By Kara Brandeisky
ProPublica/small>
Ten months after Edward Snowden’s first disclosures, three main legislative proposals have emerged for surveillance reform: one from President Obama, one from the House Intelligence Committee, and one proposal favored by civil libertarians. All the plans purport to end the bulk phone records collection program, but there are big differences – and a lot they don’t do. Here’s a rundown.
By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
When Florida’s Commission on Ethics OK’d Gov. Rick Scott’s blind trust last September it acted after being told by the governor’s lawyers that it was “modeled on the blind trust of the federal Office of Government Ethics.” But the governor’s blind trust – packed with more than $70 million in Scott’s stocks, bonds and other financial assets – deviates substantially from the federal model.
By Dave Levinthal
Center for Public Integrity
Billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch may rank among the nation’s biggest bankrollers of conservative causes and Republican campaign vehicles. But Koch proselytizing of government deregulation and pro-business civics is increasingly targeted not just at creatures of Capitol Hill, or couch sitters in swing states, but at the hearts and minds of American college students, as well.
By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
Most Floridians have never heard of Alan Lee Bazaar. Yet as chief executive of the New York investment advisory firm that serves as trustee of Gov. Rick Scott’s blind trust, Bazaar is the keeper of an important public trust for Florida’s citizens.
By Michael Grabell
ProPublica
CRANBURY, N.J. – Half a century ago, the legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow came to this pancake-flat town in central New Jersey to document the plight of migrant farmworkers. But today, an old way of labor persists here. Temporary workers who migrate here daily on buses face face similar conditions.
By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
Over the last 15 months, Gov. Rick Scott and his wife, Ann, through various entities, made more than $17 million selling hundreds of thousands of shares a single stock. Scott’s blind trust sold shares of that stock worth $2.54 million in December 2012. You aren’t supposed to know that. Gov. Scott isn’t supposed to know it either.
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