Congress

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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Aug 17, 2009 by Craig Jennings

FederalReporting.gov opened up for business today. Prime recipients and first-tier sub recipients of Recovery Act funds can now begin reporting on their use of those funds.

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Aug 4, 2009 by Craig Jennings

We've been digging through $9.5 million Recovery.gov rewrite contract the Recovery Board has signed with Smartronix, Inc., and it is taking us surprisingly little time...because most of the information has been redacted.

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Climate Transparency Lacking on Senate Websites

Jul 29, 2009 by Brian Turnbaugh*

The websites of U.S. senators are a poor place to look if you are interested in their views on climate change, according to a recent analysis. Although websites are one of a politician's best ways to present their views and educate and engage their constituents about important issues, many of the nation's senators fail to do so, based on a review of websites by Grist, the environmental news outlet.

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TARP IG Reports Underscore Need for Better Transparency in Financial Bailout

Two recent reports by the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), Neil Barofsky, provide useful information and stand in sharp contrast to the Treasury Department's attempt to provide comparable transparency for the program, also known as TARP. One report clearly presents existing TARP information, while the other supplies new data that Treasury should be providing. In both cases, the reports highlight changes Treasury should make to how it conducts and presents TARP data.

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White House Refuses to Release Visitor Logs

On July 22, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for withholding White House visitor logs. The logs pertain to individuals who visited the White House to discuss health care policy. Some see the administration’s refusal to disclose the logs as a continuation of Bush administration secrecy.

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"Not Consistent With Independence"

Jul 28, 2009 by Craig Jennings

On Sunday (July 26) Federal Reserve Bank chief Ben Bernanke sat down with Jim Lehrer of PBS's News Hour to defend recent bold actions of the central bank to shore the nation's financial system. Specifically, Congress and many Americans question the wisdom of engineering a $29 billion bailout of Bear Stearns (as competitor Lehman Brothers lay dying in a pool of its own red ink); the extension of over $2 trillion in loans and loan guarantees using who-knows-what as collateral; and a doubling of the monetary base.

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Has Something Funny* Happened on the Way to the Internet?

Jul 27, 2009 by Craig Jennings

UPDATE: It's up. On the evening of Friday, July 31, the contract was posted on Recovery.gov.

Despite GSA's and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board's "confirmation" that the $9.5 million contract with Smartronix, Inc. to implement Recovery.gov 2.0 would be posted online, we're still waiting to see it on Recovery.gov.

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Dashboard Info Prompts VA to Hit the Brakes

Jul 22, 2009 by Craig Jennings

A project by the nation's Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, has lead to the suspension of some 45 information technology (IT) projects at the Veterans Administration. Unveiled earlier this month, the “'IT Dashboard' is a new, one-stop clearinghouse of information that allows anyone with a web browser to track federal IT initiatives..."

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Obama's Use of Signing Agreements Draws Ire of House Democrat Leaders

Jul 21, 2009 by Jocelyn Yin*

Today, four House Democrat leaders, including Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. David Obey (D-WI), released a strongly worded letter that expresses their displeasure with President Obama's use of a signing statement to reassert his right to ignore the conditions placed on the IMF funding for purposes of conducting foreign policy.

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SIGTARP Report Calls for More Bank Info

Jul 20, 2009 by Craig Jennings

This morning the Special Inspector for TARP released a report based on a survey of some 360 financial institutions that received TARP funds. The report finds that:

Many banks reported that TARP funds allowed them to increase lending for residential and commercial loans, small business loans, credit card loans, and other types of lending. Most firms reported multiple and sometimes interrelated uses; a majority of respondents’ reported that they used the funds primarily for lending, building capital reserves and investing...

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