Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

Follow the (Airport) Money

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.

The $333 Million Grant That Wasn't

Always amazes me...

what you can find in lobbying disclosure data. I was looking for something else when I came across this filing. TIG Insurance has hired the Normandy Group to "[a]ddress non-payment by Government of Argentina of fees owed to TIG Insurance Company. Seek to put restrictive language in Foreign Operations Appropriations Bills re: US assistance to Argentina." The fees paid are less than $5,000, so it doesn't seem like a lot of lobbying went on, but the list of lobbyists has a few revolvers on it:

Tracking swine flu...

...with Google maps.

Dicks requests earmark for Concurrent Technologies

Rep. Norm Dicks requested one Defense earmark for one former client of PMA Group:

Specter ramps up the fundraising

In the whirlwind of fundraising parties this month"as of today we've collected 428 invitations for this month and counting"Sen. Arlen Specter stands above his peers, with a dozen parties scheduled in March and more beyond.

Rangel: No accusations coming from Congress

When Charle

Dodd's family business?

Kevin Rennie notes another connection of Sen. Christopher Dodd to the financial industry, at one remove from AIG:

A few questions for Sen. Dodd

This weekend, the august Sunday Times reported on Sen. Christopher Dodd's Irish "cottage":

Another guilty plea in Abramoff case

Roll Call's Jennifer Yachnin reports:

House kills PMA probe

Shocking:

Visclosky endorses some form of action on PMA Group

A friend passes on this story:

Senate approves earmarks for PMA Group clients

Sen. Tom Coburn would like to do away with all earmarks; this evening the Senate voted on an amendment he proposed that would eliminate, from the Omnibus Appropriations bill, earmarks for 14 clients of the soon-to-be-defunct lobbying shop, the PMA Group. The purpose of the amendment read as follows:

Cities seeking a Piece of the Action?

From the A Piece of the Action? database, here's a list of cities that have hired lobbyists who have reported that the bailout or the stimulus is a specific lobbying issue, complete with links (if any) to project requests on the excellent StimulusWatch.org page for those cities: