Looking up cram down opponents in Party Time
This post is all research and no results -- that'll come later. I wanted to take a look at a vote my colleague Paul Blumenthal referred to with the title (quoting Sen. Richard Durbin) "They own the place." The "they" in question are financial sector firms, the place is Congress; at issue is a bill, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 -- or rather, an amendment to that bill -- that was voted down by a 51-45 margin.
The Durbin amendment, also known as the cram down bill, would have removed the mortgage exemption from bankruptcy proceedings, allowing bankruptcy ...
Continue readingAlways amazes me…
what you can find in lobbying disclosure data. I was looking for something else when I came across this filing. TIG Insurance has hired the Normandy Group to "[a]ddress non-payment by Government of Argentina of fees owed to TIG Insurance Company. Seek to put restrictive language in Foreign Operations Appropriations Bills re: US assistance to Argentina." The fees paid are less than $5,000, so it doesn't seem like a lot of lobbying went on, but the list of lobbyists has a few revolvers on it:
I guess that's one way to get a bill paid...
Continue readingRoll Call makes PMA Group articles available online
In conjunction with the appearance of Paul Singer on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning (his bit starts about 1:03:30 in on the video), Roll Call has put online its amazing body of work tracking the PMA Group, the defunct lobbying firm under federal investigation that, along with its clients, provided oodles of campaign cash to more than 100 members of the House while securing hundreds of millions in earmarks for its clients.
Of all the stories there, this one, from March 17, still strikes me as the most interesting:
...top PMA officials also had financial stakes in ...Continue reading
Congress’ family business, Chris Dodd edition
Edmund H. Mahony and Jon Lender of the the Hartford Courant report on Sen. Christopher Dodd's wife:
Since the low-profile family wedding on a rise above the Connecticut River in 1999, Jackie M. Clegg Dodd's income has quadrupled to the mid-six-figure range. All of the increase is due to her appointment as a highly compensated member of multiple corporate boards of directors.Clegg Dodd, a former legislative aide and senior federal Export-Import Bank officer, was compensated at a rate of about $500,000 a year in 2007 and 2008 from seats on five corporate boards, according to the ...
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Still waiting for FOIA reforms to surface
Roger Strother writes at OMB Watch's Fine Print blog about the latest noise coming out of the Office of Information Policy about the "sea change in the way transparency is viewed across the government." That sea change is supposed to lift a lot of FOIA requests that, unlike boats, seem to sink the bottom with incredible rapidity, then burrow down into the muck at the bottom. We've found that the only way to surface those FOIA requests is the application of vigorous effort (including regularly calling FOIA officers to make sure they haven't forgotten us). Waiting--for months ...
Continue readingHill: No campaign cash for Visclosky from former PMA Group clients
On April 3rd, we noted that Rep. Pete Visclosky, one of the most prolific recipients of campaign cash from and earmarker of federal dollars to PMA Group clients, had requested no earmarks--not a single one--for former clients of the firm for fiscal year FY 2010. Oddly enough, employees and PACs of former PMA Group clients donated nothing to Visclosky's reelection campaign in the first quarter of 2009, according to Roxana Tiron of the Hill.
Let's see...could there be a connection?
Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked a Hill story noting that for Rep. John Murtha, it was "business as ...
Continue readingWho’s manning the TARP desk?
Less than half a dozen people are responsible for making the final decisions about which banks get part of the $700 billion in bailout money available through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to Department of Treasury officials. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Sunlight Foundation in January for the members of the TARP Investment Committee, a FOIA officer recently responded with just four names, including Assistant Secretary, Neel Kashkari; Chief Investment Officer, James Lambright; Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, Karthik Ramanathan and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, Ralph Monaco, all holdovers ...
Continue readingPro Publica posts executive branch financial disclosures
Available here, thanks to our friends at Pro Publica. A very handy tool. The Office of Government Ethics should really post these online, but until they do, Pro Publica is your best source.
Continue readingDownload TCS’s earmark request spreadsheet
Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense announce that they have a downloadable spreadsheet with what looks to me to be the definitive list of links to earmark request disclosures from House members. The Hill gives some good examples of how hard it is to find the disclosures.
I'm looking at some of the actual requests today instead of playing find the earmark list. One of the things I've always wondered is what percentage of the earmarks that members request are brought to their attention by registered lobbyists.
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