Our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics have been doing yeoman's work compiling lists of the politicians who've received the most money over the years from political action committees and employees and their family members of the big financial colossi that are seeking (or having imposed on them) federal help to stave off collapse. Their Lehman Brothers list is here while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are ">here.
To see who in Congress invested in these operations, CRP has compiled an analysis of Freddie and Fannie holdings here; you can also dig into search results for Lehman ...
Continue readingTracking 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 readingDue diligence in the Biden family lawsuit
In a comment to this post pointing to some resources for getting acquainted with the Republican vice presidential pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, I noted this Washington Post story on a lawsuit involving Robert Hunter Biden, the son of the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, James Biden, the Senator's brother, and plaintiff Anthony Lotito, who is the former business partner of the two non-elected Bidens in a deal that didn't work out. Both sides charge one another with cheating; hence the lawsuit. It turns out the New York State Supreme Court (where the case ...
Continue readingTracking Gov. Palin
Apparently, Republican presidential nominee John McCain has selected Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate. For those looking for more information, her 2007 state personal financial disclosure form is online here (via the Center for Public Integrity). Via the excellent National Institute on Money in State Politics, here's campaign finance information from her unsuccessful 2002 race for Lieutenant Governor, her 2006 primary campaign for governor, and her 2006 general election campaign for governor. I'll update with more links as I come across them. I'm not going to dig into these myself today, but others should ...
Continue readingWashington Post: Biden’s Son Lobbied Obama’s Staff for Earmarks
The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for President, requested $3.4 million in congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbying firm that employs the son of running mate Joe Biden. Hunter Biden, who's a registered lobbyist (see here and here for his clients), apparently lobbied Obama's Senate office directly:
Campaign spokesman David Wade also said Hunter Biden never appealed directly to Obama."Hunter Biden met with the Obama Senate office, not with Senator Obama," Wade said.
Read the whole thing. An aside: Nice to see the Washington Post use information from both Taxpayers for ...
Continue readingTCS centralizes earmark data
Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have collected, in one handy spot, all of their Fiscal 2009 earmark data and trenchant analyses of same. So far, the Senate (which has much laxer earmark disclosure rules) has passed more bills than the House -- we saw the same pattern last year as well, though traditionally the House had run ahead of the Senate. All the files are available as downloadable spread sheets.
Continue readingSenate Milcon earmark file available from TCS
Taxpayers for Common Sense has now posted a downloadable spreadsheet listing all earmarks from the S. 3301, the Senate Military Construction appropriations act.
Taxpayers writes,
In addition to the usual pork for fitness centers and chapels, the bills contained something unusual: Two earmarks worth $240 million for the Missile Defense Agency's European adventure.
I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff worth digging into. For more info from Taxpayers on earmarks, see here.
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 readingTCS makes Milcon letters available
Last Friday, Taxpayers for Common Sense updates us on where the House is on the Appropriations process (a few weeks back the process could best be described as "nyah nyah nyah," and "I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,", to use the parliamentary terms favored by most members of Congress).
In that update, they posted a link to their downloadable database of earmarks from the House version of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill, they've also put the request letters online.
(This is what happens when you ...
Continue readingSubprime 6, 60…well, at least 13…
Glenn Reynolds notes that the Politico reports that Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, called for a wider investigation than the one ongoing into the burgeoning Countrywide preferential loan scandal. Politico notes that, "no other Republican leader jumped on Hensarling's bandwagon Monday, and aides said they were reluctant to push forward with a probe because they didn't know what it might reveal," prompting Reynolds to write, "That's because it'll probably turn out to be more like the subprime sixty" (as opposed to the six figures currently implicated).
Sadly, personal financial disclosure forms do not require members to disclose ...
Continue reading
59063
