From the A Piece of the Action? database, here's a list of cities that have hired lobbyists who have reported that the bailout or the stimulus is a specific lobbying issue, complete with links (if any) to project requests on the excellent StimulusWatch.org page for those cities:
Birmingham, MI
Jasper, AL
Thomasville, AL
Center Point, AL
Jackson, AL
Atmore, AL
Denton, TX
Whittier, CA
Brewton ...
Continue readingHidden earmarks?
This passage is from page 85 of the Labor, HHS, Education portion of the committee report for the big appropriations bill:
Buildings and Facilities
Within the amount provided for Buildings and Facilities, the bill includes $30,000,000 for nationwide repairs and improvements; $71,300,000 for the completion of Building 24 on the Roybal Campus in Atlanta, Georgia; $1,500,000 for facilities and equipment at the CDC laboratory in Ft. Collins, Colorado; and the remaining funds shall be used to begin planning and construction of Buildings 107 . and 108 on the Chamblee Campus in Atlanta, Georgia.
...don't ...
Continue readingWho’s seeking A Piece of the Action?
The bailout (the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, etc.) and the stimulus (the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act) are massive pieces of legislation with lots of moving parts. Thus, the more eyeballs on them and what's around them, the better.
A Piece of the Action? tracks one aspect of the unfolding age of bailing and stimulating -- interests hiring Washington lobbyists to at the very least monitor and likely to try to influence how the government spends its money.
As noted immediately below, this database is an imperfect resource. But it's what we can do ...
Continue readingTreasury Taking a Bath on TARP
Via twitter, via Right Org, comes this very cool way of tracking the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program investments from Ethisphere -- almost like an S&P index of stocks of publicly traded firms that have received money from TARP:
For the week ended February 13, 2009, the aggregate Ethisphere TARP Index is down a total of $86.5 billion, out of the original investment principal of $195.5 billion for a total balance of $109 billion. However, the Adjusted Ethisphere TARP Index, which excludes the calamity investments, has an aggregate loss $27.6 billion as of the week ...Continue reading
Genealogy of the Stimulus Bill
The current economic crisis does seem to present a combination of circumstances (the housing crisis, a credit crisis, declining international trade, rising unemployment), some of which are causes, some of which are symptoms, none of which--of course--are particularly pleasant for those going through them. So how does Congress, legislatively, address new circumstances? Do members and their staffs (and the lobbyists whispering in their ears) craft bills to solve the problems at hand? Or do they go through their archives and relabel old bills as solutions to new problems?
Using the indispensable Govtrack.us, I'm going to look for antecedents ...
Continue readingGreasing the stimulus with pork?
Glenn Reynolds flags the latest twist on earmarks -- we'll have them, but call them something else:
At some point, [House Majority Whip James] Clyburn [(D-S.C.)] noted, there will be a list of projects funded by the package, and Members want to have input.The list is going to come from somewhere, he said.
House Appropriations ranking member Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) questioned whether the bill can truly be considered free of earmarks when it will be loaded up with complicated formulas directing spending.
Calling it an earmark-free thing and then saying there are established formulas doesn't sound very ...
Continue reading
Ethics Panel to Clear Rangel?
House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel predicted, on C-SPAN's Newsmakers program that aired Sunday, Feb. 1, 2009, that his multitude of ethics woes would soon disappear. "I think that next Tuesday you will see a break in this and as soon as the Ethics Committee organizes they ought to be able to dismiss this," National Journal's CongressDaily quoted the Rangel as saying.
If so, it's hard to imagine that the Select Committee on Ethics will have devoted anything more than a cursory glance at the various issues raised. Consider just one aspect, for which documents ...
Continue readingPresidential Library Reform bill…
...is one of the first bills introduced In the House. If passed, it would require quarterly reports on donors to presidential libraries.
Items like this and this demonstrate why this is useful.
Which reminds me -- how is the Clinton Foundation going to handle new donations? Will they periodically add to what they've already disclosed? And will the Bush Presidential Library Foundation release the names of any donors at all? Nope.
Continue readingNY Times: Clinton Foundation Donor got help from Hillary
Digging down deep into the list of Clinton Foundation donors, the New York Times finds that a donor had gotten considerable help from Sen. Hillary Clinton:
An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel ...
Continue reading
Updates to Clinton donors
Just a running commentary on what I'm finding.
Cool -- Muckety already has some of this data entered.
I wonder how many of these donors have lobbyists. Alltel certainly does, although skimming their reports (here's one) it doesn't seem that they have international issues. Also, wonder how many turn up in FARA filings...
Continue reading
59063
