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.
Congress Will Not Like This Idea (Score:1, Interesting)
I bet that our Congresscritters are not going to like this idea at all--for the very reason that it would actually bring transparency to the appropriations process, exposing all of the pet projects in their home states that they're getting funded. They won't want that info out and available the next time they're up for election . . .
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:1, Interesting)
I almost felt that way until the unconstitutional wiretapping and Obama became more connected. Obama's support for the warrantless wiretapping programs has cast a doubt on everything else. He seemed to be off to a remarkable start until that.
Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't vote for the man but I agree with everything he's done so far.
Now if he can just get Universal Health Care going, and bring home our troops from ALL the nations where they are deployed, and redeploy them along our boarders to curtail drug traffic and illegal immigration I would be even more happy.
Re:Destined to the "ungratifying"? (Score:4, Interesting)
I managed to survive, but I learned a valuable lesson: government won't help those who can't help themselves at the moment, but will be able to eventually. You have to be a true loser for them to even talk to you.
So now I claim as much as possible to avoid having my tax dollars from becoming an interest-free loan for a year, for the government to blow at their discretion. And I now vote Republican whenever I discover a true one running for office (as rare as that is these days).
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a side-note, FISA in Swedish means "farting" in English. ;) (Yeah, I'm really gonna be that low today)
Re:blogspot (Score:4, Interesting)
He may end up "launching a website" on blogspot himself, which of course would be illegal if he was Republican.
Like the respectful leaders of other influential nations do? [ahmadinejad.ir]
Publish the data (Score:2, Interesting)
Well (Score:5, Interesting)
During the inauguration, I got a text message from them asking if I wanted more info about the event. Once I set "yes", I got messages about the weather, where to go in Washington dc and other local info (even though I wasn't there :-). Once it was over, I got a thankyou email from "President Barack Obama" (info@pic2009.org) thanking me for participating.
Their campaign sent out all kinds of text messages and emails, I donated to the Red Cross/Hurricane Gustav by text message thanks to them. It was pretty impressive how much they used this new-fanged inter-tube-text-messaging thing. The fact they took that technology and are now using it for "serious business" is a great sign.
In short, when was the last time you ever got an email or text message from "President George Bush" thanking you for anything?
Re:Destined to the "ungratifying"? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hahaha, as a European I find it amusing how your half-baked, badly implemented safety nets are taken as evidence that there shouldn't be any at all. And we always get flak for being wasteful socialist commies.
I had to visit a welfare office, too, at one stage. It was embarrasing but helped me get through that bad period. It's not like our system is perfect but I'm grateful and now happily pay my taxes to help others in the same position. It also helps to know that only the absolute minimum is spent on non-productive stuff like defence.
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it's better have the executive order and ask for an exceptions than to not have the order at all. I assume the guy is really freakin' valuable because I'm pretty sure Obama knew that asking for the exception would be politically costly to all the ideologues and partisans on both sides of the aisle.
Five seconds of goggling yielded this:
Defense Secretary Gates said at his news briefing today that he had personally vetted Lynn and found him to be the best qualified for the job and that an exception had to be made to bring him aboard.
Gates said the Obama transition recognized his Raytheon position might become an issue. "I was very impressed with his credentials; he came with the highest recommendations of a number of people that I respect a lot. And I asked that an exception be made, because I felt that he could play the read of the deputy in a better manner than anybody else that I saw. He said that the White House Counsel's office, presidential personnel and the Pentagon's General Counsel are making arrangements to get the necessary information to Levin's committee."
That's a start. (Score:5, Interesting)
But what we really need is a version tracking and autentication system for federal legislation to complement it.
It'd work like this.
You go onto the President's budget website and discover, say, a a hundred thousand dollar grant to some local company to study the effect of interpretive dance on crop growth. Where did it come from? Well, the budget site tells you it was an earmark in the 2010 transportation bill. How did it get into that?
Well, you go to Congress's legislation site, and find that the earmark was in the final bill, but not the initial house bill. The earmark was inserted the night before the bill went to a final vote, and the digital signature belongs to an aid in Senator Blowhard's office.
Transparency isn't just publishing data. It's establishing accountability by making everything traceable.
The technology to do this isn't exotic. The system resembles the kind of version control systems that even small software development teams can install and put in place. Commercial, off the shelf document and workflow management systems that could handle this for an enterprise the size of Congress have been in existence for at least twenty years, to my personal knowledge.
It would be amazing if putting such a system in place cost would more than ten or twenty million dollars. Even if it cost a hundred million, how much money would it save, even just in the first year? Could we even put a price on how much less corrupt government would be?
That begs a good question (Score:5, Interesting)
How does congress manage documents now? Are they just emailing word documents around as attachments, or is there a modern-ish document management system in place? Is it homebrew, or commercial?
A quick search turned up that "they" might already be working on a solution to your problems.
FDsys [gpo.gov]
Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:3, Interesting)
"Senators Kennedy and Kerry haven't helped Massachusetts much at all, if at all."
That's really not true. a good deal of money is funneled into Massachusetts through the Federal government for all sorts of wacky things, and it certainly isn't because this state lacks money to for things itself (we have the second highest per capita income along with a relatively high tax rate... which I love saying just because it frustrates right-wingers trying to justify how that makes sense without blowing their own theories completely out of the water) or we have such an enormous population. It's because they actually do what Senators are supposed to do, and represent the interests of their state. A very valid criticism of Senators who refuse to, for example, use the ear-mark system, is that by doing so they aren't solving any problems but rather harming their state... Arizona is actually suffering for the fact that McCain thinks ear-marks are evil, which means he's doing his job of representing and pursuing Arizona's best interests very poorly.
Re:Explain this (Score:4, Interesting)
47,- euros a month for unlimited access? Is it bound to a specific route?
I live in The Netherlands and my costs far outweigh that number. For the sake of simplicity let's assume I travel the same route 5 days a week.
A yearly subscription for the train between on a route of +/- 55km would cost me 132.40,- euros a month. Because I recently graduated I received a subsidized public transit subscription which allows me to currently bring this down to about 100,- euros a month (ignoring any taxes, again for the sake of simplicity). Add to that the fact that just traveling back-and-forth between the train station with the bus (+/- 10km) costs me about 4,- euros per trip. That's 80,- euros without a subscription, I could possibly bring that down to about 60,- euros a month with a subscription.
So in a best case scenario (without the subsidized subscription) using public transit costs me roughly 2300,- euros on a yearly basis.
Back on-topic. What I'm wondering is just how much spending is included with the bill that mandates this website. I actually opened it with the intention of at least somewhat reading it, but it has a gazillion more pages than I'm willing to read right now. Starting with a bill that mandates actually reading the bills sounds like a plan to me.
Re:Technology (Score:4, Interesting)
What has surprised me about the Obama campaign was how they used information technology effectively to get their message out. These people get it.
Indeed. Now that the election is over, I think it would be fun to look back at how it is we got to where we are, and thereby make wild-assed deductions about individual candidates approach to technology. From Site Operating System and Server by Candidate [marketingtechblog.com]
FreeBSD
- Barack Obama (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
- Christopher Dodd (D) - FreeBSD, Apache by pair Networks
Linux
- Joe Biden (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
- John Edwards (D) - Linux, Apache by Plus Three
- Bill Richardson (D) - Linux, Zope by Interlix
- Wesley Clark (D) - Linux, Apache by Voxel Dot Net, Inc.
- Al Gore (D) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
- Jim Gilmore (R) - Linux, Apache by 1&1 Internet, Inc.
- Rudy Giuliani (R) - Linux, Apache by RackSpace
- Ron Paul (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
- Dennis Kucinich (D) - Linux, Apache by New Age Consulting
- Mitt Romney (R) - Linux, Apache by Rackspace
Windows
- Hillary Clinton (D) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0
- Sam Brownback (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by RackForce Hosting
- Mike Huckabee (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
- Duncun Hunter (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
- John McCain (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
- Tom Tancredo (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Interland
- Fred Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by LNH Inc.
- Tommy Thompson (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Time Warner Telecom
- Chuck Hagel (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Individual
- Newt Gingrich (R) - Windows Server 2003, Microsoft-IIS/6.0 by Smartech Corporation
Not entirely certain that the above could be translated as "FreeBSD: Change We Can Believe In!", but interesting nonetheless.
On the other hand, both pmo.gov.ps and knesset.gov.il use Windows/IIS, so whatever the "Change" strategy is, it will have to be implemented by diplomatic efforts on the part the Secretary of State, perhaps in conjunction with the help of individuals with sufficient technological expertise. I hear that the ex-chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation might be available.
Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:4, Interesting)
Even Better, how about this:
It can't be a law unless it can fit on one page, single sided, 12 point times-new-roman, double spaced.
Everyone has time to read one page of text. That's where the bullshit gets thrown into the laws, on the 600th page, in small print, under Article XVII, Section 125, subsection 43, paragraph 68. Laws should be simple. If it requires explaining, it isn't a good law, or it should be broken up into sub-laws.
~X
Re:Destined to the "ungratifying"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know any Republicans that want to get rid of all welfare programs. Maybe some of the more obnoxious neocons out there do.
What the people I know want is for someone to make the system work sanely. It's supposed to be a temporary crutch, something to fall back on, not a chosen way of life. I want it available for my neighbor when he gets laid off and is out of work for a couple months. I do not want some shitbag living off it, pumping out children they can't afford, draining the system of resources so my neighbor can't use it when [s]he needs it.
It's such that I almost want to see a neighborhood welfare program that's contributed to, and managed by, other people that live in our neighborhood. Now if only we could get our tax dollars back to fund it...
interactive zoomable pie chart (Score:2, Interesting)
Can you imagine how cool it would be if they used an interactive zoomable pie chart like this one [nytimes.com] that shows inflation.
You'd start with every government department visible, you could then zoom in to any spending program and see how it was made up, area being proportional to cost.
If recovery.gov don't do it, someone should.
Re:Destined to the "ungratifying"? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a European that moved to the USA and I'm happy about it. Sure welfare isn't the best here, but back in Europe, welfare is abused by everyone.
It's not 'embarrassing' for most to go to the welfare office, it's a matter of being able to pull off going to the welfare office under several different names while you haven't even worked for it (you just claim you had a bad time at whatever country you came from and here you go, free money, free housing, free food and we'll assist you getting a job) or with the same name to several different welfare offices in different parts of the state/province/country without getting caught because the IT contractors can't seem to communicate simple XML files between databases.
Then there are those like me that are honest locals that make some money then they fall upon bad times and then on two different times you get a reply like: you didn't work long enough (9 mo. netting $700/mo) or you made too much last year (netting $1200/mo) while you have two people to feed at insane rates for basic food and having to buy bottled water because the tap is too chlorinated, $500 rent $200 gas and electric in a moderate climate (no air-conditioning, just heating a very small apartment). Then you get your tax note and you still have to pay more taxes after vat on everything that is not bread and water (electricity and gas over the absolutely minimum (which is calculated back about the power to turn a single 100W bulb on day and night) is also luxury taxed)
No I'm happy I'm in the USA. Sure there are some unfortunates but I was also unfortunate back in Europe (always late with rent and bills) and there were more beggars in the streets and train stations than many places here in the US. Yes, you have to contribute mainly to your own welfare but at least I can choose to do so at my own rate and at least I'm not contributing (or at least less) to the endless stream of illegal immigrants or plain run-away criminals from shady countries and not getting anything in return. If I choose not to and something happens to me, then that's my own fault, my bad decisions don't get caught that well by a net but at least people either learn from it and pick themselves up or weed themselves (and with them some stupidity) out.
Being here you actually can see what the real situation is. There are many horror stories in Europe about Americans losing their job or having health issues and it destroys their whole life and they have to go homeless just because of that single event. Well, I have seen several people get (really) sick or have no job for a while, it doesn't necessarily destroy their life. Sure they have to downgrade their lifestyle or have some hardship, but those that planned for it don't have that big of a problem. Those that didn't plan for it and hoped their whole life would be sweet without sickness are the ones that get hit hardest. They will have to get rid of their mansions they could only afford by not contributing to a health plan and their hummers they payed off by not contributing or emptying their IRA.