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Potential Murtha successor Norm Dicks knows the favor factory
By Luke Rosiak Feb 10, 2010 3:56 p.m.The abrupt passing of Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) left many wondering who would replace the King of Pork as chair of the Defense Appropriations subcommitteebut anyone hoping his replacement might bring relief from a reputation for trading favors, rewarding campaign contributors and steering lucrative contracts to home districts would likely be disappointed by the pool of potential successors.
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Database used to track contractor fraud poorly managed, filled with inaccuracies
By Anupama Narayanswamy Jan 14, 2010 1:03 p.m.Congressional watchdogs have often criticized the online tool maintained by the General Services Administration to prevent the award of federal funds to banned individuals and companies. A Sunlight Reporting Group review of the sites data finds that it continues to be badly maintained, with rampant problems including omissions, inaccuracies and other data quality issues.
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Recovery.gov recipient data just in
By Bill Allison Oct 15, 2009 4:50 p.m.Recovery.gov posted information today showing that 30,383 jobs have been created or saved by the federal contracts that have been awarded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. So far, $16 billion has been disbursed by 9,100 contracts. The federal government is spending more than $525,000 spent on every job they saved or created.
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An Army of pharma trips?
By Bill Allison Jun 10, 2009 3:56 p.m.The Center for Public Integrity has analyzed 22,000 Pentagon travel disclosures -- filed when an outside party pays for a trip taken by Department of Defense personnel. The finding that jumped out at both Anu and me:
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Murtha's earmark recipients: How hands off (or on) is he?
By Bill Allison Jun 3, 2009 4:17 p.m.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 in "China or someplace" rather than in Murtha's district), about $8.2 million of taxpayer money, and a whole lot of digging. Oh, and PMA Group makes a cameo appearance. Read the whole thing, but also consider this:
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Whither stimulus contracts?
By Bill Allison May 18, 2009 9:52 p.m.The Washington Post's Kimberly Kindy reports that the Dept. of Energy is awarding stimulus funds to companies specializing in nuclear clean-ups that have a mixed track record:
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A long winding partially underwater earmarked road?
By Bill Allison Aug 1, 2008 7:26 p.m.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:
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FedSpending.org updated
By Bill Allison Jul 30, 2008 7:31 p.m.Our friend Adam Hughes of OMB Watch writes:
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Tidbits from trainings
By Bill Allison Apr 24, 2008 11:29 p.m.Lately I've been doing a lot of traveling, training reporters on using some of the campaign finance resources that Sunlight supports, and doing a lot of research in the process. I've come across some interesting stuff along the way, including this General Dynamics statement on their political contributions:
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