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Available on paper: Government records on jobs lost to foreign trade hard to access
By Aisha Qidwae Mar 23, 2010 11:42 a.m.In December 2009, Bristol Myers Squib, a biopharmaceutical company with international operations, told employees at two Indiana plants that 75 to 100 of them would need to seek other work. In February 2010, HSBC, the British financial firm that bills itself as the "world's local bank," laid off 20 full-time customer service representatives who processed loan modifications in a Kentucky town named, ironically enough, London. Some 125 workers who built and assembled truck cabs for 18 wheelers at Mayflower Vehicle Systems in Norwalk, Ohio, saw their workplace shut its doors in April 2010.
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Gov’t Database of Bad Doctors Blocks Public From Seeing Names
By Jim Morris Mar 23, 2010 10:50 a.m.In the mid-1980s, incompetent and negligent doctors were moving freely between states, with state licensing boards and hospitals largely oblivious to lawsuits or disciplinary actions in other locations that might have flagged bad providers.
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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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Description of Citizenship Database Available – If You’re Willing to Pay Nearly $112,000
By Nick Schwellenbach Mar 18, 2010 10:22 p.m.After taking nearly four years to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request, the U.S. immigration agency is demanding $111,930 for records that describe what is in a government database of claims for U.S. citizenship – not the actual database itself.
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POIA aims to make public records truly public
By Bill Allison Mar 16, 2010 2:45 p.m.According to a procurement officer in the Transportation Department, SF-LLLs, a disclosure form filed by lobbyists when they help their clients pursue contract or grant awards, are filed away with other contracting documents and "kept in a secure place so no one has access to the them." This, despite the fact that, in fine print on the lower left hand side of the document are the words, "This information will be available for public inspection."
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Public Blocked From Key Parts of U.S. Dam Inspection Data
By Jim Morris Mar 15, 2010 12:26 p.m.In the middle of the night on Nov. 6, 1977, the Kelly Barnes Dam near Toccoa Falls, Georgia, gave way, unleashing a wall of water that killed 39 people. In a report, federal investigators blamed the failure on a combination of factors, including heavy rains and a breach in the 38-year-old earthen dam’s crest that had been followed by progressive erosion.
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Earmark Season: Republicans up the ante on Democratic for-profit ban
By Bill Allison Mar 11, 2010 5:03 p.m.Following the announcement by Rep. David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Norm Dicks, incoming chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, that members can no longer earmark funs to for profit companies, the House Republicans have adopted a one-year moratorium on earmark requests.
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How a grant grew from $35,000 to almost a million
By Bill Allison Mar 11, 2010 11:27 a.m.In 2004, the National Park Service gave the George Wright Society, a Hancock, Mich.-based nonprofit that promotes preservation and understanding of natural and cultural resources, a $35,000 cooperative agreement (a kind of grant in which the recipient will work closely with a federal agency to accomplish a public purpose) to host a pair of conferences. Over five years, that initial cooperative agreement grew in value to more than $800,000, and came to include such projects as coordinating the complex travel arrangements for archaeologists to visit Afghanistan (something the nonprofit has yet to do).
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OGD: Freeing health care data
By Nancy Watzman Mar 10, 2010 9:11 a.m.We're still tracking government's performance under the Open Government Directive, and we're also asking for specific information to be released. Here's the data we'd like to see on food and drug safety, which we posted over at the Department of Health and Human Services "open" Web page. The agency set up this commenting system as part of President Barack Obama's open government directive. Please take a moment to visit and vote for our suggestions. (Unfortunately the HHS comment format made our paragraphs run together and slightly truncated our comment. This is fixed below.) We'll be posting more of these at other /open pages in the coming days and weeks.
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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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U.S. Sugar's Sweet Deal
By Nancy Watzman Mar 8, 2010 3:56 p.m.In the everything that's old is new again department, today The New York Times reports that Florida's ailing U.S. Sugar Corporation stands to profit mightily from a deal originally meant to preserve the Everglades:
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D.C. lobbyists drive Burr's fundraising
By Nancy Watzman Mar 8, 2010 2:38 p.m.Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., formally announced his reelection bid on Feb. 22, 2010, with an open house at his Winston-Salem campaign headquarters, but the first term member has been raising money since he took office. Since January 2009 alone, he and his campaign have sent out at least 38 invitations to fundraisers, according to our Party Time database, the great majority of them in Washington, D.C. The events have helped him raise a total of $6.7 million, $4.3 million of which he still has in the bank.
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Members, staffers on both sides of "Chinese wall" between earmarks, fundraisers?
By Bill Allison Mar 7, 2010 8:57 a.m.If nothing else, Jeffrey Smith's story in the Washington Post proves that Mark Twain's critique of congressional investigations still holds: "One does not blindfold one's self in order to investigate an object." So it is in the matter of PMA Group, the lobbying group that was a top donor to members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee who were top earmarkers for PMA Group's clients.
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Farm Subsidies Still Missing from USDAs Data-Rich Website
By Jim Morris Mar 5, 2010 noonFarm subsidies have a way of inciting people. Here, in the words of the Environmental Working Group, is why:
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