Free Republic

The government health agency continues to withhold key details about the sources and allocations of the large streams of cash flowing to its scientists. The National Institutes of Health and its scientists received an estimated $350 million in royalties from third-party payers between 2010 and 2020, according to an investigation by government transparency watchdog Open the Books. The third-party payers are, according to the report, mostly pharmaceutical companies that credit NIH scientists as coinventors on various patents. "Because those payments enrich the agency and its scientists, each and every royalty payment could be a potential conflict of interest and needs...

The Obama administration sparked outrage when it announced on Monday that it was withholding $110 million mineral royalty payments that are owed to states and counties due to the sequestration. “The Budget Control Act of 2011, passed by Congress, mandates across-the-board, automatic 5.1 percent sequester reductions,” said Office of Natural Resources Revenue spokesman Patrick Etchart. “By law, revenue payments to states are not exempt from the sequester. Cumulatively, approximately $110 million will be withheld from states and counties where energy production occurs on federal lands during the remainder of the current fiscal year.”