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Financial Bailout: Who does Dodd see at his fundraisers?
By Bill Allison Sep 24, 2008 2 a.m.Among Sen. Christopher Dodd's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: Citigroup ("written off and lost $53.6 billion through the credit crunch so far, which is more than any other bank or broker,") Bear Stearns ("Bear Stearns's mortgage business, a big driver of profits, has been eviscerated,"), SAC Capital Partners (vehemently denies charge that they helped bring down Bear Stearns), American International Group (saved by an emergency $85 billion rescue), Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (each of which are morphing into bank holding companies), Greenwich Capital Markets ("a top issuer of mortgage-backed securities in the subprime market, Royal Bank of Scotland (which owns Greenwich Capital Markets), Credit Suisse Group (which misled some investors about its auction rate securities), Merrill Lynch (which needed Bank of America to rescue it), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns) and Lehman Brothers (which failed).
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A compendium of mortgage bank failures
By Bill Allison Sep 22, 2008 4:14 p.m.The Mortgage Lender Implode-o-Meter has a useful list of companies that have gone belly up in the subprime mortgage crisis that appears to be more the trigger than the overall cause of the current financial meltdown. I was looking at it Friday, browsing the stories, and some of it is pretty incredible (the list of 285 failures is pretty incredible). Reading about the first failure, Merit Financial, gives a flavor of just how freewheeling these firms could be:
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TCS posts Senate Defense Authorization earmarks
By Bill Allison Sep 17, 2008 8:07 p.m.Our friends at Taxpayers inform us that they've just posted...
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CRP tracks beneficiaries of belly-up banks
By Bill Allison Sep 15, 2008 2:41 p.m.Our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics have been doing yeoman's work compiling lists of the politicians who've received the most money over the years from political action committees and employees and their family members of the big financial colossi that are seeking (or having imposed on them) federal help to stave off collapse. Their Lehman Brothers list is here while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are ">here.
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Tracking earmarks from Obama and Biden
By Bill Allison Sep 13, 2008 1:29 p.m.Taxpayers for Commons Sense rolled out a pair of new databases on earmarks of presidential candidates, this time covering Sen. Barack Obama's requests from 2006 to 2008, and his funded earmarks for 2008. The databases are online here.
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TCS, Post examine Palin's pursuit of earmarks
By Bill Allison Sep 2, 2008 9:17 p.m.The most interesting story on Alaska Gov. and Republican nominee for Vice President Sarah Palin is the Washington Post's report that, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin "employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents." Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense provided the earmark analysis. Note who Palin hired:
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Due diligence in the Biden family lawsuit
By Bill Allison Sep 2, 2008 2:37 a.m.In a comment to this post pointing to some resources for getting acquainted with the Republican vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, I noted this Washington Post story on a lawsuit involving Robert Hunter Biden, the son of the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, James Biden, the Senator's brother, and plaintiff Anthony Lotito, who is the former business partner of the two non-elected Bidens in a deal that didn't work out. Both sides charge one another with cheating; hence the lawsuit. It turns out the New York State Supreme Court (where the case is filed) puts most of its documents online (here's the home page for searching).
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Are the parties over?
By Bill Allison Sep 1, 2008 2:33 a.m.Republican presidential nominee John McCain has apparently cancelled all but the most essential official convention activities due Hurricane Gustav's menacing approach toward the Gulf Coast. That means Monday will have none of the normal convention hullabaloo -- the customary succession of speeches (President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had already cancelled their appearances) will be foregone.
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Tracking Gov. Palin
By Bill Allison Aug 30, 2008 3:07 p.m.Apparently, Republican presidential nominee John McCain has selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. For those looking for more information, her 2007 state personal financial disclosure form is online here (via the Center for Public Integrity). Via the excellent National Institute on Money in State Politics, here's campaign finance information from her unsuccessful 2002 race for Lieutenant Governor, her 2006 primary campaign for governor, and her 2006 general election campaign for governor. I'll update with more links as I come across them. I'm not going to dig into these myself today, but others should feel free to have at them.
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Washington Post: Biden's Son Lobbied Obama's Staff for Earmarks
By Bill Allison Aug 27, 2008 2:05 p.m.The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for President, requested $3.4 million in congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbying firm that employs the son of running mate Joe Biden. Hunter Biden, who's a registered lobbyist (see here and here for his clients), apparently lobbied Obama's Senate office directly:
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TCS centralizes earmark data
By Bill Allison Aug 25, 2008 6:56 p.m.Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have collected, in one handy spot, all of their Fiscal 2009 earmark data and trenchant analyses of same. So far, the Senate (which has much laxer earmark disclosure rules) has passed more bills than the House -- we saw the same pattern last year as well, though traditionally the House had run ahead of the Senate. All the files are available as downloadable spread sheets.
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Democratic Convention Receives More PAC Money
By Anupama Narayanswamy Aug 21, 2008 1:01 p.m.More political action committees are giving to the Democratic convention scheduled for next week than the Republican one, to be held in September, according to the recently disclosed lobbyists contribution data available online with the Senate Office of Pubic Records. At least six company PACs have given more than $436,000 to the Democratic National Convention Committee so far, whereas, the Republican National Convention has attracted only $55,000 from company PACs.
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Mark Warner biggest recipient of lobbyist dough, new disclosures show (so far)
By Bill Allison Aug 14, 2008 3:22 p.m.Mark Warner, who's running for Virginia's open seat to the U.S. Senate and will serve as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, has received more than $206,000 from lobbyists since the beginning of the year, a Real Time Investigations analysis of recently released disclosure records show.
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Tracking Obama's earmarks
By Bill Allison Aug 12, 2008 4:50 p.m.Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., steered earmarks to some organizations with a board member who is also serving as a top bundler to his presidential campaign, according to the Next Right. This raises what for me is one of the primary questions about earmarks in general. Members of Congress say they know the needs of their states (or districts, in the case of House members). Whence comes this in-depth knowledge? Do they hear about needs from constituents, from their own personal observations, or do insiders--lobbyists, campaign contributors and others--educate them? Because the process is so opaque, in most cases we simply don't know.
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