Five Minutes of Fame

Today there was an article in the Washington Post about the database I've been working on at work on and off the past few weeks. Check it out:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092803862.html

This is cool because I specifically looked up and documented all of the earmark requests and campaign contributions for Senator Cochran, and now it's NEWS! Our office was really buzzing because of the publicity as well. I talked to CNN, Reuters, Huffington Post, NPR, and a few other random reporters. By "talked to" I mean I answered the phone and transferred them to someone who could really talk to them. But it was still cool.

(If the link doesn't work look it up by the title, "Defense Bill, Lauded by White House, Contains Billions in Earmarks" by R. Jeffrey Smith)

Random Observations Concerning Work

• A particularly entertaining earmark I came across at work today..."The Operating Room of the Future"

• I came across an earmark destined for none other than Socorro, New Mexico! Say hi to the $2 mil we sent there, Paul!

• I saw that Hackensack is an actual town in New Jersey! (An unintended consequence: I had "Movin' Out" stuck in my head for three hours.)

• I came across a company called "Moog Inc. - FloTork." You can't make up a more ridiculous name.

• I sat in on a quarterly planning meeting today and figured out how non-profits work: proposals, grants, and results. And the cycle never ends, by the time you find out if you got a grant or not, you have to start writing a proposal to apply for the next year.

• Sometimes we put C-SPAN on in the background at work, and today the woman taking votes sounded just like Katharine Hepburn! It was strangely comforting...

September 8 or Worked on an Earmark Database

I know, I know. I couldn’t come up with a better name than that.

But today, like so many other days, I went to work.

In the morning, I worked mostly on the same stuff from last week, but then Laura and Steve gave me something new! Hooray! I was about to volunteer to clean out the fridge downstairs.

I worked on transferring information from Senators’ websites (they are required to disclose the earmarks they request) to our earmark database. I did some data entry and had to interpret the long, adjective-filled description of what exactly the Senator was requesting money for. I worked mostly on Senator Inouye from the defense appropriations committee today. When I finished, he had requested over $330 million dollars for defense related project in Hawaii. And some of the descriptions of the requests sounded like quotes from a defense lobbyist’s mouth. It was like reading a catalog for military equipment. “This state-of-the-art ______” will improve this and that and be absolutely vital to this or that. If warfighters don’t get this technology now, they will regret it in 10 years. Etc. etc.

It’s amazing how you can write an entire paragraph with very specific nouns, but not really say anything. And it’s amazing how little you have to specify to get $10 million. If I want a $2,000 loan I have to sign away my firstborn child, but if you are a ranking member of the right committee you have hundreds of millions at your discretion. And if you assign it all through earmarks, it doesn’t have oversight or any competition. It’s a pretty sweet deal, unless you’re a taxpayer.

But I digress.

Not much else happened. We had a staff meeting at work, and it was cool to hear them talk about news as it happened throughout the day. I read the front page of the Washington Post while I ate breakfast, but if I hadn’t checked it again at lunch I would have been totally behind.

Also on the way home today the metro train in front of mine broke down, so we were at “L’Enfant Plaza” for half an hour. Good thing I had my book. With the combination of staying a little late at work and the metro trouble, I got home a little after seven o’clock. I sat down, took a deep breath, and before I knew it, it was time for dinner group.

I went downstairs, had a lovely dinner with my Barlow Center friends and had a good talk with the ones who stayed a little late. After talking with them, and then talking with the people in the lobby, I finally made it back to my room (still in my work clothes) at ten o’clock. And now I try to catch up on my blog-erific hobby of mine. (If you get behind, it’s hard to catch up.)

Keep your ears tuned for tomorrow. I go to my first hearing on the Hill.