Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

1. The Fed's growing again, overseas

   By Ryan Sibley May 14, 2010 12:51 p.m.

   Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve reopened one of the special lending windows it created in January 2009 to ease the failing global economy. The move comes amid a weakening euro and after Greece, Spain and Portugal have all created austerity packages to help fix their struggling economies.

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2. Moran requests funds for alternative medicine center

   By Ryan Sibley May 13, 2010 10 a.m.

   Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, has requested a $1.5 million earmark to fund an alternative medicine center in Washington D.C. run by a doctor with an alternative past. The request is for the FY 2011 Department of Defense budget and will go to the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, run by Dr. James Gordon.

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3. Shelby smells a rat in S. 3217

   By Ryan Sibley Apr 29, 2010 3:44 p.m.

   Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala, doesn't believe the financial reform bill the Senate began debating today will actually regulate the large financial organizations whose risky actions threatened the entire economy in 2008. Instead, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee sees the bill as something that will further institutionalize bank bailouts in the future.

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4. Committee members grilling Goldman have recieved Wall Street giant's money

   By Ryan Sibley Apr 27, 2010 5:43 p.m.

   Four of the 10 committee members on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that grilled Goldman Sachs today have received campaign contributions from the Wall Street Giant. The amounts and recipients are as follows:

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5. SEC and CFTC exclude derivatives from joint regulatory review

   By Ryan Sibley Apr 23, 2010 3:37 p.m.

   As part of the broader push to strengthen regulation of the financial industry, two agencies with sometimes conflicting responsibilities and rules joined forces to see how harmonizing their efforts might be effective in, among other things, protecting against fraud and forcing foreign trade organizations to register with them before doing business within the United States. However, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, released yesterday, highlights that the two agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), did not assess how they could cover gaps in the agencies’ authorities to oversee derivatives—a central part of the reform being debated in congress.

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6. Sen. Lincoln's proposed reform moves to the Senate floor for debate

   By Ryan Sibley Apr 21, 2010 2:32 p.m.

   The financial reform legislation regarding derivatives voted 13-8 out of the Senate Agriculture Committee this morning and on to the Senate floor. It’s intended to fend off any future government bailouts and prohibit the risky behavior banks participate in that caused the 2008 financial meltdown. But of course, the very organizations that these new laws will affect are using their money and expertise to influence the lawmakers in charge of making reform happen.

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7. Hawaii Superferry: An ulterior motive?

   By Ryan Sibley Apr 12, 2010 11:13 a.m.

   Was the Hawaii Superferry project conceived of as a means of securing a military contract? Speculation in Hawaii among activists that the ferries might have eventually been used for interisland transport of the Army’s Stryker brigade and other military equipment fueled conflict between protestors and Superferry supporters.

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8. Government agency with a history of taxpayer losses keeps at it

   By Ryan Sibley Apr 12, 2010 11 a.m.

   Between 2004 and 2009, the U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, a federal agency that supports the U.S. shipbuilding industry and merchant marine, made just one loan from its troubled Federal Ship Financing Program, also known as Title XI. The borrower was Hawaii Superferry Inc., a politically connected company that hired a former chief counsel and deputy administrator of MARAD, among others, to lobby the agency. In 2005, Hawaii Superferry got a taxpayer-guaranteed loan for $139 million to build and operate a pair of high-speed ferries in the fiftieth state. Just four years later, the company filed for bankruptcy, listing assets of a mere $1 million.

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9. The bailout is investing again

   By Ryan Sibley Mar 29, 2010 5:06 p.m.

   The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has started to grow again, after the Department of Treasury announced in December of last year the bailout would be coming to a close. Earlier this month, the Department of Treasury invested $21 million in small business loans with more investments to come that could total as much as $15 billion.

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10. The bailout makes a move towards transparency

    By Ryan Sibley Mar 19, 2010 9:29 p.m.

    Today, in a huge win for transparency, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that the Federal Reserve Board must disclose records containing information about how it intervened to bail out banks during the financial crisis.

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11. Recovery rail funds could benefit freight industry

    By Ryan Sibley Mar 10, 2010 8:59 a.m.

    USA Today reported yesterday that an inspector general investigation and congressional critics say that the Federal Railroad Administration, which awarded $8 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for high speed rail projects around the country, lacked the technical expertise to choose projects. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, described the process as “amateur hour,” according to the paper, and complained that too much money is dedicated to increasing speeds on existing Amtrak routes. The Sunlight Reporting Group ran a piece highlighting that a few weeks ago.

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12. Amtrak: Winner by default in high speed rail contest

    By Ryan Sibley Feb 11, 2010 12:22 p.m.

    Last month the Obama Administration announced which high speed rail projects across the country will receive portions of the $8 billion in Recovery act funds dedicated to advancing high speed technology in the country. However, the largest single beneficiary of the spending did not directly receive a dime. Amtrak, the federally funded rail company, will benefit from $4.5 billion worth of improvements to the infrastructure that its trains run on. That's in addition to the $1.3 billion in stimulus money the company received last year for capital improvements. The nearly $6 billion will supplement the annual appropriation it receives from Congress which is scheduled to exceed $1 billion through 2013.

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13. OGD: Transparency for Whom?

    By Ryan Sibley Jan 26, 2010 5:38 p.m.

    Most of the raw data released by the Open Government Directive on Friday was released in an XML format.  For those of you who dont know what that is or what to do with it, thats because it most likely isnt for you.  Common knowledge about XML is that its a platform only Web developers and programmers use.  And thats what it looked like after opening up the datasets in XML on Data.gov. The unfamiliar code can be off-putting and might cause people to not try to figure out whats in these high value datasets.  In order to use XML one has to know how to convert it or how to use an XML reader. Its also possible to import XML to Microsoft Excel, and thats only if the file isnt so big it crashes the gentle Microsoft application. (We've had marginal success using Microsoft Access 2007 to look at some of the XML data.)

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14. OGD: High value...er, never mind

    By Ryan Sibley Jan 26, 2010 2:46 p.m.

    Data.gov has apparently changed its mind about which datasets are high value. When datasets were released on Friday, the 2007-2008 State-to-State Migration Outflow file released by the Department of Treasury was designated high value--an asterisk appeared next to its entry in the raw data catalog on data.gov. Today that asterisk is gone. This would leave treasury one high value data set short of the three required by the Open Government Directive. But dont worry, they've added another. The dataset titled, Tax Year 2007 County Income Data, has been placed in the list and given an asterisk. What isn't shared with the public in this instance is the day it was released. The entry only says January 2010, while all other datasets identify the day as well.

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Investigations by Sunlight Foundation reporter Ryan Sibley