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Tag Archive: Investigations

Jake Tapper finds $27 million=$59,000

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I am still playing around with the spread sheet of the 100 projects, which I'll be posting in some form (probably Dabble) in a bit. Right now I'm looking to see if I can find any of these projects listed on Recovery.gov, the agency Recovery Web pages, FedBizOpps.gov, USASpending.gov, and other places. Not sure I'll do this for all 100 projects.

In the mean time, it's well worth looking at this post from Jake Tapper, which probably explains this as well -- the dollar figures in the report don't necessarily have any relationship ...

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Clip job

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Of the 100 projects listed in the 100 Days, 100 Projects report, 37 come from newspaper, wire service and broadcast outlets. So why is government depending on Nexis searches for its data on Recovery spending?

Got everything into a spread sheet -- I'll play with it a bit more tomorrow.

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How much stimulus money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb?

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Apparently $109.5 million. From the aforementioned 100 Days, 100 Projects report:

The New York State Veteran's Home at St. Alban's, in Jamaica, New York, is using $109.5 million in Recovery Act spending to install more efficient motors, variable speed drive units, lighting, ballasts, lighting sensors, daylight sensors and to replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. All of these improve the energy efficiency of the facility, lower costs, and lessen its impact on the environment.

Just curious -- let's say the improvements cut the facility's power bills by half. How many years will it take ...

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Open Secrets of 100 Days, 100 Projects

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Hm. The Obama Administration released a new report on Recovery spending, 100 Days, 100 Projects. "As we worked to compile the Report, all of us were struck by the very personal stories that we came across. We learned that Recovery is about more than just projects. It's about helping people who have been hit hard by the worst recession of our lifetimes," the blog post announcing the work states.

Curious, I started scrolling through. It's loaded with tidbits like this:

Jobs & Job Training: 15. The president of New Hampshire paving company Continental Paving estimates he would have had ...

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Delving into Rep. Lewis’ earmark requests

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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

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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 ...

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You can’t go far…

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...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 ...

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New Mexico Independent asks for help hunting earmarks

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The New Mexico Independent is asking readers to delve into the earmark requests of Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, and comment on anything interesting they find. This is what's really important -- while the hide-and-go-seek disclosure methods of Congress make for an amusing diversion, it's the substance of the disclosures should command our attention.

So I'm happy to chip in the first thing I noticed: How about the first earmark disclosed here, to a company called Advatech Pacific. TPM Muckraker noted that the company's employees contributed to PAC run by Rep. Jerry Lewis' stepdaughter:

The group ...

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