July 22, 2009

Blue Dogs Fill Their Bowls with Cash

Whether the subject is health care reform, climate change, or pay-as-you-go budgeting rules, almost everyone, it seems, suddenly wants to talk with the Blue Dogs. President Obama’s White House meeting with members of the fiscally conservative Democratic coalition earlier this week is but the latest indication that the Blue Dogs — 52 members strong — have deftly turned themselves into a key voting bloc at the nexus of power. With them, the Democrats do not need a single Republican to back their legislation; without them, the Democratic agenda would be in serious peril. And as their clout has expanded, fundraising has grown accordingly, not just from traditionally Democratic contributors, but from unexpected quarters as well. Read more

July 20, 2009

Rebuked Appraisers Reborn as Real Estate Agents

In 2007, a mortgage lender flagged the work of veteran Florida home appraiser Jerome Woolf for review, a process that often leads to an appraiser losing a lender’s business — a potentially disastrous financial hit for a small businessman like Woolf. Read more

July 15, 2009

Is Congress Failing on Homeland Security Oversight?

Tom Ridge, the Department of Homeland Security’s first secretary, testified before the 9/11 Commission on a May morning in 2004. Ridge spoke before a hall packed with emotional New Yorkers, about two miles from the site of the World Trade Center. His subject, however, was Washington. Read more

June 26, 2009

‘Smart Growth’ Goals Frustrated By Local Authorities

In a pasture, along a tree-lined road, a small herd of hefty black-and-white striped “Oreo cows” — more formally known as Belted Galloways — graze near the entrance to a housing development widely regarded as one of the few examples of “smart growth” on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Read more

June 16, 2009

The Battle for Wheatland

The Wheatland Manor House was built 35 years before the Revolutionary War. The farmland surrounding it served as a focal point of a small community during the Civil War and is today a symbol in a new land war, one that has spawned accusations of corruption, fraud, and deception, as developers, preservationists, and politicians wrestle over the future of historic Loudoun County, Virginia. Read more

June 01, 2009

The Montenegro Connection

“My little cat … I’m going crazy without you …. You have repeatedly betrayed me, I think …. Little cat, when are you coming? ... I love you, little cat.” On Jan. 4, 2001, Dusanka Pesic Jeknic, representative of the Montenegrin trade mission in Milan, Italy, was speaking on the phone at her home in the southwest of the city. Milo Djukanovic, at that time president of Montenegro, was calling from the capital Podgorica. Billions of people around the world had just hailed the New Millennium. Dusanka, nicknamed “Duska,” the beautiful 41-year-old widow of the late foreign minister of Montenegro, was alone, far from her country. And she spoke out freely about everything: love, tobacco, and crime. Read more

May 19, 2009

The Climate Lobby’s Nonstop Growth

Makers of sneakers, blue jeans, and computer network servers joined forces late last fall and vowed a bigger push in Congress on climate change. Meanwhile, consumer-owned utilities — relatively quiet in the global warming debate compared to the big investor-owned power companies — decided they needed to weigh in once a new president took office. Food producers felt they, too, needed to watch the global warming issue more closely to protect their interests. And promoters of electric vehicles saw their long-awaited chance for a boost from Uncle Sam if their needs were addressed in a climate bill. Read more

April 20, 2009

The ‘Clean Coal’ Lobbying Blitz

They’ve brought coal above ground.

They’ve put the black rock on billboards in the swing states, and they’ve splashed it on full-page ads in CQ Weekly, Roll Call, Politico, and The Washington Post. They sponsored presidential debates on CNN, and their “clean coal” boosters were a fixture on the campaign trail. They’ve rolled out a series of TV spots from the firm that promised that what happens in Vegas will stay in Vegas. Read more

April 14, 2009

The Appraisal Bubble

In 2004, years before plummeting real estate values turned Fort Myers, Florida, into a top five foreclosure capital, appraiser Mike Tipton faced a dilemma. Read more

April 01, 2009

Fraud Cases Fell While Pentagon Contracts Surged

The number of defense contracting fraud and corruption cases sent by government investigators to prosecutors dropped precipitously under the Bush administration, even as contracting by the Defense Department almost doubled. Read more