The Center for Public Integrity has analyzed 22,000 Pentagon travel disclosures -- filed when an outside party pays for a trip taken by Department of Defense personnel. The finding that jumped out at both Anu and me:
The medical industry paid for more travel than any other single interest over $10 million for some 8,700 trips, or about 40 percent of all outside sponsored travel. Among the targets: military pharmacists, doctors, and others who administer the Pentagon's $6 billion-plus annual budget for prescription drugs
I would have expected Defense contractors to be number one. I hope CPI follows ...
Continue readingLunchtime Link Round-Up
Some open government/transparency posts from around the web: The Food and Drug Administration, in conjunction with their Transparency Task Force,... View Article
Continue readingMurtha’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 readingWhither stimulus contracts?
The Washington Post's Kimberly Kindy reports that the Dept. of Energy is awarding stimulus funds to companies specializing in nuclear clean-ups that have a mixed track record:
A private company was being paid $300 million by the federal government to clean up radioactive waste at two abandoned Cold War plants in Tennessee when an ironworker crashed through a rotted floor. That prompted a major safety review, which ended up forcing work to an abrupt halt, and the project was shut down for months. The delay and a host of other problems caused cost estimates to rise, eventually hitting $781 ...Continue reading
New Subcommittee to Tackle Contracting Fraud, Waste
Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Chair Joe Lieberman just sent out a release announcing the creation of a new... View Article
Continue readingCunningham Figure’s Revelations May Imperil Other Officials
The chief witness in the investigation into former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham may have spilled the goods on more lawmakers... View Article
Continue readingA long winding partially underwater earmarked road?
Commenter Archie Mead points out something I didn't know about the discrepancy between Rep. Neil Abercrombie's description of an earmark and the description of what I believe is the same earmark in the House Appropriations Committee report:
Even with the name Abercrombie to connect the two entries, it's still very vague. Saddle Road, which connects the harbor to the inland Pohakuloa Training Area, location of war games for Iraq-bound troops and Stryker tanks, is located on the Big Island, while Schofield Barracks is located on Oahu, another island.
I doubt that Saddle Road will be running underwater ...
Continue readingFedSpending.org updated
Our friend Adam Hughes of OMB Watch writes:
We released new data on FedSpending.org yesterday. We've now got a complete FY 2007 year for contracts, the first quarter of FY 2008, and a partial second quarter (everything for the second quarter except DoD, which isn't very much). There is also updated assistance data through the third quarter of FY 2007. Here's the release we sent out yesterday.
Adam adds: "We're planning another data update for the end of this year."
Continue readingRevolving Door Study Finds Pentagon Contractors at the Turnstiles
Via IEC Journal comes word of this Government Accountability Office report written up in this Government Executive article by Elizabeth Newell on the post-employment trends of 400 top former Defense Department officials -- all of whom were subject to a one-year ban on lobbying their old colleagues. Newell offers this staggering finding:
Approximately 65 percent of those former officials were employed by one of seven contractors: Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC); Northrop Grumman Corp.; Lockheed Martin Corp.; Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.; L3 Communications Holding Inc.; General Dynamics and Raytheon Co. All but one of those companies, Booz Allen Hamilton, ranked in the top 10 of Government Executive's Top 200 Contractors list in 2007. Booz Allen Hamilton was 24th on that list.USASpending.gov, maintained by Office of Management and Budget, ranks all of those seven contractors in their top 20 for 2007. Newell quotes Cristina Chaplain, the report's author, as saying, "Our results indicate that defense contractors may employ a substantial number of former DOD officials on assignments related to their former DOD agencies or their direct responsibilities." Continue reading
Tidbits from trainings
Lately I've been doing a lot of traveling, training reporters on using some of the campaign finance resources that Sunlight supports, and doing a lot of research in the process. I've come across some interesting stuff along the way, including this General Dynamics statement on their political contributions:
General Dynamics participates in the U.S. political process when it is in the best interests of its shareholders, businesses and employees to do so. Participation in this process ensures that the company's interests as a leading member of the defense and aerospace industries, as well as a large ...Continue reading
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