After yet another public corruption scandal splashed across front pages in January, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted the state government would pass ethics reform, and said he would force lawmakers to deal with the issue by attaching ethics measures to the state budget. Cuomo got his wish in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, when the legislature passed a reform package just after a symbolic midnight deadline for an on-time budget.

In a statement, Cuomo claimed the bill “implements the nation’s strongest and most comprehensive disclosure laws for public officials.”

But many believe the changes likely won’t be sufficient to clean the state’s tarnished image. New York earned an overall grade of D from the State Integrity Investigation, a 2012 report by the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International. Over the past few years, Empire State lawmakers have been convicted of bilking public funds by directing money to nonprofits, collecting per-diem payments for days when they weren’t actually in the capital and a variety of other offenses. In January, then-Speaker Sheldon Silver was charged with accepting millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks.

The ethics package looks to treat the state’s ills with greater transparency. Its signature measure is a requirement that lawmakers with private practices—lawyers, for instance— disclose the names of clients who pay them or their firms $5,000 or more. The bill makes several exceptions, however, including for clients involved in criminal cases or bankruptcy, and it applies only to new clients beginning December 31, 2015. Legislators can also avoid disclosing names by working on retainer for general advice, a clause that many advocates point to as a massive loophole that could render the new requirement largely meaningless.

Other provisions in the legislation will introduce more stringent prohibitions against the personal use of campaign funds, greater disclosure of independent campaign spending and a requirement that lawmakers use an electronic system to verify their attendance at official events in order to receive per diem payments.

Legislative leaders did not introduce the actual language of the bill until Tuesday afternoon, less than 12 hours before a deadline to pass all budget legislation, prompting a coalition of good-government groups to criticize the secrecy surrounding the effort. “It is unacceptable in a functioning democracy that an ethics bill about the disclosure of legislators' outside income hasn't even been disclosed to the public,” the groups said in a statement Tuesday morning.

Those groups and other advocates for reform, including New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, have generally criticized the legislation as inadequate to improve the state’s chronic corruption problems.

Indeed, there’s much that wasn’t included. Here’s a look at several issues — raised in the past by advocacy groups and even Cuomo himself — that are left essentially unaddressed:

• A ban or restriction on outside income – Reform groups and Schneiderman have called on the state to eliminate or restrict lawmakers’ ability to earn income from other sources, citing the practice as an inherent conflict of interest. Peggy Kerns, of the National Conference of State Legislatures, told the Center she is not aware of any state with such a prohibition.
• Campaign finance reform – In 2014, Cuomo called for broad campaign finance reform that would have included lower limits on campaign contributions — individuals can give up to $60,800 to statewide candidates per year in New York and up to $150,000 to all candidates and committees combined — and a system for public funding of campaigns. The effort drew little support from the Republican-led Senate, and a pilot program for public financing, enacted last year, was widely viewed as a failure. According to the New York Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy organization that has pushed for stronger ethics reforms, about half of the money Cuomo raised for his re-election last year came from donors who gave $40,000 or more.
• The “LLC loophole” – New York campaign finance law treats limited liability companies as individuals rather than corporations, which are subject to lower contribution limits. Wealthy New Yorkers have used the loophole to multiply their giving, registering various LLCs and donating the maximum allowed from each. This is how Leonard Litwin, reportedly one of two developers named in the complaint against Silver, gave $200,000 to the former speaker and a committee he controls and more than $10 million to politicians and parties in the state since 2005, according to the complaint. Litwin’s properties have benefited from numerous tax breaks and incentives controlled by the legislature.
• The “Housekeeping Account loophole” – Political parties are allowed to receive unlimited contributions to these accounts, which are supposed to fund only operating expenses, but which donors have used as an end-run around contribution limits. A 2013 report by Common Cause New York found that donors had given more than $133 million since 1999 to these accounts “in return for influence and access.”
• Pay-to-play laws – Schneiderman and several advocacy groups have called on the state to enact “pay-to-play” laws that would impose lower limits on the political contributions of entities that do business with the state. 

When news broke last month on the Department of Justice’s plans to indict Sen. Robert Menendez on criminal corruption charges, the New Jersey Democrat signaled he would fight.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

The test of Menendez’s will begins today, as a federal indictment charges the senator with 14 counts, including bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud.

It’s certain to add considerably to the already massive legal bills Menendez has racked up — and that political patrons are helping pay off. From early 2013 through the end of 2014, Menendez reported spending more than $1.2 million on legal fees, using a combination of cash from his campaign committee, political action committee and a legal defense fund, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal documents.

It was early in 2013 when Menendez’s relationship with Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen, a friend and campaign donor, set off a series of investigations that led to today’s indictment.

New filings are due this month that will no doubt reflect additional large payments to Menendez’s legal team, which now includes prominent white collar defense lawyer Abbe Lowell of Chadbourne & Parke LLP.

Lowell has represented a long list of prominent politicians from both parties. They include former Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.; former Democratic senator and presidential candidate John Edwards; and another Democratic senator from New Jersey, former Sen. Robert Torricelli, who faced allegations of corruption. Menendez's committees reported paying Chadbourne more than $160,000 during the fourth quarter of 2014.

The bulk of Menendez’s legal fees have so far been paid to other firms, including Perkins Coie LLP, where Menendez is represented by Marc Elias, the chairman of the political law practice.

Menendez’s legal fund and political committees paid Perkins Coie more than $560,000 during 2013 and 2014.

Elias has represented long list of Democratic clients, from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to, reportedly, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In addition, Menendez’s legal fund has paid McDermott Will & Emery LLP roughly $780,000 over the same period, nearly $56,000 to Brand Law Group, and about $157,000 to Coburn and Greenbaum PLLC.

So far, donors have been willing to ante up to Menendez’s legal defense fund: Menendez has raised about $866,000 since it formed two years ago. About three-quarters of this haul has come in $10,000 increments, the maximum annual contribution allowed. He’s spent more than $760,000 of it, almost all on legal fees.

Among the biggest donors to Menendez’s legal defense fund: Hoboken developer David Barry.

Barry gave the maximum $10,000 in 2014. Three other donors with the same last name using the address of his business, Ironstate Development, gave $10,000 each, as did another executive at Ironstate, Gregory Russo.

Marc Lasry, the president and chief executive officer of hedge fund Avenue Capital Group, gave $10,000, and his firm appears to have given $10,000 as well. Michael Kempner, the president of New Jersey-based public relations and lobbying firm MWW Group, gave $10,000, and so did his wife, Jacqueline Kempner.

Eighty-three of the 150 contributors to Menendez’s legal fund list New Jersey addresses. Another 20 list addresses in New York.

“As a top fundraiser, I’m sure he’s made a lot of contacts … with people who will want to continue to support him,” said Lawrence Noble, a senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center and a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission. “The question is going to be, as the case goes along, how much of a viable candidate he remains and what it does to his fundraising.”

Added Kenneth Gross, who leads the political law practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, & Flom: “This is going to be an expensive defense … the senator has already incurred significant bills, and this could go on for quite some time through a legal process and beyond.”

Menendez, a former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman, is known as a strong fundraiser and doesn’t face re-election until 2018.

In the meantime, it’s hard to say how high Menendez’s legal bills could go.

Only 11 senators have been indicted while in office, according to the Senate Historical Office, and only one so far this century: the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Stevens was convicted in 2008, but in 2009, a federal judge dismissed the conviction, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

Aligning with a political committee: most news reporters consider it a cardinal sin.

But dogma isn't dogging Michael J. Hollis, a freelance writer and adjunct journalism professor from Texas who on Wednesday registered a federal super PAC aimed at representing the interests of work-a-day scribes, particularly contract writers.

Struggling journalists, he said, shouldn't fear prodding politicians to heed their economic concerns.

"If we allow real journalism to get devalued though and allow journalists to simply become 'content providers,' we are participating in the death of our own industry," said Hollis, who most recently taughtcourses at Park University and Concordia University Texas. "There are quite a few changes going on in the industry that are concerning to me but I think we can overcome them so long as we don’t ignore them."

Simply forming a super PAC, which by definition may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against politicians, guarantees nothing.

Most of the nearly 1,000 federally registered super PACs in existence have raised little or no cash, according to Federal Election Commission records. Multimillion-dollar operations such as conservative American Crossroads or liberal Senate Majority PAC are rare.

Hollis said he wants to use the super PAC to advocate for issues and also plans to try to attract small-time entrepreneurs and non-journalist freelancers to his causes.

He will assuredly face fiscal challenges. Few working journalists ever contribute to political campaigns and committees — although there are exceptions. And freelancers, his target demographic, aren't typically flush with surplus cash.

Hollis says he's lined up some "small donations coming in next week" and will soon solicit businesses and labor unions that share the super PAC's philosophy. But he doesn't expect an influx of contributions, at least not immediately.

So should Hollis even attempt operating a journalist super PAC?

"Absolutely. Why not?" said Dave Mason, a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission and campaign deregulation advocate.

But Mason quickly noted that many journalists would likely balk on ethical grounds at supporting — financially or otherwise — this or any political committee.

Skepticism among news professionals will certainly be a problem for the super PAC, which Hollis has named Freelancers and Micro-Entrepreneurs PAC, or FAME PAC.

The Society of Professional Journalists, for example, urges journalists to "avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility."

The Associated Press requires its employees to "avoid behavior or activities — political, social or financial" that create conflict of interest or compromise our ability to report the news fairly and accurately, uninfluenced by any person or action."

And the New York Times' ethics guidelines are even more overt: "Staff members may not themselves give money to, or raise money for, any political candidate or election cause. Given the ease of Internet access to public records of campaign contributors, any political giving by a Times staff member would carry a great risk of feeding a false impression that the paper is taking sides."

Points taken, Hollis said.

"I anticipate a fair amount of resistance ... but we need to at least try," Hollis explained, noting that the people his super PAC seeks to represent are often ignored by Congress and have little voice in political debates.

He added: "I have campaigned against super PACs in the past, but I'm interested now in seeing whether or not they can be put to good use."

One ancillary benefit Hollis says comes with forming a super PAC?

The experience could help his own journalistic endeavors.

"Hopefully, what I learn from being on the inside of a PAC will guide my own future reporting on the subject," he said. "With all of the other investigative work I have done, being on the inside is by far the best way to truly understand a subject."

South Africa, the only nation ever to build a nuclear arsenal and voluntarily dismantle it, proudly regards itself as a champion of disarmament and nonproliferation. But for almost two decades, the United States and South Africa have struggled over the handling of highly enriched uranium (HEU) stockpiles that have remained after the closure of its bomb program. What is the dispute over South Africa’s stocks of HEU, and how is it playing out? What are its roots? And what are the consequences for global security?

At a meeting on April 6 at the Carnegie Endowment's offices in Washington, D.C., the Center for Public Integrity’s Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey Smith will explain how the two countries have interacted under presidents Obama and Zuma. Harvard University’s Matthew Bunn will discuss South Africa’s HEU in the context of efforts to improve nuclear security around the globe. Former ambassador Thomas Wheeler of South Africa will join by video from Johannesburg to offer his views on the subject. Carnegie's Togzhan Kassenova, an associate in Carnegie's nuclear policy program, will moderate.

The meeting is open to the public, but advance registration is requested here.

Denise Pitts walked into the pawn shop not far from where she bought her mobile home in Knoxville, Tennessee, and offered up her wedding rings for $100. Her marriage wasn’t over, but her husband was battling cancer and, Pitts said, her mortgage company told her the only way to keep a roof over his head would be to sell everything else.

Across the country in Ephrata, Washington, Kirk and Patricia Ackley sat down to close on a new mobile home, only to learn that the annual interest on their loan would be 12.5 percent rather than the 7 percent they said they had been promised. They went ahead because they had spent $11,000, most of their savings, to dig a foundation.

And near Bug Tussle, Alabama, Carol Carroll has been paying down her home for more than a decade but still owes nearly 90 percent of the sale price — and more than twice what the home is worth.

The families’ dealers and lenders went by different names — Luv Homes, Clayton Homes, Vanderbilt, 21st Mortgage. Yet the disastrous loans that threaten them with homelessness or the loss of family land stem from a single company: Clayton Homes, the nation’s biggest homebuilder, which is controlled by its second-richest man — Warren Buffett.

Buffett’s mobile home empire promises low-income Americans the dream of homeownership. But Clayton relies on predatory sales practices, exorbitant fees, and interest rates that can exceed 15 percent, trapping many buyers in loans they can’t afford and in homes that are almost impossible to sell or refinance, an investigation by The Center for Public Integrity and The Seattle Times has found.

Berkshire Hathaway, the investment conglomerate Buffett leads, bought Clayton in 2003 and spent billions building it into the mobile home industry’s biggest manufacturer and lender. Today, Clayton is a many-headed hydra with companies operating under at least 18 names, constructing nearly half of the industry’s new homes and selling them through its own retailers. It finances more mobile home purchases than any other lender by a factor of six. It also sells property insurance on them and repossesses them when borrowers fail to pay.

Berkshire extracts value at every stage of the process. Clayton even builds the homes with materials — such as paint and carpeting — supplied by other Berkshire subsidiaries. And Clayton borrows from Berkshire to make mobile home loans, paying up to an extra percentage point on top of Berkshire’s borrowing costs, money that flows directly from borrowers’ pockets.

More than a dozen Clayton customers described a consistent array of deceptive practices that locked them into ruinous deals: loan terms that changed abruptly after they paid deposits or prepared land for their new homes; surprise fees tacked on to loans; and pressure to take on excessive payments based on false promises that they could later refinance.

Former dealers said the company encouraged them to steer buyers to finance with Clayton’s own high-interest lenders.

Under federal guidelines, most Clayton loans are considered “higher-priced.” Those loans averaged 7 percentage points higher than the typical home loan in 2013, according to a Center for Public Integrity/Times analysis of federal data, compared with just 3.8 percentage points above for other lenders.

Buyers told of Clayton collection agents urging them to cut back on food and medical care or seek handouts in order to make house payments. And when homes got hauled off to be resold, some consumers already had paid so much in fees and interest that the company still came out ahead. Even through the Great Recession and housing crisis, Clayton was profitable every year, generating $558 million in pre-tax earnings last year. 

Clayton's tactics contrast with Buffett’s public profile as a financial sage who values responsible lending and helping poor Americans keep their homes.

Berkshire Hathaway spokeswoman Carrie Sova and Clayton spokeswoman Audrey Saunders ignored more than a dozen requests by phone, email and in person to discuss Clayton’s policies and treatment of consumers. In an emailed statement, Saunders said Clayton helps customers find homes within their budgets and has a “purpose of opening doors to a better life, one home at a time.”

First, a dream

As Buffett tells it, his purchase of Clayton Homes came from an “unlikely source:” Visiting students from the University of Tennessee gave him a copy of founder Jim Clayton’s self-published memoir, First a Dream, in early 2003. Buffett enjoyed reading the book and admired Jim Clayton’s record, he has said, and soon called CEO Kevin Clayton, offering to buy the company.

“A few phone calls later, we had a deal,” Buffett said at his 2003 shareholders meeting, according to notes taken at the meeting by hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson.

The tale of serendipitous deal-making paints Buffett and the Claytons as sharing down-to-earth values, antipathy for Wall Street and an old-fashioned belief in treating people fairly. But, in fact, the man who brought the students to Omaha said Clayton’s book wasn’t the genesis of the deal.

“The Claytons really initiated this contact,” said Al Auxier, the UT professor, since retired, who chaperoned the student trip after fostering a relationship with the billionaire.

CEO Kevin Clayton, the founder’s son, reached out to Buffett through Auxier, the professor said in a recent interview this winter, and asked whether Buffett might explore “a business relationship” with Clayton Homes.

At the time, mobile home loans had been defaulting at alarming rates, and investors had grown wary of them. Clayton’s profits depended on its ability to bundle loans and resell them to investors.

That’s why Kevin Clayton was seeking a new source of cash to relend to home buyers. He knew that Berkshire Hathaway, with its perfect bond rating, could provide it as cheaply as anyone. Later that year, Berkshire Hathaway paid $1.7 billion in cash to buy Clayton Homes.

Berkshire Hathaway quickly bought up failed competitors’ stores, factories and billions in troubled loans, building Clayton Homes into the industry’s dominant force. In 2013, Clayton provided 39 percent of new mobile-home loans, according to a Center for Public Integrity/Times analysis of federal data that 7,000 home lenders are required to submit. The next biggest lender was Wells Fargo, with just 6 percent of the loans.

Clayton provided more than half of new mobile-home loans in eight states. In Texas, the number exceeds 70 percent. Clayton has more than 90 percent of the market in Odessa, one of the most expensive places in the country to finance a mobile home.

To maintain its down-to-earth image, Clayton has hired the stars of the reality TV show Duck Dynasty to appear in ads. Buffett, meanwhile, has become known as a Billionaire of the People, grousing publicly that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does and delivering public pronouncements riddled with folksy aphorisms and quotes from Mark Twain.

At next month’s shareholders meeting in Omaha, Buffett will participate in his fourth annual newspaper tossing challenge — a lighthearted contest with his investors to see who can land a copy of the Omaha World-Herald, which Buffett also owns, closest to the door of a Clayton model home.

Clayton's headquarters is a hulking structure of metal sheeting surrounded by acres of parking lots and a beach volleyball court for employees, located a few miles south of Knoxville. Next to the front door, there is a slot for borrowers to deposit payments.

Near the headquarters, two Clayton sales lots sit three miles from each other. Clayton Homes’ banners promise “$0 CASH DOWN.” TruValue Homes, also owned by Clayton, advertises “REPOS FOR SALE.” Other nearby Clayton lots operate as Luv Homes and Oakwood Homes. With all the different names, many customers said they believed they were shopping around.

House-sized banners at dealerships reinforce that impression, proclaiming they will “BEAT ANY DEAL.” In some parts of the country, buyers would have to drive many miles past several Clayton-owned lots, to reach a true competitor.

A few miles north, beyond Kevin Clayton’s new $1.6 million, waterfront home, is a strip of highway packed with pawn shops, auto title lenders, payday lenders and car dealerships. The highway is home to two Clayton-owned dealerships and one that is independently owned but advertises Clayton mortgages.

Jim Clayton, who founded Clayton Homes in 1966, ascended from his roots as a sharecropper’s son to the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans in part by lending at high rates to people with few options. The original Clayton Homes dealership sits adjacent to a Clayton family-owned “Buy Here Pay Here” used car lot, catering to low-income buyers. Across the street is another auto dealership owned by the Clayton family. Down the street is a branch of Jim Clayton’s bank, housed in a Clayton-built manufactured home.

Guided into costly loans

Soon after Buffett bought Clayton Homes, he declared a new dawn for the moribund mobile-home industry, which provides housing for some 20 million Americans. Lenders should require “significant down payments and shorter-term loans,” Buffett wrote.

He called 30-year loans on mobile homes “a mistake,” according to notes taken by Tilson during Berkshire Hathaway’s 2003 shareholders meeting.

“Home purchases should involve an honest-to-God down payment of at least 10% and monthly payments that can be comfortably handled by the borrower’s income,” Buffett later wrote. “That income should be carefully verified.”

But in examining more than 100 Clayton home sales through interviews and reviews of loan documents from 41 states, reporters found that the company’s loans routinely violated the lending standards laid out by Buffett.

Clayton dealers often sell homes with no cash down payment. Numerous borrowers said they were persuaded to take on outsized payments by dealers promising that they could later refinance. And the average loan term actually increased from 21 years in 2007 to more than 23 years in 2009, the last time Berkshire disclosed that detail. Vanderbilt advertised 30-year loans in printed literature available at Clayton Homes sales lots this winter.

Clayton’s loan to Dorothy Mansfield, a disabled Army veteran in North Carolina who lost her previous home to a tornado in 2011, includes key features that Buffett condemned.

Mansfield had a lousy credit score of 474, court records show. Although she had seasonal and part-time jobs, her monthly income often consisted of less than $700 in disability benefits. She had no money for a down payment when she visited Clayton Homes in Fayetteville, N.C.

Vanderbilt, one of Clayton’s lenders, approved her for a $60,000, 20-year loan to buy a Clayton home at 10.13 percent annual interest. She secured the loan with two parcels of land that her family already owned free and clear.

The dealer didn’t request any documents to verify Mansfield’s income or employment, records show.

Mansfield’s monthly payment of $673 consumed almost all of her guaranteed income. Within 18 months, she was behind on payments and Clayton was trying to foreclose on the home and land.

Many borrowers interviewed for this investigation described being steered by Clayton dealers into Clayton financing without realizing the companies were one and the same. Sometimes, buyers said, the dealer described the financing as the best deal available. Other times, the Clayton dealer said it was the only financing option.

Clayton’s Oakwood Homes dealer in Knoxville told Tim Smith that Vanderbilt was “the only one who would be able to do the deal,” Smith said. His used home arrived a month later, long after Smith had traded in his previous home as a down payment, he said. The Clayton contractor who delivered the house refused to haul it up the hill, Smith said, unless Smith took out a short-term, high-interest payday loan to cover an unexpected fee.

Kevin Carroll, former owner of a Clayton-affiliated dealership in Indiana, said in an interview that he used business loans from a Clayton lender to finance inventory for his lot. If he also guided homebuyers to work with the same lender, 21st Mortgage, the company would give him a discount on his business loans — a “kickback,” in his words.

Doug Farley, who was a general manager at several Clayton-owned dealerships, also used the term “kickback” to describe the profit-share he received on Clayton loans until around 2008. After that, the company changed its incentives to instead provide “kickbacks” on sales of Clayton’s insurance to borrowers, he said.

Ed Atherton, a former lot manager in Arkansas, said his regional supervisor was pressuring lot managers to put at least 80 percent of buyers into Clayton financing. Atherton left the company in 2013.

During the most recent four-year period, 93 percent of Clayton’s mobile home loans had such costly terms that they required extra disclosure under federal rules. For all other mobile-home lenders, less than half of their loans met that threshold.

Customers said in interviews that dealers misled them to take on unaffordable loans, with tactics including broken promises, last-minute changes to loan terms and unexplained fees that inflate loan balances. Such loans are, by definition, predatory.

“They’re going to assume the client is unsophisticated, and they’re right,” said Felix Harris, a housing counselor with the non-profit Knoxville Area Urban League.

Some borrowers said they felt trapped because they put up a deposit before the dealer explained the loan terms or, like the Ackleys, felt compelled to swallow bait-and-switch deals because they had spent thousands to prepare their land.

Promise denied

A couple years after moving into their new mobile home in Ephrata, Washington, Kirk Ackley was injured in a backhoe rollover. Unable to work, he and his wife urgently needed to refinance the costly 21st Mortgage loan they regretted signing.

They pleaded with their lenders several times for the better terms that they originally were promised, but were denied, they said. The Ackleys tried to explain the options in a call with a 21st supervisor: If they refinanced to lower payments, they could stay in the home and 21st would get years of steady returns. Otherwise, the company would have come out to their rural property, pull the house from its foundation and haul it away, possibly damaging it during the repossession.

They said they were baffled by the reply: “We don’t care. We’ll come take a chainsaw to it — cut it up and haul it out in boxes.”

Nine Clayton consumers interviewed for this story said they were promised a chance to refinance. In reality, Clayton almost never refinances loans and accounts for well under 1 percent of mobile-home refinancings reported in government data from 2010 to 2013. It made more than one-third of the purchase loans during that period.

“If you have a decrease in income and can’t afford the mortgage, at least a lot of the big companies will do modifications,” said Harris, the Knoxville housing counselor. “Vanderbilt won’t even entertain that.”

In general, owners have difficulty refinancing or selling their mobile homes because few lenders offer such loans. One big reason: Homes are overpriced or depreciate so quickly that they generally are worth less than what the borrower owes, even after years of monthly payments.

Ellie Carosa, of Napavine, Wash., found this out the hard way in 2010 after she put down about $40,000 from an inheritance to buy a used home from Clayton priced at about $65,000.

Clayton sales reps steered Carosa, who is 67 years old and disabled, to finance the unpaid amount through Vanderbilt at 9 percent interest over 20 years.

One year later, Carosa was already having problems — peeling paint and failing carpets — that she decided to have a market expert assess the value of her home. She hoped to eventually sell the house so the money could help her biological granddaughter, whom she adopted as her daughter at age 8, attend a local college to study music.

Carosa was stunned to learn that the home was worth only $35,000, far less than her original down payment.

“I’ve lost everything,” Carosa said.

Clayton’s own data suggest that its mobile homes may be overpriced from the start, according to court documents and comments filed with federal regulators by its general counsel. When Vanderbilt was required to obtain appraisals before finalizing a loan, he wrote, the home was determined to be worth less than the sales price about 30 percent of the time. Another Clayton executive said in a 2012 affidavit that the average profit margin on Clayton homes sold in Arkansas between 2006 and 2009 was $11,170 — roughly one-fifth of the average sales price of the homes.

"Rudest, most condescending" agents

Berkshire’s borrowers who fall behind on their payments face harassing, potentially illegal phone calls from a company rarely willing to offer relief.

Carol Carroll, a nurse living near Bug Tussle, Ala., began looking for a new home in 2003 after her husband died, leaving her with a six-year-old daughter. Instead of a down payment, she said, the salesman assured her she could simply put up two acres of her family land as collateral.

In December 2005, Carroll was permanently disabled in a catastrophic car accident in which two people were killed. Knowing it would take a few months for her disability benefits to be approved, Carroll said she called Vanderbilt and asked for a temporary reprieve. The company’s answer, she said: “We don’t do that.”

However, Clayton ratcheted up her property insurance premiums, eventually costing her $803 more per year than when she started, she said. Carroll was one of several Clayton borrowers who felt trapped in the company’s insurance, often because they were told they had no other options. Some had as many as five years’ worth of expensive premiums included in their loans, inflating the total balance to be repaid with interest. Others said they were misled into signing up even though they already had other insurance.

Carroll has since sold belongings, borrowed from relatives and cut back on groceries to make payments. When she was late, she spoke frequently to Clayton’s phone agents, whom she described as “the rudest, most condescending people I have ever dealt with.” It’s a characterization echoed by almost every borrower interviewed for this story.

Consumers say the company’s response to pleas for help is an invasive interrogation about their family budgets, including how much they spend on food, toiletries and utilities. Denise Pitts, of Knoxville, said Vanderbilt collectors have called her multiple times a day, with one suggesting that she cancel her internet service, even though she home schools her son. They have called her relatives and neighbors, a tactic other borrowers reported.

After Pitts’ husband, Kirk, was diagnosed with aggressive cancer, she said, a Vanderbilt agent told her she should make the house payment her “first priority” and let medical bills go unpaid. She said the company has threatened to seize her property immediately, even though the legal process to do so would take at least several months.

Practices like contacting neighbors, calling repeatedly and making false threats can violate consumer-protection laws in states including Tennessee, lawyers said.

Last year, frequent complaints about Clayton’s aggressive collection practices led Tennessee state officials to contact local housing counselors seeking information about their experiences with the company, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.

With protections lacking, homes are seized

Many mobile home buyers finance their purchases with personal property loans, which typically have fewer federal and state protections than regular home mortgages. Their homes, for example, can be seized with little or no warning. With regular mortgages, by contrast, companies must wait 120 days before starting foreclosure.

Tiffany Galler was a single mother living in Crestview, Fla. in 2005 when she bought a mobile home for $37,195 with a loan from 21st Mortgage. She later rented out the home.

After making payments over eight years totaling more than the sticker price of the home, Galler lost her tenant in November 2013 and fell behind on her payments. She arranged to show the home to a prospective renter two months later. But when she arrived at her homesite, Galler found barren dirt with PVC pipe sticking up from the ground.

She called 911, thinking someone had stolen her home.

Hours later, Galler tracked her repossessed house to a sales lot 30 miles away that was affiliated with 21st. It was listed at $25,900.

Some Clayton borrowers risk losing more than their house. The company often allows buyers to put up land as collateral if they can’t afford a down payment. One dealership claimed in advertisements to be the “only company that can provide you with a guarantee that if you or a family member owns land, that we can finance you a trailor[sic],” according to court documents.

Government neglect

The government has known for years about concerns that mobile home buyers are treated unfairly. Little has been done.

Fifteen years ago, Congress directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to examine issues such as loan terms and regulations in order to find ways to make mobile homes affordable. That’s still on HUD’s to-do list.

The industry, however, has protected its interests vigorously. Clayton Homes is represented in Washington by the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), a trade group that has a Clayton executive as its vice chairman and another as its secretary. CEO Kevin Clayton has represented MHI before Congress.

MHI spent $4.5 million since 2003 lobbying the federal government. Those efforts have helped the company escape much scrutiny, as has Buffett’s persona as a man of the people, analysts say.

“There is a Teflon aspect to Warren Buffett,” said James McRitchie, who runs a widely-read blog, Corporate Governance.

Still, after the housing crisis, lawmakers tightened protections for mortgage borrowers with a sweeping overhaul known as the Dodd-Frank Act, creating regulatory headaches for the mobile home industry. Kevin Clayton complained to lawmakers in 2011 that the new rules would lump in some of his company’s loans with “subprime, predatory” mortgages, making it harder for mobile home buyers “to obtain affordable financing.”

Although the rules had yet to take effect that year, 99 percent of Clayton’s mobile home loans were so expensive that they met the federal government’s “higher-priced” threshold.

Dodd-Frank also tasked federal financial regulators with creating appraisal requirements for risky loans. Appraisals are common for conventional home sales, protecting both the lender and the consumer from a bad deal.

But when federal agencies jointly proposed appraisal rules in September 2012, industry objections led them to exempt loans secured solely by a mobile home.

Then Clayton pushed for more concessions, arguing that mobile home loans secured by the home and land should also be exempt. Paul Nichols, then-president of Clayton’s Vanderbilt Mortgage, told regulators that the appraisal requirement would be costly and onerous, significantly reducing “the availability of affordable housing in the United States.”

In 2013, regulators conceded. They will not require a complete appraisal for new manufactured homes.

Berkshire’s opaque reporting

To ensure that lenders are treating consumers fairly and extending loans that they expect will be repaid, regulators and analysts often rely on public financial disclosures about loan down payments, delinquencies, defaults and foreclosures.

Clayton Homes doesn’t have to disclose these details because it is part of a bigger company, Berkshire Hathaway.

In a letter to shareholders last month, Buffett wrote that a “very high percentage of [Clayton’s] borrowers kept their homes” during the 2008 housing meltdown and ensuing recession, thanks to “sensible lending practices” that were, he has said, “better than its major competitors.”

“Our blue-collar borrowers, in many cases, proved much better credit risks than their higher-income brethren,” Buffett wrote.

Yet the company has provided scant data to back up this claim. “I wouldn’t give much credence to those comments,” said James Shanahan, an analyst with Edward Jones who follows Berkshire Hathaway.

Berkshire declared each year since 2010 that 98 percent of its loan portfolio is “performing.” Yet elsewhere in its financials, the company discloses that the only loans it considers “non-performing” are those currently in the foreclosure process. That means the impressive-sounding ratio ignores loans that are delinquent and those that have already been foreclosed or the homes repossessed.

Across the industry, about 28 percent of non-mortgage mobile home loans fail, according to research prepared for an industry conference by Kenneth Rishel, a consultant who has worked in the field for 40 years. Clayton’s failure rates are 26 percent at 21st Mortgage and 33 percent at Vanderbilt, said Rishel, who cited his research and conversations with Clayton executives. 

Berkshire reports Clayton as part of its “financial products” segment because it makes most of its money from lending and insurance, not from building and selling homes, according to Tim Williams, president of 21st Mortgage, who worked at Vanderbilt before founding 21st and selling it back to Clayton.

“The company is profitable in all it does,” he said in an interview last year, but financial products are “where the money is made.”

Buffett proudly trumpets Berkshire’s decentralized structure, saying he delegates to CEOs like Kevin Clayton “almost to the point of abdication.” At Clayton Homes, the result has been lax oversight of some of its dealers. In Texas, for example, hundreds of signatures were forged to help secure loans for people with no assets, a practice that Vanderbilt’s then-president, Paul Nichols, acknowledged and said was “deplorable” in later trial testimony.

Clayton’s questionable practices extended to its dealers, said Kevin Carroll, the former dealer who won Clayton awards for his sales performance.

CEO Kevin Clayton helped Carroll get a loan from 21st Mortgage to buy out his business partners in 2008, Carroll said. Two weeks after the loan documents were signed, Clayton Homes told Carroll it was shuttering the nearby manufacturing plant that supplied his dealership.

The closure doomed Carroll’s business. He fell behind on his payments. Clayton representatives tormented him with endless phone calls, he said, until he agreed in 2010 to surrender the company and the land underneath it. Carroll sued, but the case was thrown out because too much time had elapsed.

“They entrap you,” Carroll said. “They give you a loan that you can’t pay back and then they take from you.”

During his campaign for the Alabama Legislature last year, now-state Sen. Larry Stutts, a Sheffield Republican and OB-GYN, vowed to get the government out of the middle of the patient-physician relationship. He made no mention of the fact that what he really had in mind was putting insurance companies back in the middle of that relationship.  

Stutts, who until a few days ago was considered a rising-star in the state Republican party, made national news because of the furor caused by what might go down in history as the most ill-advised bill any lawmaker could possibly sponsor.

Did he really think no one would notice that the law he wanted to get rid of was enacted because of the death of one of his patients?

By the end of last week, this former up-and-comer, whose bill would once again allow insurance companies to decide when a mother and her newborn would have to leave the hospital, had been labeled a pariah. Alabama political reporter Bill Britt wrote this about him: “Stutts is arrogant and careless and now we know he is evil.”

In 1998, Rose Church, a 36-year-old nurse who was one of Stutts’ patients, died of a heart attack soon after giving birth to a baby girl. An autopsy revealed that she had developed severe bleeding and that a part of the placenta had been left in her womb.

Rose was discharged just 36 hours after she gave birth. Gene Church believes that had his wife not been sent home so soon, at the insistence of their insurer, she might still be alive.

With his baby daughter in his arms, Gene spent many hours in Montgomery trying to persuade legislators that insurers should not be allowed to make medical decisions. He argued that they should be required to pay for at least a 48-hour stay in the hospital following a normal delivery and a 96-hour stay following a Cesarean section or complicated delivery. His efforts paid off. The Alabama Legislature in 1999 unanimously approved what came to be called “Rose’s Law.”

Alabama was not the first state to pass such a law. In fact, it was one of the last. In the mid-1990s, dozens of states began passing similar bills following a backlash against what was perceived to be inappropriate interference by insurance companies in the patient-physician relationship.   

In the early 1990s, HMOs and other insurers began implementing hospital length-of-stay policies based on guidelines developed by an actuarial firm, Milliman & Robertson (now called Milliman). As a consequence, employees of managed care companies were calling the shots on how long mothers and their newborns could stay in the hospital.

The early discharges came to be called “drive-through deliveries” and were the subject of countless media stories. I’ll never forget that time because I was on the front lines of the backlash. As a spokesman for Cigna, I had the unenviable responsibility of responding to a seemingly endless stream of calls from reporters seeking comment about the company’s discharge guidelines.

It wasn’t long before politicians of both parties were condemning drive-through deliveries. Two of the U.S. Senate’s most conservative members, Republicans Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Mike DeWine of Ohio, denounced drive-through deliveries as “unconscionable.”

By 1997, more than 40 states had enacted bills to force insurers to end the practice. In Washington, Congress passed the “Newborns’ and Mothers’ Health Protection Act.” The Senate version had more than 50 cosponsors, including Helms and DeWine.

Among the most vocal advocates of the legislation were doctors who were outraged that managed care companies were able, for all practical purposes, to tell them how to practice medicine.

"I think that the decision for when a newborn and their family needs to go home is a mutual one that should be decided between the family and their provider,” Dr Lenna Liu, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington, told CNN in 1997. “It's not a decision that administrators or managed care people should be making.”

Liu was quoted in the CNN story about a study that found that newborns discharged early were more vulnerable to several conditions including jaundice, dehydration and sepsis and consequently more likely to be re-admitted to the hospital.

I couldn’t find any stories from the 1990s quoting Larry Stutts about drive-through deliveries, but I did find a number of recent stories in which he attempted to conflate Rose’s Law with Obamacare. During his campaign last year, he promised voters that if they helped him defeat Roger Bedford, the Democratic incumbent, he would be “standing against OBAMACARE and all interference in the doctor-patient relationship.”

When Gene Church found out what Stutts was up to a few weeks ago, he made certain that it would not go unnoticed that the law Stutts was trying to get rid of was the very one named 16 years ago for one of Stutt’s patients. A patient who might be alive today had it not been for the “unconscionable” interference in the doctor-patient relationship — not by government, as Stutts would like us to believe, but by insurance companies.

Wendell Potter is the author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans and Obamacare: What’s in It for Me? What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act.

Wisconsin voters will make two major choices on Tuesday that will affect the state’s highest court. One will fill a seat on the seven-person Wisconsin Supreme Court. The other will determine how the state selects the high court’s chief justice.

Although both issues are officially nonpartisan, the campaigns are attracting partisan dollars.

Here are the six things to know about Wisconsin’s election, which will immediately follow another kind of court battle — Monday night's NCAA men's national basketball championship game, which pits the University of Wisconsin against Duke University:

1.) The Supreme Court candidates: Incumbent Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who voters elected to Wisconsin’s highest court in 1995, will face lower court Judge James Daley in Tuesday’s election. Though judicial candidates do not declare party affiliation in these nonpartisan judicial elections, Bradley is widely viewed as part of the high court’s liberal minority. In a campaign ad that aired in Madison late last month, Bradley assured voters that “special interests and partisan politics have no place in our courtroom.” She has said she would not accept money from the Democratic Party, although her top backers include Democratic booster and Milwaukee philanthropist Lynde Uihlein. Former Madison Mayor Joseph Sensenbrenner is also a supporter. On the other side, the Wisconsin Republican Party ranks among Daley’s top donors, a list that also includes national GOP donor Richard Uihlein and Green Bay Packers director emeritus Paul J. Schierl, according to state campaign finance filings.

2.) The ballot question: If approved by voters, Question 1 would change the state’s constitution so that the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is elected by a majority of the court’s seven justices. Now, the court’s top spot goes to the longest serving jurist. Justice Shirley Abrahamson, part of the high court’s liberal minority, is currently chief justice. Bradley, another liberal, is next in line under the existing system. The court is slated to decide the “John Doe” case involving Gov. Scott Walker’s alleged campaign misconduct in a 2011 recall election, and a conservative chief justice might be more sympathetic to the Republican governor and prospective presidential candidate.

3.) The race for campaign cash: Bradley has outraised her opponent, $525,000 to $231,000, according to state campaign reports through April 3. Bradley reported spending more than $510,000 on television ads, according to Federal Communications Commission records. Daley has not put up any TV ads, but his campaign filings show he purchased more than $108,000 in radio ads.

4.) Independent spenders step in: The left-leaning Greater Wisconsin Committee and the conservative WMC Issues Mobilization Council are duking it out in the races.

The Greater Wisconsin Committee jumped into the judicial race in late March with an ad that accused Daley of protecting “child abusers” by handing down lax sentences as a Rock County Circuit Court judge. The group spent more than $100,000 on the ads, according to Federal Communications Commission records. It is also spending money to oppose Wisconsin’s ballot measure about chief justice appointments. State campaign records show the group gave $280,000 to Make Your Vote Count, a committee that has sponsored radio and television ads opposing the constitutional amendment. The group received no other donations as of April 3. The Greater Wisconsin Committee, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit, is not required to disclose its donors to the public. But IRS records indicate that a related group with the same address gets most of its cash from national labor unions such as the AFL-CIO and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The Greater Wisconsin Committee is no stranger to elections, spending about $4.3 million on TV ads attacking conservative Wisconsin candidates during 2014 state elections.

On the other side, a group called Vote Yes for Democracy has sponsored radio and TV ads in support of the chief justice appointment ballot measure. The group received a single $600,000 donation from the WMC Issues Mobilization Council in late March. During the 2014 election, the pro-business council spent nearly $5 million on TV ads supporting conservative candidates for Wisconsin office.

5.) Partisan drama as backdrop: WWE-esque drama and political scandal have rocked Wisconsin’s high court within recent years. In 2011, Bradley accused fellow Justice David Prosser, a former Republican legislator, of choking her during an argument about the state’s partisan battle over collective bargaining rights for state workers. Prosser was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing and an ethics complaint against him stalled when too many justices recused themselves from ruling on it. Late reports filed April 3 show that Prosser donated $500 to Daley, Bradley’s opponent in the race.

6.) Changing picture for judicial elections: Once insulated from political blood sport, judicial elections across the nation have become just as messy — and expensive — in the past decade as races for legislative and executive state office. The campaigns of state supreme court candidates attracted at least $18 million during the 2014 election cycle, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data collected by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Independent groups paid for more than $5 million in TVs related to last year’s state supreme court races, with more than a quarter spent by nonprofit groups that do not disclose their donors. Thirty-eight states elect their high court judges. Wisconsin is one of 14 states with a nonpartisan election system.

Next up for state judicial elections: A May 19 partisan primary for three of the seven seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The Center for Public Integrity’s groundbreaking investigation into campus sexual assault is being cited as a model for responsible journalistic practice by a report dissecting the now-infamous Rolling Stone magazine piece on a purported gang rape at the University of Virginia.

The much-anticipated audit, released Sunday night by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, said the magazine’s reporter, editors, and fact-checker had failed to undertake simple measures to verify a student’s account of being raped by seven men at a fraternity on the UVA campus. The report chronicles a host of failures at every editorial level, describing them as “basic, even routine journalistic practice — not special investigative effort.”

“If these reporting pathways had been followed,” according to the Columbia report, “Rolling Stone very likely would have avoided trouble.”

On Sunday, the magazine retracted and apologized for its December 2014 article, “A Rape on Campus,” accepting the audit’s conclusions and adopting its recommendations.

The original Rolling Stone article re-ignited a national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses that has continued to grow since the Center’s investigation into the topic six years ago.

Published in a six-part series starting in 2009, “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice” — done in collaboration with NPR  — showed that campus judicial proceedings regarding allegations of sexual assault were often confusing and marked by lengthy delays. Those who reported sexual assaults encountered institutional barriers that either assured their silence or left them feeling victimized again. Even students found “responsible” for alleged sexual assaults often faced little punishment, while their victims’ lives were turned upside down.

In December 2009, the Center shined a light on how the UVA administration had handled allegations of sexual assault by one of its former students in a 6,500-word story, “Sexual Assault on Campus Shrouded in Secrecy.” The story revealed a campus adjudicatory process shrouded in secrecy, in which victims  encountered mysterious disciplinary proceedings, closed-mouth school administrations, off-the-record negotiations, and gag orders that, in some cases, have been found to be illegal.

The Columbia report mentioned the Center’s investigation as a catalyst for reform. The series led the Education Department to strengthen its oversight of how colleges and universities handle campus rape cases, and has helped inspire stricter federal actions on a variety of fronts, including the creation of a White House task force last year.

In the Columbia audit, Kristen Lombardi, a senior reporter at the Center and the lead reporter for the campus-rape series, is quoted explaining the practices that she and her colleagues followed during their investigation — on balancing sensitivity to victims with rigorous reporting, and focusing on institutional accountability, for instance.

After The Seattle Times and The Center for Public Integrity published their investigation of Berkshire Hathaway’s mobile-home business, Berkshire sent a statement to a newspaper it owns, calling the story “misleading.” It did not point to any factual inaccuracies.

For months, Berkshire Hathaway and Clayton Homes, its mobile-home subsidiary, had ignored or declined reporters’ requests to discuss the company’s treatment of consumers.

Here’s a look at the company’s statement, published by the Omaha World-Herald, and the credibility of its claims:

CLAIM: “Clayton Homes’ policies, procedures and training are designed to ensure that customers have a choice of lenders. A list of all available lenders is posted and provided in company-owned retail locations.”

FACTS: Customers historically have not been given a choice of lenders, according to customers interviewed for this report. In early 2015, a reporter visited Clayton-owned and -affiliated dealerships in eastern Tennessee, and saw large, house-sized banners promoting Clayton loan products. There were no comparable signs related to other lenders. Promotional materials related to other lenders at one dealership consisted of small, trifold brochures located on a side table in one room of the dealership.

CLAIM: “Customers are encouraged to select more than one lender so they can compare options – and select the loan program that best serves their needs.”

FACTS: Numerous customers interviewed for this story said they were told that Clayton lenders were the only option or the best option. Some did not realize, nor were they told, they said, that the home dealers and lenders were part of the same company. They said they were never encouraged to explore alternatives.

CLAIM: “The retailer selling the home receives no financial incentives from the lender the customer chooses.”

FACTS: Two former dealers interviewed for this story said they received financial incentives, which they called “kickbacks,” to finance buyers through Clayton lenders or sell Clayton insurance products in the years after the Berkshire Hathaway merger. A third former manager, who worked for the company until 2013, described ongoing pressure from his supervisor to put at least 80 percent of borrowers in Clayton financing.

CLAIM: The New York Times recently wrote that Clayton’s financing division was distinguished by a lack of predatory or exploitative consumer practices and that its collections activities were “cited as best practices.”

FACTS: The item was not written by a New York Times staffer. It appeared on its website as a guest blog labeled "Another View," and was written by George Washington University Professor Lawrence Cunningham. A former corporate lawyer, Cunningham is a longtime Buffett acolyte whose most recent book was called "Berkshire Beyond Buffett: The Enduring Value of Values." The blog post itself was adapted from that book.

CLAIM: “Our lending policy and procedures help ensure that we evaluate each customer’s reasonable ability to repay the loan for which they have applied.”

FACTS: Loan documents reviewed for this story indicate that borrowers with very low credit scores received loans whose payments consumed a large majority of their monthly incomes. Rising premiums on Clayton-brokered insurance caused monthly payments to become unaffordable for some borrowers, especially those on fixed incomes. Several borrowers said their incomes were not verified.

CLAIM: “Appraisals are ordered from an unaffiliated third party on all loans secured by land that we finance, and a copy is provided to the customer prior to closing of the loan.”

FACTS: In 2014, 65 percent of Clayton’s loans were not secured by land and therefore would not be subject to the procedure described. Moreover, Clayton has pressured federal financial regulators against proposals that would require appraisals on more of the company's transactions. And the company succeeded in preventing rules that would have required  full appraisals, including inspections, on loans for new homes secured by land.

CLAIM: Loans over the past year had an “average total down payment of just under 19 percent.”

FACTS: Clayton is not referring to down payments in the traditional sense. The company promotes “$0 CASH DOWN” loans and allows customers to put up land that they own instead. Land collateral is fundamentally different from a cash down payment, mainly because it does not reduce the balance of the loan or increase the borrower's equity in the purchased asset.

The “just under 19 percent” refers to a combination of cash down payments and the value of land. The Times and CPI reviewed more than 20 loans originated since the Berkshire merger that included no cash down payment, and one from 2010 that included a $1 down payment.

CLAIM: “The only 30-year loans being offered by our lenders are through the government FHA title II loan program.”

FACTS: Reporters reviewed numerous loan files of conventional (non-FHA) 30-year loans originated by both Vanderbilt and 21st Mortgage since the Berkshire acquisition. A brochure available in early 2015 at a Clayton store mentions 30-year financing options in the course of advertising biweekly payment plans that reduce the length of the loan.

Until this story was posted, Clayton-owned Vanderbilt Mortgage’s online loan calculator used a 30-year loan term as its default setting.

CLAIM: “Interest rates on manufactured homes can be higher than loans for site-built homes.”

FACTS: Clayton’s loans are particularly expensive, even among its peers. Among new loans considered “higher-priced” by the federal government in 2013, Clayton's averaged 7 percent above prime, compared with an average of 3.8 percent above prime for all other mobile-home lenders.

CLAIM: Clayton’s retail locations operate under different names because it produces numerous brands of homes and wants to emphasize a “broader selection for customers.”

FACTS: The brands of homes available at a given Clayton store do not always correspond to the trade name of that store. For example, lots called Clayton Homes may sell a full range of models, not just those branded as “Clayton.”

Numerous customers reported that they thought they were shopping with different companies when they visited Clayton dealers operating under different brand names.

CLAIM: “Clayton Homes’ retail locations make up approximately 12% of the industry’s retail locations.”

FACTS: Clayton owned 326 dealerships at the end of 2014, but counted 1,336 independent retailers as affiliates in its latest annual disclosure. Affiliates work closely with the company to sell its homes and finance them through 21st Mortgage, one of Clayton's lenders.

CLAIM: “The overwhelming majority of Clayton Homes’ customers report high levels of satisfaction with their home purchase and mortgage.”

FACTS: Clayton's customer satisfaction data is based on research the company funded.

It's all but official: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will todayannounce he's running for president.

On the 2016 campaign trail, Paul, an ophthalmologist and son of the libertarian-leaning former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, is hoping to tap into the grassroots energy that helped catapult him onto the national stage in the first place.

Cash is a key to Paul's success in what's certain to be a crowded Republican primary field. Here's more about the financial history of this outsider-turned-insider who wants his next home to be the White House.

Sources: Center for Public Integrity reporting, as well as The American Conservative, Center for Responsive Politics, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Federal Election Commission, NNDB.com, Pageonekentucky.com and YouTube.

Image sources: Cheryl Senter/AP, Jose Luis Magana/AP, stumpsource.org/Flickr and Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

Serve in Congress. Leave office. Sit on a mountain of surplus campaign cash.

Such miserliness is surprisingly commonplace for lawmakers of all political stripes, some of whom have hoarded leftover election money for years, even decades.

But Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., has introduced a bill aimed at curtailing it — motivated, in part, by a Center for Public Integrity report that detailed the practice.

As of last year, nearly $100 million in campaign funds sat idle in the accounts of former political candidates.

The California Democrat's bill — H.R. 1518, also known as (cue Elsa) the "Let it Go Act" — would force former federal candidates who aren't again seeking federal office to "dispose of" lingering campaign money within six years of their last race.

After first paying off all outstanding debts, candidates' campaigns could disgorge extra cash by cutting refunds to contributors, transferring it to political party committees or donating it to nonprofit groups, according to the bill.

"If a person is not going to run for office, this money shouldn't be be able to sit around forever," Takano told the Center for Public Integrity.

Takano says he's particularly concerned about members of Congress leaving office, becoming lobbyists and maintaining political campaign accounts — the money in which could be given to other candidates.

"It becomes an extension of your lobbying salary and another tool for leverage on the political process," he said.

So far, Takano's bill, which he formally introduced last month, has no co-sponsors. And the House Administration Committee, to which the bill has been referred, has not yet set a hearing date for it.

Since entering Congress in 2013, Takano has yet to see any of the 17 bills he's introduced signed into law, although his staff notes that he has helped influence larger pieces of successful legislation, including him adding language to one bill that increased the number of medical residencies at Veterans Affairs facilities.

Despite his limited legislative victories, Takano expressed confidence that the Let it Go Act  would attract support from both Republicans and Democrats, particularly those in Congress who are "trying to help rebuild the reputation of the institution."

Ex-congressmen offer different reasons for why they've retained huge amounts of campaign cash years after last serving.

Former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana told the Center for Public Integrity last year that he didn't want to "foreclose any possibilities at this time" because "the future is difficult to predict."

Bayh, who decided against seeking another term in 2010 and is now an adviser at law and lobbying firm McGuireWoods, had nearly $10 million left in his old campaign account as of Dec. 31. Since leaving the Senate, he has been courted to run again for political office but has repeatedly declined, most recently opting against a bid for governor of Indiana.

For his part, former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who reported more than $1.2 million left in his congressional account as of March 31, has said he is also weighing future political prospects. In 2006, he resigned from Congress under pressure from colleagues after sending sexually explicit messages to boys serving as congressional pages.

"After the resignation, I would have given it slim odds that I’d ever run again,” Foley said last year. “But I’ve had people tell me since, ‘Your public service was sterling aside from a bump in the road.'"

To date, Foley has announced no plans to run for office.

Then there's former Rep. Joe Kennedy II, a Massachusetts Democrat who hasn't served in Congress in 16 years.

As of Dec. 31, Kennedy's long-unused campaign fund had about $2.6 million in its coffer. That includes more than $176,000 in interest, dividends and capital gains the committee earned through investments during the fourth quarter of 2014.

Neither Kennedy nor his campaign committee treasurer, Stephen Kidder, have responded to questions about Kennedy's campaign money.

Other ex-congressmen say they simply have no plans for their campaign money — the very thing Takano's bill seeks to curb.

Four investigations from the Center for Public Integrity have won awards from the New York State Society of CPAs 2015 Excellence in Journalism Awards.

The Medicare Advantage Money Grab series won Best Independent or Affiliated Outlet (medium to small). The project examined the billions of tax dollars wasted through manipulation of “risk scores” and the power of the Medicare Advantage industry. It was reported by senior health care reporter Fred Schulte, former data editor David Donald, intern Erin Durkin and news developer Chris Zubak-Skees.

The Center’s documentary, Time is Money, revealed how a growing web of prison bankers, private vendors and corrections agencies profit off the innocent by shifting costs onto inmates’ families. Finance reporter Dan Wagner and multimedia editor Eleanor Bell collaborated on the Profiting from Prisoners series. It won Best TV or online video news story.

Florida’s Foreclosure Crisis investigated the aftermath of the housing crash in the Sunshine State and revealed a parallel legal system whose focus is on clearing the court system of cases and cutting the time it takes a bank to foreclose. The project found that this system had created a nightmarish series of obstacles for people struggling to hang on to their homes. Finance Managing Editor Alison Fitzgerald and digital editor Jared Bennett won the award for Best Personal Finance Story.

The Center’s senior reporter for broadband, Allan Holmes, examined the telecommunication industry’s web of influence in Wireless Companies Fight for their Futures. This investigation examined the money and lobbying behind the battle for wireless spectrum and won the award for Best Beat News Reporting.

The awards recognize national and local reporters whose work contributed to a better and balanced understanding of business and financial topics.

This is the 32^nd year of the awards produced by the New York Society of CPAs and judged by a group of Society members and journalists from the New York Financial Writers Association.

The Awards will be presented at an Awards Luncheon in New York in early May; see the full announcement and other place-getters here. 

Kayleb Moon-Robinson was 11 years old last fall when charges — criminal charges — began piling up at school.

Diagnosed as autistic, Kayleb was being scolded for misbehavior one day and kicked a trash can at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A police officer assigned to the school witnessed the tantrum, and filed a disorderly conduct charge against the sixth grader in juvenile court.

Just weeks later, in November, Kayleb, who is African-American, disobeyed a new rule — this one just for him — that he wait while other kids left class. The principal sent the same school officer to get him.

“He grabbed me and tried to take me to the office,” said Kayleb, a small, bespectacled boy who enjoys science. “I started pushing him away. He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me.”

In an incident report, a teacher confirmed that the officer spoke to Kayleb, then grabbed him around the chest, and that Kayleb cursed and struggled. School officials won’t comment on this case, but say that police in schools are crucial to providing a safe atmosphere and protecting against outside threats. Stacey Doss, Kayleb’s mother and the daughter of a police officer herself, was outraged.

Educators stood by, she said, while the cop took her son in handcuffs to juvenile court. The officer filed a second misdemeanor disorderly conduct complaint. And he also submitted another charge, a very grown-up charge for a very small boy: felony assault on a police officer. That charge was filed, Doss said the officer told her, because Kayleb “fought back.”

“I thought in my mind — Kayleb is 11,” Doss said. “He is autistic. He doesn't fully understand how to differentiate the roles of certain people.”

To Doss’ shock, a Lynchburg juvenile court judge found Kayleb guilty of all those charges in early April, which could prove life-altering.

The young student’s swift trip into the criminal justice system might seem like a singular case of tough discipline. But he’s not alone.

In fact, U.S. Department of Education data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity show that Virginia schools in a single year referred students to law enforcement agencies at a rate nearly three times the national rate. Virginia’s referral rate: about 16 for every 1,000 students, compared to a national rate of six referrals for every 1,000 students. In Virginia, some of the individual schools with highest rates of referral — in one case 228 per 1,000 — were middle schools, whose students are usually from 11 to 14 years old.

The Education Department didn’t require that schools explain why, during the 2011-12 school year, they referred students to law enforcement. And a referral did not necessarily have to end in an arrest or charges filed, at least not immediately. But by definition, it did mean that students’ behavior was reported to police or courts.

The Center’s analysis found that in Delaware, special schools for troubled kids helped drive up that small state’s rate to second after Virginia. Florida ranked third.

The findings raise questions about what kind of incidents at school really merit police or court intervention, and provide fodder for a growing national debate over whether children, especially those in minority groups, are getting pushed into a so-called “school-to-prison pipeline” unnecessarily and unjustly. What’s happening in some schools seems almost directly at odds with guidance from the U.S. Department of Education.

Preteens and police

In Virginia, interviews and police records obtained by the Center confirm that referrals of students to law enforcement have eventually turned into thousands of complaints filed in courts, many of them against preteens. The most frequent complaints are for disorderly behavior — allegations similar to those against Kayleb.

Virginia isn’t reliably tracing how many charges in juvenile courts statewide originate with school police. But some public defenders report they’re handling multiple cases with surprisingly harsh allegations against young students.

In southeastern Virginia, for instance, a 12-year-old girl was charged earlier this year with four misdemeanors — including obstruction of justice for “clenching her fist” at a school cop who intervened in a school fight.

Across the country, a movement away from harsh, discipline is gaining influence, especially in convincing authorities that out-of-school suspensions are counterproductive. But certain schools continue to allow police who patrol their hallways to serve as de facto disciplinarians, with arrest powers, for all manner of indiscretions that a generation ago would almost certainly have been handled by teachers or principals.

Every so often, headlines flare about school police injuring students with Tasers, or wrestling with them to take away cell phones. In Green County, Virginia, last October, a school cop handcuffed a 4-year-old who was throwing blocks and kicking at teachers and drove him to a sheriff’s department.

What draws less scrutiny, though, is the quiet stream of young students into courts.

For some kids, the process creates delinquency records that stigmatize them at school, and stick with them for years. Judges can order students to perform, as penance, community service, and to check in frequently with probation officers. They can order students to wear electronic monitors, or put kids into detention before and after a hearing. A later slip-up at school, such as using profanity, public defenders say, has sent kids back to court and into detention.

Judge Steven Teske, who presides over juvenile court in Clayton County, Georgia, saw a steady rise in cases from schools when he took the bench in 1999 — with 90 percent involving misdemeanor charges, such as disorderly conduct, disrespect and fighting. He wanted to stop it.

“It should come to no one’s surprise that the more students we arrested, suspended, and expelled from our school system, the juvenile crime rate in the community significantly increased,” Teske said at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on school discipline in 2012. “These kids lost one of the greatest protective buffers against delinquency — school connectedness.”

Teske forged a “protocol” limiting arrests at schools, and he’s been urging other jurisdictions to do the same. Last October, he went to Richmond, Virginia, to spread the word with a group of local and state juvenile-justice officials.

That wasn’t long before Kayleb Moon-Robinson was arrested in Lynchburg.

In March, Stacey Doss said, she turned down a “plea deal” prosecutors offered to reduce the felony to a misdemeanor assault, but require Kayleb do time in a detention center. Doss didn’t think Kayleb should be in court at all. But now, if she appeals and loses, she’s scared that state law will require that the felony remain in court files forever, even if public access is limited.

Kayleb is in an alternative school now and has to return to court in early June to hear what the judge wants to do with him. Doss said the judge had a deputy show him a cell, and told him if he gets into trouble again he could go straight to youth detention.

“He said that Kayleb had been handled with kid gloves. And that he understood that Kayleb had special needs, but that he needed to ‘man up,’ that he needed to behave better,” Doss said. “And that he needed to start controlling himself or that eventually they would start controlling him.”

A public defender argued that Kayleb wasn’t intentionally disruptive, but the prosecution argued, according to Doss, that Kayleb’s “mental issues” were insufficient to claim “diminished capacity.”

Kayleb can perform well on academic tests. But Doss had argued last year with Linkhorne Middle that it might not have appropriate services for him. He’s now in an alternative school the district is paying for that’s more equipped to deal with Kayleb’s difficulty with sudden changes in routine, Doss said. Kayleb said he left class the day he was arrested because he wanted to be with the other kids.

Revealing stats

The data that pinpointed Virginia as a hot spot for referrals was collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, for the 2011-12 school year, the most recent available. The rights office has the power to withhold funding from a district if investigators find that practices violate students’ civil rights and districts fail to change.

Federal officials didn’t rank states’ rate of referrals. But the Center analysis did, and among the findings are these:

• The national rate of referrals to law enforcement agencies was six students for every 1,000 pupils, with 19 states surpassing that rate.
• Virginia had about 16 referrals for every 1,000 students, followed by Delaware with almost 15; Florida with more than 12; and Wyoming and New Hampshire with nearly 12 referrals for every 1,000 students. 
• Massachusetts, Ohio, Nevada and Washington, D.C., reported the lowest rates of referrals, at two or fewer students per 1,000.
• Even states not among those with the highest overall rates of referrals had individual schools that stood out. Bedford County, Tennessee’s Cascade High School had a referral rate of 157 per 1,000 students.
• About 26 percent of all students referred to law enforcement nationally were special-needs kids — kids with physical or learning disabilities — even though these kids represent only 14 percent of U.S. enrollment.
• In most states, black and Latino kids were referred in percentages that were disproportionate to their enrollment numbers.

To find out why kids in Virginia were referred, the Center filed public-record requests for police data in communities where parents have complained publicly about harsh discipline. The data reveal startling details about the tender age of some of the children accused of crimes, and a disturbing racial divide.

In Chesterfield County, a Richmond suburb that’s increasingly racially diverse, police data show that officers filed 3,538 criminal complaints against students over the last three academic years, starting in fall 2011. That’s a staggering number for a district of about 60,000 students.

The volume of complaints Chesterfield police filed during the 2011-12 academic year alone — 1,499 — was more than half the 2,548 cases that New York City police filed against students that year. Civil-rights groups protested that New York’s charges were a sign of excess, and New York has about 16 times as many students.

More than half the 3,538 complaints police filed over three years in Chesterfield were for “simple assault” or disorderly conduct.

More than half the students sent to court were black, even though black students are only 26 percent of enrollment.

And almost half of the students issued criminal complaints were children 14 or younger.

Among the youngest were 27 kids under the age of 10 accused of assault, and five children under 10 accused of making bomb threats.

Falling Creek Middle School in northern Chesterfield County had a referral rate of 228 kids per 1,000 — 39 times the national rate.

Chesterfield’s records do show a two-year decline to 951 complaints filed last year compared to the 1,499 in 2011-12. But half of those charges last year were still for simple assault or disorderly conduct — compared to 18 charges related to weapons and 117 charges for narcotics.

District administrators declined to comment, deferring to Chesterfield County Police Department officials to respond. “Their sworn officers serve as school resource officers in our schools and are charged with upholding and enforcing the law,” Chesterfield schools’ communications director Timothy Bullis said in an email.

Police spokeswoman Elizabeth Caroon said not all complaints included an arrest, and not every complaint led to a hearing in court. In an email, she said that some students are “diverted” to counseling or other programs by juvenile court intake officials empowered to decide which go to court. School cops can recommend diversion, or that a complaint go to a hearing. On the police department’s school resource webpage, a message says: “There will be no exception to the practice of reporting violations of the law.”

Chesterfield mother Lelia Grant argues that schools and police are prematurely treating kids like criminals.

In 2013, her daughter, 15, got into a fight with another girl who walked into a class and confronted her, Grant wrote to school officials. Grant’s daughter ended up being charged with assaulting a school staff member.

Grant pleaded with school officials to consider that her daughter was in shock and bleeding because a ring the other girl was wearing had deeply cut her forehead. If her daughter pushed a staff person, Grant wrote, it was not intended to be “a separate vindictive action.”

Grant also pleaded that her child was in college-prep classes and had never been in a fight before. But a week after the incident, the girl was summoned to court and arrested on the spot. “They told her to stand up, take off her sweater and put her hands behind her back,” Grant said. “They held her in a detention hall for a whole day.”

The school never tried to use mediation or counseling in response to the incident, Grant said. The court ordered 40 hours of community service in a church store, and her daughter’s grades slumped because she was removed from school for two months and forced to attend a “dumbed down” night school, Grant said.

“Some laws need to be enacted on behalf of these children,” Grant said. “They need to revisit this zero tolerance stuff.” In a letter to Grant, a school official justified suspending her daughter because the teen “defied repeated requests … to calm down.” Although officials declined to discuss policing at schools, Bullis said the local school board feels safety is “a responsibility that our parents expect us to fulfill.”

In Virginia’s Henrico County, another increasingly diverse suburban area of Richmond, police said they only began tracking student arrests this school year. In the district of about 50,000 students, records show that in five months, between last September and January, police had already filed 200 complaints against students they arrested.

Four charges were for weapons, one a firearm. The biggest single accusation against students — 78 charges — was disorderly conduct. One-third of the 200 charges were against kids 14 or younger. And even though black students represented 37 percent of enrollment, 77 percent of those arrested and charged were black. Lt. Christopher Eley, Henrico Police communications officer, said, “Our first goal [is] to divert the juvenile from the justice system to the extent possible, consistent with the protection of the public safety.”

Henrico mom Brenda Coles, who is African-American, said a police officer at her son’s school threatened to arrest the fifth-grader this year.

Her son Elijah was one of a minority of black fifth-graders at the Three Chopt Elementary School for academically gifted students. His mom has since transferred him.

Coles accuses a school cop of singling out 10-year-old Elijah last fall. She has asked, in multiple emails to school officials, why Elijah was put into a room at school with an officer interrogating him even though school officials said Elijah hadn’t done anything wrong.

At school, Coles found Elijah with the officer, who was demanding to know if Elijah understood “unwanted touching” and “assault.”

“My son was tormented. He had his head down on a table. He would not hold his head up,” Coles said.

Coles said a classmate grabbed Elijah’s shoulders in the cafeteria and Elijah jerked his arm back and it jabbed the boy. School officials agreed the boys had engaged in mutual “horseplay,” according to a school document.

Yet, Coles said, the principal and a school police officer called her and the officer told her he’d spoken to the other child’s parents and decided that Elijah had committed assault.

“He said, ‘If it happens again I’m going to arrest him,’ Coles said. “He said, ‘I do arrest fifth graders.’ ”

A letter to Coles from Henrico Police internal affairs said it investigated the officer’s conduct and could not substantiate her complaint. Another letter from a school official to Coles said: “Henrico County Public Schools does not direct the decisions of Henrico law enforcement officials, including decisions regarding charges or potential charges.”

William Noel, Henrico’s director of student support and discipline told the Center much the same. School police “are part of the building, they’re part of the family,” he said, but they work for the police department.

“We don’t tell them what to do,” Noel said.

But that stance is in stark contrast to what Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary of education for civil rights, expects to happen at schools.

She’s the top federal education official responsible for ensuring all students’ civil rights are respected.

“If you have police on your campus,” she said, “you need to be clear what it is you’re asking them to do.”

Police should be handling criminal activity, she said, not behavior more appropriately handled by school personnel. There are effective discipline methods schools can use, Lhamon said, and her office is ready to provide guidance and assistance for schools to get funding to train staff.

Just last October, in fact, the department awarded Virginia $3.5 million in grants to improve services for students with mental-health needs and to reduce disruptive behavior.

“We’ve tried to be very clear in our guidance,” Lhamon added, “that schools are responsible for the actions that their school police engage in when they're at the school site, so that there's not a way of saying, ‘Well, that was the police, and not us.’ ”

Lhamon said she understands calls for safety and for order in schools. Demand for school police mushroomed following the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, and has spread after each school shooting since. But she’s also concerned when she hears that school police are issuing a barrage of criminal accusations against students.

“A red flag for us, consistently,” Lhamon added, “is catchall terms, like ‘disorderly conduct,’ that leave too much discretion that is unfettered,” she said. If that term isn’t well defined, she said, then schools leave open the possibility of discrimination against certain students.

In Virginia, according to the national data the Center analyzed, about 30 percent of students schools referred to law enforcement two years ago were special-needs kids — who were only 14 percent of the state’s students. About 38 percent of students referred to law enforcement were black, even though black kids were only a quarter of Virginia’s enrollment.

Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton declined an interview request to discuss the Center’s findings. Instead, she sent a statement emphasizing that Virginia has received federal funds to help address “negative behaviors before students receive referrals.”

“We remain committed,” she said “to equity in the classroom.”

Last August, Lhamon’s office struck an agreement with the Lynchburg district that required its administrators take steps to reduce disproportionate suspensions of black students. Lhamon wasn’t happy to hear what happened to Kayleb after that agreement was reached.

“It certainly upsets me,” she said. “I wouldn't want that for my own daughters. I wouldn't want that for any child I love in school. I very much hope that we can make sure that all of our kids are treated appropriately in school.”

In eastern Virginia, public defender Linda McCausland is also concerned about students charged for behavior she thinks schools and counseling should handle.

Unlike other public defenders the Center contacted, McCausland was willing to speak publicly—as long the precise jurisdiction she was discussing wasn’t named.

One of McCausland’s clients is a 15-year-old charged with assault and sexual battery after she pushed a girl in the bathroom and kissed her. “Sexual abuse, that’s a pretty serious charge,” McCausland said. Another is an 11-year-old with mental-health problems who stole her teacher’s cell phone and was automatically charged with felony theft because the phone is worth at least $200.

“She can’t do long division, but she can get felony theft,” McCausland said.

McCausland believes the problem is compounded by police who she says “pile” charges on kids.

A 12-year-old client went to pick up her cousin at an elementary school, saw a fight and pulled her cousin out of it, McCausland said, and when a school cop grabbed her she swore. The cop charged her with obstruction of justice for clenching her first, along with trespassing, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Julie McConnell, who teaches law at the University of Richmond, is a former juvenile prosecutor as well as a former public defender in Richmond. She said some prosecutors feel obligated to press forward with cases from schools, like it or not.

“Some offices have a no-plea-agreement policy,” she said. “You either go to trial or you plead guilty. I think that's a really unfortunate situation in a few jurisdictions.”

McConnell also said school police don’t necessarily see themselves as mediators at school because that’s not what most are trained to do.

Don Bridges, a school police officer in Maryland, argues that training can correct an overzealous approach to school policing. He is a vice president of the National Association of School Resource Officers, a professional group that offers classes to school resource officers.

“As I’m doing my training,” he said, “one of the phrases I always say is when you’re in the building as a police officer, you have to learn to stay in your lane. You have to know specifically what it is that you should be doing.

“As long as there’s nothing where there’s a weapon, something that’s going to cause immediate public harm,” he said, “charging a student within a school setting should be an absolute last resort.”

Lynchburg prosecutors handling Kayleb Moon-Robinson’s case said confidentiality laws prohibit them from commenting on juvenile cases. But before a case goes forward, they said, a juvenile court intake officer must be satisfied that there is “sufficient probable cause” based on an officer’s or another person’s sworn testimony.

Kayleb’s public defender and Lynchburg Juvenile Court Chief Judge Cary Payne wouldn’t comment either.

Lynchburg School Board President Regina Nolan-Sewell, the school district superintendent and the Lynchburg police chief also declined to talk. They sent a statement that school police are trained to work with kids, including autistic students, and get involved “in incidents that are criminal in nature, that have the potential to result in criminal charges, or that appear to place the safety of students and staff at risk.”

Virginia law requires schools to notify law enforcement about incidents that “may constitute a criminal offense.” An “offense code” chart advises that assaults must be referred to law enforcement, but disorderly conduct doesn’t. Charges aren’t required in either case.

In Lynchburg, Stacey Doss said she’s worried her special-needs son doesn’t grasp the judge’s warnings about his behavior, and that he already feels branded because classmates saw an officer subdue him. “There are people in our apartment complex that make rude comments about Kayleb,” she said. “They’ve talked about how he’s a criminal, how he's been arrested.”

She’s also incredulous that so many resources have gone into putting Kayleb into court. “As taxpayers we should say, ‘Look, I don’t want my money wasted on frivolous issues,’ ” Doss said. “Children are going to argue, children are going to push and shove. That should be handled by the school.”

The Center for Public Integrity’s Ben Wieder performed the analysis of U.S. Department of Education data. This story is featured on Reveal, a new public radio show from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. Check out revealnews.org for more.

A key job requirement for federal agents ferrying  nuclear weapons around the United States —no surprise here— is that they shouldn’t have “anger management” issues.

Incidents of “hostility or aggression toward fellow workers or authority [or] uncontrolled anger” represent rules infractions that must be reported to top officials overseeing the nuclear couriers, according to the government’s personnel manual for them.

But the commander of a nuclear courier squad based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee – where the uranium portions of H-bombs are fabricated, stored, and periodically moved to other federal sites – allegedly threatened to kill one of his colleagues two years ago, and senior officials did not learn about it for five months, according to a recent inspection report by the Department of Energy’s top auditor.

Moreover, the commander in question repeatedly engaged in related misconduct, without more senior officials being promptly informed,   the report said. “Each of the seven incidents” described by the commander’s colleagues during the auditor’s investigation “involved physical or verbal altercations,” the report said. The misconduct began as long as a decade ago, but it wasn’t reported up the chain of command.

“Additionally, we found that other [courier] agents engaged in unsuitable, reportable behavior,” said the November 2014 account by Energy Department deputy inspector general Rickey R. Hass. His report was initially declared “Official Use Only” by the Energy Department, but was publicly released in recent days in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by a trade publication known as Greenwire.

The commander in question was not named, and he denied “the threat allegation,” the report said. But when senior officials eventually were informed, he was suspended, and today he remains on administrative leave. (A spokesman for the department declined to make him available for an interview.) The report noted that on two other occasions, in 2004 and 2008, the commander got into physical altercations with couriers, according to the accounts of those who worked with him, but senior officials said these also were not properly reported.

The alleged misconduct is embarrassing for a group of military and special forces veterans that arguably performs one of the nation’s most sensitive tasks – securely transporting nuclear bombs and weapons-usable nuclear materials among several dozen government factories, storage sites, and military installations nationwide, such as missile and bomber bases and submarine ports.

The stated mission of the little-known courier group, the Office of Secure Transportation – an entity within the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)— is to “defend, recapture, recover” the bombs or explosives they transport. The unit is proud of never having lost an H-bomb to accident or theft – not even one. A plutonium-carrying truck rolled onto its side in a 1981 Colorado icestorm, and a truck carrying two warheads rolled onto its side in a 1996 Nebraska icestorm, but neither accident released radiation or blew anything up.

The roughly 700 agents that perform this mission generally try to stay under the public’s radar. Highly-trained in small arms and military tactics and sometimes carrying 80 pounds of specialized gear and weaponry, they nonetheless move around without identifying uniforms or telltale signage on their armor-plated vehicles.

The office’s effort to avoid attracting attention has not been terribly good for its budget, however.  Funding hasn’t kept up with the group’s needs , according to Energy Department reports that have criticized the department’s deferral of new vehicle purchases and its heavy use of overtime to compensate for recurrent staff shortages. One exception was the office’s  purchase a few years back of two Boeing 737’s to complement a fleet of smaller airplanes.

But a long-range planning report by the office in 2012 bemoaned “antiquated facilities” and “deferred maintenance.” And an earlier, 2010 account by Energy Department auditors revealed the existence of 16 “alcohol-related incidents within OST involving current Agents and Agent Candidates” between 2007 and 2009.

Two incidents occurred during transport missions, while the agents lodged at hotels along their routes, the report said. In one, a courier was arrested for being publicly drunk, and in the other, local police wound up handcuffing two couriers who had been drinking at a bar. It said that managers took “what appeared to be appropriate action” in response to these and other incidents ­– they banned kegs at parties in an Arkansas dormitory for candidate agents, among various new rules.

But the report added that “alcohol incidents such as these, as infrequent as they may be, indicate a potential vulnerability in OST’s critical national security mission.” A similar warning appears in the new Inspector General’s report, which states that without better oversight and the prompt reporting of rules infractions, “there is an increased risk that unsuitable individuals could be allowed to protect nuclear weapons, weapon components and special nuclear material, raising possible national security concerns.”

In a written response to the latest audit report, NNSA administrator Frank G. Klotz said he concurred with these recommendations and that his agency is “in the process of implementing corrective actions.” A spokesman for Klotz, Shelley Laver, added that "OST has and will continue to have very strict politices regarding alcohol use or abuse," and that it recently began making new tractors to carry nuclear bombs.

This story was co-published with The Daily Beast. 

Ready or not, here comes Hillary.

Clinton will today makeofficial what for months — even years — has seemed inevitable: that she'll again run for president. 

All the while, a small political industry materialized around the Democrat's expected bid, including more than a dozen pro- and anti-Clinton super PACs that together have raised millions of dollars off her (until now) non-candidacy.

But the story of Clinton cash is as old as the Clinton political dynasty that began with husband Bill's election to the White House in 1992. Here's more about the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state who could become the first woman to lead the nation:

<p style="font-size:80%;color#666">Sources: Center for Public Integrity reporting, as well as the Center for Responsive Politics, ClintonFoundation.org, Federal Election Commission, Washington Post and U.S. Senate.</p>

 <p style="font-size:80%;color#666">Image sources: Rona Proudfoot/Flickr, Richard Drew/AP, Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx/AP, Kathy Willens/AP</p>

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., today is expectedto become the third big-name Republican to enter the 2016 race for the White House.

Florida’s junior senator faces plenty of challenges during the Republican presidential primary, particularly explaining his past immigration reform advocacy to skeptical conservatives and thriving in a hyper-competitive candidate field that will almost assuredly feature an even better-known Floridian in former Gov. Jeb Bush.

But Rubio is young, aggressive — he’s written a best-selling book and taught a college course while serving in the U.S. Senate — and enjoys the support of some decidedly wealthy political patrons.

Here's more about the financial history of a man who could become the nation’s first Latino president:

Sources: Center for Public Integrity reporting, as well as the Center for Responsive Politics, Miami Herald, Politico and U.S. Senate.

Image sources: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP, Gage Skidmore/AP

I usually don’t pay a lot of attention to the songs on a restaurant’s playlist, but when “The Old Rugged Cross” came on at the Manassas, Virginia, Cracker Barrel as I was traveling to Tennessee recently, I put my fork down and listened.

Hearing the hymn took me back nearly half a century to my childhood in Kingsport, Tennessee. Every Sunday morning, we listened to the “hymn program” on WMCH, a Christian radio station, as we got ready for church.

I couldn’t resist Googling WMCH to see if it was still around. I was happy to find that not only is it still on the air, it now has much broader reach, thanks to the Internet.

But when I streamed it, instead of a gospel quartet, I heard a radio talk show host mock environmentalists who want more laws and regulations to address climate change. I was told that the earth hasn’t really been getting warmer and that, even if there is a little more CO₂ in the atmosphere, it’s God’s way of helping to restore the rainforests.

The hymns on WMCH are, unfortunately, now few and far between. Filling the big gaps between them is propaganda—or “messaging” if you prefer the corporate PR term—designed to get people to think, act and vote in certain ways.

Just days earlier I had participated in a discussion at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on this very issue. We had just watched Merchants of Doubt, the new Robert Kenner documentary about how oil and gas industries, among many others, finance propaganda campaigns to influence public policy by creating doubt in the minds of American citizens and the people they elect to public office. 

Almost all of us are completely oblivious to these campaigns. The special interests behind them go to great lengths to hide their involvement. During the health care reform debate, for example, America’s Health Insurance Plans, a large Washington-based trade group I used to work with—I was a member of its strategic communications committee—funneled more than $100 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund the Chamber’s anti-reform advertising campaign. Insurers knew that the TV ads would be more credible if people believed the Chamber of Commerce had paid for them.

Neither AHIP nor the Chamber was required to report this transfer of money or  how it was spent—even though the intent was to influence the outcome of the reform debate and even though the $100 million was more than insurers spent in campaign contributions and to pay lobbyists. We probably would never have known about it at all had investigative reporters not been able to connect the dots after reviewing the groups’ tax filings.

Just as health insurers spend far more money on covert activities than on expenditures they have to disclose, so too do a variety of other companies and special interests.

While we know how much insurers and oil and gas companies dole out  to political campaigns and lobbyists, we don’t have a clue how much of their cash is used to establish front groups or how much of it winds up in the pockets of either pundits-for-hire, like those depicted in Merchants of Doubt, or tax-exempt organizations that do their bidding.

One such tax-exempt group: the Lincoln Institute, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that “promotes the ideals of free market economics, individual liberty, and limited government.” WMCH has become one of the vehicles it uses to promote those ideals.

Ron Gordon, one of WMCH’s owners, told me his station plays less music than it did when I was a kid because he now has to pay much more in royalties for the songs he plays. Enter the Lincoln Institute, which has two broadcasting arms, American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal.

The Lincoln Institute helps hundreds of stations across the country fill airtime and save money by replacing music with talk. Gordon said Lincoln doesn’t charge him a dime. It doesn’t have to, thanks to its donors, which the organization doesn’t name. Being a so-called 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the institute isn’t required to tell us who its donors are.

While we don’t know for sure that oil and gas companies provide funding for Lincoln, we do know they benefit whenever a radio listener starts believing that more regulation not only is unnecessary but also might lead to job losses and higher prices at the pump.

Special interests of all kinds with big pots of money are able to influence elections and shape public policy not only by funding disinformation campaigns but also by hiding their role in the deception. And the cash they spend to do it now far exceeds what they spend in ways that have to be disclosed.  Does this make any sense? Not to me.

Wendell Potter is the author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans and Obamacare: What’s in It for Me? What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act.

Campaign finance watchdogs have filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against hip-hop musician Pras Michel — one of the founders of the Fugees — and a politically active company under his control.

In the new complaint, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 argue that Pras violated the law by giving money to a super PAC through his company without disclosing that he was the source of the funds. Federal law prohibits making political donations in someone else’s name, which the groups argue was the effect of the corporate contribution.

As the Center for Public Integrity recently reported, Pras’s company, SPM 2012 Holdings LLC, donated $875,000 in 2012 to Black Men Vote— a super PAC that supported the re-election of President Barack Obama in the battleground states of Ohio and Virginia.

“[This] looks to us like an individual’s contribution that was routed through an LLC, and it consequently obscured the identity of the true donor,” Campaign Legal Center attorney Paul S. Ryan told the Center for Public Integrity.

“The LLC was no more than a straw donor,” Ryan continued.  “There’s reason to believe that the law was violated, and the FEC should investigate.”

Through a spokeswoman, Pras declined to comment. But attorney William Kirk, the treasurer of the Black Men Vote super PAC, called the new complaint baseless.

“I don’t believe an FEC complaint regarding this matter would have any merit,” Kirk said. “Based on my understanding of the campaign finance laws and the facts, as they say, ‘There is no there there.’”

Kirk continued: “Personally, I think an artist like Mr. Michel should be applauded for his efforts — fully legal — to encourage young African-American men to vote and become civically engaged. I would hate to think or find out that [this complaint had the effect of] discouraging such participation.”

Super PACs — which may raise unlimited amounts of money to help elect or defeat political candidates — must regularly disclose the names of their donors in filings with the FEC.

In this case, Black Men Vote reported the name of the donor behind the $875,000 as SPM Holdings LLC, not Pras as an individual.

Last month, Pras told the Center for Public Integrity that SPM was “just a holding company to do my everyday business through.”

In a recent exchange, Kirk stressed that Pras’s LLC “was not some special company set up for the purposes of making a campaign contribution.”

David Mason, a Republican attorney and former FEC chairman, cautioned that not all LLC contributions should be viewed as inappropriate as super PACs are allowed to accept money from many types of companies, including LLCs.

“The fact that a contribution was made by an LLC isn’t on its face evidence of a straw donation,” Mason said.

Overall, Black Men Vote raised roughly $1.3 million ahead of the 2012 election. Pras was responsible for more than 90 percent of its money, between the donations he made in his own name and those from his company.

As of June 2013, Black Men Vote had about $10,000 in debts and $4,300 in its bank account, according to its most recent campaign finance filing. The group has not filed federally mandated disclosures since then.

In the past, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 have filed similar complaints against limited liability companies that contributed to Restore Our Future, a super PAC that backed Republican Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential bid. Those complaints are still pending.

For its part, SPM 2012 Holdings LLC was formed in July of 2012 — roughly four months before it contributed to Black Men Vote, according to Delaware business records.

Since then, Pras’s LLC has not made any additional federal political donations, although Virginia campaign finance filings show one additional state-level political contribution: $30,000 in January 2014 to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s current governor.

And electoral politics hasn’t been its only pursuit. Since the fall of 2012, Pras’s company has been listed in property records as the owner of a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home valued at roughly $340,000 in Coconut Creek, Florida.

Individuals have long been allowed to use LLCs to make donations to federal candidates — but campaign finance records must list both the name of the LLC and the name of the person, or people, responsible for the money. This is to ensure that individuals don’t exceed campaign contribution limits and that candidates don’t receive corporate money.

Neither of these prohibitions applies to super PACs, which were first created in 2010 in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision and a subsequent federal court ruling.

Since then, the six-member FEC, which is charged with enforcing and regulating federal campaign laws, has not formally discussed whether super PACs should have additional disclosure rules — although at least two of its current Democratic-appointed commissioners favor additional reporting requirements.

An audit prompted by a Center for Public Integrity/ABC News investigation of the federal black lung benefits system has found “many opportunities” to improve the claims process for sick coal miners.

The audit, by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General, reported that some 2,000 miners die of black lung each year and that more than 70,000 have died since 1970. The Center/ABC investigation found that some lawyers and physicians hired by coal companies – notably, a group of radiologists at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions– have used questionable tactics to thwart miners’ claims, which can yield monthly benefits ranging from $631.80 to $1,263.60.

Among the inspector general’s recommendations:

• The Labor Department’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP) could better vet medical providers “to safeguard the integrity and image of the [black lung benefits] program.” The inspector general said it researched the credentials of all 108 physicians on the provider list and found one who had been reprimanded by a state board of medicine for improperly prescribing controlled substances and another reprimanded for self-prescribing medication. “OWCP was not aware of either of these reprimands...”

• The department’s depleted Office of Administrative Law Judges (OALJ) should staff up to handle a growing caseload. Hearings are requested in about 20 percent of the black lung claims decisions issued by the OWCP; last year, on average, it took almost two years for a judge to issue a decision.

• Judges should use video teleconferencing to conduct hearings to reduce travel time and clear the case backlog.

In a written response to the audit, the director of the OWCP said his office issued a bulletin to its district offices in March “outlining procedures for adding, reviewing, and removing physicians from its list of approved providers.”

The Labor Department’s acting chief administrative law judge wrote that the OALJ plans to hire four judges, 16 clerks, two lawyers and nine legal assistants in the current fiscal year, which ends September 30.

A joint investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel examining the rise of toxic air emissions in Texas shale fields has won the National Press Foundation’s Thomas L. Stokes award for energy writing.

“Big Oil, Bad Air” showed how hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas has endangered public health, even as it generated billions of dollars for oil companies. The 20-month investigation reported on industry-friendly regulators and weakened air pollution guidelines, and helped lead to the installation of a new air monitor in one of the heaviest drilling areas.

National Press Foundation judges said the series was: “First-rate investigative journalism with a human pulse. The collaborative project blended hard facts with a powerful narrative of real people that made you care. The description of fracking consequences in Texas is now playing out elsewhere, in the Bakken and Utica shales. The project triggered meaningful impact, forcing concessions from state regulators.”

The reporting team for the project included the Center for Public Integrity’s managing editor for environmental health and labor, Jim Morris, CPI reporter Ben Wieder and former reporter Alan Suderman. The work of reporters Lisa Song and David Hasemyer of InsideClimate News and producer Greg Gilderman of The Weather Channel also was cited.

The Thomas L. Stokes Award was established in the spring of 1959 by friends and admirers of the late syndicated Washington columnist, who wrote about national affairs. It was to be given annually for the best writing "in the independent spirit of Tom Stokes" on subjects of interest to him including energy and natural resources.

The primary mission of the National Press Foundation is to increase journalists' knowledge of complex issues in order to improve public understanding. The nonprofit foundation recognizes and encourages excellence in journalism through its awards and programs. A complete list of award winners is here.