Earlier today, we posted schedules for some 370 events at the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions, many of which are sponsored by private interests. The RNC list is here, the DNC list is here. On page 7 of the latter document, there’s an event called the “FSR Financial Literacy Brunch,” sponsored by 21 companies, including [...]

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Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense have analyzed, and compiled in a downloadable database available at the link, the earmarks from S. 3261, the Senate Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. They note,
The FY09 Senate appropriations bill providing money for transportation and Housing and Urban Development projects contains 609 earmarks worth more [...]

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In this post and this post, we looked at an earmark Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, secured for the Saddle Road project on Big Island. I sent a query along to Dave Gedeon, the project manager for the Central Federal Lands Highway Division of the Federal Highway Administration, asking how the project was funded–whether these were [...]

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Commenter Archie Mead points out something I didn’t know about the discrepancy between Rep. Neil Abercrombie’s description of an earmark and the description of what I believe is the same earmark in the House Appropriations Committee report:
Even with the name Abercrombie to connect the two entries, it’s still very vague. Saddle Road, which connects the [...]

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Another reason why we need members of Congress to disclose information on their residences:
Rep. Robert Wexler is renting a home in his congressional district to quell criticism that his main residence is in the Washington suburbs.
Wexler said in a statement Tuesday that he knew some constituents were concerned after he said last week he [...]

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The Washington Post notes that Alaskans are fretting the potential fallout of the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for not disclosing more than $250,000 in gifts from VECO Corp. Taxpayers for Common Sense sums it up more succinctly:
Taxpayers for Common Sense has released the last four years of earmark data for Alaska to help [...]

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Our friend Adam Hughes of OMB Watch writes:
We released new data on FedSpending.org yesterday. We’ve now got a complete FY 2007 year for contracts, the first quarter of FY 2008, and a partial second quarter (everything for the second quarter except DoD, which isn’t very much). There is also updated assistance data through the third [...]

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When Rep. Neil Abercrombie requested an earmark in the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill to fund “Saddle Road Phase 5,” he listed (on page two of that mega file courtesy of Taxpayers for Common Sense), the “U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, located at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii” as the entity that was the recipient of [...]

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Last Friday, Taxpayers for Common Sense updates us on where the House is on the Appropriations process (a few weeks back the process could best be described as “nyah nyah nyah,” and “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you,”, to use the parliamentary terms favored by most [...]

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LD-203 forms–on which lobbyists disclose their contributions to lawmakers’ campaigns, to presidential libraries, and to nonprofits honoring members of Congress, is available online. The disclosure that prompted the headline of this post is here. Lots of other interesting stuff, but there are a little less than 3,917 records in the entire database, which makes me [...]

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