, Motorola has spent nearly $60 million over 10 years to lobby Washington and contributed nearly $2 million to the Republican and Democratic governors associations.   read more

The retail company claims price fixing and other antitrust violations occurred from 2004 to 2012, resulting in Visa collecting more than $350 billion, some of that at the expense of Walmart and its customers. Walmart’s move comes after it opted out of a 2012 class action settlement between merchants and Visa and another credit card company, MasterCard.   read more

The General Accounting Office (GAO) said that in fiscal 2013, the federal government agreed to $459 billion in contracts to purchase goods and services. Of that total, about $164 billion, or 35.7%, was in noncompetitive contracts. Three percent of Defense’s noncompetitive contracts, amounting to $12.5 billion, fell under the urgency exception. The State Department had 12.5%t of its noncompetitive deals, worth $582 million attributed to urgency.   read more

In a reversal of lower court rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court decided this week that severance payments are subject to payroll tax under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). Quality Stores, an agricultural-specialty retailer that initiated the civil case, made FICA payments on behalf of its workers when it paid them severance. The company later filed for a $1 million refund from the Internal Revenue Service, arguing that the severance was non-taxable income.   read more

It’s questionable whether spending to shield terminals and other airport facilities from attack, as opposed to the mission of keeping terrorists off airplanes, makes sense from a cost-benefit perspective, the study shows. There were 20 attacks on airports in the U.S. and Europe between 1998 and 2011, killing 64 people. During this same time period, 31 attacks were recorded on aircraft, including the 9/11 attacks.   read more

A U.S. appeals court gave banks a victory on Friday when it overturned a decision that would have limited what financial institutions can charge businesses to handle debit card transactions. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), who sponsored the amendment that set a cap on swipe fees, called the ruling by the appeals court “a giveaway to the nation’s most powerful banks and a blow to consumers and small businesses across America.”   read more

With the help of the grassroots progressive group CREDO Action, the letters went out with only two variations: one batch indicated the person requesting the meeting was a constituent, and the other batch came from those professing to be a donor. Members of Congress were four times more likely to meet with donors than constituents, and their chiefs of staff were five times more likely. Overall, access to senior staffers tripled for donors.   read more

The pro-defense lobby focuses on the Pentagon’s discretionary budget, while conveniently ignoring the other $500 billion in tax dollars that help maintain the nation’s security each year. For starters, there’s the money allocated for “Overseas Contingency Operations”—a fancy term for funding the war in Afghanistan. This budget item (separate from the Pentagon’s discretionary spending) eats up around $80 billion annually.   read more

The IG’s report shows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) put mortgage fraud at the bottom of its criminal priority list—after receiving extra funding ($196 million from the 2009 to 2011) to address this problem. In some major cities, mortgage fraud wasn’t even on the FBI’s radar as any kind of a priority. Just as disturbing was the fact that Justice inflated its numbers to make it appear prosecutors were doing more than they actually were.   read more

Con men scammed more than $1.6 billion in 2013, according to a report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This does not include identity theft complaints. Victims lost an average of $2,294 in scams. Forty percent of fraud victims were initially contacted by telephone and 33% by email. The Consumer Sentinel Network (CSN), a database the FTC maintains for the use of law-enforcement agencies, reports that identity theft was the top crime reported, with 14% of the 2.1 million complaints.   read more

Cocaine consumption dropped by 50% between 2006 and 2010. Marijuana use, on the other hand, increased by 30% during the period covered by the study. Heroin use remained fairly constant, with a slight rise beginning in 2008. Methamphetamine use peaked in 2005, but the study did not account for users who produce their own drugs. Also the data was drawn primarily from urban areas, and meth use is thought to be more prevalent in rural areas.   read more

Not even a downturn in profits can dissuade Wall Street from rewarding itself with higher bonuses. Last year, Wall Street’s shrinking pool of workers enjoyed on average a 15% bump in bonuses. The average bonus climbed to $164,530 in 2012, making it the largest bonus since 2007, the year before the financial crisis. Although Wall Street produces only 5% of the New York City’s jobs, it accounts for 22% of its wages.   read more