Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series... View Article
Continue readingFavor Factory 2008
Thanks to faithful reader Ann Minks for bringing my attention to Seattle Times’ Favor Factory. The Favor Factory offers a... View Article
Continue readingHal Rogers’ Yearly Earmarks
In the House Defense spending bill released last night, Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., sponsored an earmark worth $2 million for U-60 Leak Proof Transmission Dip Pans, an earmark he has backed for four years now. In the past this earmark has been awarded to Phoenix Products, Inc., a small company in McKee, Ky.
As Real Time reported last year, although this company has received more than $10.4 million in earmarks from Rogers, Army officials said at the time, that they have yet to decide if the transmission drip pans should be purchased from the company at all. As in ...
Continue readingTCS releases searchable earmark lists
While most of Washington fixates on the $700 billion bailout package now being debated by the House Finance and Senate Banking Committees (Rep. Frank has added his own version of a bailout to the ones proposed by the administration and Sen. Christopher Dodd), our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense are paying attention to some $600 billion in spending that Rep. David Obey, D-Ohio, concocted in secret, or, as he put it to Bloomberg News, operating "the old fashioned way by brokering agreements in order to get things done and I make no apology for it." Taxpayers has posted searchable ...
Continue readingBill Allison on the Bridge to Nowhere
Sunlight’s Bill Allison was on Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN last night discussing the Bridge to Nowhere and the votes... View Article
Continue readingNo Time to Read the Bill
Noted curmudgeon David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, yesterday issued a disobliging statement towards the cause of transparency.... View Article
Continue readingFinancial Bailout: Who does Dodd see at his fundraisers?
Among Sen. Christopher Dodd's top career donors are employees, their family members and PACs of the following players in the nation's financial meltdown: Citigroup ("written off and lost $53.6 billion through the credit crunch so far, which is more than any other bank or broker,") Bear Stearns ("Bear Stearns's mortgage business, a big driver of profits, has been eviscerated,"), SAC Capital Partners (vehemently denies charge that they helped bring down Bear Stearns), American International Group (saved by an emergency $85 billion rescue), Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (each of which are morphing into bank holding companies ...
Continue readingTCS posts Senate Defense Authorization earmarks
Our friends at Taxpayers inform us that they've just posted...
The complete database of earmarks in the 2009 defense authorization report and bill. The Senate version of the bill currently under debate contains 435 earmarks worth $5.2 billion, a big jump in number from last year's Senate authorization but a decrease in total value.
They posted an analysis and highlights from the bill here.
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Tracking earmarks from Obama and Biden
Taxpayers for Commons Sense rolled out a pair of new databases on earmarks of presidential candidates, this time covering Sen. Barack Obama's requests from 2006 to 2008, and his funded earmarks for 2008. The databases are online here.
A list of the earmarks Sen. Joe Biden requested for fiscal year 2009 is available here. Robert Bluey at Red State is calling on Biden to disclose all his earmark requests--can't argue with that. But for those who want to dig around in the press release archives of his site, there are plenty of releases like this one from prior ...
Continue readingTCS, Post examine Palin’s pursuit of earmarks
The most interesting story on Alaska Gov. and Republican nominee for Vice President Sarah Palin is the Washington Post's report that, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin "employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents." Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense provided the earmark analysis. Note who Palin hired:
As mayor of Wasilla, however, Palin oversaw the hiring of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, an Anchorage-based law firm with close ties to Alaska's most senior Republicans: Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July ...Continue reading
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