According to the Hill, yesterday the Treasury Department released its rules regarding “Communications With Registered Lobbyists And Other Persons About... View Article
Continue readingFormer Treasury Official Thought TARP Lobbyist Rules Were Political
Not sure what I think about this, but former TARP czar Neil Kashkari, appointed under President Bush, told the TARP... View Article
Continue readingAgencies Not Reporting Stimulus Lobbying Contacts
Lobbyists are in midst of a bonanza in Washington. With the Obama administration pursuing so many goals at once, the... View Article
Continue readingWhat am I reading today?
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reviewed all 50 state formulas for disclosing stimulus contracts and found that New Hampshire... View Article
Continue readingAre the Inspector General’s Financial Bailout Recommendations Out of Date?
Earlier this month, the Inspector General responsible for overseeing the government’s bailout of the financial sector released an audit of... View Article
Continue readingStimulus Lobbying Rules, Take Two
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget released the administration’s new stimulus lobbying rules on Friday, as John mentioned... View Article
Continue readingUSDA misses the point
Matt Drudge has linked a dozen or so examples of what look to be wasteful spending in the stimulus--$2,531,600 for 'HAM, WATER ADDED, COOKED, FROZEN, SLICED, 2-LB', $1,191,200 for '2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED' (I linked that one immediately below), $351,807 for 'REPLACE AND UPGRADE THE DUMBWAITER, $1,562,568 for 'MOZZARELLA CHEESE'... and so on. In response, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture posted the following clarifying information:
The references to "2 pound frozen ham sliced" are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 ...Continue reading
New Data from Recovery.gov
The office of Vice President Joe Biden sent out a statement with links to new Recovery maps:
The new map detailing how states are putting Recovery Act funds to work can be viewed here. The state map shows the amount of money that the Recovery Act has provided for each state (announced), the amount each state is putting to work (obligated) and the amount actually paid out (outlays). Visitors can click on a given state to view the spending in more detail.The new series of maps detailing how Recovery Act funds are moving out to contractors, grantees and loan ...
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Open notebook: Following stimulus contracts
Recovery.gov might not be useful yet for "following every penny" of stimulus spending, but with a telephone, Google, USASpending.gov and some luck it might not be that hard. Pretty much at random, I picked out a bunch of congressional press releases touting stimulus dollars going to local communities, and started making calls. Here's some notes on where one inquiry led me.
Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania's 3rd district (roughly the northwest corner of the state) put this press release on her Web site on March 24, announcing that, "The Mercer County Housing Authority is slated to ...
Continue readingSome stimulus recipients to report in Excel?
Just reading the new guidance from Office of Management and Budget for recipients funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to report information to the government: "This Recipient Reporting spreadsheet template is to be used for non-machine recipient reporting. It enables manual data entry and collection of recipient reporting information in a familiar excel format."
There's also some XML schemas for those submitting machine readable data.
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