Ben Goad reports for the Press Enterprise that Rep. Jerry Lewis, former chair and now ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, earmarked $96 million for firms represented by Innovative Federal Strategies, which was once under federal investigation:
Inland Rep. Jerry Lewis is requesting more than $96 million in federal earmarks for clients of Washington lobbyists whose dealings with the veteran lawmaker were part of a criminal investigation launched three years ago.Would-be recipients of the earmarks, including Inland cities, agencies, hospitals and defense contractors with local branches, paid more than $1.3 million to the firm -- more than a third ...
Continue reading
Weekly Media Roundup – May 22, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:... View Article
Continue readingLinks to Senate earmark disclosure requests in a database
They labeled them as funding priorities, programs and project requests, investments in their states and, in just one case, earmarks. They posted image files that can't be cut and pasted, tables, single files with every item or dozens of files for each individual item. Still, 96 members of the Senate have, for the very first time, posted their earmark requests for appropriations bills online"and you can find all the links to those disclosures here.
Unlike the House, which has required members to disclose the name and address of the beneficiaries of all their earmarks since 2007, rules adopted ...
Continue readingYou can’t go far…
...without running into Chinese dominance in some form of production and Goldman Sachs. It's after midnight, so I'm researching (what else) some earmarks. I came across a company, Molycorp Minerals, that might get $3 million from taxpayers to develop metal separation techniques in the U.S. so that we're not dependent on the Chinese for magnetic ores. The taxpayer money "will be leveraged against more than $20 million in private capital to accelerate the engineering and scale of this work."
Leveraged struck me as an odd word choice -- "added" would be more appropriate. In any case, I ...
Continue readingUpdating House transportation reauthorization database…
...with this requests from Rep. Tom Perriello. Worth taking a look at -- I like the way he uses Google maps along with the requests:
Here's the description:
Project name: Smith River Trails
Continue design and construction of Smith River Trail system east of Mulberry Creek to new Smith River Sports Complex.
Requested amount: $572,400
Continue readingNew Mexico Independent asks for help hunting earmarks
The New Mexico Independent is asking readers to delve into the earmark requests of Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, and comment on anything interesting they find. This is what's really important -- while the hide-and-go-seek disclosure methods of Congress make for an amusing diversion, it's the substance of the disclosures should command our attention.
So I'm happy to chip in the first thing I noticed: How about the first earmark disclosed here, to a company called Advatech Pacific. TPM Muckraker noted that the company's employees contributed to PAC run by Rep. Jerry Lewis' stepdaughter:
The group ...Continue reading
Pressure building on Murtha?
Justin Rood reports on the ABC News Investigative blog on the several different investigations of Rep. John Murtha, the defunct PMA Group which funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to Murtha from its PAC, employees and its clients, many of which were the beneficiaries of Murtha earmarks. Rood notes that these investigations are all distinct inquiries:
The federal probes do not appear to be directly connected or controlled by a single office, agency or prosecutor, but instead involve various combinations including the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the Defense Criminal Investigation Service, the ...Continue reading
Journal-Gazette finds Lugar earmark disclosures
Sylvia A. Smith, finds, to the best of my knowledge, the first online disclosure of earmark requests by a member of the Senate: Sen. Richard Lugar:
WASHINGTON " Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has asked Congress to set aside $3.5 million to help Navistar develop a hybrid Humvee at the truck company's Fort Wayne plant.The request is one of 31 he submitted to the Appropriations Committee as it begins weighing the lawmakers' bids for pet projects in their states.
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., has said he will not request money for projects he singles out. The process, often called ...
Continue reading
More transportation reauthorization earmark requests
A couple of staffers have emailed links to postings that their members have put online; I've updated our little Dabble database of earmark requests (I love Dabble, by the way -- fast becoming one of my favorite tools). So I've added requests for Rep. Zack Space and for Rep. Joe Wilson.
I guess we'll continue to update the database, at a much slower rate, throughout the week, but as with our previous efforts in this area, I'd much rather be looking at actual earmark requests than criticizing the process of posting them online.
I note, for example ...
Continue readingRequirements matter: Just 83 members disclosed transportation earmark requests
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.
Rep. James Oberstar, chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, didn't require members to disclose their earmark requests online in the same way that the House Appropriations Committee does. The latter requires members to post all their earmark requests online before they submit them to the committee for consideration -- at least ...
Continue reading
59063
