Recovery.gov Not Very Transparent

Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN is reporting that the page recovery.gov is not as transparent as it claims to be. The examples pointed out are: 1. The user is greeted by a large pie chart that show the breakdown of money spent by 2 categories, state government distributions and local government distributions. 2. Finding projects involves a complicated search, information on projects is not actually hosted on recovery.gov 3. The format of the information available is of poor quality (the article specifically mentions a PDF document that was created from a scanned sideways copy of roadwork projects from New York state). Given that this site was meant to make the spending of the new stimulus money more transparent to the citizens of the Unites States of America it seems oddly opaque. CNN does seem to praise the ability for government agencies to be able to exchange HTML based information between systems, which for government I would call a massive accomplishment. I tried to find information for my state and searched for Minnesota. I got 4 matches, 2 of which were generic ones: one was the Minnesota state certification that is required for a state to receive funds and one that lays out public transportation spending for all states of which Minnesota gets $94,093,115."

Comments

Re:Better than nothing

[larry bagina]

"Snake" (or "trouser snake") is a popular gay pastime that involves snorting coke off a dick and chasing it down with piss or jizz.

Re:Better than nothing

[fm6]

Gee, I dunno. A total absence of any evidence? Guilt by association doesn't count.

Re:Yes they could make it much easier.

[mi]

This money was wasted, this money was not wasted, we have no idea what happened to this money but we no longer have it and I could have sworn we had it.

Now we are talking — and moderating — like we have (very) fallible humans in the White House, not a Deity (who, for example, has solved the Global Warming problem before even taking office).

Why, perhaps, those impartial newspapers (whatever is left of them) may some day begin writing, what they surely would've written by now about John McCain, had he won the Presidency last year...

Re:Yes they could make it much easier.

[cayenne8]

"It's certainly not going into everyones pockets, but a great deal of it is going back into the economy. You know, like government projects earlier last century, like the Hoover dam, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system."

Excuse me while I don't hold my breathe while waiting to see if they accomplish anything great like that this time around.

But, excepting that....why should a govt. worker get money over and above any other worker in any other job? That was more my point. If they'd just done an extended 'vacation' out of all working people's paycheck....everyone, especially middle class people (who generally work for a W2 paycheck) would keep more of their own money, and have that to spend,pay debt, etc....

I think that would be more fair for ALL workers...not just those working for the govt.