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An Army of pharma trips?
By Bill Allison Jun 10, 2009 3:56 p.m.The Center for Public Integrity has analyzed 22,000 Pentagon travel disclosures -- filed when an outside party pays for a trip taken by Department of Defense personnel. The finding that jumped out at both Anu and me:
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Rep. Flake: Campaign contributions are a financial interest in an earmark
By Bill Allison Jun 4, 2009 4:45 p.m.Rep. Jeff Flake has released a letter asking the Ethics Committee asking it to "specifically prohibit members from being able to certify having no financial interest in an earmark when they have received campaign contributions from the entity that would benefit from the earmark or those affiliated with it."
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PMA Group probe: What did the House vote for?
By Bill Allison Jun 4, 2009 3:47 a.m.Roll Call's Tory Newmyer and Jennifer Yachnin are both good reporters, and their story is certainly easy to read, but I'm still sitting here scratching my head trying to figure out exactly what it is that the House just voted for in the matter of PMA Group, the lobbying firm at the heart of a series of federal investigations involving campaign contributions to members of Congress and earmarks to some of the firms clients:
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House Ethics Committee: Investigating PMA Group or not?
By Bill Allison Jun 3, 2009 6:06 p.m.Tory Newmyer reports in Roll Call:
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Murtha's earmark recipients: How hands off (or on) is he?
By Bill Allison Jun 3, 2009 4:17 p.m.Paul Singer reports in Roll Call on a tangled story that apparently involves the undisclosed hand of Rep. John Murtha but certainly involves his brother Kit (a retired lobbyist) and his former lobbying firm, five different companies doing business, directly or indirectly, with Defense (including one under federal indictment and one that allegedly wanted to outsource earmarked defense work to "China or someplace"), an earmark from the pre-disclosure era, some technical corrections added to the Tsunami relief bill that moved the funds for that earmark from one recipient to another (because the original recipient allegedly wanted to do the work in "China or someplace" rather than in Murtha's district), about $8.2 million of taxpayer money, and a whole lot of digging. Oh, and PMA Group makes a cameo appearance. Read the whole thing, but also consider this:
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Visclosky temporarily relinquishes reins of subcommittee
By Bill Allison Jun 2, 2009 9:27 p.m.Rep. Peter Visclosky, whose office has been subpoenaed for documents related to clients of the defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, has temporarily stepped down as chair of the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee. Lindsay Renick Mayer reports on Visclosky's woes, his top donors, and those of his replacement, Ed Pastor, who has taken less than a tenth as much in contributions from PMA Group and its clients (of course, I'm referring to contributions from their employees, family members and political action committees).
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Transportation earmark request update
By Bill Allison Jun 2, 2009 7:33 p.m.We haven't been updating the database of House Transportation Reauthorization earmark requests beyond what we found the first night. Eventually I'll find the time to update this, but here's some from Rep. Barron Hill that were passed on to me in a comment to an earlier post. They were posted the morning of May 15, which was after we did our searches.
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Investment Ratings Tank for Home Loan Banks
By Sarah Dorsey Jun 2, 2009 3:14 p.m.They hold $1.3 trillion in assets and, chances are, you've never heard of them.
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CREW visualizes Murtha web
By Bill Allison May 29, 2009 5:49 p.m.Here's a picture worth well over a thousand words: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has assembled an interactive, "You Don't Know Jack" graphic showing the connections between Murtha, a trio of lobbying firms, relatives, staffers and the companies for whom he's gotten earmarks.
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Turning 100 Days, 100 Projects into data
By Bill Allison May 29, 2009 3:50 p.m.Chauncey Thorn of CongressSpacebook has made the 100 Days, 100 Projects report searchable. And I've slapped together a little Dabble database here that's a work in progress -- note all the "not specified" that run all the way through it.
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Why there's so little spending data on Recovery.gov
By Bill Allison May 29, 2009 2:14 a.m.Because apparently, there's not all that much spending yet:
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Washington savvy firm gets stimulus bucks
By Bill Allison May 28, 2009 11:22 p.m.Number two of the 100:
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Oblique allusion to contract data available on Recovery.gov
By Bill Allison May 28, 2009 8:36 p.m.We have a partial winner. My colleague Greg Elin has tracked down, on Recovery.gov, this announcement:
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Jake Tapper finds $27 million=$59,000
By Bill Allison May 28, 2009 3:54 p.m.I am still playing around with the spread sheet of the 100 projects, which I'll be posting in some form (probably Dabble) in a bit. Right now I'm looking to see if I can find any of these projects listed on Recovery.gov, the agency Recovery Web pages, FedBizOpps.gov, USASpending.gov, and other places. Not sure I'll do this for all 100 projects.
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