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Tag Archive: Investigations

House Ethics Committee: Investigating PMA Group or not?

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Tory Newmyer reports in Roll Call:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) plans to offer as early as Wednesday afternoon a privileged resolution to force the ethics committee to disclose whether it is investigating senior Democratic appropriators' ties to the PMA Group, Democratic sources say.

Hoyer's move follows eight attempts by Republican anti-earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) to jump-start a probe and aims to pre-empt Flake's ninth stab at the issue, which was due for a vote on Thursday. It marks a sharp break from Democratic leaders' previous approach to the burgeoning controversy involving the now-defunct lobbying ...

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Murtha’s earmark recipients: How hands off (or on) is he?

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Paul Singer reports in Roll Call on a tangled story that apparently involves the undisclosed hand of Rep. John Murtha but certainly involves his brother Kit (a retired lobbyist) and his former lobbying firm, five different companies doing business, directly or indirectly, with Defense (including one under federal indictment and one that allegedly wanted to outsource earmarked defense work to "China or someplace"), an earmark from the pre-disclosure era, some technical corrections added to the Tsunami relief bill that moved the funds for that earmark from one recipient to another (because the original recipient allegedly wanted to do the work ...

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Visclosky temporarily relinquishes reins of subcommittee

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Rep. Peter Visclosky, whose office has been subpoenaed for documents related to clients of the defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, has temporarily stepped down as chair of the House Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee. Lindsay Renick Mayer reports on Visclosky's woes, his top donors, and those of his replacement, Ed Pastor, who has taken less than a tenth as much in contributions from PMA Group and its clients (of course, I'm referring to contributions from their employees, family members and political action committees).

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Transportation earmark request update

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We haven't been updating the database of House Transportation Reauthorization earmark requests beyond what we found the first night. Eventually I'll find the time to update this, but here's some from Rep. Barron Hill that were passed on to me in a comment to an earlier post. They were posted the morning of May 15, which was after we did our searches.

I kind of like the Google map from the comment:


View Baron Hill's Monroe County Earmarks in a larger map

Right now though I'm following other things more intensively, particularly stimulus spending. More ...

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Investment Ratings Tank for Home Loan Banks

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They hold $1.3 trillion in assets and, chances are, you've never heard of them.

The Federal Home Loan Banks, or FHLBs, were created during the Depression, and are meant to ensure that if the economy were to tank, commercial banks would still have the money to issue home loans. A cooperative of 12 regional banks, the system works like this: banks, thrifts, credit unions and insurers (more than 8,100 across the country) become members and put up collateral; the FHLBs borrow money and lend it to them at a discount.

So where does the subsidy come ...

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CREW visualizes Murtha web

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Here's a picture worth well over a thousand words: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has assembled an interactive, "You Don't Know Jack" graphic showing the connections between Murtha, a trio of lobbying firms, relatives, staffers and the companies for whom he's gotten earmarks.

Well worth a look. Well worth remembering too that PMA Group isn't just a John Murtha scandal -- the firm was a top donor to 32 members of Congress in the 2008 election cycle.

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Why there’s so little spending data on Recovery.gov

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Because apparently, there's not all that much spending yet:

Only a small part of the spending authorized by ARRA has occurred so far. It appears that about 5 percent, or about $19 billion, of the approximately $380 billion in budget authority for 2009 granted under the law was spent through the end of April. (Reported expenditures of $29 billion include $11 billion in federal transfers into the unemployment insurance fund, most of which has not yet been distributed to recipients.)

That's a Congressional Budget Office estimate, via a report by David Lightman of McClatchy.

I'm going to ...

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Washington savvy firm gets stimulus bucks

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Number two of the 100:

2. Advanced Technology: Reveal Imaging Technologies of Massachusetts recently received a $47.5 million contract to develop, build, and install 123 reduced-size explosive-detection system units and their ancillary equipment at approximately 50 airports across the country, as part of the Electronic Baggage Screening Program.

The name seemed familiar. Here's a bit from the Washington Post on Rep. Hal Rogers:

Rogers has been accused of promoting government contracts for homeland-security firms that have donated to his campaigns. In 2001, The Washington Post reported explosive-detection machine makers Reveal Imaging Technologies Inc. received a TSA contract worth ...

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Oblique allusion to contract data available on Recovery.gov

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We have a partial winner. My colleague Greg Elin has tracked down, on Recovery.gov, this announcement:

Obligated ~$47 million for EBSP equipment and ~$3 million for PSP equipment

That seems to correspond to this announcement from the 100 Days report:

2. Advanced Technology: Reveal Imaging Technologies of Massachusetts recently received a $47.5 million contract to develop, build, and install 123 reduced-size explosive-detection system units and their ancillary equipment at approximately 50 airports across the country, as part of the Electronic Baggage Screening Program.

That's the closest we've gotten to finding a reference to any of the ...

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