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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.
It freaks me out how much Obama's doing right. It's almost as if I've been elected president, except he seems to waste less time on slashdot and actually gets things done.
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...
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
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.
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.
Heh. Where do you nutcases come from, anyway?
Fox News: Will manufacture enemies for food and viewers.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
The government should tell us nothing otherwise the terrorists might get a hold of something valuable and use it to plot an attack against a flag lapel pin factory or something else that will compromise our patriotism and freedom!
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.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
... he didn't wear a USA flag lapel pin. I can only imagine how 4 years of McCain would've been different.
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.
Instead, how about just providing more time for the senators to read each bill! Why would we ever want to expand the federal government to match the bloat at the expense of the tax payer? If they want to process more bills, then they should be compiled shorter or at least broken down in sub-sections to be voted on later.
Life is not for the lazy.
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?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
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.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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?
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.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
http://www.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.
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.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
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?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
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.
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
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 :-)
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.
Perfect is the enemy of done.
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
sig?
Hi, I admin the list in question and just saw this. The list is a default installation of Mailman, 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).