Obama To Launch Website For Tracking Tax Expenditures 358
internationalflights tips news that Barack Obama, in his first weekly address as President, has mentioned plans to set up a website for tracking "how and where we spend taxpayer dollars." Details about the website, Recovery.gov, are available within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PDF). The website "shall provide data on relevant economic, financial, grant, and contract information in user-friendly visual presentations to enhance public awareness of the use funds made available in this Act," and will also "provide a means for the public to give feedback on the performance of contracts awarded for purposes of carrying out this Act." The site itself currently contains a placeholder until the passage of the Act.
Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:-1, Informative)
Your metacommunism is doomed. Have fun, hippies. The Russians tried that and it flopped big time, I'm sure you'll do much better, with your inferior Linux software and godless inter-racial society.
Yours in Christ,
Hal Turner
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:3, Informative)
So Obama has yet to actually support warrantless wiretapping. Whether he will or will not will be a story for another day.
Obama voted for the revised FISA even though his vote wasn't needed to pass it.
Obama has yet to actually denounce warrantless wiretapping.
Whether he will or will not will be a story for another day.
Silence is a tacit acceptance of the status quo.
Re:Explain this (Score:5, Informative)
Because some idiots thinks buses is a good idea? Personally I hate them, less so for long trips though. But within a city or as commute transport they suck balls, slower than a bike or more expensive than a car...
I am an extensive mass transport system user who, every day, benefits from a multi-modal network that involves bus, suburban train and subway system. I use it to not only cover a 40km trip to work each day but also on my off time. In order to gain access to the local mass transport network I need to pay 47 euros for a montly pass. That is 47 euros for unlimited access to multiple modes of transportation. That ends up costing right under 600 euros a year.
Where exactly can you purchase a car for 600 euros a year? Are you able to run a car for a year with 600 euros worth of gasoline/diesel? Can you even maintain a car (insurance, maintenance, etc...) with 600 euros a year? No, you can't.
Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.downsizedc.org/ [downsizedc.org]
"Read the Bills Act" (what I like to call "RTFB Act"): the bill must be read aloud before a full quorum in both the House and the Senate. In addition, 7 days must pass between when a change was made to the bill, and when they can vote on it. Furthermore, the full text of the bill must be made available to the public at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give notice on when they will be voting for that bill.
"One Subject at a Time Act": Self explanatory. Each bill can not address more than one subject at a time.
Re:No (Score:3, Informative)
Look at the result! We let our government slack off on regulation and set us up for this recession thing we are now in.
That's a myth. There was no significant market deregulation in the last 20 years. Rather, regulation was a major cause of the problem. Check out "Community Reinvestment Act".
Obama says "figure out what is wrong, and solve that". If a government program sucks, kill it. If it is a good program but badly managed, fix the management. If it is a good program and well managed, reward it.
I hope he's really going to follow through on that. It would be wonderful to see. I don't think there is a government program that was eliminated any time in at least the last 50 years. The prevailing wisdom is that once a program is created, it's permanent, and impossible to kill. If he could at least reduce the harmful effects of counter-productive policies like marijuana prohibition and ethanol import tariffs I'll be impressed.
Misleading Headline (Score:3, Informative)
The federal government "spends" vast amounts of money by specially exempting certain things from taxation. (This is not to be confused with the stuff government doesn't have a right to tax to begin with.)
Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:3, Informative)
"It was developed for a country in 1776, not 2009, and it didn't scale well enough."
Although I agree with this to some degree, that's not the entire problem. Part of the problem is that we have completely turned our backs on the part of the 1776 plan that made government scalable: states' rights and extended autonomy. The Federal Government should have been a small lean organization that did nothing more than what it was allowed to by the Constitution. That's not how things have worked out because instead of thinking of themselves as the glue between the states, they imagined themselves as the rulers and it all went downhill from there.
I dunno how to solve this mess though. The US government has been telling people they need it to pass more laws in order to be a prosperous society. It's a joke. We continue to erode everything that was core to the system though. It doesn't really matter anyway: so long as the average man is either fat and happy, or not on the brink of desperation yet still too afraid to do anything corruption will grow until the common man is literally faced with consequences so bad he has no choice but to fight back.
We can barely get out people out to vote and when they do vote... well, just look at this presidential election. The average voter supports either of the major parties for reasons as arbitrary as the reasons they cheer for any given sports team and act accordingly.
Re:Read the op? (Score:5, Informative)
Hi, I admin the list in question and just saw this. The list is a default installation of Mailman [gnu.org], and I have no idea why it would give that error. If you write to contact(at)metagovernment(dot)org, I will subscribe you manually.
Also, if you could forward that error message to the above address, I can try to debug (but again, it is a default install as provided by a standard Cpanel host).