Most of us are aware that the government gives mountains of cash to powerful corporations in the form of tax breaks, grants, loans and subsidies–what some have called “corporate welfare.” However, little has been revealed about exactly how much money Washington is forking over to mega businesses.

Until now.

A new venture called Open the Books, based in Illinois, was founded with a mission to bring transparency to how the federal budget is spent. And what they found is shocking: between 2000 and 2012, the top Fortune 100 companies received $1.2 trillion from the government. That doesn’t include all the billions of dollars doled out to housing, auto and banking enterprises in 2008-2009, nor does it include ethanol subsidies to agribusiness or tax breaks for wind turbine makers.

What Open the Book’s forthcoming report [3] does reveal is that the most valuable contracts between the government and private firms were for military procrument deals, including Lockheed Martin ($392 billion), General Dynamics ($170 billion), and United Technologies ($73 billion).

After military contractors, $21.8 billion was granted out to corporate recipients in the form of direct subsidies; literally transfers of cash from the pockets of Americans to major corporations. The biggest winners were General […]

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Ohio has experienced a surge in earthquakes in recent years, an uptick that corresponds with an increase in fracking in the state, according to a new analysis.

The Columbus Dispatch looked at data from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and found that, between 1950 and 2009, Ohio saw an average of two greater than 2.0 magnitude earthquakes each year. Between 2010 and 2014, when fracking operations began to take off in the state, that number jumped to an average of nine per year.

That’s an uptick in earthquakes that’s been mirrored nationally, the analysis found. Between 2010 and 2012, the U.S. experienced an average of 100 magnitude 3.0 or higher earthquakes each year, compared to the 21 the country experienced each year between 1967 and 2000.

The analysis was prompted by a spate of earthquakes over the last few weeks in Ohio. Last week, five earthquakes were recorded in a 25-hour period near the town of Poland Township in Mahoning County, Ohio, an area that before a few years ago hadn’t seen a sizable earthquake in 100 years, according to the Columbus Dispatch. The earthquakes prompted a shutdown of a nearby fracking operation while scientists work to figure out whether the operation […]

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NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The ground is still shaking in northern Parker and Tarrant County. A system of seismic monitors is still picking up small movements. However, it’s been more than a month since the last 3.0 earthquake in the area. The Texas Railroad Commission is still in the process of hiring a seismologist to help look into more than 30 quakes since the fall.

People have been shaking from unexpected quakes in Oklahoma, Ohio and Arkansas. When it happened north of Little Rock, however, the state took action, and the quakes there, have all but stopped.

The home Freddy Miller raised his family in, is now the home he doesn’t want to sleep in anymore.

‘I don’t,” he said. ‘I’m looking for a firm piece of ground somewhere.”
(credit: CBS 11 News)

(credit: CBS 11 News)

Miller’s home has doors that don’t shut, walls that won’t stay together, and a pool that keeps draining. It’s damage, he said was never there three years ago.

‘People in this area know what has happened,” Miller said. ‘They know especially right here close to our home what has happened.”

Miller’s home was right in the middle of a sudden swarm of earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. There were more […]

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LAS VEGAS-It’s no secret that the West is running out of water.

Perhaps the best evidence of this problem lies in stark juxtaposition across a stretch of desert surrounding Las Vegas.

As my wife and I planned our route from Tucson, Ariz., to California for the #thirstywest Slate series, there were a couple of stopovers I wanted to make along the way. This short drive was one of them.

Within the span of a single afternoon, it’s possible to witness the past, present, and future of water issues in the West. We accomplished this by driving past the Hoover Dam, through Las Vegas, and on into California via Death Valley.

First, the past:

The Hoover Dam was the biggest civil engineering project in U.S. history, famously constructed in the midst of the Great Depression to tame the Colorado River, provide electricity, and create Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country. Now, climate change is starting to make it obsolete.

Lake Mead provides 90 percent of the water to the once-again booming city of Las Vegas, as well as indirectly to Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, and agricultural areas downstream via diversions from the Colorado River. As the result of an ongoing multiyear drought, this giant lake […]

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CINCINNATI — Thousands of gallons of crude oil leaked from an interstate pipeline into the area of a southwest Ohio nature preserve, authorities said today. There were no immediate reports of injuries to wildlife.

Federal and state environmental officials were at the scene today of the spill west of Cincinnati. Nearby residents in Colerain Township weren’t in danger from the leak reported late yesterday, authorities said. The pipeline was shut off overnight, they said.

The Mid-Valley Pipeline Co. pipeline runs nearly 1,000 miles from Texas to Michigan and is largely owned by Sunoco Logistics Partners. A Sunoco Logistics spokesman said the cause of the leak in a wooded ravine was under investigation.

Spokesman Jeff Shields said initial estimates were that 240 barrels of oil were released, the equivalent of some 10,000 gallons. He said crews confirmed the release at about 1 a.m. and the pipeline was shut down immediately on either side of the release area.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Heather Lauer said a wetland area of about one acre was affected by oil that had traveled about a mile down an intermittent stream. She said an environmental contractor had been called to begin work on the cleanup.

Rangers at the Oak Glen Nature […]

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