Tag Archive: Earmarks

Closing the Earmark Disclosure Loopholes

by Bill Allison May 14, 2009 1:59 pm

It won’t save our intrepid band of earmark hunters from staying up all night looking for earmark requests on member... View Article

Listing “Earmarks” in Lobbying Disclosures

by Paul Blumenthal May 13, 2009 5:03 pm

Most lobbyists seeking earmarks for clients are likely trying to operate slightly on the sly. At least you’d think. That’s... View Article

Earmark request disclosures: do deadlines make a difference?

by Bill Allison

investigations

May 13, 2009 4:26 pm

Adam Hughes of OMB Watch asks a trenchant question in response to a report by Jackie Kucinich in Roll Call. Kucinich notes that Rep. James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation Committee, which will be overseeing the massive transportation reauthorization bill (the last one, as Taxpayers for Common Sense's Steve Ellis tells Roll Call, contained earmarks for the bridges to nowhere), will have less stringent earmark disclosure rules than the House Appropriations Committee. The latter, chaired by Rep. David Obey, requires members post their earmark requests online before they submit them to the committee. Oberstar, by contrast "set a ...

2 Easy Wins for your Congressional Website

by Clay Johnson

technology

May 13, 2009 1:49 pm

2 Easy wins for your Congressional Website

Lots of members of congress are busily updating their website. It seems these days that we're getting lots of brilliantly designed congressional websites as the innovation in design from the campaigns trickles ever so slowly into government.

If you're helping to build your Member of Congress' website, I'd like to ask you to do two things:

Earmarks Crash Computer, Chairman Accepts Less Transparency

by Paul Blumenthal May 13, 2009 10:26 am

I don’t know what amuses me most, that this happens at all or that this happens every year. The computer... View Article

Roll Call makes PMA Group articles available online

by Bill Allison

investigations

May 4, 2009 4:31 pm

In conjunction with the appearance of Paul Singer on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning (his bit starts about 1:03:30 in on the video), Roll Call has put online its amazing body of work tracking the PMA Group, the defunct lobbying firm under federal investigation that, along with its clients, provided oodles of campaign cash to more than 100 members of the House while securing hundreds of millions in earmarks for its clients.

Of all the stories there, this one, from March 17, still strikes me as the most interesting:

...top PMA officials also had financial stakes in ...

The Rule of Rules

by Paul Blumenthal Apr 24, 2009 1:16 pm

If you’ve been following the Real Time Investigations hunt for House lawmaker earmark disclosures you probably already know that many... View Article

Political Party Time: More than 170 fundraisers for appropriators (already!) in 2009

by Bill Allison

investigations

Apr 23, 2009 9:04 pm

We're just past the end of the first quarter of the current election cycle (with seven more to go before it's all over), but members of the Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate have already had <a href="http://blog.politicalpartytime.org/2009/04/23/more-than-170-parties-with-appropriators/">more than 170 fundraisers</a>, according to my colleague Nancy Watzman.

A few thoughts: Earmark season (why do I imagine a lobbyist dressed up like Elmer Fudd?) comes early in the year--requests had to be submitted to members by April 3 in the House; for the Senate they'll start ...