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White House Gets Green by Putting Federal Budget Online
coondoggie writes "Looking to save $1 million, 20 tons of paper, or close to 500 trees, the White House said today President Bush's 2009 Federal Budget will for the first time be posted online. The E-Budget will be available for downloading at the Office of Management and Budget Web site on Feb. 4. Typically the White House has paper-bombed congress and anyone else who wanted to read the budget with a tome which can reach 3,000 pages and weighed multiple pounds each."
Now, all we need to figure out is how to let the constituency modify it.
This is an exercise that is left to the reader.
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Do you have any idea how much harder it is to hide Pork in a searchable document with revision history then a 20 pound stack of paper? Like this would really take off.
Paper is a renewable resource like rice or strawberries. It's grown on farms like any other crop. They aren't out there chopping down ancient redwoods for paper.
The issue of going paperless to save the planet was always bogus. Driving a mile in a car has a much larger impact on the planet than printing a page.
that's a good start, however for some time now I've been thinking that the government should be publishing real time expenses online through an easy to use interface. I live in Toronto, Ontario and our city has been suffering on the verge of bankruptcy even though the budget from the taxes is over 7.5 billion CAD/year. About 60% of the money goes to the unionized city workers, which is a shame, there is no competition for the city contracts really, it's all government based mafia. This is not a surprise given that the city is governed by an NDP idiot-troll and the province is yet again in the hands of a liberal pathological lier.
I would like to see the government's bank statements on line. If the city gets the 7.5 billion CAD a year from the taxes, I would like to see the current balance, look at all expenses in detail. If a million is given away here, another million there, I would like to see the details of every transaction.
If the city mayor suffers a defeat on his crazy tax proposals (something he concocted instead of looking at balancing the budget the correct way, without immediately imposing new taxes the NDP way,) then the mayor wants to punish the city with meaningless reduction in working hours of community centers and libraries, I want to see the savings in the budget. Of-course the truth is that there was no savings, since the union city workers are still sitting in those centers and libraries because the union will not allow the city not to pay these people and the only sufferers are the citizens who cannot use these public resources.
The government does not want the citizens to be able to see detail of every dollar that is spent, because if we did see these details, we would revolt.
You can't handle the truth.
Seems to me that defense is one of the top priorities, according to the constitution.
You don't need to outspend every other nation in the world, combined, when you are surrounded by two friendly nations and the world's largest oceans.
I didn't see anything about education in that document so that is supposed to be left up to the states.
The Constitution grants the authority to Congress to promote the general welfare and make laws to that effect, and your general welfare is going to be pretty piss poor without education.
Doing the math, it appears the Big Dig was about 1/70th the price of the Iraq war. (Oh, and did I mention tens of thousands of people not being slaughtered?)