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Visclosky endorses some form of action on PMA Group
By Bill Allison Mar 5, 2009 10:35 p.m.A friend passes on this story:
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Lobbying for a Piece of the Bailout and Stimulus Action?
By Bill Allison Feb 23, 2009 4:46 p.m.First a word of caution: when the title of a database ends with a question mark (in this case, A Piece of the Action?, approach it with some caution.
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Madoff's firm lobbied for earmarks
By Bill Allison Dec 18, 2008 7:03 p.m.Yesterday I was talking to some folks about whether, given the trillions potentially committed to bailouts, there's any sense in continuing to probe earmarks. I say of course there is.
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Financial Bailout: K Street hurting too?
By Bill Allison Sep 30, 2008 6:11 p.m.The Hill reports that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are dissolving their formidable lobbying operations (when the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight was investigating their shady accounting practices, Fannie Mae was spending $8 million a year on lobbyists, some of whom were working with Congress to derail the investigation).
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Financial Bailout: Fannie Mae announces subpoena
By Bill Allison Sep 29, 2008 11:11 p.m.Fannie Mae announced <a href="http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/310522/000129993308004533/0001299933-08-004533.txt">today</a> that it's gotten more subpoenas from the SEC and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York:
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Financial Bailout: Lobbyists' Donations to House Financial Services Committee
By Anupama Narayanswamy Sep 26, 2008 3:28 p.m.The chairs and ranking members of the House Financial Services Committee and its subcommittees have received less from lobbyists hired by financial and investment firms compared with members of the Senate Banking Committee from the eight firms we surveyed. Six of the 12 chairs and ranking members received more than $144,000 in the first six months of this year.
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Financial Bailout: Lobbyists' Donations to Senate Banking Members
By Anupama Narayanswamy Sep 25, 2008 8:42 p.m.In-house lobbyists and other major Washington lobbying firms hired by eight investment and securities companies have given Senate Banking Committee members more than $380,000 in campaign donations in the first six months of 2008, according to the LD-203 lobbying disclosures filed with the Senate Office of Public Records.
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Financial Bailout: Who's minding the store?
By Bill Allison Sep 24, 2008 10:31 p.m.As Congress begins wrestling with the Bush administration's financial industry bailout legislation (and Sen. Christopher Dodd's alternative), perhaps it's worth asking who are these folks who may well be deciding the economic fate of the nation? In this post (which took me about five hours longer to put together than I'd anticipated; hint to Labs: we need to design a tool to do this stuff faster), we take a look at the Senate Banking Committee and the House Finance Committee. Specifically, we look at how much of the campaign cash raised by members of those committees has come from the industries at the epicenter of the crisis -- finance, insurance and real estate -- over the course of their careers.
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Financial Bailout: Who does Frank see at his fundraisers?
By Bill Allison Sep 24, 2008 8:52 p.m.Among Rep. Barney Frank's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: American Bankers Association (wants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to continue paying dividends, despite going bust), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (which bought Bear Stearns), National Association of Realtors (working to "assure a robust secondary mortgage market"), UBS AG (which hopes the bailout will include foreign banks), Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (hopes Congress will "hastily approve" the administration's plan), Credit Union National Association (members are included in any bailout plan), Bank of America (acquired Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial, once the largest mortgage lender in the U.S.), and the Mortgage Bankers Association (opposes efforts to allow bankruptcy judges to alter mortgage terms).
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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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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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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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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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