Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

1. Where to find stimulus contracts

   By Bill Allison May 14, 2009 6:02 p.m.

   A company that offers outsourcing services to federal and state governments got a a contract award for $2.8 million in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- the stimulus -- to set up call centers for the FCC's digital transition effort; they advertised for jobs paying $16.38 an hour in Buffalo, N.Y. The Dept. of Health and Human Services spent $326,000 in stimulus funds to purchase and install 98 workstations (and an option to store them until needed at a cost of $35 per pallet); a Midland, MI-based company, Space, Inc., got the sale. And the General Services Administration used stimulus funds to hire a pair of Northern Virginia contractors to help oversee the hiring of contractors bidding for both stimulus and non-stimulus work.

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2. GM, Chrysler to cut 3,000 campaign contributors

   By Bill Allison May 13, 2009 10:47 p.m.

   ...er...dealers:

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3. Earmark request disclosures: do deadlines make a difference?

   By Bill Allison May 13, 2009 4:26 p.m.

   Adam Hughes of OMB Watch asks a trenchant question in response to a report by Jackie Kucinich in Roll Call. Kucinich notes that Rep. James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, which will be overseeing the massive transportation reauthorization bill (the last one, as Taxpayers for Common Sense's Steve Ellis tells Roll Call, contained earmarks for the bridges to nowhere), will have less stringent earmark disclosure rules than the House Appropriations Committee. The latter, chaired by Rep. David Obey, requires members post their earmark requests online before they submit them to the committee. Oberstar, by contrast "set a May 14 deadline for Members to submit requests and encouraged them to post the requests on their Web sites, but he stopped short of setting a mandatory deadline," according to Roll Call. The committee's communications director, Jim Bernard, told Roll Call "We are not giving them a hard deadline [or stipulating] we won't consider them until they are posted. Our style is bit different than Mr. Obey's, but our results will be the same." Hughes asks: Sorry - quick follow-up Mr. Bernard. How exactly is not requiring earmark requests to be disclosed under the transportation reauthorization the same as requiring earmark requests to be disclosed in appropriations bills?

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4. Cram down look ups, cont. cont....

   By Bill Allison May 13, 2009 3:32 p.m.

   For more detail on what this is, see here. While this is still partially that, it's also turning into something else. As I noted, this is raw research, not a finished product--results to come. One thing I'm finding is that looking closely at slices of data from Party Time leads in all kinds of directions...

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5. Congress' Family Business, John Murtha edition...

   By Bill Allison May 12, 2009 4:17 p.m.

   ...continues in the Washington Post. Read the whole thing. Do

6. Cram down look ups, cont.

   By Bill Allison May 7, 2009 8:07 p.m.

   More research (see here for details on what this research is. I'm trying to see if there was a flurry of fundraising around the vote on the Durbin amendment to the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009.

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7. Quarters doubled in odd years, halved again in evens

   By Bill Allison May 7, 2009 4:11 p.m.

   This always makes me thing of Lewis Carroll every time I see it. A PAC tells the FEC it's going to file quarterly reports rather than monthly reports. The FEC approves the request, and writes back:

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8. Looking up cram down opponents in Party Time

   By Bill Allison May 6, 2009 10:05 p.m.

   This post is all research and no results -- that'll come later. I wanted to take a look at a vote my colleague Paul Blumenthal referred to with the title (quoting Sen. Richard Durbin) "They own the place." The "they" in question are financial sector firms, the place is Congress; at issue is a bill, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 -- or rather, an amendment to that bill -- that was voted down by a 51-45 margin.

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9. Always amazes me...

   By Bill Allison May 5, 2009 5:18 p.m.

   what you can find in lobbying disclosure data. I was looking for something else when I came across this filing. TIG Insurance has hired the Normandy Group to "[a]ddress non-payment by Government of Argentina of fees owed to TIG Insurance Company. Seek to put restrictive language in Foreign Operations Appropriations Bills re: US assistance to Argentina." The fees paid are less than $5,000, so it doesn't seem like a lot of lobbying went on, but the list of lobbyists has a few revolvers on it:

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10. Congress' family business, John Murtha edition

    By Bill Allison May 5, 2009 3:38 a.m.

    From the Washington Post:

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11. Roll Call makes PMA Group articles available online

    By Bill Allison May 4, 2009 4:31 p.m.

    In conjunction with the appearance of Paul Singer on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning (his bit starts about 1:03:30 in on the video), Roll Call has put online its amazing body of work tracking the PMA Group, the defunct lobbying firm under federal investigation that, along with its clients, provided oodles of campaign cash to more than 100 members of the House while securing hundreds of millions in earmarks for its clients.

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12. Congress' family business, Chris Dodd edition

    By Bill Allison May 4, 2009 4:02 p.m.

    Edmund H. Mahony and Jon Lender of the the Hartford Courant report on Sen. Christopher Dodd's wife:

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13. Specter, unions & Blank Rome LLP

    By Bill Allison Apr 30, 2009 8:12 p.m.

    Just a thought about Sen. Arlen Specter's shift to the Democratic party:

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14. Tracking swine flu...

    By Bill Allison Apr 28, 2009 2:28 p.m.

    ...with Google maps.

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Investigations by Sunlight Foundation reporter Bill Allison