Your Stories · Fix the Incentives
These are stories from people hurt by rules that reward the wrong outcome. A funding formula, a bonus, a quota, a fee, a deadline. We read every one so we can find the incentives and fix our government.
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Your story is published in your own words. We don't rewrite your experience or soften it.
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We name the incentive behind the harm: who got paid, who got counted, and what rule made it pay.
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We check every claim we can against law, budgets, and public records, and we tell you which ones are verified and which are still open.
How we classify it
Any incentive that destroys people for someone else's gain is foreign-adversary behavior.
A foreign adversary would want our families broken, our people sick, in debt, and in cages, and our trust in government gone. When our own rules pay for those outcomes, they do that work for them. We aim this label at the structure: the formula, the contract, the quota, the law. Most people inside these systems are doing what the system rewards. That's exactly why the rewards have to change.
Search by what happened, the agency involved, or where you live. Then narrow it down by system and by the kind of incentive behind it.
1 story
Washoe County, Nevada · 2014 to 2026
How a Reno courtroom put a price on my daughter, and how a federal funding formula made sure somebody collected it
A mother who called 911 to save a life lost her three-year-old to a case built on a manufactured emergency. The family wanted guardianship with the grandmother. The court kept pointing to a $600-a-month adoption subsidy. Twelve years later, her daughter says home is with them.
By Ciara Mason →
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