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Rep. Wexler heads to think tank funded by big Democratic donor
By Luke Rosiak Oct 14, 2009 7:57 p.m.Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is resigning from Congress and accepting a job at the Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation, a nonprofit with offices in Florida and Washington, D.C., that's funded by Slim-Fast founder S. Daniel Abraham.
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Most Senate supporters of electronic FEC filing still disclose on paper
By Luke Rosiak Oct 13, 2009 3:54 p.m.With all the foot-dragging that has accompanied legislation requiring Senate candidates to disclose campaign finance information electronically--common-sense legislation with no real opposition that comes years after the House entered the digital age--it's an oft-overlooked fact that they can already file electronically if they choose to, and a few do.
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Follow the (Airport) Money
By Bill Allison Oct 7, 2009 6:30 p.m.Over the past five years, the Federal Aviation Administration has handed out nearly $18 billion in grants for almost 19,000 airport projects. In theory, these projects -- funded through the FAA's Airport Improvement Program -- are supposed to enhance safety or protect the environment. In fact, according to a Subsidyscope analysis of FAA data (neatly assembled into a searchable database by Sunlight's Kaitlin Lee), a fair amount of money has gone toward the building of parking lots and other questionable things.
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Digging into recovery.gov data
By Anupama Narayanswamy Oct 5, 2009 10:12 p.m.We're playing with the new stimulus data released last week on the Recovery.gov Web site - analyzing the data, trying to find out which states are receiving the most money and what kinds of projects are receiving the most money. Data on contracts can be downloaded from FPDS site and the grants and loans from the USAspending Web site.
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Shining a Bright New Light on an Old Game
By Larry Makinson Oct 1, 2009 9:33 p.m.Jaws dropped around the Sunlight offices a couple of weeks ago, when we discovered after a month's worth of painstaking research the extent to which lobbyist donations were echoing, and in some cases greatly supplementing, the campaign contributions of their clients.
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Revealing the "Hidden Budget"
By Jim Morris Sep 30, 2009 5:41 p.m.Our colleagues at The Pew Charitable Trusts, with whom we collaborate on Subsidyscope, have produced a nine-page overview of federal subsidies -- the "hidden budget" -- that's worth a read.
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Recovery.gov redesign released
By Bill Allison Sep 28, 2009 3:45 p.m.We're poking around it now. The maps are done very well, but as of this writing, we haven't been able to get any of the XML feeds from the Download Center to work (we've learned that they're working on it) and the spreadsheet on Recovery contracts from the Federal Procurement Data System, while helpful, had the usual glitches--including a contract for bridge construction with an effective data of
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Corruption charges prompt Congo to lobby Congress
By Anupama Narayanswamy Sep 25, 2009 3:40 p.m.In the past few years a handful of private equity or hedge funds have garnered a reputation as "vulture funds," a term coined to describe companies that profit from the debt of extremely poor countries. The hedge funds buy defaulted debt for pennies on the dollar, then sue them later for the full amount owed in U.S. and European courts.
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Open Notebook: Health care
By Bill Allison Sep 22, 2009 10:22 p.m.Transparency-related provisions in the summary of the chairman's mark that Sen. Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee released last week: Lots of new disclosure requirements for physicians who refer patients to hospitals in which they or their family members have a financial interest, for nursing homes, for hospitals, for medical device manufacturers, suppliers, and pharmaceutical companies. Little oversight of government (there's a few requirements for new entities created by the bill to act in a transparent manner). Still, what's more interesting is what's not transparent -- updates on that coming later. Here's the descriptions of the provisions.
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Defense contractors join Turkish lobbying effort in pursuit of arms deals
By Luke Rosiak Sep 17, 2009 2:13 p.m.The Defense Department's request last week for congressional approval of the sale of $8 billion worth of PAC-3 missiles to Turkey was the latest victory for a disparate group of interests including defense contractors, finance and energy corporations, trade groups, the Turkish government and a well-financed network of domestic advocacy nonprofits. Intersecting interests have led them to join forces and lobby on a number of issues, including the characterization of distant historical events.
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Turkey's influence over lawmakers surfaces in Ohio hearing
By Luke Rosiak Sep 10, 2009 10:28 p.m.Labeling the killing of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923, many at the hands of Ottoman government, an act of genocide has been a controversial issue in Turkey, among some historians, in the U.S. Congress, and now in the unlikely venue of the Ohio Board of Elections, where recent hearings indirectly considered the government of Turkeys connection, if any, to Turkish advocacy groups in Washington.
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Lobbying disclosure upheld
By Bill Allison Sep 8, 2009 10:14 p.m.Details available from Legal Times blog here:
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In 1983, Congress changed Medicare payment system with little scrutiny
By Bill Allison Sep 8, 2009 8:50 p.m.This 1984 paper, which summarizes a number of academic publications that raised questions about a 1983 reform to the Medicare payment system, suggests that whether things have gotten better or worse, they certainly have changed. It's hard to imagine Congress moving so quickly on a health care measure developed behind closed doors.
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ClinicalTrials.gov missing basic data
By Nancy Watzman Sep 8, 2009 8:35 p.m.Fewer than half of medical clinical trials published in the last year in leading medical journals are reported on the government site ClinicalTrials.gov, according to a new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
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