From Investor’s Business Daily

Labor: While the focus was on card-check legislation that would allow workers to be bullied into union membership, a federal board has quietly changed a rule to let unions organize without a majority of workers.

The National Mediation Board, an agency charged with resolving labor disputes in the rail and airline industries, has approved a rule shift that heavily favors unions.

Under the change, OK’d by a 2-to-1 vote early this month, a union will be certified if a majority of those voting cast “yes” votes. Under the previous 75-year-old rule, certification required a majority of eligible workers, not just those voting. It’s conceivable that a company, or group of workers in a company, could be organized even if much less than a majority is in favor of unionization.

Take Delta Air Lines, which is facing union votes among its flight attendants and ground workers after absorbing Northwest Airlines to become the world’s largest carrier. It could be forced to deal with a union of 20,500 flight attendants with more than half not wanting to be members.

Unlike other major carriers, Delta has remained virtually free of the burden of a unionized work force. Only its pilots are organized, and it seems Delta employees continue to be proud of their independence. Just last year, before the addition of 6,500 Northwest flight attendants, a union attempt failed when fewer than 40% of Delta’s 14,000 flight attendants voted to organize.

The new rule, now subject to a 60-day comment period, was proposed by a union — the AFL-CIO — and it reeks of politics. The two mediation board members who voted for it were Democratic appointees. One, Linda Puchala, a former flight attendant union leader, was appointed by President Barack Obama. The other, Harry Hoglander, is a former airline pilot and official in a pilots union.

Seems these two, taking their cue from the same Democrats intent on forcing health care reform on an unwilling public, rammed through the change. Mediation Board Chairman Elizabeth Dougherty, a former Bush aide who voted to keep the rule in place, told nine senators in a letter:

“The proposal was completed without my input or participation, and I was excluded from any discussions regarding the timing of the proposed rule.”

While her colleagues were fronting for organized labor, Dougherty thoughtfully questioned the board’s authority to implement the change. Her argument, one we find compelling, is that the power to alter the rule rests in Congress.

If the rule becomes permanent after the 60-day comment period, the potential for workers who don’t want union representation to be forced under the control of organized labor increases greatly.

The Delta employees, and any others, who have been fighting off unions for years might find themselves subject to a master they didn’t ask for.

From The Wall Street Journal

Unions are pushing state lawmakers to pass legislation that would make organizing workers easier, as efforts to rewrite federal organizing laws remain stalled in Congress.

Oregon passed the Worker Freedom Act, which prohibits companies from holding mandatory employee meetings to talk about organizing.

Employers say mandatory meetings, known as “captive audience meetings,” are necessary to counter misleading information disseminated by union organizers. Unions say employers use the meetings to gauge worker sympathies and pressure workers not to join the union.

Union members support the Employee Free Choice Act at a Labor Day parade in Detroit. Efforts to shape organizing laws are turning to states.

It is unclear if the bill — which was signed into law in June but doesn’t take effect until January — would be pre-empted by federal law. Oregon business groups say it should be and that the state law would violate employers’ rights.

“It completely undermines employer speech,” said J.L. Wilson, the vice president of government affairs for Associated Oregon Industries, a Salem-based trade group.

The organization said it is planning to file a lawsuit to challenge the law as early as November in U.S. District Court in Oregon.

Mr. Wilson also said the bill was “a political favor” to labor unions.

Diane Rosenbaum, a Democratic Oregon state senator and chief sponsor of the law, denied it was payback for labor’s political support and said she believes it will survive a legal challenge. “What this bill says is you can hold these meetings. You just can’t force people to attend,” she said. “We worked hard with legislative counsel to make sure it will hold up.”

Oregon is the only state to pass such a law so far, but it is considered a test case, with developments closely watched by national business groups and state-level labor leaders around the country.

Similar bills prohibiting mandatory workplace meetings about union organizing passed this year in the Connecticut Senate and the Michigan House, both controlled by Democrats, but stalled in each state.

Both sides see the Oregon law as a local variation of the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card check, which allows unions to organize workers by getting them to sign cards, often without an employer’s knowledge.

Patrick Semmens, with The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which opposes efforts to expand unionization, said Oregon’s law is similar to card check because both limit an employer’s access to workers during union organizing. The Oregon law is “a step toward card check,” he said.

In Washington state, Democrats dropped efforts this year to push the Worker Privacy Act, which would ban mandatory meetings about unionization efforts, after an internal state AFL-CIO email was leaked to lawmakers, saying unions wouldn’t contribute to state politicians until the bill — the unions’ top priority — was passed. Democrats said the email raised legal and ethical questions.

In Hawaii, Democratic lawmakers overrode the Republican governor’s veto in August to pass a bill that enables unions to organize agriculture and public-sector workers via cards instead of elections.

The law requires employers with annual revenue of at least $5 million and all state and county governments to collectively bargain once a union is certified “without an election.”

These state efforts are viewed as a plan B for organized labor frustrated by its inability to get Employee Free Choice Act passed.

“While Congress is still debating the federal legislation, we think it’s important to move ahead in states where it’s possible to take action,” said William Samuel, director of legislative affairs for the AFL-CIO.

The state efforts face stiff headwinds. “There is a noticeably less friendly mood in the country toward unions,” said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

In the Nov. 3 elections, Republicans won the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey against Democratic opponents who were supportive of union issues.

Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com

From The Washington Times

The good news in the domestic auto industry is that Ford Motor Co. posted a $1 billion profit for the third quarter this year. After 17 straight quarters of red ink, any profit is a sign of progress. Ford sales were up 3.3 percent last month compared to October 2008 (contrasted to Chrysler, which saw sales plummet 30.4 percent year-to-year), market share is increasing, quality has improved to Japanese standards and the blue oval has a new fleet of attractive models hitting showrooms.

The bad news is that the United Auto Workers has decided to punish Ford for its success.

In results announced on Monday, more than 70 percent of Ford’s UAW members voted against concessions negotiated between its own leadership and corporate management. The amendment to the 2007 labor contract would have merely allowed Ford to take advantage of the same labor practices that cross-town rivals General Motors Corp. and Chrysler worked out in bankruptcy. Neither wage nor benefit cuts were involved. The new agreement simply would have instituted a pay freeze for new hires, reorganized job classifications and put in place a limited no-strike clause to give Ford breathing room to weather the current recession.

Rejecting this agreement breaks the six-decade-old practice of pattern bargaining in which any labor agreement negotiated with one domestic automaker was used as the pattern for contracts with the other companies. First utilized in 1950, pattern bargaining provided wage parity in the industry and guaranteed that the unions couldn’t strike against all three automakers at once and shut down the whole industry. To establish a pattern, only one company would be targeted for walkouts. The UAW’s abandonment of pattern bargaining spells big trouble ahead for Ford.

What’s new in Detroit is that the government has a stake in two out of three domestic automakers. It is a little-known detail of the government bailout of GM and Chrysler that a ban on the ability of workers to strike was a condition to receive federal largesse. Because Ford decided not to take a government handout and instead is working on a turnaround through private lenders the good old-fashioned capitalistic way, the Dearborn, Mich., company is the only member of the Big Three that can be targeted for a strike. Chairman William Clay Ford Jr. – the great-grandson of Henry Ford who founded the company 106 years ago – and his leadership team better buckle up because they are on a collision course with the UAW when the current contract expires in two years.

Make no mistake about it: Ford is being punished for refusing to take a government bailout. GM and Chrysler, which became wards of the state and the union through bankruptcy, not only were relieved of debts they owed to other corporations but also enjoy government-sponsored protection from Big Labor. The UAW spent more than $4.4 million to get Barack Obama elected president, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Ford is still run by the Ford family – not the Obama administration – and the union is making the company pay for that.

From The Washington Times

The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously Thursday to move toward new rules to prevent corporate Internet providers from charging online powers such as Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. extra for the large amount of infrastructure and bandwidth they use in delivering their services.

While technical, the issue of network neutrality – or Net neutrality – has sparked a furious, expensive lobbying war, as well as a raging debate in cyberspace over the government’s role in setting the rules of the road for the Internet, with some even arguing that the right to free speech in the Information Age is at stake.

The FCC commissioners said they were concerned about maintaining the Internet’s accessibility and openness and hope to issue a final set of rules early next year after a period of public comment.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, appointed by President Obama, said he was concerned about reports of some Internet providers slowing or blocking access to certain online companies.

“The heart of the problem is that, taken together, we face the dangerous combination of an uncertain legal framework with ongoing as well as emerging challenges to a free and open Internet,” Mr. Genachowski said.

He added that failing to consider new regulations “would be gambling with the most important technological innovation of our time.”

But the two Republican-appointed members of the commission, while voting to consider new regulations, said they are still skeptical there is enough evidence to justify government intervention.

“I am not convinced that there is a sufficient record to establish that a problem exists that should be addressed by [FCC] rules. … We should not adopt regulations to address anecdotes where there is no fact-based evidence that persuasively demonstrates the presence of a problem,” Commissioner Meredith A. Baker said.

The FCC move is designed to answer a basic question on how Internet services are delivered: Should cable and telecommunications companies be allowed to charge higher prices and fees to high-volume users to get access to their networks?

The proposed draft rule prevents operators from discriminating against any permissible content a third party sends through their networks – regardless of the volume of use – with exceptions only for technical reasons, such as to clear viruses and to block prohibited content such as child pornography.

While the panel voted 5-0 to proceed with the rulemaking, the commissioners broke down on party lines on a 3-2 vote to approve the proposed draft language as it now stands.

Complicating the dispute are fears from groups across the political spectrum that giving up the principle of Net neutrality opens the door to network owners censoring or favoring certain users based on the content of their sites.

“This is a down payment on creating a digital democracy,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a digital rights advocacy group.

Internet providers, including such companies as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Qwest Communications Inc., say they are open to working with the FCC over the next few months as it receives public comments on the draft rules, but say Net neutrality would prevent them from managing their product lines and undercut the incentive to make an estimated $350 billion in new investments to improve their networks.

“We continue to hope that any rules adopted by the commission will not harm the investment and innovation that has made the Internet what it is today and that will make it even greater tomorrow,” said David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast Corp.

Liberal groups pushing to restrict what the Internet providers can restrict hailed Thursday’s vote.

“Today’s vote is an important step toward securing the open Internet and a victory for the public interest and civil rights organizations, small businesses, Internet innovators, political leaders and millions of people who have fought to get to this point,” said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, an advocacy group for “diverse and independent media ownership.”

Congressional Democrats – including Massachusetts Rep. Edward J. Markey – have spent the last few years pushing for legislation that would encode open access to the Internet but had been unsuccessful.

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, introduced his own bill to block the FCC from moving forward with a Net neutrality rule.

New rules would create “onerous federal regulation,” Mr. McCain said.

From Washington Times

When software firm MobilVox wanted to break into the lucrative world of defense contracting, it pursued an unmistakable strategy: It expanded operations from its Northern Virginia base in Rep. James P. Moran’s congressional district to the southwestern Pennsylvania district of Rep. John P. Murtha.

Working with two of the most powerful members of a House subcommittee that controls Pentagon spending, the company also hired lobbying firms that employed former top aides of both the Democratic lawmakers and Mr. Murtha’s brother. Company executives and their lobbyists donated thousands of dollars to the two congressmen.

Soon, money flowed the other way.

Between 2003 and 2009, Mr. Murtha and Mr. Moran helped deliver $12 million to MobilVox in earmarks – money that is set aside by lawmakers for pet projects in the government’s annual spending bills. The latest House defense spending bill introduced and pushed through by Mr. Murtha includes an additional $2 million earmark for MobilVox requested by Mr. Moran. The bill is currently pending in conference committee.

MobilVox, the two lawmakers and the lobbyists hired by the company insist they followed all congressional rules and campaign fundraising laws, and that all earmark decisions were made on their merit. None has been accused of any wrongdoing.

But MobilVox’s success fits a pattern of doing business in Washington that ethics watchdogs deride as a “pay-to-play” system – one that became infamous during Republican years and continues to operate under a Democratic leadership that had promised to change a “culture of corruption” in Washington.

Mr. Moran’s and Mr. Murtha’s relationship with MobilVox “raises red flags. It is not subtle. It looks bad,” said Joel Hefley, a retired Republican congressman from Colorado who chaired the House ethics committee when that panel admonished then-Majority leader Tom DeLay for ethical lapses earlier this decade.

Mr. Hefley, who retired in 2006, said he was particularly troubled by MobilVox’s opening of an office in Mr. Murtha’s district, saying that while there may have been a good reason, “It looks like it was done to curry favor with a person who has power to benefit them.”

Mr. Murtha, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, is under siege as multiple grand juries investigate defense contractors close to him. The contractors built their businesses on Murtha earmarks at the same time they donated to him, hired lobbying companies that employed his former aides, associates and brother, and opened offices in his home district.

Mr. Moran has escaped the public scrutiny that Mr. Murtha has faced, but Federal Election Commission (FEC) and congressional lobbying records show his relationship with MobilVox fits a substantially similar pattern that benefited his campaign coffers and delivered lobbying work to one of his closest former top aides, Melissa Koloszar, the congressman’s longtime chief of staff and appropriations aide.

A federal grand jury in Washington is investigating one of MobilVox’s key lobbyists, Paul Magliocchetti, and his defunct firm, The PMA Group, which was highly successful in getting earmarks for dozens of clients.

Prosecutors have signaled that what began as a probe into questions of whether Mr. Magliocchetti illegally reimbursed associates for their campaign donations may end up targeting members of Congress and their aides. Although federal agents searched PMA’s offices and Mr. Magliocchetti’s home in November, the investigation did not become public until February, three months before Rep. Peter J. Visclosky, Indiana Democrat, announced that a grand jury had subpoenaed records from his congressional and campaign offices.

PMA employees were the top campaign contributors to Mr. Visclosky, and one of his former chiefs of staff was a PMA lobbyist.

Mr. Visclosky, a member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, has denied any wrongdoing, but has stepped down as chairman of the energy and water appropriations subcommittee.

A spokesman for Mr. Magliocchetti, who worked as a defense subcommittee staffer with Mr. Murtha and other members for nine years before becoming a lobbyist, declined comment on the probe.

Mrs. Koloszar, who worked for PMA after leaving Mr. Moran’s office, now works with her own lobbying firm. In an e-mail to The Washington Times, she said she did not lobby Mr. Moran’s office during a one-year House-imposed “cooling off period” aimed at preventing top staffers from seeking legislative favors from their old bosses. She also said she did not lobby Mr. Murtha’s office during the cooling-off period.

Bill Allison of the D.C.-based Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said the system that firms like MobilVox use to get earmarks amounts to “an influence tax on defense contracts.

“It raises the question of whether taxpayers are getting the most bang for our buck,” Mr. Allison said. “Companies wouldn’t be hiring lobbyists or making campaign contributions if they didn’t think it was effective, but if it is effective, does that mean that the best company gets the contract or the one with the best or best-connected lobbyist gets it?”

Reston-based MobilVox, founded in 1998, develops software to help the U.S. military reduce the threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – roadside and car bombs. The software is designed to make it easier to locate, identify and defuse the weapons.

According to databases maintained by the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget, MobilVox had not received any Defense contracts before it began working with Mr. Moran and Mr. Murtha.

But MobilVox has received or shared in nine earmarks sponsored by the two lawmakers since 2003 totaling $12.35 million, according to records and interviews.

During that same period, MobilVox officers and employees donated $39,000 to Mr. Murtha and his various political committees and $21,000 to Mr. Moran, records show.

Most of the donations came from Enrique Lenz, the company’s owner and chief executive officer.

Mr. Lenz, in a written statement answering some but not all of the questions asked by The Times, said MobilVox has developed technologies useful in preventing terrorist attacks and saving lives, and it has “complied with all applicable U.S. laws and regulations.” He also said the firm had delivered all of its U.S. contracts “on time and within budget.”

Lobbying disclosure records show that MobilVox paid at least $510,000 to politically-connected lobbyists, including $350,000 to Mr. Magliocchetti’s PMA Group over a three-year period beginning in February 2006 through this past March, when the firm closed in the fallout of the federal probe.

Both Mr. Murtha and Mr. Moran said through spokesmen that the MobilVox earmarks were based on the quality of the firm’s technology and not on who lobbied or gave donations.

“Our office complies with all the rules of the House and we do not keep records regarding who represented firms in our district and at what time,” Mr. Moran’s spokesman, Austin Durrer, said in a written statement. Mr. Murtha’s spokesman, Matthew Mazonkey, said the MobilVox earmark requests were thoroughly vetted.

Since 1989, PMA’s lobbyists and employees have donated $271,500 to Mr. Visclosky, $171,200 to Mr. Moran and $167,400 to Mr. Murtha, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a nonpartisan watchdog that monitors campaign finances. When coupled with donations from the firm’s clients, the PMA-related political gifts for each of the three lawmakers jump to $1 million or more, CRP said.

Watchdog groups such as Common Cause asked the House ethics committee to investigate Mr. Murtha, Mr. Moran and Mr. Visclosky to determine whether they traded earmarks for campaign gifts from PMA and its clients. In June, after pressure from House Republicans and various watchdog agencies, the committee announced it had already begun to look into any misconduct of members and employees of the House in connection with activities of the PMA Group.

Mr. Murtha, chairman or ranking member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee for the past 20 years, has said he has done nothing wrong and the investigations don’t concern him. A staunch defender of earmarks, Mr. Murtha says on his Web site that “elected representatives of the people understand their constituents and districts best.”

Records show that in 2003, MobilVox hired two lobbying firms – one with ties to Mr. Murtha and the Democrats and another with ties to now-disgraced former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a California Republican then on the defense appropriations subcommittee.

MobilVox hired Timothy Charters, former aide to Mr. Cunningham, paying his lobbying firm, Charters and Co., $80,000 between July 2003 and June 2005. During that period, Republicans controlled the House and Mr. Cunningham had not yet been accused by the Justice Department of taking bribes.

Mr. Charters said MobilVox needed help in getting the Defense Department interested in a new handheld device it had developed for military ordinance disposal teams, and Mr. Cunningham played no role in his work for the firm. He said he introduced company officials to Mr. Moran to persuade the lawmaker to sponsor an earmark for the device.

“In order to educate the congressman about this product, we invited him to visit the MobilVox facility and meet with experts in the bomb disposal community and MobilVox employees,” Mr. Charters said in a written statement.

He said Mr. Moran agreed to help and, according to federal records, a $1 million earmark later was inserted into the defense appropriations bill for 2005, which had passed in July 2004.

At the time, Mrs. Koloszar still worked as Mr. Moran’s chief of staff and his appropriations aide, but she left in November 2005 to join PMA. A few months later, she became a lobbyist for MobilVox.

The second lobbying firm hired in 2003, KSA Consulting, employed Robert “Kit” Murtha, the congressman’s younger brother, and Carmen Scialabba, who worked as a Murtha appropriations committee staffer for 27 years. In a 2000 tribute in the Congressional Record, Mr. Murtha described Mr. Scialabba as “indispensable.”

Listed on KSA disclosure reports as a MobilVox lobbyist, Kit Murtha said he never used his brother to further his career. He said he told clients, “I don’t know if I can do anything. Jack can be kind of unreasonable.” He described his KSA role as more of “a glad hander,” who introduced MobilVox executives to defense contractors.

In its disclosure forms, KSA said MobilVox paid it less than $10,000 in fees for each six-month reporting period between 2003 and 2006, and it stopped working for the Virginia firm at the end of 2006.

In a brief telephone call, Mr. Scialabba, who brought Kit Murtha into KSA, said he knew nothing about MobilVox and hung up.

In 2004, a year after MobilVox hired the two lobbying companies, Mr. Lenz and Mr. Murtha jointly announced that the company was opening an office in Indiana, Pa., in the congressman’s financially struggling district. The announcement came at Mr. Murtha’s annual “Showcase for Commerce,” a trade show in his hometown of Johnstown, Pa.

The show brings the nation’s top defense contractors together for what Mr. Murtha has called “one of the largest government-procurement expositions in the country.” Mr. Mazonkey, the Murtha spokesman, said the congressman was “happy to welcome MobilVox to the district in 2004 to work on important NASA and defense programs.”

Over a three-year period, MobilVox – with Mr. Murtha’s help – shared in three separate $1.7 million earmarks for a U.S. Navy project that included a mobile field kit to help train sailors about advanced IEDs. The earmarks were in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 appropriations bills.

Federal lobbying records show that by the time Kit Murtha retired at the end of 2006, MobilVox had hired a new set of lobbyists with ties to his brother – the PMA Group.

At the time, Mr. Magliocchetti was turning PMA into one of the 10 top-grossing lobbying firms on Capitol Hill, based in large part on its ability to get defense earmarks from Mr. Murtha and his colleagues on the subcommittee. The firm’s Web site bragged that “no one understands the inner workings of our nation’s capital better than the PMA Group.”

MobilVox became a PMA client on Feb. 1, 2006, with Mrs. Koloszar and Mr. Magliocchetti listed as two of the four lobbyists on its registration form.

Mr. Moran went to bat for MobilVox shortly after it hired PMA and Mrs. Koloszar, helping the company obtain a $1.8 million earmark for a portable computer system for Navy divers in the 2007 defense appropriation bill, which passed the House in June 2006.

While Mrs. Koloszar could not lobby Mr. Moran and Mr. Murtha during most of 2006 because of the “cooling off” rules, other members of PMA could and she was allowed to lobby other congressmen. In her statement to The Times, she said she was “very proud” of the work she had done and she had “carefully complied” with Congress’ post-employment restrictions. She has since lobbied both offices.

Records show Mr. Moran has continued to secure earmarks for MobilVox’s diver project; $800,000 in 2008 and $1.2 million in 2009. For 2010, he requested $2 million for the project in the defense appropriations bill, which was approved by the full House on July 30. The bill is currently in a conference committee between House and Senate appropriators.

Federal campaign records show that in November 2008, Mrs. Koloszar gave $5,000 – the maximum allowed – to Mr. Moran’s Virginia Leadership PAC, while Mr. Magliocchetti and other PMA employees gave an additional $7,000. Mrs. Koloszar also donated $8,400 to Mr. Moran’s congressional campaign committee since she became a lobbyist, the records show. Overall, PMA employees have been Mr. Moran’s biggest career donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Virginia state campaign records show that Mrs. Koloszar, Mr. Lenz, his wife, Darlene, who is the company’s chief operations officer, and MobilVox also gave $7,000 to Mr. Moran’s younger brother, Brian, in his unsuccessful campaign in June for the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

In their written statements to The Times, neither Mrs. Koloszar nor Mr. Lenz answered specific questions about their campaign donations. Mr. Lenz said he complied with all federal laws and regulations regarding interactions with Congress. Mrs. Lenz did not return calls to her office seeking comment.

Federal records also show that Mr. Magliocchetti, Mrs. Koloszar and three other PMA lobbyists each donated the maximum of $5,000 to Mr. Murtha’s leadership fund on July 31, 2006, a month after the House approved the 2007 defense appropriations bill, which included two MobilVox earmarks.

Since PMA closed in March, MobilVox has continued to use Mrs. Koloszar as a lobbyist, paying her new firm, MKG Consulting LLC, $40,000 through June 30.

Mr. Durrer, Mr. Moran’s spokesman, defended the MobilVox earmarks, describing the firm as a small, minority-owned business headquartered in the congressmans district. He said Mr. Moran “strongly supports their efforts to develop cutting-edge technology that assists the military in combating improvised explosive devices on land and underwater.”

The spokesman said projects are selected based on whether they create jobs in Northern Virginia and if the military believes the technology is critical in protecting U.S. troops.

“The congressman determines which projects best fit this criteria and those are the ones we request. Period. End of story,” he said, adding there was no connection between campaign donations and earmarks.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mazonkey acknowledged that Mr. Murtha has continued to get earmarks for MobilVox:

- A $1.45 million earmark in the 2007 appropriations bill for a database to make it easier for the Navy to analyze its information on IEDs.

- An earmark in Homeland Security’s 2009 budget requiring it to spend $1 million to purchase a MobilVox geospatial tool to help law enforcement respond to terrorist attacks. It was his only earmark in the Department of Homeland Security budget for that year.

- An additional $2 million for the MobilVox geospatial tool in the 2010 Homeland Security budget, although the request did not appear in the version of the Homeland Security bill that passed the House Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Mazonkey said every earmark request “is properly vetted and, in the end, we recommend funding only those that are cost effective and have value to the government and community.”