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.
Overload (Score:2)
What about the alien invasion? (Score:2)
What will be of secret underground military bases where they keep all those alien spaceships and huge jars of pickled aliens?
How will they be funded now? Where will Will Smith and Vivica A. Fox get married in case of a alien invasion? In a field somewhere?
There WAS a reason US government was spending $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat, you know?
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I've seen notations to this effect in slashdot coversations about the DMCA for instance. It has also been useful in Canadian political discussions such as those at http://michaelgeist.ca/ [michaelgeist.ca] where we could see that the minister responsible for communications law (Bev Oda, also known as
It freaks me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:5, Insightful)
I like this one though, hopefully it'll be as good in practice as it is in theory.
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I think a big part of that practice is not just making the information available, but consumable in an easy way. So, if I want to run my own analysis of the data, it ought to be made available in a standard format so as to facilitate those purposes (ie XML and accompanying schema), as opposed to making it only available through HTML or an Excel spreadsheet.
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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."
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Exactly how I felt for a while too. Before Obama, I'd always think, "I wish I was president just so I could do this, this and that, or make this a priority" (among these things were such issues as the influence of lobbyists in Washington, market regulation, universal health care and death penalty).
Now we've got this uncommonly wise and pragmatic (the long sighted kind of pragmatic, short sighted pragmatism is awful) president, with nearly no ideological grudge, who seems to understand all points of view (un
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, you can't really top this, that guy knows so well the issues he's tackling, he probably knows what's good for you better than you do on a few issues!
Careful now. I know a lot of people are still in the throes of post-inauguration orgasm afterglow, but that's really a very dangerous train of thought. NO GOVERNMENT can be trusted that they know what's better for you, than you do -- ever. Some of the most evil and destructive regimes in the history of the human civilization have suggested exactly the same thing in order to take and maintain absolute power.
Everyone needs to take a deep breath and see how things proceed over the next year or two. To suggest that this administration is fundamentally different than any of the others after only five days in office is dangerously naive.
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm in the same boat here... well mostly. Not every politican will do everything you like. Most presidents will erode our natural rights to some extent (though some might try to strength others). I would say the warantless wiretapping is pretty damn scary.
Like all politicians, you should take everything he does with a grain of salt. Obama still has the potential to do a lot of good yet, however. I'm not saying we should over look this, but it is what it is for the time being. Maybe we all should take some time out of our bitch-fest here on /. and write some letters? Get active?
Re:It freaks me out... (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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As a side-note, FISA in Swedish means "farting" in English. ;) (Yeah, I'm really gonna be that low today)
Or smart politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Going after the bush-era full bore might make a lot of far-left democrats happy, but it would instantly piss off the republicans end the so-called "honeymoon". Speaking up too loudly about FISA right now would burn political capital he needs for more immediate plans (sadly).
Would you rather have him use up his political capitol on FISA, or something else? He can't do everything--he has to compromise on some things to move forward.
And if anybody though Obama was gonna go on a witch-hunt after the former administration, you will be dissapointed. He has said numerous times he wants to look forward, not backward.
Or, again, smart politics. Maybe he doesn't want to kick a fuss and burn his political capital over FISA because he figures it will be knocked down in the courts. Maybe if he did kick up a fuss, it would make it even *harder* to remove. Look at the war on drugs--the best way to fix that little problem is to shut the fuck up about it and start funding statewide initiative that chip away at it. The minute Obama starts talking about ending the drug war, the whole process will grind to a halt and become yet another wedge like "gun control" or "abortion".
Or maybe he agrees with parts of it. Who knows? Politics isn't easy.
Re:Or smart politics (Score:5, Funny)
I can almost imagine a conversation like this in the Bush whitehouse...
Bush: "But what about the next president? Can't he come after us for this?"
Rove: "Not if he's too busy trying to stop the next Great Depression!"
[Lightbulb illuminates]
Wolfie: "I'll go tell Madoff's daughter to start banging the SEC's chief regulator."
Cheney: "I'll start having my congressional lackeys introduce deregulation bills to gut enforcement."
Paulson: "I'll instruct the Fed chief to start handing out free money."
All chant: "One Ring to rule them all, and in Darkness bind them..."
Will it be a Web2.0 site? (Score:5, Funny)
Can we post comments, click on a little thumbs up/down button, have logins where we set up a profile and can choose what picture displays next to our comments (anime schoolgirl, picture of our cat, Karl Marx, Milton Friedman, etc.), connect to our friends (OMG can you believe they won't be funding our ipod museum WTF!!!), blog about what we think about how our money was spent on researching the impact improving a bridge will have on the local sewer rat population...
Re:Will it be a Web2.0 site? (Score:5, Insightful)
I dont think this is funny. I think its appropriate. Why not? Why are your comments any more important than someone who wants an ipod museum? Did you participate in change.gov? hunbdreds of thousands did, with moderating and voting up and voting down. It brought issues forward, started discussions and got responses.
Democracy is being responsible to the people. That is a feature, not a bug.
Dozens of people supported the ipod museum (Score:3, Insightful)
But the man kept hitting the "thumbs down" on each proposal. What kind of democracy is it when a dozen people on the internet support the ipod museum and all their suggestions get buried to the ground? I mean, why should any comment get buried?
Hopefully Obama will dedicate 24 billion to eliminating all software bugs everywhere. Those fat cats on wall street have let the bug problem carry on far to long. We need a bug-bailout *and* an ipod museum in every major city (Chicago,
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You complain 'But the man kept hitting the "thumbs down" on each proposal. What kind of democracy is it when a dozen people on the internet support the ipod museum and all their suggestions get buried to the ground? I mean, why should any comment get buried?'
Answer, because that is the DEFINITION of democracy. In a democracy, if a majority of the voters decide to fsck you, you're fscked. If a small minority is allowed to rant, rave, and get their way, even though the majority don't agree with them, and vo
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Thankfully I can be a pedant and point out we live in a republic that was designed to slow down our process so we can think rather then be ruled by the mob. A straight democracy looks exactly like Digg, and quite frankly I wouldn't want to live in Diggnation.
It is the hard truth. But wait until one of those ipod museum people hires a hot-shot lawyer and sues the feds for burying their precious idea. Make no mistake, a government website with moderation is uncharted w
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Democracy doesn't necessarily have to mean that simple majority (50% + 1) votes is enough. US Senate needs 60 votes to be filibuster-proof, constitutional amendments require pretty steep supermajority (need to be ratified on state level too), and so on.
Looking at sibling poster's "9 people" example, what if motion passing requires 80% of the vote?
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A big flaw in that kind of idea (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of those line items in a bill don't apply to you or your state. How would you feel if your senator added a line for funding light rail in your region and it was voted down by some jackass who doesn't live in your state? After all, didn't they get their stupid Elvis Museum funded last year? Why should their state get a grant and then have our project get overruled based on the will of random internet users.
Letting random internet users vote on each line item would change the power balance in governm
Destined to the "ungratifying"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The thought might be good. But what percentage of our taxes will be listed as "other" for the NSA, CIA, classified Defense, State and God knows what?
On the other hand, if Americans realize how much is "other", it could be an eye-opener. People will have more to complain about than welfare mothers and mass transit.
Re:Destined to the "ungratifying"? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who complain about "welfare mothers and mass transit" will continue to complain about whatever their leaders tell them that the "problem" is. They are not capable of realization.
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Agreed. Let's also not forget about those complaining about poor people in rural America finding comfort in their churches and exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.
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: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.
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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 resource
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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 w
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I, too, have little respect for most of "them" (that means practically any group of humans that you could put a label on). My point, AC, is that the afore-mentioned government programs are far, far from culpable in the epic fail that is passing for democracy in the USA.
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The big debate I notice every year is whether the VA budget should fall under defense/military or health care and social programs.
Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
What has surprised me about the Obama campaign was how they used information technology effectively to get their message out. These people get it. This administration understands that the majority of the U.S. population has access to the internet, has become relatively informed about the issues and wants to be kept in the loop with respect to governmental decision making. Not to be partisan, but this is quite a change from the previous administration, who made few efforts to directly connect with the average voter.
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Few efforts? They only kept the radio addresses and White House Press Secretary out of tradition, not because of some sort of desire to help you or I make better decisions or stay informed.
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?
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I think the GP and GGP's reference to "few efforts" is in regard to the Bush administration, not Obama.
Regarding the topic of this article, I think it's great. As I've said many times, the key to improving the US is transparency, not ideology. Another key is taking steps in the right direction and making incremental improvements. So to the cynics that think that v1.0 of the tax dollar tracking site will suck - v1.0 is the stepping stone to v2.0. As Ivan Turgenev said, "If we wait for the moment when e
Yes, I misspelled Organize... (Score:2)
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this is quite a change from the previous administration, who made few efforts to directly connect with the average voter.
Which was almost Orwellian, because I remember the previous administration talking about "transparency" as if they were running every decision past the average voter.
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.
Please no government transparency! (Score:4, Funny)
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its ok Jack Bauer [guardian.co.uk] will save us if anything
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Eliminate wasteful spending... (Score:2)
Like having 2 people create a tiny web page where text is an image!
You almost didn't elect this man because... (Score:5, Insightful)
... he didn't wear a USA flag lapel pin. I can only imagine how 4 years of McCain would've been different.
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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:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I hate having our troops all over the world, I hate, even more, the thought of having them deployed here at home so they can be used for domestic roadside checks and other violations of liberty. Just put them in their bases or retire them.
Death and taxes (Score:2)
I think the gov should blatantly rip off the deathandtaxes website for their actual budget as well. Why stop at having super oversight of just the recovery money? This would work brilliantly for the budget as well.
Misdirection - look at what is ABOUT to be spent (Score:2)
It's awesome to look at where tax dollars are being spent. But wouldn't it be better not to have so many things to have to look at?
Take the "stimulus" bill that hardly spends any money this year (you know, when stimulus would seem to be required to actually help anyone). Happily thanks to third parties you can see just what kind of boondoggle is underway, and try to speak about about just what kind of pork is being lathered on a massive government spending increase:
ReadTheStimulous.org
We need openness BEF
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Publish the data (Score:2, Interesting)
Transparency? (Score:3, Insightful)
All spending bills have to originate in the House. Seems that we need to just vote against every incumbent for the next 5 or 6 elections.
Re:Transparency? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course every single earmark will be in the system. The agencies who disburse the money can't buy a box of paper clips without being able to point to a line in the budget authorizing the purchase.
The problem is in the second part: who is responsible for the earmark. True, "all spending bills have to originate in the House," but this doesn't mean much when bills can be mysteriously and anonymously altered in the reconciliation process, with earmarks nobody has ever heard of being inserted in the middle of the night before the bill comes up for a vote.
It's not just that the legislative branch has managed to muck with the Constitutional division of powers between the houses, they've developed ways of legislating and budgeting in secret. This isn't just a subversion of Constitutional divisions of power, it's a subversion of the whole rationale for representative democracy.
I've always wondered why proponents of term limits even bother. Even if we change the faces, we don't know what they're up to or who they're working for. Everything term limit proponents hope to gain by term limits can be achieved, and more, by simply requiring every public act of elected officials to be a matter of conveniently accessible public record. Until that happens we aren't electing public officials, we're electing rulers.
But this is a start. People using it will see the pork, and when they run into the stone wall trying to find out where it came from, they'll complain. Right now, they know there's stuff in there to complain about, but they can't get started because they don't know what it is.
Criteria for selection? (Score:2)
And just who will decide what is "relevant," and to what it is relevant.
My problem at this point is the apparent "need to know" basis by which the administration will run, and has run since the campaign. There has been a cycle of deflection and disinformation already which does not inspire a lot of Hope(tm) for Change(tm).
And will this be another hard and fast rule against which exceptions will be made for no other reason than being the "best option?"
But then, why not? We are already fostering a culture o
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]
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.)
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Why are our tax dollars being paid to Wackenhut Corp to drive hundreds of empty buses around Tucson AZ in the dead of night?
Because driving at night saves fuel that would otherwise be used to run the air conditioning, obviously.
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: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.
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DHS....mysterious buses...mysterious government installations - might be a prison....the only thing missing is a fleet of black helicopters.
Re:Defeat U.S. Imperialism! (Score:5, Funny)
Heh. Where do you nutcases come from, anyway?
Fox News: Will manufacture enemies for food and viewers.
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Nobody ever said that real change would be easy or done for us. At least the man is pointing us in the right direction.
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]
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They obviously will already have all the numbers from budgets and such so I doubt it will cost insane amounts of money.
Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:5, Insightful)
Although congress decides where it's spent, and the people elect the senators, it doesn't necessarily mean your vote matters a lot in the decision. The current legislative process is so hopelessly bogged down that most spending bills get rubber stamped. Who has time to read through several 800 page bills a week looking for one or two lines of pork in fine print, or do research on the 50 different contractors that are being awarded the contracts? You can't really blame them directly.
I suppose the only two solutions to this problem are (1) to get more senators per state, or (2) to require senators to have a staff of 20 each, whose sole job is to review new bills and provide "cliff notes" for the senators, that catch all the little gotchas that have been hidden.
The problem is the process itself is fundamentally flawed. It was developed for a country in 1776, not 2009, and it didn't scale well enough. Back then, bills were 10 pages long and discussed single issues. Today, to get anything voted on, considering all the things that crop up as bills, they have to wrap 20 different things into one giant bloated bill, each issue of which itself is incredibly more complicated than an entire bill was in 1800. The system itself needs to be redesigned. It'll be interesting to see is Obama will attempt this. But that's what we need.
I also think part of it is the senators and their pork. Despite the modern times, they're still looking out for their individual state, and try to work in their own pork at any opportunity. So to pass an important bill, committees have to stuff in pork for important senators to get their vote, because they're being greedy. Bills that are very popular with the public get really stuffed to the gills because who wants their opponent's political ad next year to say you voted against it? We've seen several cases where a bill that seemed like common sense was having a really hard time making it through the house or senate, and if you read into it, it's because it was so incredibly porked that a lot of senators were doing the right thing, saying "no, that's completely unreasonable". If you follow those threads, they sample the senators before the actual vote, and will slowly trim out the pork until they think it will pass. Or it fails, gets thrown back to committee, where more pork negotiations take place. It seems that very little discussion takes place regarding the actual core issue of the bill. That seems to be how a lot of bills go nowadays. Gives democracy a bad name.
Several times now we've seen those "emergency spending bills" cross over into the next year because they are so incredibly over-porked. "you can't possibly say no to the bill that pays the government for next year? PORK PORK PORK!" But a few times they've held their ground and that's what we get. Absolutely disgusting.
Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:5, Funny)
PORK PORK PORK!
The Swedish Chef Goes to Washington.
From what I see on C-SPAN, Congress often resembles an episode of The Muppet Show.
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they could just link to this site instead
http://bailoutsleuth.com/ [bailoutsleuth.com]
to find out where the money is going . . .
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That useless, senile cow Diane Feinstein
Couldn't have put it better m'self.
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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
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Re:But he is still our ruler (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't really blame them directly.
I can, and I do. The processes are in place because they put them there. They don't do anything about it because it serves their personal interest in maintaining power.
If a bill is so large and the schedules so grueling that you can't read and understand what's in them before the vote, then you automatically vote against them. That would have solved one of the problems with the federal (and most state) government which is that there are simply too many laws.
"Pork" is just a euphemism for corruption, and corruption is a huge problem. When you have huge sums of money you can influence, corruption will always be an issue.
You can say that those corrupt politicians are in charge only because they were voted in by an ignorant electorate. There is some truth in that, but the parties have developed a system that ensures that only those on board with the current corrupt system will ever be voted on. The FEC makes sure that anyone with even a modicum of success with a third party will be charged criminally and fined into bankruptcy. And working from within the parties to change things is very time-consuming and it's extremely difficult to make any process at all.
Obama stated in his Inauguration speech that "We need to move beyond the debate about the size of government..." Really? Seriously? I think not. The size, reach, and power of the federal government is the root cause of most of the problems.
Regan was wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually it isn't. You don't judge a book by its size, do you? You don't judge how good a computer is based on its size, do you? No. You judge them based on how well they do their job, not based on their physical makeup.
Regan was wrong. Size doesn't matter. It is how well you do the job that matters.
Re:Regan was wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it isn't. You don't judge a book by its size, do you? You don't judge how good a computer is based on its size, do you? No.
Are you serious? You're comparing government to a book or a computer? How about when the book is so big and complicated that no one person can read and understand it? Like, for instance, the federal tax code. That's just one small part of all the laws that you are responsible for knowing and obeying.
"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." - Goldwater (?)
The larger the government is:
Etc., etc. You can only reduce corruption by limiting the power. You only limit power by limiting size.
No (Score:2, Insightful)
The debate isn't about size. It never was about size. "The size of government is the problem" is nothing more then a red-herring that lets our government get off the hook for doing a bad job.
The debate is, always was, and always will be about making sure the government does its job effectively. Every one of your bullet points are problems of their own. Their solution *might* be "make some aspect smaller", but their solution might be something entirely different as well. If all you say is "get rid of it"
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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 effec
Theory (Score:2)
My hunch on this? The best way to end this "war on drugs" is for him to not lift a finger. States, via their initiative process, are already slowly ending the war for us. As long as Obama lets the whole thing go under the radar, by the time he leaves office the power state governments have will be significantly reduced. The *minute* he talks about reforming drug law, the gig will be up. The pro-drug war people will make it a wedge issue like gun control or abortion and the whole "un
Re:Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
That we can agree on. As long as we agree with that statement and balance each other out life should be good. I'll keep you from removing all regulations on the stock market, and you can keep me from regulating the hell out of the telcos (which created a huge mess).
Well, life will be fine as long as I dont call you a fat-cat corporate bastard and I you dont call me a pinko socialist hippie. For too long, *that* has been the problem in our society... we've become so divided that we cannot see that most of us agree with eachother :-)
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.
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We should just limit bills to 10 pages. If it can't be said in 10 pages, it needs to be broken up into smaller chunks.
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"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 o
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The 17th amendment is what really fucked things up IMO:
The selection of delegates to the Constitutional Convention established the precedent that states could choose Federal officials at a higher level than direct election. Originally, each Senator was to be elected by his state legislature to represent his state, providing one of the many necessary American governmental checks and balances. The delegates to the Convention also expected a Senator elected by his state's legislature would be able to concentrate on the governmental business at hand without direct, immediate pressure from the populace of his state, also aided by a longer term (six years) than the one afforded to members of the House of Representatives (two years).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Historical_background [wikipedia.org]
Before this, Senators were accountable to the state's legislature. The State legislature represented the people more directly than a national Senator, so if someone in the U.S. Senate wasn't listening to the desires of the people they could get recalled very quickly.
Now it's down to popular vote, and the Senate seems to just be incumbent after incumbent, nothing ever really changing...
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"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 theor
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).
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You can be screwed in the ass or sideways in the ass. Take your pick.
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Thanks for that link. I needed to reboot my computer anyway..
RTFA (Score:2)
Recovery implies you're only going to see the payouts of this one bill.
Because that's exactly what will be happening. This website will only show the breakdown for the spending authorized by one specific bill, not for the whole federal government.
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I happen to live very close to GM's Janesville, WI plant, and right there you're looking at a town ready to basically be wiped off the face of the map by the GM collapse.
Of course, that's what happens when you have overpaid workers with no barriers to entry. Why should anyone take the time to learn useful skills when they can take a union job straight out of highschool? Their execs did them wrong on a grand scale, but I know plenty of people who's lives are in th
Depends (Score:2)
I voted for my congress critters based on how much money I thought they could get to fund Sound Transit. For me, I'd judge them based on how successful they were at doing that. This website, or any like it, will help me find that information out.
It will also let me know if our state gets a fair slice of the pie. If we aren't I'd blame our congress people, it is their job to make sure we get a fair share--they are elected to
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As long as the "pork" is spent fairly among states and doesn't bankrupt us
Except for the fact that if our nation was a business, it would be so bankrupt, it's ridiculous:
Debt Clock [brillig.com]
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All of that information is already available. Every Senator's and Representative's vote on every bill is a matter of public record, AFAIK. And candidates for office generally have opposition research teams dedicated to digging up every embarrassing vote, or even political statement, their opponents have ever made.
Re:way too much government spending in this packag (Score:2)
But most people under 50k in income don't pay anywhere near $4k in taxes.....so why are they getting the big rebates on taxes they never paid?