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Requirements matter: Just 83 members disclosed transportation earmark requests
By Bill Allison May 15, 2009 6:48 p.m.Apparently, deadlines do matter. Just 83 House members disclosed their earmark requests for the upcoming transportation reauthorization bill (that last version, SAFETEA-LU, was loaded with Prairie Parkway and Bridge to Nowhere--both of which were earmarks) on the same day that they submitted them to the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.
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Where to find stimulus contracts
By Bill Allison May 14, 2009 6:02 p.m.A company that offers outsourcing services to federal and state governments got a a contract award for $2.8 million in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- the stimulus -- to set up call centers for the FCC's digital transition effort; they advertised for jobs paying $16.38 an hour in Buffalo, N.Y. The Dept. of Health and Human Services spent $326,000 in stimulus funds to purchase and install 98 workstations (and an option to store them until needed at a cost of $35 per pallet); a Midland, MI-based company, Space, Inc., got the sale. And the General Services Administration used stimulus funds to hire a pair of Northern Virginia contractors to help oversee the hiring of contractors bidding for both stimulus and non-stimulus work.
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GM, Chrysler to cut 3,000 campaign contributors
By Bill Allison May 13, 2009 10:47 p.m....er...dealers:
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Earmark request disclosures: do deadlines make a difference?
By Bill Allison May 13, 2009 4:26 p.m.Adam Hughes of OMB Watch asks a trenchant question in response to a report by Jackie Kucinich in Roll Call. Kucinich notes that Rep. James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, which will be overseeing the massive transportation reauthorization bill (the last one, as Taxpayers for Common Sense's Steve Ellis tells Roll Call, contained earmarks for the bridges to nowhere), will have less stringent earmark disclosure rules than the House Appropriations Committee. The latter, chaired by Rep. David Obey, requires members post their earmark requests online before they submit them to the committee. Oberstar, by contrast "set a May 14 deadline for Members to submit requests and encouraged them to post the requests on their Web sites, but he stopped short of setting a mandatory deadline," according to Roll Call. The committee's communications director, Jim Bernard, told Roll Call "We are not giving them a hard deadline [or stipulating] we won't consider them until they are posted. Our style is bit different than Mr. Obey's, but our results will be the same." Hughes asks: Sorry - quick follow-up Mr. Bernard. How exactly is not requiring earmark requests to be disclosed under the transportation reauthorization the same as requiring earmark requests to be disclosed in appropriations bills?
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Cram down look ups, cont. cont....
By Bill Allison May 13, 2009 3:32 p.m.For more detail on what this is, see here. While this is still partially that, it's also turning into something else. As I noted, this is raw research, not a finished product--results to come. One thing I'm finding is that looking closely at slices of data from Party Time leads in all kinds of directions...
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Cram down look ups, cont.
By Bill Allison May 7, 2009 8:07 p.m.More research (see here for details on what this research is. I'm trying to see if there was a flurry of fundraising around the vote on the Durbin amendment to the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009.
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Looking up cram down opponents in Party Time
By Bill Allison May 6, 2009 10:05 p.m.This post is all research and no results -- that'll come later. I wanted to take a look at a vote my colleague Paul Blumenthal referred to with the title (quoting Sen. Richard Durbin) "They own the place." The "they" in question are financial sector firms, the place is Congress; at issue is a bill, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 -- or rather, an amendment to that bill -- that was voted down by a 51-45 margin.
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Always amazes me...
By Bill Allison May 5, 2009 5:18 p.m.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:
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Roll Call makes PMA Group articles available online
By Bill Allison May 4, 2009 4:31 p.m.In conjunction with the appearance of Paul Singer on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning (his bit starts about 1:03:30 in on the video), Roll Call has put online its amazing body of work tracking the PMA Group, the defunct lobbying firm under federal investigation that, along with its clients, provided oodles of campaign cash to more than 100 members of the House while securing hundreds of millions in earmarks for its clients.
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Congress' family business, Chris Dodd edition
By Bill Allison May 4, 2009 4:02 p.m.Edmund H. Mahony and Jon Lender of the the Hartford Courant report on Sen. Christopher Dodd's wife:
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Still waiting for FOIA reforms to surface
By Bill Allison Apr 27, 2009 2:49 p.m.Roger Strother writes at OMB Watch's Fine Print blog about the latest noise coming out of the Office of Information Policy about the "sea change in the way transparency is viewed across the government." That sea change is supposed to lift a lot of FOIA requests that, unlike boats, seem to sink the bottom with incredible rapidity, then burrow down into the muck at the bottom. We've found that the only way to surface those FOIA requests is the application of vigorous effort (including regularly calling FOIA officers to make sure they haven't forgotten us). Waiting--for months or years at a time--is also a necessary skill to master. In any case, Roger notes:
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Hill: No campaign cash for Visclosky from former PMA Group clients
By Bill Allison Apr 16, 2009 9:12 p.m.On April 3rd, we noted that Rep. Pete Visclosky, one of the most prolific recipients of campaign cash from and earmarker of federal dollars to PMA Group clients, had requested no earmarks--not a single one--for former clients of the firm for fiscal year FY 2010. Oddly enough, employees and PACs of former PMA Group clients donated nothing to Visclosky's reelection campaign in the first quarter of 2009, according to Roxana Tiron of the Hill.
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Who's manning the TARP desk?
By Anupama Narayanswamy Apr 10, 2009 5:54 p.m.Less than half a dozen people are responsible for making the final decisions about which banks get part of the $700 billion in bailout money available through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to Department of Treasury officials. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Sunlight Foundation in January for the members of the TARP Investment Committee, a FOIA officer recently responded with just four names, including Assistant Secretary, Neel Kashkari; Chief Investment Officer, James Lambright; Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, Karthik Ramanathan and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, Ralph Monaco, all holdovers from the Bush administration.
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Pro Publica posts executive branch financial disclosures
By Bill Allison Apr 8, 2009 9:08 p.m.Available here, thanks to our friends at Pro Publica. A very handy tool. The Office of Government Ethics should really post these online, but until they do, Pro Publica is your best source.
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