Business
Credit card promotions profitable for two Iowa universities
Clark Kauffman of the Des Moines Register reported in a two-part series that Iowa’s two largest public universities are aggressively marketing credit cards to their students as part of an arrangement that generates millions of dollars for the schools’ privately run alumni organizations. Records obtained by the Register showed that while the schools and their…
Read MoreFugative fundraiser has been hiding in plain sight
Chuck Neubauer and Robin Fields of the Los Angeles Times report that Norman Hsu, a fugitive for over a decade, has been hiding in plain sight as a prominent Democratic fundraiser. Fifteen years ago, Hsu pleaded no contest to charges of grand theft agreeing to serve up to three years in prison. His identity was…
Read MoreElectric co-op to energy conglomerate
Margret Newkirk of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on Georgia’s Cobb EMC, one of the largest electric co-ops in the nation and described as “an aggressively expanding conglomerate.” “While most co-ops reimburse that invested money to customers over time, Cobb EMC hasn’t returned a nickel of it in more than 30 years: It was sitting on…
Read MoreContributions call school board president’s ethics into question
James Pressley, school board president in Pleasantville, N.J., sought money from community businesses who were seeking contracts from the school board. John Froojian, of the Press of Atlantic City, reports that money was solicited for the James A. Pressley Scholarship and Community Youth Build Foundation, although neither the IRS nor the New Jersey Consumer Affairs…
Read MoreFresno suffers more power outages than neighboring communities
California and other states require investor-owned utilities to publish reliability statistics, including the number of minutes the average customer goes without power each year. Brad Branan of the Fresno Bee looked at those numbers to find that “customers in the Fresno division of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. go without power longer than those in…
Read MoreWARN Act riddled with loopholes
In a four-part series, James Drew and Steve Eder of The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade report that a 19-year-old federal law that requires companies to give notice to workers losing their jobs is so full of loopholes and flaws that employers repeatedly skirt it with little or no penalty. A Blade analysis of 226 lawsuits filed…
Read MoreComputer security issues plague Boeing financial records
Andrea James and Daniel Lathrop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigated security problems with Boeing’s computer system which leaves it vulnerable to manipulation, theft and fraud. The issues relate to Boeing’s failure to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, “a wide-ranging law aimed at preventing stockholder rip-offs such as the Enron scandal from happening again.” For the…
Read MoreState pensions profit from nuclear waste, rogue states
Nevada’s pension fund for state workers, legislators and judges holds investments in companies that have pushed to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain— even though the state has fought to keep the shipments out. Steve Kanigher and Alex Richards of Las Vegas Sun discovered that the $23 billion portfolio, run by independent fund managers, holds…
Read MoreBackgrounding South Florida businessman reveals criminal past
While looking into complaints about a local business, Florida Today reporter Sarah Okeson unearthed the criminal record of a top executive, exposing the questionable endeavors in his past and present. His current firm was booted from the Better Business Bureau. Along with the story, a video interview with the subject of the story was posted…
Read MoreMedical research group’s conflicts of interest revealed
Reporters Susanne Rust and Cary Spivak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel detailed conflicts of interest involving the Constella Group, a private health research company that performs hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work for the federal government while also representing major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline. The reporters analyzed federal…
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