The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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No-bid contract for concert producer costs taxpayers
Reporter Mike McAndrew of The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.) used interviews, emails, contracts and other documents to show that the operators of New York’s State Fair contrived the justification to award a lucrative no-bid contract to a national concert producer. The reporting pokes holes in the reasons cited by public officials when they circumvented state law…
Read MoreGun lobby mole revealed
A Mother Jones investigation by James Ridgeway, Daniel Schulman and David Corn reveals that an NRA spy had infiltrated anti-gun groups for the past several years. The investigation shows that Mary Lou Sapone, a freelance spy for the NRA, spent years posing as gun control activist Mary McFate. McFate had penetrated the highest ranks of…
Read MoreLabor exploitation rampant in Chinese-owned mining companies
In China in Africa and China in Peru, parallel investigations for Bloomberg Markets, Simon Clark, Michael Smith and Franz Wild report on the exploitation of indigenous peoples by Chinese-owned mining companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The authors report that “hundreds of workers have been injured or killed since 2005 working for Chinese companies.”…
Read MoreRenters caught in middle of foreclosure crisis
A report by Dina ElBoghdady of The Washington Post reveals that renters are becoming unwitting victims of the mortgage crisis as property owners lose houses to foreclosure. “Several localities around the country, as well as some members of Congress, are pushing to give renters more time before the new owners, usually banks, can evict them.…
Read MorePopulation growth impacting dam safety issues
A report by Jim Getz of The Dallas Morning News looks at the impact of population growth on dam safety. The investigation “found that suburban sprawl has encroached on hundreds of dams in Texas that were once in remote locations – including dozens in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.” Development upstream from a dam increases runoff…
Read MoreHomeless used for fraud at three California hospitals
An FBI raid at three Southern California hospitals uncovered “a massive scheme to defraud taxpayer-funded healthcare programs of millions of dollars by recruiting homeless patients for unnecessary medical services,” according to a report in The Los Angeles Times. The chief executive at one hospital faces criminal charges, while executives from two other facilities have been…
Read MoreGas price secrets revealed
A series by The Cincinnati Enquirer analyzed a daily price database of gas prices at 716 stations in the Greater Cincinnati region, including northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana, to better understand the many aspects of retail gas pricing. Rising gas prices and stiff competition are causing many major oil companies, like BP and Shell, to…
Read MoreBig donors, bundlers boost Obama’s fundraising
Records show that one-third of Barack Obama’s campaign donors have made donations over $1,000, reports Michael Luo and Christopher Drew of The New York Times. While Obama claimed to forgo public financing due to his lucrative grassroots fundraising from small donors, he has a robust stable of “bundlers” — more than 500 — who have…
Read MoreLoopholes in hiring practices leave kids at risk
Flaws in how the city of Columbus handles background checks for street peddlers has created loopholes that allow child predators behind the wheels of ice cream trucks, reports Paul Aker of WBNS-TV. Prospective employees submitted their own background checks, and one ice cream truck driver simply omitted his history of child pornography charges. As a…
Read MoreCity’s wildfire clean-up exceeded estimates
Following the October 2007 wildfires, the city of San Diego contracted with two companies for demolition and clean-up of homes destroyed in the fire. Original estimates for the service was around $28,000 per home, but the final costs surpassed the original estimate by more than 68 percent according to a watchdog report by Dana Wilkie,…
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