Blog : Sunlight Foundation

World Bank says protection on the rise

by Bill Allison

investigations

Mar 18, 2009 12:36 pm

The Washington Post reports on a new World Bank study (a summary is here) showing that 17 members of the G20 had enacted measures to limit imports. The Post writes,

The report underscores a "worrying" trend toward protectionism as countries rush to shield their ailing domestic industries during the global economic crisis. It comes one day after Mexico vowed to slap new restrictions on 90 U.S. products. That action is being taken in retaliation against Washington for canceling a program that allowed Mexican truck drivers the right to transport goods across the United States, illustrating the tit-for-tat responses that ...

Expanded Commitment by Omidyar Network to Sunlight

by Ellen Miller Mar 18, 2009 11:09 am

I am thrilled to announce that we will be expanding our collaboration with the Omidyar Network to catalyze greater transparency... View Article

Sleuthing the Stimulus’ bonus provision

by Bill Allison

investigations

Mar 18, 2009 3:20 am

So maybe Dodd's not to blame for the AIG bonus furor. Jane Hamsher uses OpenCongress.org to compare versions of the bill -- Donnie Shaw explains how here. Hamsher concludes:

So -- in the end, all compensation limits only applied to contracts written after February 11, at the specific request of Timothy Geithner, and AIG was able to pay out $286 million in bonuses on Sunday.
It's impossible to know how many of those bonuses would have been covered by Dodd's original language without examining the individual contracts. What is certain, however, is that the loophole regarding "retroactivity" which ...
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BankTracker debuts at Investigative Reporting Workshop

by Bill Allison

investigations

Mar 18, 2009 1:47 am

I've been doing some Webinars over the past few days for reporters to show off some features of SubsidyScope.com for looking at bailout data from Treasury and the FDIC. One of the things I keep telling them is that lots of groups are looking at this data, building tools for parsing and analyzing it, and they should stay tuned.

Today I got to offer an incredibly vivid example of that: the Investigative Reporting Workshop released its BankTracker project, which uses FDIC data to answer the question, "how safe is your bank?" Wendell Cochran is heading up the effort ...

Muckety maps PMA Group giving

by Bill Allison

investigations

Mar 18, 2009 1:13 am

There have been lots of different ways of slicing PMA Group contributions from Congressional Quarterly and the Center for Responsive Politics (see here too). Now Muckety looks at the web of connections of top PMA Group lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti. From CQ's analysis, Muckety begins by noting:

In addition to Magliocchetti, nine of his relatives - two children, his daughter-in-law, his current wife, his ex-wife and his ex-wife's parents, sister and brother-in-law - donated a total of $1.5 million to political campaigns in that nine-year period, according to the analysis.

The map is interactive; click the names to navigate it ...

Don’t mean…

by Bill Allison

investigations

Mar 17, 2009 8:13 pm

to keep picking on Dodd, but he does seem to be in the center of quite a lot of things lately:

While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009 -- which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.
The amendment made it into the final version of the bill, and is law.
Separately, Sen. Dodd was AIG's largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle ...
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Dodd’s tbd fundraising reception

by Bill Allison

investigations

Mar 17, 2009 6:31 pm

Facing what looks like a tougher-than-expected reelection effort, Sen. Christopher Dodd has a fundraiser scheduled for tomorrow evening, March 18, at a location "TBD." (click the link to see the invite) Dodd is asking "hosts" to pony up $10,000 (PACs will be the hosts, and they'll be asked to give $5,000 for the primary and $5,000 for the general election, maxing out in March for an election twenty months away. To be a co-host, a PAC can contribute $5,000, while individuals can get in the door (which door?) for a mere $1,000 ...

Murtha’s pass through earmarks

by Bill Allison

investigations

Mar 17, 2009 3:00 pm

Earmark disclosure isn't going to do any good if members can designate a middle man to take funds, then distribute them to private companies. But that's exactly what the Washington Post says Rep. John Murtha has been doing, and they've got documents to back them up:

A Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two "handlers" close to Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) as it collected nearly $250 million in federal funding through the lawmaker, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and sources familiar with the funding requests. The center then channeled a significant portion ...