Rep. Jo Bonner joined Sen. Richard Shelby in securing $470,000 in the Commerce, Justice & Science appropriations bill for the Mobile County Commission to acquire interoperable communications systems.
The Mobile County Commission had Washington representation — the lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates. They lobbied on the “Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, FY […]

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In the Labor, Department of Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, Rep. Jo Bonner secured a $199,000 earmark for the Fairhope Center for the Arts in Bay Minette, Ala., for arts education programs, including purchase of equipment. The Fairhope Center for the Arts doesn’t seem to have hired a federal lobbyist. The organization […]

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Rep. Jo Bonner attached his name to an earmark originally requested by Sen. Richard Shelby for $1,372,000 for the City of Mobile’s Transit System, known as the Wave Transit System.
The City of Mobile employed the firm Miller, Hamilton, Snider & Odom who lobbied on “appropriations issues.” Their employees have contributed $6,500 to Bonner between […]

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Rep. Jo Bonner earmarked $245,000 in the Transportation, Housing & Urban Development appropriations bill to the “City of Jackson for construction of a building in conjunction with a 240-acre industrial development park.”
I came up empty looking for this one — the City of Jackson employed the Bloom Group (already encountered in this post), but […]

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Rep. Jo Bonner earmarked $245,000 for the Bay Area Food Bank for construction of a commercial-size kitchen. Bay Area Food Bank, which distributes food donated by grocery stores, restaurants and the like to soup kitchens and homeless shelters, doesn’t have a federal lobbyist, according to the Senate Office of Public Records. To double check, I […]

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Going for the low hanging fruit first (earmarks in EarmarkWatch.org). So let’s look at the $141,000 that the Alabama School of Math and Science in Mobile, Ala., got in the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Act.
The school–a public, residential school for sophomores through seniors who are gifted in science and math–employed Capitol […]

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I’m still looking mostly at the earmarks that Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Ala., has sponsored, but while I was looking at them, I came across the official biography that Rep. Robert B. Aderholt, another Alabama Republican, has on his Web site. The language is instructive:
Congressman Aderholt serves on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, as a member […]

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Let’s start with this earmark, because it’s already in EarmarkWatch.org, and hence easy to research. A few interesting notes…
Providence Hospital is the beneficiary of the earmark (the final amount of the Earmark was $1.2 million, not the $1.5 million that EarmarkWatch, which draws on older data, shows). One of their two lobbying firms is Cassidy […]

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Transportation’s Inspector General has launched an investigation of the Transportation Technology Innovation and Demonstration program–at the request of a pair of members of Congress, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.–to determine whether the program, as administered by the Federal Highway Administration, fulfilled the goals set for it by Congress and whether FHWA […]

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Since we’ve not had too many volunteers making phone calls to verify if the information collected as part of our distributed research project is accurate, I’m making calls this afternoon.
Here’s reviewing a few:
Ric Molen went from working as a Legislative Director in Sen. Conrad Burns’ (R-Mt.), office to work as a lobbyist with […]

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