The following tables show aggregated prime contract dollar totals for the state of Wisconsin. Key data elements (agencies, companies, metropolitan areas) are ranked by their FY2006 – FY2007 YTD Totals. All aggregated data is copyrighted by Eagle Eye Publishers, Inc. Tables may not be reproduced without written permission from Eagle Eye.
Parsing Earmarks with Our Entrenched Political Class: David Obey….
John Solomon & Jeffrey Birnbaum:
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) confronted David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, on the House floor in March over this practice, noting that a spending bill then under debate contained $35 million for a risk-mitigation program at a federal space-exploration facility, even though the measure had been certified to contain no earmarks.
“We have passed some good rules with regard to earmark reform and transparency,” Flake said. “But we have found a way around them already.” Obey said that the provision was not an earmark under the rules. “An earmark is something that is requested by an individual member,” Obey said. “This item was not requested by any individual member; it was put in the bill by me.”
Two months later, Obey again rebuffed Flake when Flake pointed out that a supposedly earmark-free bill on the House floor contained an allocation of $8.7 million to ward off floods in New York. The provision was not called an earmark, Flake noted, but Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) put out a news release applauding the provision and its potential benefit to her district.
Much more on earmarks, here.
First Look at Branson / Rutan’s Space Terminal
Making private space travel possible and accessible to everyone has been a recurring topic at recent TED conferences, discussed by speakers such as Burt Rutan at TED 2006 (watch his speech), Peter Diamandis at TEDGLOBAL 2005, Richard Branson at TED 2007 and others. This week the first images of the central terminal and hangar facility at New Mexico’s future private spaceport have been released.
The Flop Heard Round the World
Fifty years ago today, Don Mazzella skipped out of school to see the hot new car that everybody was talking about, the hot new car that almost nobody had actually seen.
Ford Motor Co. had proclaimed it “E-Day,” and Mazzella and two buddies sneaked out of East Side High School in Newark, N.J., and hiked 13 blocks to Foley Ford so they could cast their gaze upon the much-ballyhooed new car that had been kept secret from the American public until its release that day.
It was called the Edsel.
“The line was around the block,” recalls Mazzella, now 66 and an executive in a New Jersey consulting firm. “People were coming from all over to see this car. You couldn’t see it from the street. The only way you could see it was to walk into the showroom and look behind a curtain.”
Mazzella and his truant friends waited their turn, thrilled to be there. “Back then for teenagers, cars were the be-all and end-all,” he explains. They’d read countless articles about the Edsel and seen countless ads that touted it as the car of the future. But they hadn’t seen the car. Ford kept it secret, building excitement by coyly withholding it from sight, like a strip-tease dancer.
The 7 Wonders of the World in Full Screen VR Panoramas
Your DNA, Please
The Economist:
Rapid advances in genetic testing promise to transform medicine, but they may up-end the insurance business in the process
“IF YOU can make a good soufflé, you can sequence DNA.” That assertion sounds preposterous, but Hugh Rienhoff should know. When his daughter was born about three years ago, she suffered from a mysterious disability that stunted her muscle development. After many frustrated visits to specialists, Dr Rienhoff, a clinical geneticist and former venture capitalist, decided to sequence a specific part of her genome himself. He discovered that her condition, which most resembled a rare genetic disorder known as Beals’s syndrome, was probably due to a new genetic mutation. “Without a lab and for just a few hundred dollars, you can contract or outsource almost all the steps,” he explains.
What a well-connected and highly motivated scientist in California can do today the rest of the world will be able to do tomorrow. Indeed, a number of firms are already offering tests for specific ailments (or predispositions to ailments) directly to the public, cutting out the medical middle-man. Dr Rienhoff, for his part, will soon launch MyDaughtersDNA.org, a not-for-profit venture intended to help others to unravel the mysteries of their family’s genes in the way that he unravelled those of his own.
Federalism
Presidential Candidate in waiting Fred Thompson weighs in on Federalism and the “compelling reasons not to look to the federal government first”. Video
Politicians “Hypocrisy on SUV’s”
You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Last week, during a speech to a labor group in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told the crowd: “One of the things [Americans] should be asked to do is drive more fuel-efficient vehicles.” Asked if by saying that he was specifically telling Americans to give up their SUVs, Edwards replied, “Yes.”
t’s a wonder we Americans haven’t choked to death on all the hypocrisy we’ve been force-fed of late. Naturally, Edwards owns and drives an SUV himself — several, in fact. In Washington D.C. he often pilots his Cadillac SRX, while at his North Carolina spread — a 28,000-square-foot manse more than ten times the size of the average American home — one can easily spot several more those-aren’t-Priuses (click to enlarge accompanying photo). Asked at the labor-group speech how he can reconcile asking other Americans to sacrifice while he’s living so large, Edwards replied: “I have no apologies whatsoever for what I’ve done with my life. My entire life has been about the same cause, which is making sure wherever you come from, whatever your family is, whatever the color of your skin, you get a real chance to do something great in this country.”
Merci Pour Les Roses :)
One of my favorite recent photos, taken in the 5th – Paris.
Taxes & The Closing of Foreign Car Specialists
Beebe bought the business after working there a year and Lucey sold the building to the family of President Kennedy. Beebe said the Kennedys bought the building because they wanted a business reason to visit Wisconsin where the former president’s sister, Rosemary Kennedy, who was mentally retarded and lobotomized at age 23, spent decades at St. Coletta’s in Jefferson until her 2005 death at age 86.
Beebe bought the building from the Kennedy family in 1979 and recently paid off the mortgage