Poughkeepsie firms benefit from government grants

The Poughkeepsie Journal used an analysis of federal data to find that "United States government agencies paid $39.4 million through federal contracts to more than 150 local businesses, nonprofits and individuals in the two most recent fiscal years." While there has been a trend nationally of larger corporations receiving more grants at the expense of smaller companies, the Poughkeepsie area has experienced growth.

Federal contract data is available from the IRE and NICAR Database Library.

The Project on Government Oversight unveiled a new version of its online Federal Contractor Misconduct Database. "The new database, which covers instances of misconduct from 1995 to the present, includes the source documents for each instance, drawing primarily from government documents," noted a POGO press release. The site reports that the top 50 firms took in business worth more than $177.8 billion and had misconduct penalties totaling over $12.5 billion.

Jonathan D. Salant and Kristin Jensen of Bloomberg report that Sen. Christopher Dodd has outpaced his political rivals in the race to raise money for a presidential bid. A third of the $3 million he raised in the last quarter of 2006 came from the financial-services industry -- the industry he oversees as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

An article by Josh Margolin and Ted Sherman of The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger uncover new scandals at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). After a long legal battle with the University, the Star-Ledger obtained documents which "paint a picture of a state institution in which high-paid administrators chased state grants they didn't need, built buildings that now seem pointless and embarked on bizarre schemes -- like moving a bioterror lab without telling the officials who funded it."

The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. continues his series on coal mine safety with a Sunday article about the dangers of working at mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia. Ward reports, among other things, that Appalachian strip mines account for 20 percent of the nation's strip-mined coal, but over the last decade accounted for 75 percent of the nation's surface mine deaths. The entire series can be viewed here.

John McQuaid, co-author, with Mark Schleifstein, of Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms, interviews Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity, on the future of investigative journalism on the Internet. McQuaid is blogging for newassignment.net.

Bill McKelway of the Richmond Times-Dispatch is doing a series of reports on the state of hospitals and medical care in the Richmond area. The latest in the series reports the story of Danielle Moore, a former prison guard who delivered a baby girl with severe cerebral palsy after staff and doctors at the hospital - Community Memorial Healthcenter — delayed the procedure. Medical experts who reviewed the case established that she had grounds for a medical malpractice suit and the baby should have undergone an emergency delivery long before she did. "Four obstetricians who reviewed the file concluded that baby's catastrophic brain injuries were caused by oxygen loss before her birth and in the hours afterward. " Other stories in the series use the National Practitioner Data Bank to look at disciplinary and malpractice actions taken against doctors and attempts to reform malpractice laws.