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 readingTracking Obama’s earmarks
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., steered earmarks to some organizations with a board member who is also serving as a top bundler to his presidential campaign, according to the Next Right. This raises what for me is one of the primary questions about earmarks in general. Members of Congress say they know the needs of their states (or districts, in the case of House members). Whence comes this in-depth knowledge? Do they hear about needs from constituents, from their own personal observations, or do insiders--lobbyists, campaign contributors and others--educate them? Because the process is so opaque, in most cases we simply ...
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 readingTCS releases Senate Transportaion & HUD earmark database
Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have analyzed, and compiled in a downloadable database available at the link, the earmarks from S. 3261, the Senate Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. They note,
The FY09 Senate appropriations bill providing money for transportation and Housing and Urban Development projects contains 609 earmarks worth more than $954 million (click here for the database). This represents a cut of more than one-quarter in the value of earmarks from the Senate-passed bill for FY08 and a significant reduction in the overall number of earmarks. The FY08 Senate bill contained 822 earmarks ...Continue reading
Saddle Road funding update
In this post and this post, we looked at an earmark Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, secured for the Saddle Road project on Big Island. I sent a query along to Dave Gedeon, the project manager for the Central Federal Lands Highway Division of the Federal Highway Administration, asking how the project was funded--whether these were military, Dept. of Transportation, or state funds, and which agency was managing the project. He was kind enough to respond and clarify:
Initial construction of Saddle Road began with the section that passes through the Department of the Army's Pohakuloa Training Area; funding for ...Continue reading
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