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PMA Group is gone, but earmark influence persists
By Luke Rosiak Jul 9, 2009 8:36 p.m.While the dozen members of Congress most favored by contributions from PMA Group continued to request earmarks for the defunct firm's clients, two other lobby shops--Alcalde & Fay and Innovative Federal Strategies--appear to have had even more success in procuring earmark requests for fiscal year 2010 from the PMA top twelve.
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Open notebook: Following stimulus contracts
By Luke Rosiak Jun 29, 2009 8:55 p.m.Recovery.gov might not be useful yet for "following every penny" of stimulus spending, but with a telephone, Google, USASpending.gov and some luck it might not be that hard. Pretty much at random, I picked out a bunch of congressional press releases touting stimulus dollars going to local communities, and started making calls. Here's some notes on where one inquiry led me.
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The FOIA Process: Still as Archaic as Snail Mail
By Anupama Narayanswamy Jun 25, 2009 3 p.m.There are very few occasions in the Sunlight offices for us to use the fax machine, so we were somewhat out of practice when we learned that we had to use it to send Freedom of Information Act requests to the Department of Treasury. At least the fax is instantaneous: we received most of our responses from them via snail mail.
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Is FOIA any better under Obama? An anecdote today, data later
By Anupama Narayanswamy Jun 23, 2009 9:01 p.m.Newsweek's Michael Isikoff report on the Obama administration's mixed record on transparency got me to thinking about our own experience with FOIA requests. Isikoff notes,
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Some stimulus recipients to report in Excel?
By Bill Allison Jun 23, 2009 8:02 p.m.Just reading the new guidance from Office of Management and Budget for recipients funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to report information to the government: "This Recipient Reporting spreadsheet template is to be used for non-machine recipient reporting. It enables manual data entry and collection of recipient reporting information in a familiar excel format."
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Campaign Software Makers All About Disclosure, Except their Own
By Luke Rosiak Jun 17, 2009 4:26 p.m.NGP Software, a leading provider of software for electronically disclosing campaign contributions to the Federal Election Commission, is striving to keep its long-running legal battle with a competitor, Aristotle International, under wraps. In August 2005, plaintiff Aristotle filed suit against NGP alleging unfair business practices, claiming that the firm falsely advertised as serving only Democrats while selling an identical product at a heavy discount to political action committees that supported Republicans.
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Grassley feted by alternative med lobbyist
By Nancy Watzman Jun 17, 2009 2:57 p.m.A self-proclaimed lobbyist for an alternative health organization--who left a prominent conservative group more than a decade ago under a cloud of financial mismanagement--is hosting a fundraiser next week for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). Grassley, who recently earned fame for his tweets on health care, has a reputation as a strong crusader for drug safety. But he has also has championed policies favoring the alternative health industry, which some consumer critics charge is not adequately regulated by the federal government.
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Non-earmark disclosing lawmakers feted by transportation interests
By Nancy Watzman Jun 11, 2009 6:25 p.m.At least a dozen lawmakers who didn't disclose their transportation earmarks are the beneficiaries of trasnportation fundraisers this year, according to Party Time. Click here to see who. We've also updated this online database to include party information.
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NRCC promos fundraiser for Dem
By Nancy Watzman Jun 10, 2009 4:55 p.m.Over at Party Time we're reporting how the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) accidentally sent out a list of fundraising events that included a June 11 breakfast for Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI) and featuring "special guest" Rep. John Dingell (D-MI).
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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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