Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says he will amend his financial disclosure forms to account for a 2014 real estate deal involving billionaire Harlan Crow that he failed to report, but he still has said nothing about the more than $3 million in luxury travel he has accepted from Crow. ProPublica reported April 6 that… Read more »
To determine the cost of the travel that billionaire Harlan Crow paid for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as reported in the April 6 ProPublica article, we used a variety of publicly available sources. Air travel: We used an hourly rate of $15,000 to operate a Bombardier Global 5000 jet, which Crow uses to fly… Read more »
Pro Publica’s ground-breaking reporting on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepting junkets from a real estate mogul has created a flurry of controversy about the lack of federal judicial ethics. The controversy raises a basic question: How much would it cost you, as an average citizen, to buy travel that Thomas was given over the… Read more »
The conviction of former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder and state Republican Party chairman Matt Borges in a $61 million bribery trial ends just one chapter in a long-running saga of corruption in Ohio that Checks & Balances Project has uncovered over the last decade. At the heart of the scandal is FirstEnergy, a fossil… Read more »
A second watchdog group has followed the Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) in filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., and his campaign treasurer connected to potentially false statements in his campaign accounts. The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed its complaint Jan. 9, claiming that Santos hid did the… Read more »
The Checks and Balances Project (C&BP) has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission seeking an investigation into the finances of the successful 2022 campaign of Rep.-Elect George Santos, R-N.Y. Santos’ campaign reported receiving $705,000 in loans from the candidate for the 2022 campaign, but recent reports in the New York Times show no… Read more »
For years, opponents of wind energy have cited claims that the presence of turbines in an area causes property values to drop. Checks and Balances Project (C&BP) has reported that these claims are false. Now a detailed report in the Greenville Daily News of Michigan has shown that property values in areas with wind turbines… Read more »
Opponents of wind energy in Michigan and elsewhere frequently assert they oppose wind farms because of their impact on public health. But Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) spent several weeks reviewing health statistics from American communities with significant numbers of wind turbines. The records and relevant public health authorities report no negative health effects from… Read more »
By the end of this year, Michigan companies will produce 3,544 megawatts of renewable energy, state statistics show, from an assortment of sources, including 38 wind farms that generate the vast majority of that electricity. Yet, many large Michigan employers seeking to power their facilities with renewable energy are now having to turn to out-of-state… Read more »
Often lost in the debate in rural Michigan communities about whether to host a wind farm is the cost to saying “no.” That’s why Checks and Balances Project investigated just how much communities and landowners stand to lose over the projected 20-year life span of wind projects in their areas. Our research concluded that five… Read more »
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