Watching The Hogs Wallow

[trysail]

If you want to see where the stimulus money is going, this is a good site and scorecard:

http://www.stimuluswatch.org

As was once famously observed, "There are two things you don't want to see made: sausage and legislation."

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

There's nothing to be done about it. Sooner or later there wont be any money to beg, borrow, or steal, and the party will be over.

 

[trysail]

The Single Most Expensive:
$17,500,000,000
New Energy Efficiency Industrial Zones 100 Acres Cidra, Puerto Rico Energy

 

[alyxen]

From the first page of this website:

"These projects are not part of the stimulus bill. They are candidates for funding by federal grant programs once the bill passes. Learn more by reading the FAQs."


What is the point of this site other than to create negative dialog when it isn't even items from the stimulus bill, OR items that are even approved or listed on anything...anywhere?

My apologies if I am simply missing the point, just seems like a waste. I would also be curious what the source is since, in searching, I find no reference to them other than on this site. Anyone know?

 

[trysail]

From the first page of this website:

"These projects are not part of the stimulus bill. They are candidates for funding by federal grant programs once the bill passes. Learn more by reading the FAQs."


What is the point of this site other than to create negative dialog when it isn't even items from the stimulus bill, OR items that are even approved or listed on anything...anywhere?

My apologies if I am simply missing the point, just seems like a waste. I would also be curious what the source is since, in searching, I find no reference to them other than on this site. Anyone know?

http://www.stimuluswatch.org

From FAQ#1
... Congress and the President are getting ready to spend billions of dollars to try to stimulate the economy. As a result, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has responded by releasing a list of "shovel-ready" projects in cities around the country that the mayors would like to see funded.

President Obama, however, has promised to spend stimulus dollars only on critical projects.

"What we need to do is examine what are the projects where we're going to get the most bang for the buck [and] how are we going to make sure taxpayers are protected," he has said. "You know, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over."

StimulusWatch.org was built to to help the new administration keep its pledge and to hold public officials to account. We do this by allowing you, citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed projects in your city, to find, discuss and rate those projects.

From FAQ#2
... the Mayor's report presented an opportunity for citizens to engage with their government. The U.S. Conference took the laudable step of posting online a complete, detailed, and well-formatted list of projects and related data. This made it easy for us to take the data and use it for the site you see here. These projects are also worth scrutinizing. To what extent do these projects reflect what citizens want or need for their communities? The list provides an opportunity for citizens to provide useful feedback to their elected officials. This discussion can help monitor funds and also rate the extent to which projects 'hit their marks'.

FAQ#3
The Obama White House has begun taking the first steps to keep its promise to be the most transparent and accountable administration in history. However, it has yet to provide the type of interactive accountability tool you see here. Because legislative and executive activity on stimulus spending is moving so quickly, we feel its important to help jump-start citizen participation as soon as possible.

Additionally, this site is interactive in a way we don't expect to see in federal government sites. First, we are trying to gather knowledge from you about the worthiness of local projects before they are funded. Second, after a project has been funded we would like to continue to harness local knowledge about how the funds were spent and the project managed in order to keep local officials accountable. To date, no federal site does this.


http://www.stimuluswatch.org

 

[alyxen]

The US Conference of Mayors website has an actual listing of items proposed by said conference. Oddly no mention of state specific items (might have to do with this being a non-state specific entity?). The highest price tag item that I saw was actually $87 billion for Medicaid, followed by $27.5 billion for highway infrastructure.

The info on here is wiki also correct? Meaning individuals are updating it? Using, for example the $600 million listed for 'Forks of the Road Heritage Trail. The notes on the page even indicate that the correct amount, as per a linked article, is $1 million. But of course, the amount listed didn't get updated.

As for the $17.5 billion for that project in Puerto Rico, according to the US Conference of Mayors site, the total for the energy programs funding (including energy efficiency projects such as the one some random person added here) is $2.8 billion.

The info there is available in excel format for the main projects, and various PDFs for the other, section specific projects. I had some trouble with some of PDFs though.

I guess I just prefer legitimate, cited sources for my BS since I am sure all of this will change by the time dollars start flowing anyways.

 

[trysail]

( Fair Use Excerpts )
Obama’s Spending Spurs Former U.S. Lawmakers to Join Lobbyists
By Jonathan D. Salant

April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Lobbying, scorned during the 2008 campaign, is an occupation of choice among former members of Congress looking for jobs.

Barack Obama shunned political contributions from lobbyists and, on his second day as president, announced new ethics rules to reduce their influence. Republican nominee John McCain disdained lobbyists as “birds of prey.”

Still, about one-quarter of the House and Senate members who retired or lost elections last year have found new jobs with lobbying firms, where business is booming as Obama pushes for multitrillion-dollar changes in federal banking, health care, energy and military procurement policies.

“Even though some people deplore lobbying, it’s still a growth profession,” said Bill Allison, a senior fellow with the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based watchdog group.

Law, lobbying and consulting firms have announced the hiring of at least 15 of 61 House and Senate members who left politics or were defeated in 2008.

“There’s a lot of demagoguery going on,” said former Congressman James Walsh, 61, who spent 12 years in the House’s powerful “college of cardinals,” as appropriations subcommittee chairmen are known. “Politics is an honorable profession. This profession, consulting, can be also as long as you conduct yourself honorably.”

*****​

...Lobbyists were paid a record $3.2 billion last year to influence federal government officials and lawmakers, up 14 percent from 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington group that tracks special-interest spending. Disclosures for the first three months of 2009 are due April 20.

Influence-peddling income is likely to keep rising, as Congress and federal agencies pick winners and losers in the $787 billion stimulus package, a $3.9 trillion federal budget plan, the financial industry bailout, and proposals to revamp Wall Street regulation, curb greenhouse-gas emissions and expand health-care coverage.

Money Flowing

“We’ve got more money coming out of Washington than ever before,” the Sunlight Foundation’s Allison said. “This puts a premium on people who know the system.”

*****​

Bud Cramer, an Alabama Democrat who was on House appropriations subcommittees with purview over transportation and financial services, became chairman of Wexler & Walker Public Policy Associates.

The firm got $7.9 million last year from companies such as AMR Corp., the parent of American Airlines, which is seeking government permission for an alliance with British Airways Plc, and Visa Inc., which is fighting efforts to put new restrictions on credit-card rates and fees.

“In Congress, Bud quickly gained the confidence of his colleagues on the Hill and became a trusted adviser to House Democratic leaders, and we look forward to him doing the same for our clients,” founder Anne Wexler said in a release announcing Cramer’s hiring...

...John Warner, who retired after 30 years in the Senate, rejoined Hogan & Hartson LLP, where he worked as a lawyer from 1961 to 1969. The firm, with clients such as Oakland, California-based Clorox Co. and Toyko-based Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., was paid $17.9 million for lobbying in 2008.

K Street Corridor

The path is well worn between Capitol Hill and K Street, the downtown Washington boulevard that is the lobbying industry’s symbolic center.

Former appropriations chairman Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who left the House 10 years ago, leads a firm that was paid $9 million last year by such clients as Hamilton, Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd., and Redwood City, California-based Oracle Corp. Former Senate Majority Leaders George Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, and Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican, both registered as lobbyists.

“It is a natural progression, and it is not an unhealthy one,” said Jim Greenwood, 57, a Republican who represented a Pennsylvania House district until 2005 and now heads the Biotechnology Industry Association. “I know how lawmakers think, what they need to make good decisions, what’s counterproductive, and what’s reasonable to ask and what’s not reasonable.”

New Job

Jon Porter, a Nevada Republican who lost his 2008 bid for re-election after six years in the House, said his new job at the Akerman Senterfitt law and lobbying firm lets him put his experience to good use.

“As the legislation gets more complex and as it’s coming out as fast as it is, there is a role for folks to help provide consultation on how to chart a road map through the federal bureaucracy,” said Porter, 53, who sat on both the Budget and Ways & Means committees.

Lobbying continues to flourish in the face of perennial calls in Congress itself for tougher limits on politicians and aides who bounce between government and lobbying jobs.

“Would I like to see the revolving door slowed? Yes, I would,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who helped write the 1995 law overhauling lobbying rules. “The appearance of an unfair advantage is real. The access is enhanced.”

Craig Holman, who lobbies for Public Citizen, a Washington- based advocacy group seeking stricter rules for lobbyists, said well-connected former lawmakers have unique advantages.

“Their knowledge of the preferences of various members, who is working in what area and what concerns them most, their networks, makes them exceedingly valuable,” Holman said. “That’s the type of knowledge and networks you just can’t get anywhere else.”

 

[geronimo_appleby]

http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2004/April_09/files/1093523587_12jot4wltt0_svinja_obilic.jpg

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Very recently, a local organization held a TEA PARTY, and be damned if several politicians didnt show up. They'll go to their own hanging, smiling and happy to get their name in the paper.