Economy & Business

The American Legislative Exchange Council -- ALEC -- has for decades worked to fight protection of public health from environmental threats. Funded with corporate money, the group has won non-profit tax status from the federal government even as it lobbies for industrial interests on an industrial scale. Now, because it backed the gun law that kept Trayvon Martin's killer from arrest, some large corporations are cashing out from ALEC.

"If the Koch brothers didn't exist, the left would have to invent them. They're the plutocrats from central casting -- oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape, or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their profits."

"President Barack Obama pushed Congress Tuesday to give oil market regulators more muscle to deter price manipulation by speculators, the latest White House response to determined Republican attacks on administration energy policies amid high gas prices at the pump."

A coal-fired power plant in Georgia has neighbors worried about the consequences of its ash-disposal pond.

"LONDON -- The oil market has broken a two-year cycle of tightening supply conditions, the International Energy Agency said Thursday, as demand softens and Saudi Arabia increases output in response to tensions with Iran."