Earmarks are getting some renewed attention, and reporters are finding fresh examples of Washington's addiction to pork.
Roll Call has a story today about millions of dollars in earmarks requested by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) for his alma mater Tougaloo College. Problem is, the college doesn't know what the earmarks are for and it's not apparent it could provide the engineering services Thompson wants to fund since it has no discernible engineering program.
The story comes on the heels of the Washington Post's look this weekend at earmarks requested by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). The Post highlighted the John Murtha Airport in Murtha's hometown of Johnstown, Pa., a lightly-used airport which has been kept afloat largely due to earmarks requested by Murtha.
The airport hired a subsidiary of Mountaintop Technologies, a recipient of millions of dollars in earmarks sponsored by Murtha in the past decade, to manage the airport. This despite members of the airport board's complaints that the company had no prior experience in airport management. The company, meanwhile, hired a lobbying firm featuring one of Murtha's former staffers and that had once included Murtha's brother.
Finding such curious earmarks is easier with LegiStorm's easily searchable database of earmarks, which was generously compiled and provided by Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS). Currently, our earmarks database is a year old but TCS is finalizing its work on earmark requests for the 2009 fiscal year, and LegiStorm will add the data to our site as soon as next week.
