| | | | March 3, 2011 | | U.S. Oil Refineries: Aging, Unsafe and Poorly Regulated | |  Share on Facebook |  Share on Twitter |  Ponder this the next time our fill your gas tank. The nation’s oil refineries are plagued by recurring equipment failures and sometimes-fatal fires, explosions and chemical releases that in many cases could have been prevented, according to a new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity. Documents and data, along with interviews of top safety officials and refining industry insiders, confirm an array of contributing factors ranging from haphazard enforcement to resistance from a politically influential industry. The investigation also reveals that 16 million Americans live near 50 refineries that use lethal hydrofluoric acid and could be at risk during a mishap, even though there are safer chemicals available.
| | | | | | Industry Donations Shifted Toward the GOP in 2010
| | Share on Facebook | Share on Twitter |  Businesses always hedge their political bets. Large political action committees shifted their contributions deep into red territory as legislation and polls moved them to back Republican candidates, a new analysis from the Center shows. We examined the 1,300 political action committees that gave at least $100,000 over the 2008 and 2010 election cycles and identified the 50 whose partisan giving percentage shifted dramatically from Democrats to Republicans. Half of that Top 50 consisted of PACs for either the financial services or health care sectors. Other sectors in that group included real estate and construction, motor vehicles and energy. |
| | Union Leaders Not Exactly Starving | | Share on Facebook | Share on Twitter |  As the battle rages in Wisconsin over union bargaining rights, a look at the top national bosses shows some earn outsized salaries. A Center survey of union reports, filed with the Department of Labor, shows that assets of the various labor unions run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and payrolls rival midsized companies. Among the Top 10 unions, dozens of officials have salaries and benefits that rank them among the elite ranks of income-earners. For example, Terence O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America received $618,000 in salary and benefits in 2009. Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was paid about 480,000 that same year, according to tax documents. |
| | Center Investigation Inspires Bill on Medicare Data | | Share on Facebook | Share on Twitter |  We are especially gratified when a Center investigation produces real-world impact. This week, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa introduced a bill that would make available to the public data on Medicare billing by doctors and other health care providers. Grassley spokeswoman Jill Gerber said the bill is a “direct outgrowth of reporting” by the Center for Public Integrity and its partner The Wall Street Journal, which have been using limited portions of the Medicare data to expose waste, fraud, and abuse in the program. Up to now, however, both news organizations have been unable to gain full access to the claims data, and unable, due to a court order, to use some of the information contained in the data they have acquired.
Jack Farrell Joins Center
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 I’m very happy to announce that Jack Farrell has been named a senior reporter for money and politics at the Center. Jack spent his early career, and won a George Polk award, at the Denver Post. At The Boston Globe, he covered the first Iraq war, several presidential campaigns and served as the Globe’s White House correspondent and Washington editor, among other assignments. Farrell returned to The Denver Post in 2003 for four years as national columnist and Washington bureau chief for the newspaper and the MediaNews chain. In 2007 he left to write Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, a biography of the great American defense attorney. The book will be published by Doubleday in June.
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Until next week,
  Bill Buzenberg
Executive Director | | | |  |
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