The federal helium program sells vast amounts of the gas to U.S. companies that use it in everything from party balloons to MRI machines. If the government stops, no one else is ready.
If you have $1 billion, you can use the Clinton Foundation as a conduit, and as it goes by, Clinton gives it his prestige.
There are two main organizations that rate charities. They look at their finances and decide whether they are giving enough to the causes they claim to focus on. Something like 80 or 90% of their money actually goes to a charitable purpose.
The perception a lot of folks have of the Clintons, even folks who are Democrats, see the Clintons as bending the rules.
In theory, it is illegal to make the basement into a bureaucratic purgatory. In 1994, for instance, Congress prohibited agencies from making significant changes in a whistleblower's 'working conditions' as punishment for speaking out.
Some courts have said moving an employee to a basement or closet usually amounts to punishment. But others have said this is a decision that should be made case by case. How nice is the basement office? How big is the closet?
I am not going to argue about whether I am a nasty guy.
There are some things about Trump's foundation and charity that I really want to know. I worry there may not be enough time to figure it all out.
The point of my stories was not to defeat Trump. The point was to tell readers the facts about this man running for president. How reliable was he at keeping promises? How much moral responsibility did he feel to help those less fortunate than he? By the end of the election, I felt I'd done my job.
For me, the thing that is different about Trump is that you don't realize it, and I didn't realize it, but there is a rhythm that the political press - including myself - expects people to show in terms of embarrassing statements or shameful acts. And that is spinning it away and finally being forced to apologize, and then apologize again.
The U.S. government has a problem with dead people. For one thing, it pays them way too much money.
The task of tracking deaths for the federal bureaucracy is an enormous one; about 2.5 million Americans die each year. Federal officials say the vast majority of these cases are handled correctly: The death is recorded. Government money is no longer sent to that person. But not always.
The trouble with dead people often begins with something called the Death Master File, which is kept by the Social Security Administration. Every day, new reports are added, provided by relatives, funeral homes, and the state agencies that issue official death certificates. The list contains 90 million reports.
Trump called me a 'nasty guy' on the phone, and some of his surrogates called me 'obsessed' and biased on TV.
There's two sides to Trump's character, at least his pre-presidential character. One was, 'I'm the richest man you could possibly imagine, I live the life of Scrooge McDuck.' The other side was, 'I need your money. Give me money.'
It's so hard to cover Trump. What Trump says, what he feels, what he thinks changes from day to day.
When bills come in, Medicare get so many bills every day, it pays most of them and then goes back later to figure out if they were fraudulent, if it ever goes back at all.
Miami is the place where all great Medicare fraud schemes come from. It has a great concentration of professional criminals and old people.
What's a good metaphor for a Harvard student? A talking, gold-plated pile of manure, wearing a fleece.
The federal government requires that its loans be paid back within 10 years of graduation, and Harvard has pegged its loans to the same 10-year timetable. Yet despite Harvard's low default rate, the idea of years of loan debt is daunting for some students even before it's time to pay back.
