Browse Primary Sources
"Times' Bernheimer Wins Pulitzer for Music Criticism" - John J. Goldman - Los Angeles Times
"The Herald-Examiner's series, based on reporter Merle Linda Wolin's experiences as an undercover worker in the garment factories, was the jury's unanimous first choice for the award."The board objected to the series partly because the reporter posed as an illegal alien to gain jobs in the sweatshops, according to members of the jury. Other sources said the board did not consider any of the jury's recommendations to be first-rate entries. "Anticipating that Wolin might be accused of deception, the jury submitted a confidential report defending its choice of her series. The jurors said they, too, believed that reporters generally should not misrepresent themselves but said that sweatshop 'conditions' could not have been fully explored in any other way . . . "
Los Angeles Times 1982-04-13
XIII-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
"I'm wasting my time working. I'd be better off on welfare." The man holding the steaming cup of coffee could have been your neighbor, the worker at the next machine or the bus passenger sharing a seat. What he said is repeated often in the mounting public distress over high welfare costs. It is the echo of revelations of laxity, chiseling, laziness and dishonesty. It is also wrong. Because a man would be better off "on the welfare" only if he wanted to feed and clothe each of his children for less than a dollar a day.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-21
X-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
Suppose where you work that half the personnel would leave every year. Could your office, factory or business operate efficiently?This is one of the major problems facing public welfare today in Erie County and across the state. Last year 68 of 121 caseworkers left the county welfare service.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-17
IX-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
If a man picked your pocket today, most likely he'd go to jail.But if he taps your wallet via the Welfare Department route, the chances are that he'll never see the inside of a cell.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-16
VIII-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
Tony has received public assistance almost all of his adult life. His son was on welfare in Erie, Pa. A daughter, living at home now, gets monthly Aid to Dependent Children checks for herself and Tony's grandson. Here are some excerpts from his relief history: 1932 - Victor found man had a car licensed in his grandmother's name. Victor knows that the man drives car and is out nights with it. Man doing window washing but denies it.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-15
VII-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
Joey P. had been on welfare for a month. He filled out job applications at half-a-dozen Buffalo plants, hitched a ride to the Niagara Power Project and visited the N.Y. State Employment office regularly. What he told me, as a caseworker for the Erie County Department of Social Welfare, could almost be a recording of what other workers hear repeated day after day, week after week. In many cases its true. But when it comes from men who have a two or three-year relief ride, then it sounds as if the needle got stuck.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-14
VI-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
In New York City, for example, ADC in 1958 supported 54,000 illegitimate children.On the other side of the coin the question is often put this way: What do you propose to do? Let these children starve because of the mistakes of their parents?
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-13
V-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
In Erie County today and in other New York counties, there are thousands of men and women who weekly deduct part of their take home pay and give it to a needy parent, an elderly aunt or children whose early marriage is being threatened by financial shoals.But there are others whose charity never began at home or anywhere else.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-11
III-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
As a group, many of the relief recipients have become a dependent society. During the three months I was a caseworker I gave your tax dollars to children who are fourth-generation welfare cases."Don't let them save you," was the advice I received when I first started. "Some of these people, you'll find, know more about welfare than all of us. They've got every angle."
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-09
IV-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
In a gray filing cabinet in the office of the Erie County Welfare Department where I worked there are supplies of forms that include a list of 65 different ones most frequently used by caseworkers.Each, used in duplicate or triplicate, serves a particular function in the paper empire that has grown with the administration of public welfare.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-10
II-"Our Costly Dilemma" - Ed [Edgar] May - Buffalo Evening News
"If I had the time I could close 20% to 30% of my cases."This statement by a caseworker in the Erie County Department of Social Welfare focuses on one of the major welfare problems. It means that one caseworker, giving away between $15,000 and $18,000 a month, could come up with a possible saving of $30,000 in one year - if he had the time.
Buffalo Evening News 1960-06-08
X-Medicaid Probe: "How Medicaid Dentist Pulled City's 800G" - William Sherman - New York Daily News
Fred Fisher is a medicaid dentist with an East Harlem practice who neatly extracted $800,000 from the city in two years, much of it in an alleged double billing scheme for false teeth and other work that some of his patients never needed in the first place. Although indicted two years ago by a Manhattan grand jury on 241 counts of submitting fraudulent bills, Fisher, 37, is still running his medicaid operation at 1690 Lexington Ave. out of the second floor of an old frame building. Since he opened his nine-chair office at 103d St. six years ago, Fischer has billed the city for more than $1 million, much of it for work performed by other dentists in his employ.
New York Daily News 1973-02-06
III-Medicaid Probe: "How Medicaid Paid $457,000 for Sesame Oil" - William Sherman - New York Daily News
A 76-year-old Romanian-born physician, Emanuel Revici, announced to the world for than 20 years ago that he had developed a cancer drug. Since then, the doctor has claimed to have invented other drug remedies for alcoholism and narcotics addiction.His remedies have never received approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration. So, city officials were dismayed last fall to discover they paid paid out $457,000 in medicaid funds for his panacea for drug addiction - injections of sesame oil, sulphur crystals, and other still unidentified compounds at a voluntarily hospital here.
New York Daily News 1973-01-25
II-Medicaid Probe: "Our 'Patient' Gets More Tests on 2d Visit" - William Sherman - New York Daily News
A man complaining that a table had fallen on his foot was number one in line. An old woman, her calves bulging with phlebitis, stood behind him, and next to her a boy who said he is a junkie was holding a packed duffel bag and an old guitar. He mumbled something about stomach pain.They were welfare clients with medicaid cards waiting to see the receptionist at the Park Community Medical Building, 131 12 Rockaway Blvd., Ozone Park, Queens. After they registered their complaints they joined about 25 others sitting silently in the crowded waiting room. Every five minutes or so another patient was called into an examining room.
New York Daily News 1973-01-24
I-"Medicaid Probe - A Cold? Take 3 Doctors Every Hour" - William Sherman - New York Daily News
Disguised as a welfare client complaining of a cold, a reporter with a medicaid card wandered into a group medical office in Ozone Park, Queens, one day last week and asked to see a doctor.The patient was first sent to a foot doctor, then twice to an internist with instructions to come back a third time, and then to a psychiatrist who arranged for weekly visit. On his second visit, the patient was given an electrocardiogram, three blood tests, two urine tests and a chest X-ray.
New York Daily News 1973-01-23
IV-Walter Reed: "'It Is Just Not Walter Reed'" - Anne Hull and Dana Priest - Washington Post
"Across the country, some military quarters for wounded outpatients are in bad shape, according to interviews, Government Accountability Office reports and transcripts of congressional testimony. The mold, mice and rot of Walter Reed's Building 18 compose a familiar scenario for many soldiers back from Iraq or Afghanistan who were shipped to their home posts for treatment. Nearly 4,000 outpatients are currently in the military's Medical Holding or Medical Holdover companies, which oversee the wounded. Soldiers and veterans report bureaucratic disarray similar to Walter Reed's: indifferent, untrained staff; lost paperwork; medical appointments that drop from the computers; and long waits for consultations."
The Washington Post 2007-03-05
II-Walter Reed: "The Hotel Aftermath" - Anne Hull and Dana Priest - Washington Post
". . . Oil paintings hang in the lobby of this strange outpost in the war on terrorism, where combat's urgency has been replaced by a trickling fountain in the garden courtyard. The maimed and the newly legless sit in wheelchairs next to a pond, watching goldfish turn lazily through the water . . ."
The Washington Post 2007-02-19
I-Walter Reed: "Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army's Top Medical Facility" - Dana Priest and Anne Hull - Washington Post
". . . Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment . . ."
The Washington Post 2007-02-18