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Obama To Launch Website For Tracking Tax Expenditures
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.
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 votes against them, then what you have is, BY DEFINITION, as you should have learned in high school Civics class, not democracy. It might well be a Republic, in that it is generally democratic but goes out of its way to preserve minority rights. Or it might be oligarchy, or dictatorship, and the small minority in question happens to be the ruling party, or friendly with the ruling party, or paying off the ruling party, or supplying drugs to the ruling party, or performing sexual favors for the ruling party... You get the idea.
In democracy, there is NO SUCH THING as "minority rights". At most, there are TEMPORARY privileges granted by the majority du jour, subject to being withdrawn without notice by next week's majority du jour.
If you don't like the above hard truth, then maybe you should rethink your position on the desirability of democracy.