Roll Call has looked into another beneficiary of John Murtha's earmarks, an organization called the Pennsylvania Association for Individuals with Disabilities (PAID). PAID was created by Murtha's earmarks, and it is headed by a former staffer who is also a paid lobbyist.
Despite claiming to represent millions of people, PAID's own Web site has a tracking system that indicates it averages fewer than 10 hits a day. In August, the organization had 14 jobs listed on the site, all of them at two organizations: MountainTop Technologies, a local company that has received millions of dollars in earmarks from Murtha over the past decade; and Greater Alleghenies Blood Services, a local Red Cross center that takes blood donations at the John P. Murtha Donor Pavilion, named in honor of Murtha's efforts to secure earmarks for the facility.
Access to the full piece requires a subscription, or I would excerpt more here. In the lengthy piece, Roll Call asserts that PAID has rejected the opportunity to associate with Pennsylvania employers looking to hire people with disabilities. PAID's head--Murtha's former staffer--has represented several other companies that have benefited from Murtha earmarks, including MountainTop. Further, PAID has been denied access to portions of the part of the $1 million in earmarks secured by Murtha, since the organization was judged to have no one qualified 'to make decisions or sign off on invoices.' According to Roll Call, PAID has received no recognition by local, regional, or state entities associated with providing assistance to the disabled -- except a single article in a local paper, written by a member of PAID's board.
The Board of PAID includes a number of other recipients of Murtha earmarks, as well as Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who's also the only recipient of a campaign donation from the lobbying firm associated with the PAID earmarks (and so many others from Murtha).
This is merely the latest in a long line of questionable Murtha earmarks. Earlier this year Murtha was caught asserting that the Department of Energy supported one of his earmarks, when in fact the DoE opposed it. The earmark was for an entity that apparently did not exist--at least, not yet. Prior to that Murtha had claimed that the Department of Justice was about to assign important new responsibilities to an agency for which he sought an earmark, when in fact DoJ was trying to shut it down. That followed another story by Roll Call about a firm for which Murtha secured millions in federal earmarks, apparently to induce them to move to his district.
When will Congressional Democrats rein in Murtha and his waste of taxpayer dollars on projects that always seem to involve friends and former employees?
