Ben Goad reports for the Press Enterprise that Rep. Jerry Lewis, former chair and now ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, earmarked $96 million for firms represented by Innovative Federal Strategies, which was once under federal investigation:
Inland Rep. Jerry Lewis is requesting more than $96 million in federal earmarks for clients of Washington lobbyists whose dealings with the veteran lawmaker were part of a criminal investigation launched three years ago.Would-be recipients of the earmarks, including Inland cities, agencies, hospitals and defense contractors with local branches, paid more than $1.3 million to the firm -- more than a third ...
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Links to Senate earmark disclosure requests in a database
They labeled them as funding priorities, programs and project requests, investments in their states and, in just one case, earmarks. They posted image files that can't be cut and pasted, tables, single files with every item or dozens of files for each individual item. Still, 96 members of the Senate have, for the very first time, posted their earmark requests for appropriations bills online"and you can find all the links to those disclosures here.
Unlike the House, which has required members to disclose the name and address of the beneficiaries of all their earmarks since 2007, rules adopted ...
Continue readingYou can’t go far…
...without running into Chinese dominance in some form of production and Goldman Sachs. It's after midnight, so I'm researching (what else) some earmarks. I came across a company, Molycorp Minerals, that might get $3 million from taxpayers to develop metal separation techniques in the U.S. so that we're not dependent on the Chinese for magnetic ores. The taxpayer money "will be leveraged against more than $20 million in private capital to accelerate the engineering and scale of this work."
Leveraged struck me as an odd word choice -- "added" would be more appropriate. In any case, I ...
Continue readingJournal-Gazette finds Lugar earmark disclosures
Sylvia A. Smith, finds, to the best of my knowledge, the first online disclosure of earmark requests by a member of the Senate: Sen. Richard Lugar:
WASHINGTON " Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has asked Congress to set aside $3.5 million to help Navistar develop a hybrid Humvee at the truck company's Fort Wayne plant.The request is one of 31 he submitted to the Appropriations Committee as it begins weighing the lawmakers' bids for pet projects in their states.
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., has said he will not request money for projects he singles out. The process, often called ...
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Whither stimulus contracts?
The Washington Post's Kimberly Kindy reports that the Dept. of Energy is awarding stimulus funds to companies specializing in nuclear clean-ups that have a mixed track record:
A private company was being paid $300 million by the federal government to clean up radioactive waste at two abandoned Cold War plants in Tennessee when an ironworker crashed through a rotted floor. That prompted a major safety review, which ended up forcing work to an abrupt halt, and the project was shut down for months. The delay and a host of other problems caused cost estimates to rise, eventually hitting $781 ...Continue reading
Requirements matter: Just 83 members disclosed transportation earmark requests
Apparently, deadlines do matter. Just 83 House members disclosed their earmark requests for the upcoming transportation reauthorization bill (that last version, SAFETEA-LU, was loaded with Prairie Parkway and Bridge to Nowhere--both of which were earmarks) on the same day that they submitted them to the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.
Rep. James Oberstar, chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, didn't require members to disclose their earmark requests online in the same way that the House Appropriations Committee does. The latter requires members to post all their earmark requests online before they submit them to the committee for consideration -- at least ...
Continue readingWhere to find stimulus contracts
A company that offers outsourcing services to federal and state governments got a a contract award for $2.8 million in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- the stimulus -- to set up call centers for the FCC's digital transition effort; they advertised for jobs paying $16.38 an hour in Buffalo, N.Y. The Dept. of Health and Human Services spent $326,000 in stimulus funds to purchase and install 98 workstations (and an option to store them until needed at a cost of $35 per pallet); a Midland, MI-based company, Space, Inc., got the sale. And ...
Continue readingGM, Chrysler to cut 3,000 campaign contributors
...er...dealers:
General Motors Corp and Chrysler aim to drop as many as 3,000 U.S. dealers and are expected to begin sending notifications as early as Thursday, three people briefed on the still developing plans said.GM, facing a U.S. government-imposed deadline of June 1 to restructure or file for bankruptcy, is expected to send termination notices to up to 2,000 dealers -- a third of its roughly 6,000 U.S. dealers, the sources told Reuters.
Chrysler, which filed for bankruptcy on April 30, will also tell up to 1,000 of its 3,189 U ...
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Earmark request disclosures: do deadlines make a difference?
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 ...
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