The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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Ag programs spend billions to prop up suburbanites, temporary price dips
Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert M. Gaul of The Washington Post analyzed payment records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in an investigative series. People who don’t farm at all have received $1.3 billion in government handouts since 2000, the investigation found. They also found that growers reaped benefits even in good years from…
Read MoreOfficials responsible for overseeing NASA expressed concerns regarding launch of Discovery
Michael Cabbage of the Orlando Sentinel studied e-mails sent from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General to an agency administrator and the chairman of an advisory panel that monitors NASA safety and found that “key officials responsible for overseeing NASA expressed serious concerns about launching space shuttle Discovery without additional work to prevent foam insulation…
Read MoreEnquirer wins records, shows health department let lead paint violations slide
Sharon Coolidge of The Cincinnati Enquirer won a two-year battle with the Cinncinnati Health Department to obtain records of properties cited for lead contamination violations. Coolidge analyzed the city health records and found that “Cincinnati’s Health Department is failng to force property owners to fix their buildings, leaving hundreds of children at risk for lead…
Read MoreCompanies find new way to win contracts
Michael Forsythe and Jonathan D. Salant of Bloomberg analyzed Federal Election Commission records and found that a growing number of companies had found “a new business model: locate facilities in lawmakers’ districts and shower them with campaign cash. ” The companies were taking advantage of lawmakers’ increasing penchant for “earmarking,” which was at the center…
Read MoreCity Hall list reveals ‘All-Stars’ of insider clout
Steve Warmbir, Art Golab, Natasha Korecki and Mark J. Konkol of the Chicago Sun-Times did a computer-assisted analysis of 5,743 requests for city jobs, promotions or transfers made to the mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs from 1989 to 1997 and found that “Tim Degnan, the mayor’s friend and political adviser, is the biggest slugger, batting…
Read MoreMistaken identity questions raised in 1989 Texas execution
Maurice Possley and Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune reviewed thousands of pages of court records and found that Texas may have executed an innocent man in 1989. “<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/broadband/chi-tx-htmlstory,1,781241.htmlstory?coll=chi-news-hed 16 years after Carlos De Luna died by lethal injection, "the Tribune has uncovered evidence strongly suggesting that the acquaintance he named, Carlos Hernandez, was…
Read MoreWorkplace safety in Canada
The CBC’s investigative unit obtained data from workplace safety insurance boards across Canada to track top national trends in the workplace of today. “Canada’s record for reducing workplace fatalities over the previous 20 years was the worst. The project looks at health-care workers, mines, fatalities by province, and more. Audio reports are included in the…
Read MoreMurders cost Tenn. more than $110 million annually
Melvin Claxton of The Tennessean has a three-part series on the price of murder in Tennessee, finding that “homicides cost state and local governments more than $110 million each year. The bill for Nashville alone, which has accounted for 17 percent of the state’s homicides over the past two decades, exceeds $18.7 million annually.” The…
Read MoreSchools pay for new boss’ travel
Bill Dedman and Michael Brindley of The (Nashua, N.H.) Telegraph studied Nashua’s city credit card records and found that “school Superintendent Julia Earl has spent public money to travel out of state at least seven times in her first nine months on the job, including five trips to her home state of Texas.” The total…
Read MorePsychologist embellishes credentials, personal past
Ruth Teichroeb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer studied university job records and found that Terry Tafoya, known across North America as a pre-eminent American Indian psychologist and a sought-after speaker for continuing education at schools such as Harvard University, “has scripted his own life, embellishing his academic credentials and past.” The tribe he claims to be…
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