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 ...
Continue readingFormer PMA Group Clients Get Defense Earmarks from Murtha for 2010
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., has requested defense related funding for five companies that hired the PMA Group last year, according to a review of the earmark requests released on the Congressman's website. Murtha has requested a total of $23.8 million to be directed to these companies.
You can search for the clients here (links to the search pages don't work).
And here's a breakdown for each of the five companies.
Advanced Acoustic Concepts - $5,000,000
Argon ST - $8,000,000
MTS Technologies - $5,000,000
Planning Systems Inc. - $2,300,000
QTL Bio Defense Systems ...
Continue readingMurtha’s PMA Group Connections
Half a dozen firms that Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., has sponsored earmarks for in the current defense appropriations bill hired PMA Group, the Washington based defense lobbying firm in 2008. Last night ABC news reported that the FBI raided PMA Group offices in November.
Earlier this year federal investigators raided another company with ties to Murtha, Kuchera Industries, a company that has never hired PMA Group but has received several earmarks from Murtha in the past years. In the 2008 election cycle Kuchera's employees have given $11,500 to Murtha's campaign.
In ...
Continue readingNorth Carolina Businessman Pays for Campaign Ads
In late July this year, two North Carolina state legislators and a pharmaceutical industry executive set up a political non-profit to run ads focusing on the present financial crisis ahead of the November election. The nonprofit has spent more than $600,000 to produce the ads, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Real Time has been following various ads using our new "Follow the 527s" widget, available on the right side of the site.
The nonprofit, RightChange.com, Inc., was set up by a pair Republican lawmakers, state Sen. Fletcher Hartsell ...
Continue readingFARAdb Reveals Who Lobbyists Meet to Influence Congress
Who’s Paying for Election Ads? Follow the 527 Widget…
The 30-second ad is typical fare for a campaign: the taxing and spending of a candidate, in this case former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., is pilloried. Her Republican opponent, Sen. John Sununu, facing a tough race, did not pay for the ad out of his own campaign funds. Instead, FEC filings show, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ponied up the $750,000 to attack Shaheen.
Political nonprofits are playing a bigger role than ever in election 2008, and Real Time (with assistance from Sunlight Labs) is making it easy to find the latest information on ads run by ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: A Look at Gregg and Blunt
Other ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: Lobbyists’ Donations to House Financial Services Committee
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.
Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., received the most, totaling $63,500. Since Jan. 2008, Frank has received at least $55,000 from lobbyists working for influential Washington lobbying firm DLA Piper and their PAC. During that time DLA Piper ...
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: Lobbyists’ Donations to Senate Banking Members
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.
Lobbyists and company political action committees working on behalf of eight companies that have been involved in Wall Street's financial turmoil have made donations to 15 of the 20 Senators on the committee. (The eight investment companies included here are American International Group, Bears Stearns, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P ...
Continue readingHal Rogers’ Yearly Earmarks
In the House Defense spending bill released last night, Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., sponsored an earmark worth $2 million for U-60 Leak Proof Transmission Dip Pans, an earmark he has backed for four years now. In the past this earmark has been awarded to Phoenix Products, Inc., a small company in McKee, Ky.
As Real Time reported last year, although this company has received more than $10.4 million in earmarks from Rogers, Army officials said at the time, that they have yet to decide if the transmission drip pans should be purchased from the company at all. As in ...
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