"With a simple statement on Tuesday, State Farm Insurance became the latest company to withdraw its support from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think-tank which claims a 'realist' position questioning that humans are responsible for climate change."

"HOUSTON -- Aubrey K. McClendon built Chesapeake Energy into the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas through a combination of debt, foresight, luck and sheer bravado. Now both he and the company have been forced to add humility to the mix."

"CANTON, Ohio — The Ohio steel industry, led by a drilling boom in the gas and oil industry and a resuscitated demand for cars and light trucks, is growing again. Steel makers across the state are racing to keep pace with plans to add a total of two million square feet of production space at a cost of $1.5 billion."

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."