Tag Archive: citp

Visible Discussion of the Invisible Hand

by John Wonderlich Jun 11, 2008 4:38 pm

After a few posts on the Open House Project blog, the conversation about the CITP paper “Government Data and the... View Article

Building a Compendium of Earmark Stories

by Bill Allison Jun 9, 2008 1:42 pm

Lizzie Nolan, our communications assistant extraordinaire, has been compiling links of stories generated by APME's earmark project. I'm going to toss a few additional links her way, but if we're missing some, feel free to leave them in the comments section and we'll add them.

Earmarks Unrelated to Campaign Contributions, Earmark Recipients Claim

by Bill Allison Jun 9, 2008 11:47 am

In the Denver Post, Anne C. Mulkern reports on the earmarks of Rep. Doug Lamborn and finds one of those "only in Washington" wordings that make the head spin:

Lamborn made seven requests for projects tied to specific companies. Of those, five were to businesses whose political action committees had given him campaign contributions. Officials with two of the companies, Goodrich Corp. and Aeroflex Inc., said there's no connection between their contributions and their requests for earmarks. The political action committees support lawmakers who back defense spending, both said. The committee wants to help lawmakers who are the most responsive to their business needs, said Thomas Bezas, Aeroflex's vice president of government and trade. "We want to do everything we can to make sure they stay in office," Bezas said. "The longer they stay in office, the more it benefits our company."

So they make contributions to a member who's most responsive to their business needs, who supports defense spending, but their business needs have nothing to do with earmarks, and awarding defense earmarks is unrelated to defense spending?

APME, Member Papers Turn Reporters Loose on Earmarks

by Bill Allison Jun 9, 2008 12:15 am

So what happens when reporters around the country investigate earmarks, digging into resources like the exhaustive compendium of fiscal year 2008 earmarks put out by Taxpayers for Common Sense and the wealth of influence data that the Center for Responsive Politics assembles on Open Secrets, and then ask members of Congress about what they've found? Well, they get incredibly revealing defenses of how earmarks work, like this one from Rep. Tim Holden that was reported by the Republican Herald of Pottsville, Pa:

“People you do business with contribute to your campaign,” Holden said in a phone interview Friday. “This was a constituent of mine who was having trouble doing business with the Pentagon, having trouble getting through the bureaucracy.”

So are some members of Congress in business with their earmark recipients, exchanging help getting through the bureaucracies for campaign cash? That's what a remarkable project that the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Sunlight Foundation, scores of reporters at dozens of newspapers tried to find out.