Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

1. Tracking Gov. Palin

   By Bill Allison Aug 30, 2008 3:07 p.m.

   Apparently, Republican presidential nominee John McCain has selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. For those looking for more information, her 2007 state personal financial disclosure form is online here (via the Center for Public Integrity). Via the excellent National Institute on Money in State Politics, here's campaign finance information from her unsuccessful 2002 race for Lieutenant Governor, her 2006 primary campaign for governor, and her 2006 general election campaign for governor. I'll update with more links as I come across them. I'm not going to dig into these myself today, but others should feel free to have at them.

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2. Washington Post: Biden's Son Lobbied Obama's Staff for Earmarks

   By Bill Allison Aug 27, 2008 2:05 p.m.

   The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for President, requested $3.4 million in congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbying firm that employs the son of running mate Joe Biden. Hunter Biden, who's a registered lobbyist (see here and here for his clients), apparently lobbied Obama's Senate office directly:

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3. TCS centralizes earmark data

   By Bill Allison Aug 25, 2008 6:56 p.m.

   Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have collected, in one handy spot, all of their Fiscal 2009 earmark data and trenchant analyses of same. So far, the Senate (which has much laxer earmark disclosure rules) has passed more bills than the House -- we saw the same pattern last year as well, though traditionally the House had run ahead of the Senate. All the files are available as downloadable spread sheets.

4. Mark Warner biggest recipient of lobbyist dough, new disclosures show (so far)

   By Bill Allison Aug 14, 2008 3:22 p.m.

   Mark Warner, who's running for Virginia's open seat to the U.S. Senate and will serve as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, has received more than $206,000 from lobbyists since the beginning of the year, a Real Time Investigations analysis of recently released disclosure records show.

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5. Tracking Obama's earmarks

   By Bill Allison Aug 12, 2008 4:50 p.m.

   Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., steered earmarks to some organizations with a board member who is also serving as a top bundler to his presidential campaign, according to the Next Right. This raises what for me is one of the primary questions about earmarks in general. Members of Congress say they know the needs of their states (or districts, in the case of House members). Whence comes this in-depth knowledge? Do they hear about needs from constituents, from their own personal observations, or do insiders--lobbyists, campaign contributors and others--educate them? Because the process is so opaque, in most cases we simply don't know.

6. Senate Milcon earmark file available from TCS

   By Bill Allison Aug 8, 2008 2:14 a.m.

   Taxpayers for Common Sense has now posted a downloadable spreadsheet listing all earmarks from the S. 3301, the Senate Military Construction appropriations act.

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7. Will Dodd and Conrad Attend Financial Literacy Brunch?

   By Bill Allison Aug 7, 2008 6:21 p.m.

   Earlier today, we posted schedules for some 370 events at the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, many of which are sponsored by private interests. The RNC list is here, the DNC list is here. On page 7 of the latter document, there's an event called the "FSR Financial Literacy Brunch," sponsored by 21 companies, including Bank of America, which authored much of the recent bank bailout bill, according to media reports. Bank of America also took over distressed subprime lender Countrywide Financial, which gave preferential mortgage deals to, among others, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

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8. TCS releases Senate Transportaion & HUD earmark database

   By Bill Allison Aug 6, 2008 8:08 p.m.

   Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have analyzed, and compiled in a downloadable database available at the link, the earmarks from S. 3261, the Senate Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. They note,

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9. Saddle Road funding update

   By Bill Allison Aug 5, 2008 5:54 p.m.

   In this post and this post, we looked at an earmark Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, secured for the Saddle Road project on Big Island. I sent a query along to Dave Gedeon, the project manager for the Central Federal Lands Highway Division of the Federal Highway Administration, asking how the project was funded--whether these were military, Dept. of Transportation, or state funds, and which agency was managing the project. He was kind enough to respond and clarify:

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10. A long winding partially underwater earmarked road?

    By Bill Allison Aug 1, 2008 7:26 p.m.

    Commenter Archie Mead points out something I didn't know about the discrepancy between Rep. Neil Abercrombie's description of an earmark and the description of what I believe is the same earmark in the House Appropriations Committee report:

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11. Lack of residential disclosure a problem for another member of Congress

    By Bill Allison Aug 1, 2008 4:25 p.m.

    Another reason why we need members of Congress to disclose information on their residences:

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12. More on Stevens' earmarks

    By Bill Allison Jul 31, 2008 3:16 p.m.

    The Washington Post notes that Alaskans are fretting the potential fallout of the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for not disclosing more than $250,000 in gifts from VECO Corp. Taxpayers for Common Sense sums it up more succinctly:

    Read all about it

13. FedSpending.org updated

    By Bill Allison Jul 30, 2008 7:31 p.m.

    Our friend Adam Hughes of OMB Watch writes:

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14. How confusing are earmark disclosures?

    By Bill Allison Jul 30, 2008 4:53 p.m.

    When Rep. Neil Abercrombie requested an earmark in the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill to fund "Saddle Road Phase 5," he listed (on page two of that mega file courtesy of Taxpayers for Common Sense), the "U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, located at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii" as the entity that was the recipient of the funds. Search the spread sheet Taxpayers compile for the list of earmarks in that bill, and only one Abercrombie request turns up: a $9 million earmark for "Access Road, Ph 1" in Pohakuloa TA.

    Read all about it

Investigations by Sunlight Foundation reporter Bill Allison