Tory Newmyer reports in Roll Call:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) plans to offer as early as Wednesday afternoon a privileged resolution to force the ethics committee to disclose whether it is investigating senior Democratic appropriators' ties to the PMA Group, Democratic sources say.Hoyer's move follows eight attempts by Republican anti-earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) to jump-start a probe and aims to pre-empt Flake's ninth stab at the issue, which was due for a vote on Thursday. It marks a sharp break from Democratic leaders' previous approach to the burgeoning controversy involving the now-defunct lobbying ...
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Murtha’s earmark recipients: How hands off (or on) is he?
Paul Singer reports in Roll Call on a tangled story that apparently involves the undisclosed hand of Rep. John Murtha but certainly involves his brother Kit (a retired lobbyist) and his former lobbying firm, five different companies doing business, directly or indirectly, with Defense (including one under federal indictment and one that allegedly wanted to outsource earmarked defense work to "China or someplace"), an earmark from the pre-disclosure era, some technical corrections added to the Tsunami relief bill that moved the funds for that earmark from one recipient to another (because the original recipient allegedly wanted to do the work ...
Continue readingSpeaker Pelosi Announces New Expense Disclosure Policy
Speaker Pelosi has just announced a new level of disclosure for official expenditures from the offices of House Representatives, as... View Article
Continue readingVisclosky temporarily relinquishes reins of subcommittee
Rep. Peter Visclosky, whose office has been subpoenaed for documents related to clients of the defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, has temporarily stepped down as chair of the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee. Lindsay Renick Mayer reports on Visclosky's woes, his top donors, and those of his replacement, Ed Pastor, who has taken less than a tenth as much in contributions from PMA Group and its clients (of course, I'm referring to contributions from their employees, family members and political action committees).
Continue readingTransportation earmark request update
We haven't been updating the database of House Transportation Reauthorization earmark requests beyond what we found the first night. Eventually I'll find the time to update this, but here's some from Rep. Barron Hill that were passed on to me in a comment to an earlier post. They were posted the morning of May 15, which was after we did our searches.
I kind of like the Google map from the comment:
View Baron Hill's Monroe County Earmarks in a larger map
Right now though I'm following other things more intensively, particularly stimulus spending. More ...
Continue readingSubpoenaed Congressman Steps Down From Panel Post
The offices of Indiana Rep. Pete Visclosky were subpoenaed last week regarding his efforts to secure earmarks for the PMA... View Article
Continue readingInvestment Ratings Tank for Home Loan Banks
They hold $1.3 trillion in assets and, chances are, you've never heard of them.
The Federal Home Loan Banks, or FHLBs, were created during the Depression, and are meant to ensure that if the economy were to tank, commercial banks would still have the money to issue home loans. A cooperative of 12 regional banks, the system works like this: banks, thrifts, credit unions and insurers (more than 8,100 across the country) become members and put up collateral; the FHLBs borrow money and lend it to th
em at a discount.
So where does the subsidy come ...
Continue readingNew Data on Data.gov
Good news and Bad news from Data.gov
Looks like Data.gov has added a whole bunch of new feeds, they're up from 47 to 87 in two weeks, not a bad start. Most of the new feeds come from the IRS, they look to be interesting data: 990 forms from 501(c)(3-9) organizations.
That's the good news.
The bad news? It's pretty bad so hold on to your britches.
Continue readingRedesigning the Government: U.S. Supreme Court
President Obama's nomination of Judge Sotomayor has brought increased attention to the U.S. Supreme Court. It also has led us to reexamine the Court's web site, which is long overdue for an overhaul. In its current form, its web design is suggestive of the 1990s, and its functionality is similarly dated.
The Justices appear to agree. They've recently ask Congress for money to move control of the site in-house, taking over responsibility from the GPO. This move would allow them, in their words, to "better control and manage the web site and to be able to expand the data and services provided by the site more efficiently."
Continue readingFDA Creates Transparency Task Force
Following up on President Obama’s January 21 memo requiring agencies to promote transparency and openness, the Food and Drug Administration... View Article
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