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The Center for Public Integrity is going to release a big investigation into Congressional travel on Monday. There almost certainly will be local stories in there for many of you. The CPI said:

On Monday, June 5, American Public Media's Marketplace and American RadioWorks, Northwestern University's Medill School, and the Center for Public Integrity will launch "Power Trips," an extensive investigation of privately sponsored travel by members of Congress and their aides. The findings -- based on an analysis of more than 25,000 travel disclosure documents -- will reveal that Congress and staff took thousands of trips, worth millions of dollars, to destinations around globe.

The Center will stream the results of the investigation live on www.publicintegrity.org. The Center has organized these records by congressional office, trip destination, trip cost and trip sponsor. Journalists are encouraged to contact the Center to find specific information for localized stories or to obtain general information on our report. Please contact, Sam Stein, Press Secretary, sstein@publicintegrity.org

This is an example of American RadioWorks' 2004 study on congressional travel, which allowed users to pull up the travel records of individuals within the House and Senate.

There is another way you can look up this information -- and that is by looking at the personal financial disclosure information that members of Congress must post each May. You can go to OpenSecrets, look up a member of Congress, click on "personal finances" (lower left side of the page) and see lots of detailed information.

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Pre-Fab and Mobile Homes Hot

In the great circle of life, when home sales are soft, mobile home sales rise. BusinessWeek reports:

Demand for manufactured homes -- built in factories and transported to sites -- has been brisk since Hurricane Katrina hit last August. The government has paid almost $900 million for about 25,000 mobile and modular homes to provide dislocated residents roofs over their heads while they rebuild. But the industry's growth spurt isn't just disaster-related: Affordability is driving orders as well. And that's bad news for the rest of the housing industry, says Barbara Allen, first vice-president with Avondale Partners, a Nashville-based investment bank. She says housing starts, or the number of residential building projects begun, and the number of manufactured housing units sold have tended to move in opposite directions since the 1970s, but especially since the mid-'90s.

"It's countercyclical," agrees Paul Nouri, equity analyst with New York research shop Sidoti & Co.

Why do gains in the manufactured housing industry come at the expense of the larger housing market? Prefab homes are 10 percent to 25 percent cheaper than traditional "stick-built" homes, not including land. "You're seeing the people who missed out on the housing boom buying smaller houses," says Ivan Feinseth, director of research for MatrixUSA, an institutional research and brokerage firm in New York.

The New York Times also has a story on the uptick of interest in mobile-home company stocks. The story added:

Since 1976, most homes have been required to meet strict certification standards from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that focus on design and construction, strength and durability, transportability and fire resistance, among other things. The HUD code also sets performance standards for the heating, plumbing, air-conditioning, thermal, and electrical systems.

Many manufactured units, [Thomas] Beers, [vice president for economics at the Manufactured Housing Institute] says, are often indistinguishable from stick-built housing. They can have pitched roofs, vaulted ceilings and myriad amenities like fireplaces, porches and spas. Two-story versions are also available. "Really," he said, "the sky's the limit."

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The Danger of Taking Work Home

MSNBC's very smart Red Tape Chronicles makes a strong argument for leaving work at the office.

When employees take work home on their laptops, they open systems up to the kind of data loss that the Veterans Administration and even some financial institutions have had to face. Businesses spend megabucks trying to protect their office data, but one errant laptop can ruin it all. Fifteen percent of workers -- about 20 million of us -- takes work home every day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.

The Red Tape Chronicles column makes the argument that, soon, businesses may find it is not worth the risk -- they will begin to enforce the "don't take it home" rule. In addition, in the process, workers might get their lives back.

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Alpacas: The New Big-Money Farming Fad

A decade or so ago, you might recall, everybody and their uncle was raising ostriches and emus. Now, watch for alpaca farming. Poynter's St. Petersburg Times produced an interesting story about folks who are paying megabucks for breeding stock. They call it "an investment they can hug." Here is a huge list of alpaca ranchers around the country. (It takes a few seconds to load; be patient.)

The St. Petersburg Times  story said:

Alpacas are native to the highlands of Peru, where for centuries people have domesticated them, sheared their luxurious fleece and sold it for top dollar. They were commercially imported in 1984, and today there are more than 80,000 alpacas in the United States and more than 800 in Florida, according to the Alpaca Registry International. That number is growing as more and more Floridians leave the fast life behind and take an interest in these funny-looking relatives of the llama.

New farms are popping up from Tallahassee to Miami. Most are in the central part of the state; the North Suncoast is home to more than a dozen.

Why? Alpaca fleece is warm, hypoallergenic and flame-resistant, used in pricey designer sweaters, scarves and socks sold at Bloomingdale's and Burberry. The best-bred alpacas sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars -- well above traditional livestock prices. And they're cute.

Although, they do spit when they're angry.

Critics say alpacas are just the latest farming craze without a financial foundation to back up the boom, like ostriches and emus before them. But owners of alpacas say that in a state agricultural market traditionally dominated by cattle and citrus, these fleecy faces are here to stay.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
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