Sen. Ted Stevens has served as senator from Alaska for most of his life and nearly all of the state’s existence. Stevens greatest accomplishments have been as a patronage chief; bringing home federal dollars for Alaska and protecting and expanding the extraction industries in the state, particularly the oil industry. In many ways, Stevens is Alaska. It comes as no surprise that Stevens would run his current reelection campaign on a message that says, “Without Ted, we’re toast.”

As some have noted already, Stevens - a “patronage-distributing warlord” - may be a dying breed of politician. There are others who still exclusively practice this kind of politics, most notably Alaska’s lone representative Don Young, but few to the degree that Stevens has over the years. Stevens’ undying support for earmarking and the oil industry may have brought on investigative scrutiny and, ultimately, an indictment. But they also appear to have muddled the water in the investigation, prompting prosecutors to charge Stevens with seemingly lesser felonies - for now. (more…)

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Back in the last Congress, Sen.Tom Coburn, the Senate’s “earmark sheriff,” was chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Government Relations. From that position he sent letters to various federal agencies requesting they review the earmarks Congress inserted into their budgets. Coburn asked specifically how the agencies managed the earmarks, and whether they fit into the various agencies’ goals and missions.

Coburn’s office has received the various reports, according to CQ, and the senator and his staff are underwhelmed. It became apparent that the bureaucracies didn’t relish the task he had assigned. For one thing, the agencies had to designate personnel and spend significant funds to complete the research. Undoubtedly more pertinent, however, is that the agencies apparently pulled punches out of a reticence to offend any single member of Congress. “Agency heads are often reluctant to criticize the hand that feeds them,” Coburn’s press secretary is quoted as saying. “We weren’t pleased with the level of openness.”

We’re hoping that the Senator’s office — in the spirit of openness — will make those reports available to all.

Update: KA writes:

FYI, almost all of the reports that Senator Coburn’s staff received from the IG’s on earmarks are available on the IG websites.

There were some correspondence that was not released. But, if it was a full report, the IG put it up.

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Porkbusters and Eyeblast.tv are teaming up on a new citizen journalism project. You can be the Edward R. Murrow of earmarks, and Eyeblast.tv will help you out with equipment and expertise. More details here.

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Some 76 members of Congress provide at least some disclosure of their fiscal year 2009 earmark requests online, citizen researchers have found. The majority posted their requests to their official congressional Web sites while 11 disclosed their earmark requests directly to the media–a complete list is available here.

We also learned that 46 members of Congress have foregone earmarks for fiscal year 2009. Ten members of Congress told researchers they will not disclose their earmark requests to the public, preferring to keep their constituents in the dark. Those are the findings of a collaborative study by citizen journalists organized by the Sunlight Foundation, and joined by our friends at Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense — thanks to both organizations for their help.

To create more transparency about the earmarking process, we asked citizens to call their members of Congress and ask if they’d voluntarily disclose their fiscal year 2009 earmark requests. Sunlight has the full list, we’ll update it if more members release their earmark requests.

In the meantime, you can peruse the list to see who requested
$5,000,000 for Archer Daniels Midland to evaluate solid fats in the American diet, who asked for a $15 million earmark for defense contractors L3 Titan Group, MBDA, Raytheon and Boeing, or who requested some $300,000 to fix a parking garage in Punta Gorda, Fla. An important note: These members had the integrity to inform the public of what there spending requests were — we can question their priorities and criticize their choices, but we should acknowledge their openness.

There are 413 members who don’t want you to know what they’re asking for, who don’t want any criticism of their choices. They’re the ones who deserve the most criticism.

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It’s earmark season–the time of year when the House and Senate Appropriations Committees approve the major spending bills that fund the government, and start rolling out the lists of earmarks in the reports that accompany each bill. While who’s asking for what in this earmark el Dorado on the Potomac is already known to the insiders on the Appropriations Committee, the public is left in the dark. National Journal’s CongressDaily recently reported that the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee knows there are about 100 earmarks in their bill, how much they cost, and who asked for them, but chooses not to share that information just yet. The public, apparently, will have to wait until the subcommittee is ready to share its spending handiwork.

So let’s see if, while we’re waiting for the official disclosures from the committees, we can prevail upon members to be a bit more forthcoming. Sunlight, in conjunction with Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste is asking for your help to reveal which lawmakers post their earmark requests online.

There are a small number of lawmakers—some 46 of them—who have posted some information about their earmark requests to their official Web sites. We are providing a list of them that includes links to the their requests. We also list the names of 46 other members who say they won’t request any earmarks. Is your member listed? If not, why not? Call your members of Congress and ask them to fully disclose all their earmark requests for next year’s budget on their official Web sites. After you have spoken with your lawmakers (or, most likely, their staff), use the embedded form as to what they said and we’ll update the chart on daily basis.

We think, at a bare minimum, lawmakers–both Senators and Representatives–should release the same information that House rules require them to send to the Appropriations Committee. They should disclose the recipient of the earmark, a description of the project the earmark would fund, and the address of the recipient. They should additionally disclose the amount of money they asked for. See if you can get them to post a list, or find out why they choose not to, then let us know what you find. Be sure to include the name of the person you spoke to in the office.

Lawmakers have broad discretion on the requests they make for earmarks, and often justify them by saying earmarks serve their constituents. So we encourage constituents to call their members and ask what’s being done to benefit them. (To look up contact information for Senators, go here, and you can find contact info for Representatives click here, then click your state, then the member’s name, and go to the member’s site.

(For a definition of earmarks, see Section 521 of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, available here.

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Murdock, Hannibal, Face, and B.A. Baracus? Not that A-Team. Josh Marshall got his hands on the “Intern’s Survival Guide” for the office of Alaska Rep. Don Young, currently under investigation for, among other things, inserting an earmark for the Coconut Road in Florida. The key to the survival guide is the list of “A-Team” lobbyists who can talk to anyone in the office, at any time. The list includes Coconut Road lobbyist Rick Alcade. The “A-Team” section of the guide ends with this sentence, “I recommend looking up who they are.”

(FYI: Don Young was elected to Congress the same year that the fictional A-Team was convicted of a crime they didn’t commit: 1972.)

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Sen. Kent Conrad’s mea culpa; 2008 Beijing Olympics received a helping hand from the Hammer; and Rep. James Clyburn’s family friendly earmarks.

Kent Conrad sought to assuage critics as more information was revealed about preferential loans he and Sen. Chris Dodd received from Countrywide Financial. The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Conrad, after receiving Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo’s phone number from ex-Veep vetter Jim Johnson, called Mozilo to directly ask for a loan. How could you not expect preferential treatment when your loan officer is the CEO? In response to the continued criticism and coverage, Conrad declared that he would refinance his loan and donate the estimated amount he saved - $10,500 - to Habitat for Humanity. Conrad has also called on the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate both his and Sen. Dodd’s mortgages. (more…)

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Countrywide is on your side; OMG!, Congress is still earmarking; and the Waxman committee officially approves of the White House-Abramoff report. The power’s out in D.C., but we still have news:

Sen. Barack Obama’s VP vetter Jim Johnson resigned his post after it was revealed that he received favorable loans from Countrywide while he served as the head of home loan giant Fannie Mae. The Countrywide scandal spread to the United States Senate today as it was revealed that Sens. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Banking Committee, and Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, received the same favorable loans from Countrywide. Dodd and Conrad were listed as “Friends of Angelo,” after Countrywide’s CEO Angelo Mozilo, and “received better deals than those available to ordinary borrowers.” It is unclear whether Dodd and Conrad were aware of the special treatment as “Friends of Angelo,” “weren’t told exactly how many points were waived on their loans,” unless they asked. Both Senators deny knowledge of their special treatment. Also receiving favorable loans were former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and former HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson. (more…)

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Lizzie Nolan, our communications assistant extraordinaire, has been compiling links of stories generated by APME’s earmark project. I’m going to toss a few additional links her way, but if we’re missing some, feel free to leave them in the comments section and we’ll add them.

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In the Denver Post, Anne C. Mulkern reports on the earmarks of Rep. Doug Lamborn and finds one of those “only in Washington” wordings that make the head spin:

Lamborn made seven requests for projects tied to specific companies. Of those, five were to businesses whose political action committees had given him campaign contributions.

Officials with two of the companies, Goodrich Corp. and Aeroflex Inc., said there’s no connection between their contributions and their requests for earmarks.

The political action committees support lawmakers who back defense spending, both said.

The committee wants to help lawmakers who are the most responsive to their business needs, said Thomas Bezas, Aeroflex’s vice president of government and trade.

“We want to do everything we can to make sure they stay in office,” Bezas said. “The longer they stay in office, the more it benefits our company.”

So they make contributions to a member who’s most responsive to their business needs, who supports defense spending, but their business needs have nothing to do with earmarks, and awarding defense earmarks is unrelated to defense spending?

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