Recovery.gov To Get $18 Million Redesign

barbarai notes a report by ABC News's Rick Klein: "For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site. "Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent," James A. Williams, commissioner of GSA's Federal Acquisition Service, says in a press release announcing the contract awarded to Maryland-based Smartronix Inc. according to the ABC news blog."

Comments

cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

$18 mil for a website and in a total coincidence the contract goes to a company run by people who have given tens of thousands of dollars to house majority leader Steny Hoyer (D)

Re:cash4cronies

[MindStalker]

Your shocked they are giving the contract an existing large military tech contractor? Or are you shocked that an existing large military contractor is giving campaign contributions to the house majority leader?

Personally I'm with the latter, why should they need to continually bribe if their foot is already in the door.

Re:cash4cronies

[cayenne8]

I wonder if I could subcontract to them for about 1/3 of that? Leave 2/3 to them for 'overhead'??

Re:cash4cronies

[Red Flayer]

$18 mil for a website and in a total coincidence the contract goes to a company run by people who have given tens of thousands of dollars to house majority leader Steny Hoyer (D)

And the same company gave tens of thousands of dollars to the House majority leader when the House was controlled by Republicans.

This is not a partisan issue, I hope you weren't trying to make it into one. Because that would dodge the core issue.

This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US, and the current party in power shares the culpability with the prior party in power.

Re:cash4cronies

[roc97007]

> This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US, and the current party in power shares the culpability with the prior party in power.

A fair, reasoned, objective response. This is slashdot! Not allowed!

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but corrected the problem with bitter sarcasm. Bravo!

Re:cash4cronies

[ShakaUVM]

>>This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US, and the current party in power shares the culpability with the prior party in power.

Out of curiosity, since corporations can't vote, why should they be allowed to donate money to campaigns at all?

Re:cash4cronies

[furby076]

Yea this is crap..18 million for a web app? Give me a break. This is a total rip off of tax payer money...btw I need to sell the gov't my used wal-mart hammer for $350. Oh it's the gov't, I'll give them a deal...$250...see $100 off the "retail" price. Who in their right mind believes building a web app for $18 mil is a good price?

Re:cash4cronies

[fishbowl]

So you only trust corporations that are politically indifferent.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course corporations can vote. They give the politicians money and the politicians vote for the corporations. See how easy that is? If corporations weren't allowed to give money to the politicians how would the politicians know what corporation to vote for??? In fact, if corporations weren't allowed to give money to politicians that would be anti-American. You're not anti-American are you???

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

As an American and fellow patriot, I'm willing to do it for $5 million.

Re:cash4cronies

[cml4524]

Two things:

1) Corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation is a person entitled to the same rights as a natural person, or some subset of those rights (e.g. due process, free speech, etc.)

2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech

Therefore, a person - or company legally recognized as a person - cannot be restricted from donating money to a campaign because that would be an infringement on their constitutionally-recognized right to free political speech.

The legitimacy of this position, and either of its two components individually, has been and continues to be a matter of substantial debate.

Re:cash4cronies

[BCW2]

Proves what I have said for years: Party doesn't matter, they are all crooks and only worthy of our contempt!

You can not come up with a website complicated enough to justify an $18 million price tag!

Every member of Congress who voted for Spendulous without reading it should be recalled or impeached!

Re:cash4cronies

[locallyunscene]

I really wish I had mod points right now.

Re:cash4cronies

[MozeeToby]

Most large corporations rely on Political Action Committees to raise money which is then donated to one of two groups.

1) Politicians who support that business sector, geographical area, or tax breaks. I really don't have a huge problem with that, essentially this is individuals donating money to people who will work to improve conditions for the business they work for. Though I would prefer to see a system where you can only donate if you can vote in the election, with the current situation of national and multinational interests that may not be possible. For example, the company I work for has offices all over the US but the main office is in Iowa, if taxes go up in Iowa that would effect all the employees no matter where they work.

2) Politicians who are willing to grant 'favors' in exchange for contributions. This is where the real problems begin. Pork barrel spending, pet projects, and downright bribes. The only way I can foresee this going away is to make all campaign contributions anonymous which at best would be an accounting nightmare. Either that or outlaw PACs and other groups that pool contributions into a single fund, but there would be nothing to prevent an unofficial system from springing up to replace them.

Re:cash4cronies

[Hijacked Public]

Because the sort of person who requires a bribe in exchange for awarding a contract probably doesn't care who has a foot in the door, they care only about the bribe.

Duke Cunningham made lists and, although there were some advantages of scale in his bribe menu, there were no 'foot in the door' clauses.

Re:cash4cronies

[xenolion]

To answer your very last question the people who believe its the right price are the ones found on capital hill. So the rest of the nation is with you but you must remember to our "ever so great and mindful" elected crew we don't matter only they do.

Re:cash4cronies

[Hijacked Public]

A 10s of thousands offer would be outbribed I think.

According to this an $18 million contract would require a bribe of a boat + 100k. Presumably 240k cash would work as well. Those are 2005 dollars though.

Re:cash4cronies

[jmorris42]

> This is not a partisan issue, I hope you weren't trying to make it into one.

Agreed. It is a general problem.

> This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US,

Here is where we part company. It has exactly zero with campaign finance. You are upset about a symptom of the problem. The problem is the size and scope of government. A Congresscritter makes a lot more than an average slob but compare the 535 members of the legislative branch with the 500 leaders of the 'corporate branch' (CEOs of the Fortune 500) of our society and ponder. But at those levels it is about POWER as much as MONEY. Which group has more power? Now you begin to understand why a seat that pays so little is worth spending several million every two years to keep. And why the corporations will invest so much into politicians.

When the corporations very survival depends on the whims of political class it would be stupid not to invest as much time and energy into controlling that factor as they spend on any other aspect of success with so much potential to affect the bottom line. Take the example everyone here loves to hate, MSFT. Until the government took such an intense interest in their operations their Washington DC office was vestigial, now it is a major presence. Just like every other major corporation, they either want to deflect the government's gaze or get their snout into the public treasury.

And it will be ever thus until we put the government back into it's proper place. Make the government small enough that a House seat isn't worth millions and the money will go away. Nothing else will work, no law will stop clever people who have so much at stake. At least no law that leaves the 1st Amendment intact and do we really want to go there?

Re:cash4cronies

[furby076]

If I only ran the gov't...i swear when I see this wasteful spending I would be out on the lawn telling everyone "18 mil for a site? Yea here you go - I got some company here willing to do it for half a mil".

Re:cash4cronies

[Runaway1956]

"This is not a partisan issue,"

Politicians in general manage to turn it into a partisan issue. The minority party is always trying to "clean things up", but the majority party blocks the effort. But, you're right, it isn't truly partisan. Both sides know the steps to this silly dance, and they keep time remarkably well. It's the putzes who continue to vote for career politicians who don't "get it". They actually believe the partisan noise contained in the soundbites from Fox, NBC, and all the rest. Total morons.

Re:cash4cronies

[xenolion]

Can I work with you? Because my answer to someone who said we have to spend 18 million on a web is would be this, "So can you out run a bullet?"

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no relationship between voting and campaign contributions. Why would any individual give money to a candidate? It's simply to push their cause.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

Yeah, I would question both of those, but particularly the first. Why should a corporation be considered a "person"? I could see it being valid to give corporations some set of rights which may be a subset of the rights we give people, but they still aren't people. Can anyone explain this? I don't think I've ever even heard a theory as to why corporations need to be treated as "people".

It seems valid that corporations could be given a more limited form of free speech that didn't include campaign contributions, even if we assumed that campaign contributions were simply a free speech issue.

Re:cash4cronies

[city]

god damn it, dont give them any ideas!

I mean...

I, for one, welcome our new suffrage yielding corporate overlords.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why here in the States we have traditionally referred to corporations in the singular not the plural: "Apple is" versus "Apple are".

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll subcontract to you for 1/3 of your 1/3, which would still be about twice what is needed. (5-10 developers for a year)

Re:cash4cronies

[T Murphy]

The word "donation" is often used to refer to giving money to a person or organization in need- basically it has the notion of charity. Therefore I prefer to just call these corporate spending patterns legalized bribes like they are.

Re:cash4cronies

[DarKnyht]

If you look up the history of that, it became that way because of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. To quote wikipedia (I know, but you can find better sources):

The Supreme Court never reached the equal protection claims. Nonetheless, this case is sometimes incorrectly cited as holding that corporations, as juristic persons, are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.[2] Although the question of whether corporations were persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment had been argued in the lower courts and briefed for the Supreme Court, the Court did not base its decision on this issue. However, before oral argument took place, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."[3] This quotation was printed by the court reporter in the syllabus and case history above the opinion, but was not in the opinion itself. As such, it did not have any legal precedential value.[4]

Nonetheless, the persuasive value of Waite's essentially ultra vires statement did influence later courts, becoming part of American corporate law without ever actually being enacted by statute or formal judicial decision.[5][clarification needed] For these reasons, it is literally an unprecedented extension of constitutional rights to US corporations.[2]

Re:cash4cronies

[TW Burger]

The $18 million dollar price tag is very reasonable. $500,000 for the systems analysis, design documentation, technical documentation, hardware and software design documents, load balancing Web servers, database servers, programming, testing, and deployment. $200,000 for 1 year of support, training, and operations until the passover to the government department that will take over operations. The rest ($17.3M) breaks doen into standard goverment overheads:

$5 million for contracts to idiot nephews/nieces/in-laws.
$300,000 for hiring mistresses as consultants.
$5 million for waste, mismanagement, and failed design. This is usually due to the project being sent to an overseas firm instead of hiring locally.
$50,000 for the single expert consultant that comes in at the end and fixes the mess in the last month.
$6.95 million for the trips, cars, jewelry, bags of cash, hookers, and cocaine.

This is meant to be a joke, but let me go in with a team of accountants and investigators after it's done and I will find at least a few examples of the above.

The best example so far has to be the Canadian Firearms Registration System - $2 billion and it still does not work.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah totally. Last time I did a site redesign it was for a friend and I made only about $5000 for 3 weeks of work. It was an online sales system I slapped together with some JSP and a couple of Servlets, so it wasn't just basic HTML. If I had realized I could charge her $18,000,000 for it, I would have cut her a friendly break and only charger $10,000,000 for it. Man was I cheated.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

You can not come up with a website complicated enough to justify an $18 million price tag!

Whew. For a moment there I thought Google, Amazon, Facebook and the like spent hundreds of millions of dollars making their websites work.

Re:cash4cronies

[Hurricane78]

Well, it never is a partisan issue, is it? The whole two-sides thing is just a strawman. After all, it is always the same lobbies controlling everything in the background.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Only persons who can vote should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Can corporations vote? Nope - so no donations from them.

Re:cash4cronies

[aoteoroa]

Who in their right mind believes building a web app for $18 mil is a good price?

I agree. I read the article only because I was curious what kind of system you get for that money but sadly the article was lacking in details. However 18 million is not just for 'building a web app' it appears to be the budget for the project through to 2014.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

That is good information, but my question was more as to the philosophical/economic/sociological reasons why it makes sense to grant them "personhood". What kind of bad stuff do people expect to happen if we say corporations are not "people", and do not have the right to make political contributions.

I mean, besides the politicians who expect their money to go away.

Re:cash4cronies

[rho]

When somebody tells you that a corporation is considered a person, that person is talking out of their ass.

A corporation is a legal entity. It is not a person. It shares some privileges with people, but that's a different thing altogether. Somebody, once, used the analogy of "a corporation as a person" and now we've got a lot of half-witted nonsense floating around because of it.

Next person that tells you "a corporation is like a person", ask them how many businesses they've incorporated. If it's zero, you're perfectly within your rights to kick them in the knee.

Re:cash4cronies

[locallyunscene]

Either that or outlaw PACs and other groups that pool contributions into a single fund, but there would be nothing to prevent an unofficial system from springing up to replace them.

Granted, there will always be corruption. At least with your proposed system this would be a prosecutable offense...

Re:cash4cronies

[Itninja]

Do you think you could resist the offer on principle?

"They drove a dump truck full of money up to my house. I'm not made of stone!" -Krusty the Clown

Re:cash4cronies

[tolan-b]

I don't think so. Whether it has the rights of a person or not, it's still a singular entity.

Re:cash4cronies

[marco.antonio.costa]

For the same reason that we shouldn't consider the mass murder of Hiroshima and Nagasaki anything other than that.

A corporation is ultimately made of people. Just because it is a collection of them, not a single individual, shouldn't make them have any less rights than a person does.

Just like a bunch of Japanese civilians don't lose some of their rights because the B-29 dropped a bomb on a 'city', not an 'individual'.

Re:cash4cronies

[rho]

This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US, and the current party in power shares the culpability with the prior party in power.

I've a question: how come it's always obviously graft when Republicans do it, but it's a sign that the system is flawed when Democrats do it?

Why can't it be simple vote-buying no matter who does it? And why hasn't tar-and-feathering made a comeback yet?

Re:cash4cronies

[furby076]

I agree. I read the article only because I was curious what kind of system you get for that money but sadly the article was lacking in details. However 18 million is not just for 'building a web app' it appears to be the budget for the project through to 2014.

5 years to build a web app? No this is a way to keep them employed for 5 years...how many web apps do you know which take 5 years and 18 million dollars to produce?

Re:cash4cronies

[mcgrew]

We have the best legislators money can buy.

Nobody should be able to "contribute" to more than one candidate in any race; that bribe isn't even thinly disguised. And why should I be able to contribute to a candidate I'm not eligible to vote for?

Re:cash4cronies

[WgT2]

Actually, the core issue is that someone holding the purse strings thinks the work is worth $18 million dollars.

Re:cash4cronies

[furby076]

Can I work with you? Because my answer to someone who said we have to spend 18 million on a web is would be this, "So can you out run a bullet?"

If only wishing made it so. It would be an episode of the The Apprentice - with only the portion "You're Fired" followed up by a new episode of Weaponology - with only the portion of where they test the new weapons. Where they test this weapon: http://www.spareammo.com/posters/us-marine-firing-aa-12-full-auto-shotgun-aa12-machine-shotgun.jpg

Re:cash4cronies

[Red Flayer]

1) Corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation is a person entitled to the same rights as a natural person, or some subset of those rights (e.g. due process, free speech, etc.)

That's largely a myth. Corporations do have legal rights, but by no means is there "personhood" attached to coporations legal status. Especially in regards to campaign finance -- Corporations are very limited with regards to donations to political campaigns. Instead, individuals at corporations make the contributions. While it's similar to the corporation making the donation, this is why listings of contributions include the employer of the person who makes the contribution. Case in point, the company awarded this contract made -zero- contributions to anyone's campaign. The president, and other employees of the company, did. I worded my previous post poorly when I said that the corporation made contributions.

2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech

While this point definitely has merit, it has to be balanced against the cost of allowing cash to determine our elections, and the effect the cash has on awarding of contracts, drafting of legislation, etc. This is a big reason why we have restrictions on campaign finance.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

Actually, he probably with me and is shocked because no one is bitching about the administration, no bid contracts, millions of dollars being spent and payoffs to those responsible for the contract.

I guess maybe if haliburton or cheney was a name in the story, everyone would be pissed.

Re:cash4cronies

[value_added]

This is just another example of a fundamental flaw in how campaign finance works in the US

More correctly, it's another example of how a mostly privately financed election system requires and encourages campaigns to raise obscene amounts of money to reach their voters who, regrettably, rely on expensive TV ads as their primary source of information. The horse is already out of the barn when you get to campaign finance laws.

Requiring the major networks using public airwaves to set aside free air time to candidates, combined with a shorter election cycle, would a long way to removing the problems that campaign finance laws try (and inevitably fail) to correct.

Impossible? Perhaps. Other countries have no problem, and you'd be hard pressed to argue they're any less democratic or functional than we are. I'd suggest that the obstacles to real reform aren't unlike those found in the current health care debate. The major difference with health care is that a good portion of the voting public has finally got round to recognising that the current system is dysfunctional, uncessarily expensive, and that other countries may indeed have a better way of doing things.

Re:cash4cronies

[mcgrew]

Corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation is a person entitled to the same rights as a natural person, or some subset of those rights (e.g. due process, free speech, etc.)

Then why don't they have the right to vote? If we can restrict someone's right to vote, why can't we restrict their right to bribe legislators?

Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech

Almost as illogical as calling a corporation a "person" or calling a 175 year copyright "limnited time". Spending money is NOT speech.

Re:cash4cronies

[mcgrew]

"There's no difference between Democrats and Republicans" - The Governator

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

neither can ex-cons and felons in most states. Should they be able to donate to the legalize MJ candidates or donate to the candidate that is claiming to build new parks and clean up the environment?

Ability to vote does not determine the impact of the candidates running for office. Donating, even if it is labor or vocalized support should not be removed from anyone who is subject to the political processes, laws, and environment under each, even if they aren't allowed to vote themselves.

Re:cash4cronies

[mcgrew]

For example, the company I work for has offices all over the US but the main office is in Iowa, if taxes go up in Iowa that would effect all the employees no matter where they work.

You don't HAVE to work for that company, you know. Your corporation should have no say in your government, and its CEO should have no more say in government than you do.

Living in Illinois I can't vote Fred Thompson out of office, why should your Iowa corporation be able to?

The only way I can foresee this going away is to make all campaign contributions anonymous

How about outlawing campaign contributions altogether ahnd have all elections pubically funded? Or at least, make it illegal to contribute to more than one candidate in any given race?

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

And the same company gave tens of thousands of dollars to the House majority leader when the House was controlled by Republicans.

Care to back this up with evidence? A link maybe? Anything at all?

Re:cash4cronies

[PsiCTO]

Except that a corporation more than likely does not represent the collective rights of its employees (directors, whatever).

I suppose you might even argue that they are denying their "people" elected representation if they indeed act on their behalf as it's doubtful that any kind of democratic process granted that privilege.

Thus, the corporation is a faux individual... (no knee-kicking; I've incorporated! Thrice to date, so I get three extra votes :-)

For the same reason that we shouldn't consider the mass murder of Hiroshima and Nagasaki anything other than that.

A corporation is ultimately made of people. Just because it is a collection of them, not a single individual, shouldn't make them have any less rights than a person does.

Just like a bunch of Japanese civilians don't lose some of their rights because the B-29 dropped a bomb on a 'city', not an 'individual'.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of anonymous contributions is ridiculous. The benefactor and contributor will always be able to identify the contribution by the amount, date/time etc.

Re:cash4cronies

[PsiCTO]

Oh, this reminds me of a beaut I heard up here in Snowanada

It appears that a politician running for mayor in fair Calgary, Alberta, may accept funds from, say, land and commercial developers, for his campaign. What ever is left over is his/hers to keep, personally.

I bet they even get a discount on new homes in new developments...

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

> Almost as illogical as calling a corporation a "person" or calling a 175 year copyright "limnited time". Spending money is NOT speech.
It's considered speech because there are limits to what you can do with campaign contributions: You're only supposed to use it for speech
correlated activities. The only exception I'm aware of is a double-minority
Senator who was able to use campaign funds for vacations, clothes, and jewelry. But she probably had incriminating photos of Janet Reno in addition
to her double-minority status...

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

The premise is more that they are separate people.

Corporations are nothing more the collections of people acting in liberty and enterprise in a collective way. Being a separate person means that the actions of the corporation which is not the result of the investors actions do not travel back to the investors. However, it doesn't absolve anyone who acted on behalf of the corporation or within it. So if the owner of a business incorporates, and still runs the business, they are not shielded from all liability because of the incorporation, but their silent partners will be to the extent beyond their investments.

If we were to get rid of the person aspect, then it's likely that you could be sued for Exxon's actions simply because you have their stock in your retirement account and took no part in whatever action happened. This question goes deeper then the ability to have speech on the laws and policies that would effect a corporation. This is because it is illegal to destroy or damage your corporation and it's ability to profit when others are invested in it too. The danger here is that certain political policies have the potential to do harm to some companies and if a corporate entity isn't separate, then your voting and political support could be interpreted to be harming or damaging the profitability of the corporation and you may have to support something you don't agree with to escape both civil and criminal repercussions.

Re:cash4cronies

[spion666]

One of the reasons would probably be corruption which is harder to police and expose. What would stop the individual shareholders from donating money? They would obviously qualify as people.

Re:cash4cronies

[oatworm]

The trouble with making elections fully publicly funded is that you then need a way to determine how the public funds are disbursed. If you base it on previous results, the incumbent will always have an advantage. If you give equally to all candidates, you'll end up with hundreds of candidates for each race (keep in mind we don't have runoffs in the US). If you give only to certain candidates that you think might be "viable", you're then going to have to define what "viable" means - odds are, this will tick off third parties and prevent candidates like John Anderson or Ross Perot from gaining a foothold.

Keep in mind that, at the moment, corporations actually have less ability to directly contribute to a campaign than unions do. With a corporation, only people within the corporation may individually contribute (usually CEOs and the like). Unions, which are also a collective body of individuals, may contribute to campaigns directly. Of course, this also happens to include public sector unions - whether you think that's a good idea or a bad idea probably depends on your perspective, your thoughts on how much (or little) of a conflict of interest it might be for public sector unions to attempt to influence hiring and wage policies through the election process, and your general political inclination.

Re:cash4cronies

[gizmo_mathboy]

While corporations have personhood, I think it was the pesky 14th Amendment that brought this about, that does not mean they should have the right to vote. Yes, they have free speech rights but not necessarily participation in the electoral process.

I would go further and say that no organization should be able to contribute to a campaign, only individuals. So the DNC, nor the RNC nor any other body of people can give money. Sure it sucks for your favorite interest group but the power of groups is rotting our system.

Now, money as free speech has bothered me ever since the Supreme Court ruled it as such. Can one person be allowed to have more free speech than another? Does Bill Gates have a right to more free speech than a school teacher?

Re:cash4cronies

[oatworm]

The kind of web app that needs to track federal spending five years after the checks have already cashed.

Re:cash4cronies

[Jimmy_Slimmy]

sheeeet, cgn has already got that gig at /., and they are paying him a lot more than you made.  maybe you should put in a mock up of the website you could do for /., and see if sourceforge is interested.

Re:cash4cronies

[Deosyne]

You don't buy politicians, you subscribe to them.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

A corporation is ultimately made of people. Just because it is a collection of them, not a single individual, shouldn't make them have any less rights than a person does.

Right, but I'm not asking why a person doesn't retain his own rights while engaged in business as part of a corporation. I'm asking why the corporation needs to be treated as a person in itself with its own rights. A corporation is just a legal construct, so why can't we give it whatever rights we deem appropriate? Why do people talk about it as though the corporation has inalienable rights of its own, independent of the people involved?

Re:cash4cronies

[stuntpope]

"Services include visual design, user interface design, information architecture, design engineering, project management, interactive data visualization and Web application-level functionality."

"At some point, the reporting requirements and frequency of updates for the site might be changed or expanded and would therefore require further design and integration, the notice states." (money pit - government customers are infamous for changing or adding on new requirements and projects are never delivered)

"The site must also:

        * Evaluate data quality to optimize large, highly complex, rapidly changing datasets.
        * Automatically replicate data.
        * Standardize, normalize and cleanse data.
        * Respond quickly to requests for data.
        * Link to high-value business processes, such as fraud detection."

(source: http://www.washingtontechnology.com/Articles/2009/06/15/Recovery.gov-board-seeks-vendor.aspx/)

I feel $18 million is deservedly bad press at this time, and I'm certain there's a lot of waste and padding, but this is not, as some posters here seem to think, just a web application like a shopping cart.

More here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/nl2hld

Re:cash4cronies

[Red Flayer]

Here is where we part company. It has exactly zero with campaign finance. You are upset about a symptom of the problem. The problem is the size and scope of government.

I agree we part ways there.

While there is a lot of cruft in government, I believe there is a need for the government to operate in areas where the public sector will not.

You see the root problem as the scope of the government. I see the root problem as the quality of the government's output.

I do not believe we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. Your ideal of the putting the government "back into it's proper place" would do just that. You, as a someone well read in history and economics, should know that 'small government' of the past led to enormous abuses of capital that resulted in far less than optimal outcomes for the country as a whole, for the common people, and for all but a select few of the elite. What is needed is a less wasteful government, not necessarily a smaller government.

We'll never agree on this point, I understand. But the government serves a lot of necessary roles, and we must be careful to ensure that we do not ignore these in a quest for small government.

And regarding the monetary value of holding office -- you're missing an entire aspect (though you alluded to it) that also results in suboptimal politics. Money is one motivator for those seeking higher office, but other motivations pose similar problems. People who seek office for prestige, for example. As long as we have elected offices of any kind, they will be a route to power (and thus profit) in the private sector due to the prestige that comes with being elected. So reducing the scope of government does not solve the problem, although it would help with that problem.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

Being a separate person means that the actions of the corporation which is not the result of the investors actions do not travel back to the investors.

Well first, I'm not sure why you can't allow such a legal construct without talking about the corporation as a "person".

But also, none of that really addresses the question of the negative consequences of saying, "Corporations are not people and are not necessarily entitled to all of the same human rights as people, and therefore are not entitled to contribute to political campaigns."

I think it makes sense to make a legal distinction of being able to assign legal responsibility for an action to either the employee working for a company, the company itself, or the investor funding the company. I think all of that can be handled, however, without trying to grant inalienable human rights to the corporation.

Re:cash4cronies

[Jawn98685]

Do the names Enron or Halliburton mean anything to you?
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
Only the palms change. The greasing goes on regardless. Vote for candidates who support real campaign finance reform of see this pattern repeated endlessly.

Re:cash4cronies

[jmorris42]

So which is it?

> Party doesn't matter,

and

> Every member of Congress who voted for Spendulous without reading it should be recalled or impeached!

You do know how the votes went on Porkulus, right? Or could you be bothered to actually, ya know, know what the hell you are talking about?

Porkulus got zero Republican votes in the House and three RINOs in the Senate. Senator Arlen Specter received so much heat from his vote he finally came out of the closet and became the moderate Democrat he has always voted as. Senators Collins and Snowe are both from Maine, and aren't really Republicans in any modern meaning of the word. So yes, Party did matter.

I'm with ya as far as wishing a pox on both their houses, but it is for very different reasons. Democrats are essentially an enemy of liberty these days, period. Republicans are wishy washy, unprincipled and frightened of their shadows. However, except for the old country club Republicans and east coast RINOs, most Republicans would like to do the right thing, at least when first elected.... but they need some balls... and to avoid the temptations of Washington. That is an easier problem to fix than making Democrats not be evil.

Re:cash4cronies

[Jawn98685]

When somebody tells you that a corporation is considered a person, that person is talking out of their ass.

Actually, no. They might well be citing established case law, including SCOTUS decisions, that very clearly bestow personhood on corporations.

Here is your reading assignment... http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

Re:cash4cronies

[Billly Gates]

Look up Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad?

Corporations are people according to the courts. That is a big problem all into itself, and is a perfect example of how delusional lawyers are in that they make their own reality by restating what reality is. This is why judicial activism is bad as the court has no power to make something up and call it law.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this considered insightful? Seems it's a pretty clear example of trolling to me.

I do agree, though, that $18 million for a website is absurd. However, if there are upkeep, hardware, and software costs that require constant attention, then $18 million is probably not all that much. If they want to make it interactive, I would assume that the site is going to be individually responsive, which would require some hefty database infrastructure to handle hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people wanting to use it.

Then again, it might be a total flop and no one will ever care and we've wasted another $18 million on failure. Such is our legacy.

Re:cash4cronies

[Billly Gates]

"2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech."

Riiigghht. So if a police man pulls me over for drunk driving and I just happen to practice my free speech by giving him a free dinner and a wealthy country club membership as well as his bosses boss (precinct captain) a campaign contribution for re-election then its perfectly legal?

More than likely, a judge would throw me in jail for bribery so fast I would not even have time to get my checkbook out.

I am a private citizen with full constitutional rights. Why doe corporations be treated better than myself? After all like the example above I would get thrown in prison but corporations do this all the time and its simply business as usual.

I am not disagreeing with your view that this is how the courts interpret things but its hypocritical and it needs to end.

Re:cash4cronies

[Golias]

Actually, he probably with me and is shocked because no one is bitching about the administration, no bid contracts, millions of dollars being spent and payoffs to those responsible for the contract.

I guess maybe if haliburton or cheney was a name in the story, everyone would be pissed.

Yep. I maintain that it is THE LEFT, after working so hard to elect Obama, who should be most pissed off at him right now. On economics, foreign policy, and even civil liberties, he's doing nearly everything which we were all supposed to be so enraged at Bush over, and in many cases, taking things farther.

As a libertarian, I kind of expected him to keep ballooning the federal spending and ruin what's left of the tattered economy which Bush left him. Right on schedule there, and I don't feel let down about it because I never had my hopes up.

What I find disappointing is that the unlawful detentions without trial, the wire-taps, the cronyism, the pointless foreign warmongering & gunboat diplomacy, the war on drugs, the denial of gay rights, the staged Q&A sessions, etc. etc. etc. ... all chug along with as much momentum as ever.

But hey, we (the taxpayers) now own a shitty car company, so I guess there's that.

Re:cash4cronies

[discord5]

You can not come up with a website complicated enough to justify an $18 million price tag!

Give me a week, and you will have it. It will be the biggest, most badass "Under Construction" sign you've ever seen, 2 billion pixels wide, 1.5 billion pixels high. The traffic from the banner alone will bring routers to their knees, have network admins screaming at their traffic statistics, and mere mortals shall weep in the magnificent glory of 18 million dollars worth of under_construction.png .

FYI, this most excellent sign will also require a broadband stimulus package, complete with a massive infrastructure upgrade on the governments serverfarm and job certainty for hundreds of admins who'll have to toil in slave labor to be able to serve up that monstrosity.

Can I have my check now please?

Re:cash4cronies

[MozeeToby]

Hence the 'accounting nightmare' part of my statement. It would be entirely possible to have an independent third part accept donations and turn them over at the end of the week or even day. The third party could even hand over a list of names, sans amounts, of who donated that chunk of money so that the campaign could contact those people later.

Re:cash4cronies

[Billly Gates]

I am no lawyer but I was taught that owners are shielded with corporations if I remember properly from my finance and accounting classes. This is why owners are willing to pay double taxation for owning a corporation rather than a partnership or sole proprietor.

If corporations are people then they need to be punished when breaking the law. Instead they are treated as persons for bribery .. cough campaign contributions.. but when they break the law then they are corporations and not people.

The courts need to do something about this soon and the current climate in Washington today might be it. People are still really angry at AIG and are sick and tired of corruption and massive deficit spending from Washington.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are all crooks we should always make sure the government stays as small as possible. Or how about slightly less than possible. Growing the government is like asking to be robbed.

Everyone should be fiscal conservatives (libertarians, small government conservatives, etc) because we cannot control the impulse of people to figure out how to get rich on our hard earned money. It is not like we can spend our taxes on another government like we can when choosing what store we shop at.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

Well first, I'm not sure why you can't allow such a legal construct without talking about the corporation as a "person".

It's actually a logic issue. Entities are owned by people. The ground you stand on is owned by someone, the air is owned by the government and so on to some extent. A corporation is also owned by it acts independent of the owners and is responsible for it's own actions. Lets say your dog gets lose and bites someone, you are the owner and responsible for it's actions even though it made it's own actions. When you place a degree of separation, someone has to be responsible for the actions so when it becomes the corporation, it is it's own person.

The term is more figuratively but us used to illustrate the separation of actions. You don't know why I can't not call it a person, so explain how it is responsible for it's own actions independent of the owners (like children when they reach a certain age) if not in the terms of a person.

But also, none of that really addresses the question of the negative consequences of saying, "Corporations are not people and are not necessarily entitled to all of the same human rights as people, and therefore are not entitled to contribute to political campaigns."

Well, yes it does address that. If they aren't separated and responsible for their own actions, then all liability will fall back to owners who didn't take any part in the action or direction of the action. You also have problems with conflicts of interest in your own political policies and so on. Those are all negatives that would result if a corporation wasn't autonomous and a separate person.

I guess maybe you simply don't understand the idea behind a corporation being a separate entity from the owners.

I think it makes sense to make a legal distinction of being able to assign legal responsibility for an action to either the employee working for a company, the company itself, or the investor funding the company. I think all of that can be handled, however, without trying to grant inalienable human rights to the corporation.

Well, no, it can't. At least not without ripping out a lot of the laws in place to ensure investors that actions would be taken in good faith. You see, if the corporation wasn't able to act on it's own behalf separate from the owners and investors, then if you supported some environmental restriction like say the cap and trade laws which would increase costs and make the corporation less profitable, then I as an investor could sue you for the losses of your political stance in which you poisoned my investment by intentionally attempting to harm it.

You see, without that degree of separation and the ability for the corporation to act in it's own interest, then anything you do to decrease the value of the investment for others can become a liability to you. You would be forced to align your interest into the best interest of the company and justify them when someone challenged it. Now when the company acts as it's own person, then you and it are separated and don't have that connected burden.

Now you can change the name from a person to legal entity or whatever and keep the same rules, but it wouldn't change the concept. If a corporation isn't allowed to act in it's own interest, then you, the owner, even if by just one share, will have to act in it's best interest.

Re:cash4cronies

[Billly Gates]

This needs to be challenged and ruled upon by a court.

Part of the problem is that lawyers quote other court cases to judges as facts even if no official ruling on one of the particular controversial arguments are included. The santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad is quoted as a fact that corporations truly are people even though the judge did not agree or disagree with the statement. Also lawyers and judges should not have the power to misinterpret reality. If a judge rules the sky is green is it really green? The law would say yes but reality would say no. Judicial activism is part of the problem as judges should only interpret laws and not makeup new ones or stretch an existing law to be a new one just by his or her own opinion on it.

Re:cash4cronies

[Golias]

"There's no difference between Democrats and Republicans" - The Governator

He's certainly doing his damndest to prove his point, too. As a Republican, he spent money like crazy, and is now raising taxes (including the notorious "car tax" which helped him shove Gov. Davis out of office!)

Re:cash4cronies

[ShakaUVM]

But also, none of that really addresses the question of the negative consequences of saying, "Corporations are not people and are not necessarily entitled to all of the same human rights as people, and therefore are not entitled to contribute to political campaigns."

I think it makes sense to make a legal distinction of being able to assign legal responsibility for an action to either the employee working for a company, the company itself, or the investor funding the company. I think all of that can be handled, however, without trying to grant inalienable human rights to the corporation.

I agree. We certainly don't acknowledge the right of "life" to corporations, as we allow them to be killed (go bankrupt or dissolved) or eaten by other "personages" (mergers and acquisitions). And if we don't even protect their (imaginary) lives, why on earth should they be allowed to donate to our politicians?

It should certainly be possible to legally set up corporations so as to shield investors from liability while not allowing corporations to donate to campaigns.

If you think about it, it really is common sense that we should only allow electors (members of an electorate) to contribute money to their elections. Corporations (thankfully) do not have the franchise.

Re:cash4cronies

[sydbarrett74]

You don't buy politicians, you subscribe to them.

PaaS = Politicians as a Service.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

You can not come up with a website complicated enough to justify an $18 million price tag!

Found one.

Re:cash4cronies

[Golias]

Other countries don't have our First Amendment rights.

I have the right to stand on a street corner and say, "hey, you should vote for Al Franken. What a swell guy!" *

I also have the right to pitch in with several friends and buy a billboard which says: "Al is swell! Vote for him!"

I furthermore have the right to pitch in with A LOT of people and buy 30 seconds on TV to say "Everybody in their right mind should vote for Al Franken."

I can even put together a "Tell People To Vote For Al" club, and ask other people who want to help me spread the word to send me money.

The problem with Campaign Finance Reform is, if it's "during the election cycle", I'm not allowed to do any of that stuff without falling under the strictly-regulated umbrella of Al Franken's campaign budget.

But Rupert Murdoch can spend 30 minutes a night, every night, on FOX News telling everybody how wonderful Norm Coleman is ** and how great it would be if we all voted for him. Likewise, he can buy the Minneapolis Star Tribune away from Gannet and run daily front-page articles crowing about Norm Coleman's legislative accomplishments and/or Al Franken scandals.

Campaign Finance laws which restrict, in any way, spending money on expressing an opinion about a sitting Senator or his opponent, are violations of our right to political speech, and furthermore hands the news media a monopoly on free expression

* This is a hypothetical example. Al Franken is not a swell guy. He's a complete choad.
** Norm Coleman - Also a complete choad.

Re:cash4cronies

[Sean0michael]

Only persons who can vote should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Can corporations vote? Nope - so no donations from them.

Then we ought not to tax corporations either. No taxation without representation!

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom of "Money Talk", it's in the Constitution really. It's all the way down in fine print.

Re:cash4cronies

[rho]

That's fascinating, but a corporation is still a legal entity that is not entitled to all the protections of the law in the same way that a person is.

"Kinda like a person" is, by definition, not a person. It's a convenient shorthand that gives people (real people, not corporation-people) the wrong impression. So stop it.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

It's actually a logic issue. Entities are owned by people.

I'm not sure it makes sense to call it a "logic issue". You're asserting something as a premise, but that doesn't mean the issue is one of "logic". I think "entities are owned by people" is logically problematic since companies can own things too, and companies are obviously not people. Therefore, things which are not people can own things.

You see, if the corporation wasn't able to act on it's own behalf separate from the owners and investors, then if you supported some environmental restriction like say the cap and trade laws which would increase costs and make the corporation less profitable, then I as an investor could sue you for the losses of your political stance in which you poisoned my investment by intentionally attempting to harm it.

Errr... why? If I support cap and trade laws, then anyone whose investment would be lessened in value as a result of cap and trade laws would be able to sue me? But that's prevented by corporations being "people"? I think you need to expand that out a little before it starts making some kind of sense.

Re:cash4cronies

[marco.antonio.costa]

How can you treat an group made up entirely of individuals as having LESS rights than an individual?

This is collectivism 101 you are preaching. If a corporation can be denied rights which the individuals making it up possess, then minorities can be denied them, cities, countries, professions, etc.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

I am no lawyer but I was taught that owners are shielded with corporations if I remember properly from my finance and accounting classes. This is why owners are willing to pay double taxation for owning a corporation rather than a partnership or sole proprietor.

You are only shielded outside of your own actions. If you participate in or direct whatever happens to cause the liability, you are not shielded. If you are the owner and working at your corp but didn't direct the action resulting in liability, you also run the risk of not being completely shielded from vicarious liability.

Where the shielding is beneficial is when you either need to separate piles of income in order to work taxes and credit ratings. If you don't participate in the business outside of ownership or investment, you are shielded from everything outside the value of the company.

You cannot create a business, incorporate it, then direct an employee to dump toxic sludge into the city water supply and walk away scott free. Your actions surpass the corporation's separation because they are your actions and no corporate shielding can remove that.

If corporations are people then they need to be punished when breaking the law. Instead they are treated as persons for bribery .. cough campaign contributions.. but when they break the law then they are corporations and not people.

Corporations are punished for breaking the law. What your seeing is more of a limitation in our legal system where you have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt which makes it appear as they don't get punished. However, corporations get fined regularly for breaking laws and those fines are pretty hefty. The people working inside the corporations also get fined and in some cases, jail time. However, it is hard to show that the actions of a low level worker went past a low level managers orders in which the fines tend to be a little more lenient for the corporations. But make no mistake, if the CEO can be found to have been the person who order the law to be broken, they will get fined as well as the corp and everyone else involved and in some cases, face jail time just the same.

The courts need to do something about this soon and the current climate in Washington today might be it. People are still really angry at AIG and are sick and tired of corruption and massive deficit spending from Washington.

It's not the courts place to make law. But I think if you look harder, you will see that corporations are held to the law.

Re:cash4cronies

[microbee]

You can not come up with a website complicated enough to justify an $18 million price tag!

Whoa, slow down. Could you get Google to sell its website to me for that price, please?

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

I'm not sure it makes sense to call it a "logic issue". You're asserting something as a premise, but that doesn't mean the issue is one of "logic". I think "entities are owned by people" is logically problematic since companies can own things too, and companies are obviously not people. Therefore, things which are not people can own things.

It's a logic issue because if you aren't responsible for your property, then who is. Our courts don't allow a ladder to be responsible for breaking and someone falling, it's the person who owns the ladder and offered it for service in an unsafe condition. Now if you aren't responsible for your property, then who is. In the case of a corporation, it would be the corporation. That's the logic.

It's more of a legal logic then a>b>c and not b>c>a>

Errr... why? If I support cap and trade laws, then anyone whose investment would be lessened in value as a result of cap and trade laws would be able to sue me? But that's prevented by corporations being "people"? I think you need to expand that out a little before it starts making some kind of sense.

Corporations are either separate people from the owners able to act in their own best interest or not. If you take the ability for them to act away, then it will fall on the owners. As a corporation is just a construct, it takes people to cause action with it. The separation that comes from a corporation being a separate person relieves owners not participating in it's running and direction from liability for it's actions. When you remove that ability to act on it's own and independent from the owners, then it becomes nothing more then a dog or a car you own in which you are responsible for any damage it causes.

How this effect you politically is that when you become responsible for it's actions, then it's just like partial ownership in a car or a dog, you can't sell it or junk it or put it to sleep without the consent of the other owners and you can't do so to their detriment without their approval/consent. So by removing the separate person aspect of a corporation, if you do something not in the best interest of the company which causes the investment to decrease in value, other partial owners will have a claim against your actions. So if you support cap and trade and it causes profits to drop by 30% and property owned by the corporation to lose 50% value, your actions created a claim I cold exert for my investment loses.

Investors sue corporations to act within a certain way or boundaries all the time when they see it as detrimental to their investments.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

How can you treat an group made up entirely of individuals as having LESS rights than an individual?

I'm not suggesting that individuals in a group should have less access to their rights than they would individually, but why should they be assumed to have more rights by granting additional rights to the group itself on top of the rights of those individuals?

If I form several corporations, should each get a vote in the election? If they manage to exist for 65 years, can they collect social security? If I try to put you out of business, can I be charged with assault? If I succeed, is that murder?

Corporations aren't people, and they don't (and shouldn't) have the rights and protections which people have. I have a freedom to speak, but that freedom should neither be enhanced nor diminished by participation in some particular joint venture.

Further, corporations are fully artificial legal constructs. There should be no moral qualms about contriving their rights in such a way as to benefit society most, so long as we're not violating the rights of participating individuals.

Re:cash4cronies

[MrMarket]

"$18 million to redesign a web site," is an over simplistic headline that does not take into account all of the work that goes into tracking and displaying almost a trillion dollars worth of spending.

So, how much do you think a system and web site that keeps track of and displays how nearly a trillion dollars gets spent should cost? Your banking site and the systems needed to view your account details and transactions probably cost more than $18 MM to build from scratch.

Re:cash4cronies

[tjonnyc999]

Because...
When a Republican changes his mind, he's a liar.
When a Democrat changes his mind, he's "seen the light" - or "gained a new awareness of the issues".

When a Republican raises taxes, he's a heartless bastard.
When a Democrat raises taxes, he's "taking necessary steps in a troubled time to keep the budget balanced".


...etc, etc.

Mass-media linguistic gymnastics, ain't it grand?

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't buy politicians, you subscribe to them.

PaaS = Politicians as a Service.

Does that make the office of a representative their PaaShole?

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

It's a logic issue because if you aren't responsible for your property, then who is.

Sure, and I can stipulate that a corporation is capable of owning something and being responsible for the things that they own-- at least to a large extent.

None of that really indicates that they need to be considered a legal "person" with all the rights, privileges, and protections which people enjoy.

When you remove that ability to act on it's own and independent from the owners, then it becomes nothing more then a dog or a car you own in which you are responsible for any damage it causes.

Well just to pick apart where you're going with this a little, you're not always entirely responsible for what happens with the things you own, right? I'm not necessarily liable if the car I own was involved in an accident. The car doesn't need to be granted legal personhood in order to avoid me getting charged with manslaughter if someone else, driving my car, runs someone over. There generally needs to be some kind of action or reckless inaction on the part of the owner. Or to backtrack to your earlier example:

Our courts don't allow a ladder to be responsible for breaking and someone falling, it's the person who owns the ladder and offered it for service in an unsafe condition

You can't hold the ladder responsible for breaking, but you probably can't hold me responsible for simply owning a ladder which breaks, either. Offering it for service in an unsafe condition is another matter, and I might be able to be sued for that even if I don't own the ladder, right?

if you do something not in the best interest of the company which causes the investment to decrease in value, other partial owners will have a claim against your actions.

So in this scenario I'm one of the owners of the company? I didn't get that in the original example. I thought I was just some random dude who liked cap and trade. Or... well it's still not quite clear to me.

Why should being an owner in the company require me to not do things which might harm another person's investment in that company? What's the legal requirement there? Was it part of the agreement when I bought into the company? Or is there a law somewhere that says that being a partial owner of a company requires you to avoid doing anything which might harm others' investments in that company?

If so, I'm not sure I understand the point of that law. Someone outside the company is easily allowed to harm their investments (e.g. if I were just "some dude who liked cap and trade") without any grounds of a lawsuit, so I don't see why you need the extra incentive to benefit the company for someone who is an owner, and therefore probably already has some economic incentive to see the company do well.

Re:cash4cronies

[multimed]

Two things:

1) Corporate personhood: the notion that a corporation is a person entitled to the same rights as a natural person, or some subset of those rights (e.g. due process, free speech, etc.)

Agreed, that's led to awful things. Until people can get all the rights of corporations - namely live forever - corporations shouldn't get the rights of people

2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech

Much as we hate the results, money IS speech in this context. The idea of giving money to support a candidate whose positions you agree with is absolutely in line with an individual's right express himself. In fact, I think any limitation on an individual's right to contribute is against the intent. BUT...there is a logical and reasonable solution to this. There is no absolute and limitless right of a candidate to spend said contributions. In this way, we can severely limit the spending of the contributions and effectively reduce the influence of money without the need to take away free speech rights of the individuals. I'm just not sure why this problem is so difficult.

Re:cash4cronies

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

neither can ex-cons and felons in most states.

Actually, it is only 11 states that restrict ex-cons from voting. And it is extremely wrong-headed to make that restriction because it breeds an unrepresented underclass.

Re:cash4cronies

[multimed]

Donating, even if it is labor or vocalized support should not be removed from anyone who is subject to the political processes, laws, and environment under each, even if they aren't allowed to vote themselves.

The I take it you're against taking away the voting rights from felons and non-citizens (both illegal and those legally here on visas, etc)? I ask this question because I don't see how your argument applies to one but not the other. If the determining factor is that you're subject to the laws & processes, then whether it's the influence from contributions or a vote you should have a voice. Of course we can take it to the next level - and at some point, be silly about it. You used the word environment - Canadians and Mexicans near the border very much are impacted by us environmental laws. To wit, Iraqi and Afghanistani people may well have their lives influenced more by US laws and politics than a guy living in a cabin in the woods somewhere.

Re:cash4cronies

[multimed]

Only persons who can vote should be allowed to donate to campaigns. Can corporations vote? Nope - so no donations from them.

If you can't vote for a particular candidate, then you can't give them money. Seems awfully reasonable to me. Where this would have the most dramatic effect would be on state and local elections. I can see an argument, that while Congress critters are elected to represent a district, the clearly make laws that apply nationally. However, tell me why an individual, corporation or organization from say Georgia, should be able to contribute to the campaign of the governor of Minnesota. Or those from another county or even city.

Re:cash4cronies

[Frostalicious]

Next person that tells you "a corporation is like a person", ask them how many businesses they've incorporated. If it's zero, you're perfectly within your rights to kick them in the knee.

Better yet, get your corporation to kick them in the knee so you are protected.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same arrogant son of a bitch Steny Hoyer who bragged about voting for the Waxman-Markey bill without even reading it? He's shitting all over you, folks, and laughing about it. Is this the "change" you had in mind?

Re:cash4cronies

[ibbey]

When rho tells you that a corporation is not considered a person, rho is talking out of his or her ass.

You are right that a corporation (otherwise known as a 'legal person') does not have all the rights of a human citizen (otherwise known as a 'natural person') but the doctrine of corporate personhood is, unfortunately, quite well established in US law. Just because you don't agree with the semantics doesn't mean the statement is wrong.

This would have been a good opportunity to use Google before opening your mouth... For example, this Wikipedia article provides a good summary of the issues surrounding the doctrine of corporate personhood, and would have been the first result had you googled for "corporate personhood".

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, we should eliminate proper nouns altogether. It's a wonder YOU aren't the President, what with your brilliant ideas and all...

Re:cash4cronies

[darkpixel2k]

$18 mil for a website and in a total coincidence the contract goes to a company run by people who have given tens of thousands of dollars to house majority leader Steny Hoyer (D)

That's a good gig though. $18 million to design a website that tells you your tax money is going into a giant sinkhole...oh, and about $18 million went to a certain web design company...

Re:cash4cronies

[michaelhood]

Oh, this reminds me of a beaut I heard up here in Snowanada

It appears that a politician running for mayor in fair Calgary, Alberta, may accept funds from, say, land and commercial developers, for his campaign. What ever is left over is his/hers to keep, personally.

I bet they even get a discount on new homes in new developments...

Of course it is.. where did you think money donated to a political candidate went after the election? Most of the time, a more visible candidate will donate the excess funds to his or her political party - but not always.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

That means everyone who voted for the bill. It was so big and so long that no one even had time to actually read it before they voted on it. The same thing happened with the cap and trade bill in the House. There might have been some aides who read most or even all of it but probably only after it was passed.

Re:cash4cronies

[michaelhood]

Can I have my check now please?

Depends.. is said project shovel-ready?

Re:cash4cronies

[Rocketship Underpant]

Show me where I can unsubscribe, please.

Re:cash4cronies

[DigiShaman]

Every member of Congress who voted for Spendulous without reading it should be recalled or impeached!

Personally, I would prefer those guilty of this act to be summarily executed! Such an extreme punishment would serve as a lesson to future congress members to not be derelict in their duty.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

Sure, and I can stipulate that a corporation is capable of owning something and being responsible for the things that they own-- at least to a large extent.

None of that really indicates that they need to be considered a legal "person" with all the rights, privileges, and protections which people enjoy.

Your thinking two D or only two levels deep. The corporation needs someone to be responsible for it's own actions, in which could be the actions of something it owns. A car has tires, the car can't own the tires, the owner of the car does. If the car runs over someone or something with that tire, it's the owner of the car, not the car that has the tires who is the responsible party. A thing can't possess another thing, only a person in our legal system can. When corporations are autonomous from their owners who aren't directing it's actions, it can own something just as you can.

Well just to pick apart where you're going with this a little, you're not always entirely responsible for what happens with the things you own, right? I'm not necessarily liable if the car I own was involved in an accident. The car doesn't need to be granted legal personhood in order to avoid me getting charged with manslaughter if someone else, driving my car, runs someone over. There generally needs to be some kind of action or reckless inaction on the part of the owner. Or to backtrack to your earlier example:

The only way you are not liable or the responsible party of your possessions is if an act of god (legally speaking) or theft or if you were obeying the rules and someone else caused the event imposing liability. There is no needs to create a legal person of the car because there is already one there when you aren't liable. If someone steals your car, while you can still be held for damages it caused, the person who stole it was liable. If someone hits you while you are parked, then it's that person's fault and responsibility. If a flood comes by and sweeps your car into a neighbors house, it's an act of god and both of your assume responsibility for damage to your own possessions.

This is where the disconnect with a corporation comes into play. If the car was owned by a corporation, then the company becomes responsible for the car (assuming you had no part in the event), not you as a part owner of the company. When you remove the separate person, then it's like the tire doing damage, you are left holding the bag. Instead of running over something, imagine the conversation was driving through someone's front lawn and the tired peeled out a patch of grass as the damage.

You can't hold the ladder responsible for breaking, but you probably can't hold me responsible for simply owning a ladder which breaks, either. Offering it for service in an unsafe condition is another matter, and I might be able to be sued for that even if I don't own the ladder, right?

Well, yes, you are responsible for the ladder breaking. if you simply owned the ladder which breaks, then it would be either you who is hurt and your responsibility or the ladder would break without hurting someone and your responsibility or liability would be the cost of the ladder you are out (either from replacement or from not having a working ladder anymore). And yes, when you interact with other people, if the ladder was unsafe and you offered it to use, you could be held for any damages because you are the legal person with responsibility over it. Now imagine you owned a company and the ladder was yours by possession of the company. Now suppose some mid level manager offered the ladder to a labor employee and it breaks, the company is responsible and possibly the mid level manager, but because the company is a separate person, you as a silent owner are not held responsible beyond the value of your shares of the company (you don't forfeit anything but if the damage puts the company into bankruptcy, t

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

I'm not necessarily against taking voting rights away because most convicts were likely non voters in the first place. However, there should be a way to get them back and donating time or money is still a pretty good and effective way to propel someone into office. In fact, influencing 20 other people to vote for candidate X is 20 times as powerful as your single vote.

As for immigrants and foreigners, no, I don't count them as citizens. Perhaps I was clear on that. The environment thing, I wasn't clear about either, what I meant was the political climate, not the actual environment.

It's probably my bad, I consider anyone subject to US laws and stuff to be the US citizens. To some extent, I would support legal immigrants having those same rights if they are hear for extended periods of time even without becoming a citizen. The illegal immigrants I would pose as the convict is still in jail. in jail their abilities are severely limited as should be illegal immigrants. Immigrants aren't necessarily otherwise entitled to vote either. This should be a good point of separation in which the excon or felons (and yes, at one point in time, misdemeanor possession of more or less harmless drugs was a felony) would otherwise be legally entitled to vote. Because they lost that privilege/right, shouldn't bar them from any participation in their government.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

If the car runs over someone or something with that tire, it's the owner of the car, not the car that has the tires who is the responsible party.

No, if a car runs over someone or something, the person driving the car is the responsible party, and not the guy who owns it. Unless you're claiming that I can be charged for manslaughter if I lend my car to a friend and that person runs someone else over.

Or take another example: I lend the neighbor a baseball and a baseball bat. The neighbor then uses that equipment and ends up hitting the ball through a window. Am I liable because I own the equipment, or is the neighbor liable for choosing to play baseball right next to someone's house?

If someone is directing the company in a way inconsistent with it's best interest and caused a loss in value, then that person can be held accountable for those losses.

Oh, so first it was just any random guy who caused someone to lose an investment in any way, and that person could be sued. Then it was an owner. Then it doesn't matter who the actors are. And now it's someone directing the company? And... someone could sue the person who directs some company if that company causes someone to lose an investment somewhere?

Take Enron for instance, the directors of the company acted in bad faith by falsifying reporting, accounting, and squandering corporate funding causing harm to the company. They faced both civil and criminal liability for their actions. If you remove the separation from a corporation, then your actions extend to the same effect just as it would if the company was a partnership.

So who am I in this situation? The directors? Great, so I'm facing civil and criminal liability? Or am I supposed to be the owner?

Look, I understand the purpose of corporations is to limit the liability of the owners of the company, if that's the only point you're trying to make. That still doesn't make a corporation a person, nor is it a good reason to make a corporation a person legally.

Your actions then have an impact on other people's investments and you are required to act in good faith with a degree of loyalty.

But only insofar as I'm directing the company? I assume that if I'm essentially a silent partner, there are no laws against me advocating something in my private life that might run contrary to promoting the value of the company I'm invested in?

But if it's only insofar as I'm directing the company, shouldn't I be expected to act in good faith?

Anyway, that question doesn't really matter to the question at hand: why should a corporation be considered a "person"?

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Give it to me... I'll do it for $2m !

Bargain!

Re:cash4cronies

[Omestes]

I would be all in favor of not taxing corporations (only the collected annual income, and all other "normal" taxes) iff they were not allowed to donate money to candidates, and would give up their limited liability abilities. All legal liability would go straight to its executives, and primary (voting) shareholders.

Re:cash4cronies

[Omestes]

I can see an argument, that while Congress critters are elected to represent a district, the clearly make laws that apply nationally. However, tell me why an individual, corporation or organization from say Georgia, should be able to contribute to the campaign of the governor of Minnesota. Or those from another county or even city.

As an individual I can donate to any canidate anywhere, with no problems. For example, my dad regularly donates money to Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich, since he really can't support the progressive democrats here in AZ. I see no problems with this, your money should go wherever it wants to.

As for corporations, I see no reason why they should be allowed to donate at all. I don't even see it as a worthy first amendment issue. As someone above stated, I don't have the right to bribe a cop (though I do have the right to plea my innocence and ask for a second chance, etc...), so why should a corporation (a legal fiction) have this right?

Re:cash4cronies

[ta bu shi da yu]

I don't think that is possible.

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

We need this stuff to stay informed. How else would we know that TARP money lent is really an asset? You know, like the subprime mortgages are assets now. $18 mil is cheap in the government to find out how we're being ripped off. Although I once saw a book called "How Not To Get Ripped Off" for $9.99.

$4 trillion per 100 days, do we really need to worry about an $18 mil propaganda tool. Don't we just need to take the credit cards away from these a**h*l*s? I propose we vote out any Congress person who voted for any anti-stimulus or Cap and Trade.

Re:cash4cronies

[cml4524]

That's largely a myth. Corporations do have legal rights, but by no means is there "personhood" attached to coporations legal status.

Absolutely and unequivocally false:

the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems pretty level headed to me.... Do you want some piece-of-shit convict being able to elect leaders? Not I. If those assholes wanted to be able to vote, then perhaps they should not have gotten themselves arrested. If they don't like it, fuck-em... they are convicts and lost their rights when they broke the law.

Re:cash4cronies

[hesaigo999ca]

After reading the few posts above till this one, I had a sad realization, that I live in a world where security design has no place in the market, only who you know and who you blow...
I guess I need to hang up my programming skills, and dust off my lipstick case if I ever want to
get any real contracts!!!

I guess the days of Bill Gates swooping in at the right time and place are gone for good!

Re:cash4cronies

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Do you want some piece-of-shit convict being able to elect leaders?

Yes I do. Because you know what? They did their time. Your argument is the equivalent of saying that we should never let people out of prison - if the those assholes wanted to be citizens, they "should not have gotten themselves arrested." If they don't like it, fuck-em, they lost the right to live in society when they broke the law.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

No, if a car runs over someone or something, the person driving the car is the responsible party, and not the guy who owns it. Unless you're claiming that I can be charged for manslaughter if I lend my car to a friend and that person runs someone else over.

What if no one is in the car and you left it out of gear or if it is in a state of disrepair and pops out on it's own? No one would be driving it and you would still be held responsibly for it.

And yes, you can be charged with manslaughter for letting someone else drive your car in certain situations. These situations would include knowing the driver was either not licensed, intoxicated or somehow impaired, and knowing that the driver was going to use the car to do some illegal activity.

Or take another example: I lend the neighbor a baseball and a baseball bat. The neighbor then uses that equipment and ends up hitting the ball through a window. Am I liable because I own the equipment, or is the neighbor liable for choosing to play baseball right next to someone's house?

If you know the neighbor was going to use the bat to hit the ball through the window, yes, you could be liable. But I think your missing the point in these. In all cases mentioned, a person is there and liable or responsible for the actions. When a corporation is at fault, they need to be that person or the owners become personally liable.

Oh, so first it was just any random guy who caused someone to lose an investment in any way, and that person could be sued. Then it was an owner. Then it doesn't matter who the actors are. And now it's someone directing the company? And... someone could sue the person who directs some company if that company causes someone to lose an investment somewhere?

No, it doesn't matter who the actors are, the actors are not the concern outside of the degree of separation. IF the corporation isn't a separate person then it becomes no different then a partnership in which your actions directly influence the company and you then become potentially liable. I'm not sure why we are still at this part with the who does what, I explained that before.

So who am I in this situation? The directors? Great, so I'm facing civil and criminal liability? Or am I supposed to be the owner?

OK, read this slowly because you seems to be missing the context. When a corporation is a separate person, your actions as a owner who doesn't control the corporation are separate. When that separate person is removed, you now become the same as the directors and subject to the same liabilities. The entire point of treating a corporation as a separate person is to separate silent owners from the corporation and the actions of the corporation. Unless you are suggesting a change in naming only and leaving everything in place, once you remove the separate person, it becomes the same as a partnership and your actions as owner does present a liability/obligation to other investors.

So let me recap that just to make sure you are clear. With the separate person aspect, the directors and company itself is required to act in good faith. Without the separate person aspect, everyone involved, including owners are required to act in good faith.

Look, I understand the purpose of corporations is to limit the liability of the owners of the company, if that's the only point you're trying to make. That still doesn't make a corporation a person, nor is it a good reason to make a corporation a person legally.

No, you don't understand the purpose of a corporation. The purpose is to form a company structure that can act independent of the owners will and is always required to operate in good faith and with a fiduciary duty. That makes it a separate person and in the process shields and protects the owners who don't actively participat

Re:cash4cronies

[Anonymous Coward]

PaaS/GaaS = Politicians as a Service / graft as a Service.

The second half is needed because sometimes you need collusion of other, non-specifically governmental organizations. It's a side effect of privatizing the military and espionage functions.

Re:cash4cronies

[dunkelfalke]

bullshit. non-citizens cannot vote and still can get taxed.

Re:cash4cronies

[crmarvin42]

It's called the Voting Booth. Unfortunatley you are required by law to subscribe to Someone.

Re:cash4cronies

[multimed]

I'll admit to playing a little devil's advocate here. My preferred solution (which I've posted a little futher down) is to place no limits on contributions, but to limit spending of said contributions severely.

That said, limiting campaign contributions to candidates who actually represent you - who serve your district and whom you can vote for - just strikes me as entirely logical. You think you should be able to contribute to a candidate from a far away district. We limit a person's ability to vote for someone out of district. Why shouldn't you be able to vote for him/her as well? In what way is a right to contribute to a candidate different than a right to vote for said candidate? Again, I would concede an exception for Senators, but for state and local offices it makes a great deal of sense. And considering House districts are smaller and the House of Representatives almost by definition, are there to represent the views of their district, why should they listen to or be influenced at all by anyone outside their district?

Re:cash4cronies

[NeutronCowboy]

Troll? Seriously? Whoever modded this troll ought to look up personality profiles of executives, characteristics of sociopaths and behavior of corporations.

I'm a big believer in corporations being part of a successful economy, but that doesn't we have to be blind to their behaviors.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

What if no one is in the car and you left it out of gear

In that case, *you* left it out of gear, which is negligent.

And yes, you can be charged with manslaughter for letting someone else drive your car in certain situations

Only if you're negligent in some way, and not simply because you're technically the owner of the car.

If you know the neighbor was going to use the bat to hit the ball through the window, yes, you could be liable. But I think your missing the point in these.

First of all, I can't imagine that holding up. Maybe if I provide the baseball bat to my neighbor specifically for the purpose of breaking the window, but just knowing he's going to be reckless doesn't put me on the hook. The fact of my owning the baseball doesn't make me any more responsible than if I didn't own the baseball.

I think you're the one missing the point. You're trying to claim that owning something makes you responsible for whatever happens with it, and it simply doesn't. So that line of reasoning is debunked.

If you remove the separate person aspect of a corporation, then you remove the limits to obligations of the owners just as if the business was a partnership instead of a corporation.

This is more circular begging the question. Assuming that you need to limit the obligations and liabilities of owners, and assuming the only way to achieve that is to have corporations which are legally considered a "separate person" from the owner, then yes, we need each corporation to be considered "a person". If we don't assume what we're trying to argue from the outset, then the whole argument falls apart.

And what none of this answers is, even if you want to have some way in which a corporation is technically/legally considered a "person", what is harmed by having it only be a "person" in a limited sense, and not granting it the right to contribute to political campaigns? That was the original question, after all.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

In that case, *you* left it out of gear, which is negligent.

Your missing the point. Someone has to be responsible for their property. It can be you or someone else through no fault of your own. But it has to be someone not some thing. This is why a corp is considered a separate person. It can be responsible in and of itself.

Only if you're negligent in some way, and not simply because you're technically the owner of the car.

Are you only reading what you want to read and ignoring the rest? I already stated that with my examples of giving the car to an unlicensed or intoxicated driver or knowing the car would be used in the commission of a crime. I didn't say always, I said could be.

First of all, I can't imagine that holding up. Maybe if I provide the baseball bat to my neighbor specifically for the purpose of breaking the window, but just knowing he's going to be reckless doesn't put me on the hook. The fact of my owning the baseball doesn't make me any more responsible than if I didn't own the baseball.

This concept is used all the time to hold parent criminally liable for the actions of their kids. If you have reason to believe they will cause damage, then offering them the means to do so implicates you directly.

I think you're the one missing the point. You're trying to claim that owning something makes you responsible for whatever happens with it, and it simply doesn't. So that line of reasoning is debunked.

No, I'm trying to make the point that "someone" has to be responsible for what ever happens to it. It can be the owner, it can be the neighbor, but it is always someone (a person) and not the piece of property itself. Neither the ball or bat can be the responsible party when someone strikes the ball and it goes through the window causing damage.

This is more circular begging the question. Assuming that you need to limit the obligations and liabilities of owners, and assuming the only way to achieve that is to have corporations which are legally considered a "separate person" from the owner, then yes, we need each corporation to be considered "a person". If we don't assume what we're trying to argue from the outset, then the whole argument falls apart.

There is nothing circular about this other then the precondition of separating liabilities. The entire way it works is only because the corporation is a separate person able to answer for it's own actions. If you remove that, then someone has to be responsible for it and it would work out just like a partnership where all of the owners are/can be that person. The only way a corporation can shield non acting owners is by acting on it's own as a separate person. If you want the way corporations exist today to remain, they need to be treated as separate people in many aspects. Otherwise, your entire wealth can be taxed for liability for the companies actions simple because you own shared of stock in your retirement account.

And what none of this answers is, even if you want to have some way in which a corporation is technically/legally considered a "person", what is harmed by having it only be a "person" in a limited sense, and not granting it the right to contribute to political campaigns? That was the original question, after all.

Well first, that wasn't the original question. It was in the question but it wasn't the entire question.

Now corporations are highly limited as people and to what extent they can do things. But limiting them from donating to campaigns or political speech would stop them following their fiduciary duty to a large degree when political environments pose a threat or harm to them. You have to remember, a politician's duty is n

Re:cash4cronies

[BCW2]

These fools are not building anything nearly as useful. You know they will hide the parts that make them look bad.

Re:cash4cronies

[BCW2]

The purpose of the Second Amendment is to keep us free of a tyrannical Government, it's getting closer to time to use it as intended.

Re:cash4cronies

[BCW2]

Look at how the Republicans have spent like Democrats for the last 8 years. That is why party doesn't matter much. They are all bought and paid for by the same people.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

Your missing the point. Someone has to be responsible for their property.

No, you're missing the point. Society needs to be able to assign responsibilities to actions (and sometimes inaction, in the case of negligence). People do not necessarily need to be responsible for inanimate objects.

Are you only reading what you want to read and ignoring the rest? I already stated that with my examples of giving the car to an unlicensed or intoxicated driver or knowing the car would be used in the commission of a crime. I didn't say always, I said could be.

Right, it's "could be" and not "always" because people are not necessarily responsible for events that involve their property. They can be responsible regardless ownership. Ownership is not a particularly determinant factor in most cases.

So yes, I could be held responsible for handing over the keys to a drunk person, knowing that they're going to drive. Whether I own the car they're going to drive is irrelevant. The question is whether I was negligent in permitting or encouraging a drunk person to drive.

No, I'm trying to make the point that "someone" has to be responsible for what ever happens to it.

Yes, except that it's not the case that someone has to be legally responsible for all things that happen anyway. In lawsuits, there's often an attempt to establish who is responsible because that's what lawsuits are about. However, there are cases where no one is determined to be responsible, which (depending on the circumstances) may then be called "an act of God".

If an event is caused by human action, however, you still have to establish some kind of negligence or bad act. For example, if we got into a car accident with each other, it is possible that neither driver was negligent and so neither is held responsible for the damage and injuries resulting from the accident.

But again, that whole discussion isn't really relevant to the question. You're saying you need some kind of legal construct to limit the liability owners have over the actions of the companies they own. And that's fine, I have no objection to that. But why does that legal construct need to create artificial "persons" who are granted an inalienable right to have financial influence over our government officials?

The only way a corporation can shield non acting owners is by acting on it's own as a separate person.

Right, and you're trying to use this statement to prove itself, which is begging the question.

Without input on how something will effect corporations or corporations having the ability to influence politics, then it's entirely possible for the political environment to drive the corporations out of business.

Given a particular business, a restaurant, let's say, it's possible that disallowing the restaurant from having rat feces in their food will drive them out of business. They'll have to spend extra money on exterminating the rats in their kitchen, which it may not be able to afford. Where will you buy your food? If companies go out of business, not only will people lose their jobs, but the economy will suffer.

It's also possible that their inability to own slaves hurts our economy. Businesses have to pay more for labor, and they just pass those costs onto consumers. If it drives the prices too high, it will drive those businesses under.

So yeah, I'm thinking, "So?" The freedom of speech is not considered inalienable so that people can become more profitable.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

No, you're missing the point. Society needs to be able to assign responsibilities to actions (and sometimes inaction, in the case of negligence). People do not necessarily need to be responsible for inanimate objects.

You simply cannot assign blame to an object. This isn't third grade and the ball didn't hurt you, the person who threw it did.

Where in our legal system can responsibility be assigned to an object that is not a person? Kids aren't even considered persons in most states and aren't allowed to enter into certain contracts or participate in certain activities. Our legal system requires a person to be responsible.

Right, it's "could be" and not "always" because people are not necessarily responsible for events that involve their property. They can be responsible regardless ownership. Ownership is not a particularly determinant factor in most cases.

Yes, they are. You have a duty to not let your property harm the property of others. IF you fail in that duty, you can be held liable unless a law exempts you like with most equine activities.

So yes, I could be held responsible for handing over the keys to a drunk person, knowing that they're going to drive. Whether I own the car they're going to drive is irrelevant. The question is whether I was negligent in permitting or encouraging a drunk person to drive.

You may be more then negligent, you may have acted maliciously and with intent. However, the point being is that a person is responsible and not the car or the keys or the tires, or the telephone pole that jumps out in front of him. In some states, simply leaving the keys in a reasonably accessible place can make you liable.

Yes, except that it's not the case that someone has to be legally responsible for all things that happen anyway. In lawsuits, there's often an attempt to establish who is responsible because that's what lawsuits are about. However, there are cases where no one is determined to be responsible, which (depending on the circumstances) may then be called "an act of God".

Yes, I already brought an act of god up. In those cases, the owners take responsibility for their own properties and suffer the loss. The owners are the responsible party. And don't take responsible to mean the person who caused the event, it's the person held to the results of it.

If an event is caused by human action, however, you still have to establish some kind of negligence or bad act. For example, if we got into a car accident with each other, it is possible that neither driver was negligent and so neither is held responsible for the damage and injuries resulting from the accident.

Actually, that is impossible in reality. It might have happened where no one driver is found to of been at fault because of lack of evidence, but the rules of the road cover pretty much everything that would cause an accident. However, if I was working for a company, and the situation came about as you described, then when you found out I was over worked and tired driving the car, you could sue the company because they had a duty to ensure I was a safe driver in an appropriate condition to drive. And yes, that is in the motor carrier laws.

But again, that whole discussion isn't really relevant to the question. You're saying you need some kind of legal construct to limit the liability owners have over the actions of the companies they own. And that's fine, I have no objection to that. But why does that legal construct need to create artificial "persons" who are granted an inalienable right to have financial influence over our government officials?

Because our legal system does not and can not assign blame to objects, it has to assign them to people and if the corporation isn't a separate person, then t

Re:cash4cronies

[Millenniumman]

This isn't really the case. No one remotely credible really believes that political donations by corporations are a protected form of freedom of expression. Some moronic commentators and the like spin it that way, but the political reality is that despite the obvious corruptions of the system few politicians want to change it because they rely on it, and, indeed, they wouldn't be in their position if they didn't.

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

You simply cannot assign blame to an object. This isn't third grade and the ball didn't hurt you, the person who threw it did.

Exactly! The person who threw it, not the person who owns it.

In some states, simply leaving the keys in a reasonably accessible place can make you liable.

Again, yes! The person who leaves the keys in an accessible place, and not the person who owns the car.

In those cases, the owners take responsibility for their own properties and suffer the loss.

It's not that they "take responsibility" and therefore suffer the loss. The loss is already suffered. It's just that, since no one in particular is responsible, no one else is liable to compensate the owner for his loss.

Actually, that is impossible in reality. It might have happened where no one driver is found to of been at fault because of lack of evidence

Erm...?! It's impossible that no one is legally at fault, and yet it might be found that no driver is at fault. Ok.

when you found out I was over worked and tired driving the car, you could sue the company because they had a duty to ensure I was a safe driver in an appropriate condition to drive

Ok, so yet another example where it isn't the owner of property who is responsible, but instead the negligent party that caused the event. Are you trying to make my argument for me?

the right of the public health trumps the right of the business

Exactly my point. That some business might not be as profitable does not trump the public welfare.

this country was founded on the idea of freedom of enterprise

Well it was founded on the idea of maintaining liberty for its citizens, which is utterly irrelevant to the discussion here. The preservation of individual freedom of speech (for a *person*) is vital to the purpose of our government, but guaranteeing profitability of a company is not.

You keep talking about all these various issues (most of which you're wrong about), but you're generally not really addressing the question of why corporations should be granted rights normally reserved for people. As far as I can remember, the only relevant argument you've made this whole time seems to boil down to "lessing the ability of corporations to influence our government might lessen their profitability, which might, in turn, harm our economy." However, that takes for granted the idea that their current level of influence is both acceptable and necessary.

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

Exactly! The person who threw it, not the person who owns it.

Unless the person who owns it gave it to the person who threw it for that purpose. There is a whole aspect of law you want to skip here. But the point was that the ball couldn't be held responsible.

Again, yes! The person who leaves the keys in an accessible place, and not the person who owns the car.

No, the owner of the car will be liable. You can trust me on that or look it up in your state law.

It's not that they "take responsibility" and therefore suffer the loss. The loss is already suffered. It's just that, since no one in particular is responsible, no one else is liable to compensate the owner for his loss.

No, they suffer the loss because they are the only ones responsible for their property. If someone else was at fail or could be blamed, they would be entitled to be compensated to be made whole again, when they are responsible, it's up to them to make themselves whole.

Erm...?! It's impossible that no one is legally at fault, and yet it might be found that no driver is at fault. Ok.

It is impossible for no one to be at fault. What is possible is not enough evidence to determine if either party is at fault. There is a big difference, someone is still at fault, it just can't be legally proven.

Ok, so yet another example where it isn't the owner of property who is responsible, but instead the negligent party that caused the event. Are you trying to make my argument for me?

No, both the owner and the negligent person is responsible in that situation. And yes, it happens all the time where truck drivers and delivery agents get in accidents after being in violation of their hours of service laws and the company is sued in addition to the driver. Respondeat Superior- let the master answer, this concept places liability for the actions of anyone working for you, onto you. It is a very common legal construct that the entire legal system in the US is based around.

The only point being made is your ignorance of the law.

Exactly my point. That some business might not be as profitable does not trump the public welfare.

No, no, no. Public welfare does not trump the rights of a business. A business being profitable is essential to public welfare. I said public health, not welfare.

Well it was founded on the idea of maintaining liberty for its citizens, which is utterly irrelevant to the discussion here. The preservation of individual freedom of speech (for a *person*) is vital to the purpose of our government, but guaranteeing profitability of a company is not.

You obviously don't understand what liberty entails. Liberty entails the ability to venture into enterprise (do business, start companies ect..) No where in the constitution does it say it only applies to people in the literal sense and specifically in the first amendment, it say congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Now what part of make no law abridging the freedom of speech do you not understand?

You keep talking about all these various issues (most of which you're wrong about), but you're generally not really addressing the question of why corporations should be granted rights normally reserved for people.

Ok, first of all, no one is granted rights, no one has rights reserved. It is either you right or it isn't your right. The constitution does not give you any rights, it specifically bars the government from taki

Re:cash4cronies

[caffeinemessiah]

the unlawful detentions without trial, the wire-taps, the cronyism, the pointless foreign warmongering & gunboat diplomacy, the war on drugs, the denial of gay rights, the staged Q&A sessions, etc. etc. etc. ... all chug along with as much momentum as ever.

That's the funny thing about "momentum"...it takes quite a while to overcome. Or did you really expect that he would change each and every thing you're complaining about overnight. It's been less than half a year, of a very very bad year, give the man a break. I'm not saying he's going to reverse the "momentum" on everything you mentioned, but really (and realistically) would you rather have mccain in there?

Re:cash4cronies

[nine-times]

But the point was that the ball couldn't be held responsible.

No one was arguing that the ball would be held responsible. You were arguing that the owner of the ball is responsible for any damage the ball causes, which obviously is not true. And you agreed. So we're done there.

No, the owner of the car will be liable.

Even according to you, only if the owner was negligent in permitting someone else to drive their car. So we're done there.

No, both the owner and the negligent person is responsible in that situation.

You said, "if I was working for a company, and the situation came about as you described, then when you found out I was over worked and tired driving the car, you could sue the company because they had a duty to ensure I was a safe driver in an appropriate condition to drive". So is the company absolved of responsibility if they don't technically own the car I was driving? If not, then it's further evidence that responsibility doesn't go to the owner of an object, but rather it's the responsibility of those people who were negligent or reckless. So we're done there.

No, no, no. Public welfare does not trump the rights of a business.

No, no, no, no. The point is businesses don't have a "right" to be profitable. Your claim as to why businesses needed to be granted the right to free speech was that otherwise some particular business might not be as profitable. As they have no right to be profitable, I don't see why the need to be profitable demands that they be granted special additional rights.

No where in the constitution does it say it only applies to people in the literal sense

Nowhere does it say that special rights should be granted to non-persons for the sake of profit. Doesn't even imply such a thing.

You've held throughout this argument that a business are inherently the same sort of thing as cars, but we need to grant them "personhood" merely because it's beneficial to those businesses. Should we establish that it would be in the best interest of a car to be considered a "person", is it necessary that we also give cars the freedom of speech? Why not, since the Constitution is silent on the subject? Nowhere does it say, "cars aren't people".

Ok, first of all, no one is granted rights, no one has rights reserved.

Well rights certainly are granted to corporations. Most definitely they are. Corporations are artificial entities with no inherent or God-given rights. And how are rights not reserved for people? I think you misunderstand the meaning of the word "reserve", or are unfamiliar with at least one of its meanings.

But let me spell this out one more fucking time and pay attention this time.

Oh, please do!

The law works by making someone responsible for actions

Right! Actions. That's what I said.

When you remove this aspect of a separate person, you then dump liability onto the owners

Right, back to begging the question, i.e. it would be impossible to limit a person's liability in owning a company without making that company a separate person because only making it a separate person can limit liability. Check.

This screws with it's fiduciary duty of the company and could ruin some of them.

Right, this is bad for companies, and companies have an inalienable constitutional right to profit at the expense of the public welfare.

You most likely depend on a corporation for your job if you are not living in mom's basement and mowing lawns for pizza and mountain dew cash.

Great, a new weird circular argument. Building a system which concentrates economic and political power into corporations is good, and the evidence for this is that corporations currentl

Re:cash4cronies

[sumdumass]

No one was arguing that the ball would be held responsible. You were arguing that the owner of the ball is responsible for any damage the ball causes, which obviously is not true. And you agreed. So we're done there.

Ok, you just aren't getting the picture. A corporation is the ball. When the ball is a separate person, it can be held to it's own actions because it can operate independently from it's owners. If know one knows who threw the ball but we know who the owner of the ball it, the owner will be responsible regardless of anything else.

Even according to you, only if the owner was negligent in permitting someone else to drive their car. So we're done there.

Actually, all 50 states have laws making the owner of the vehicle ultimately responsible for any damage the vehicle causes. This was part of the mandatory insurance coverage issues.

You said, "if I was working for a company, and the situation came about as you described, then when you found out I was over worked and tired driving the car, you could sue the company because they had a duty to ensure I was a safe driver in an appropriate condition to drive". So is the company absolved of responsibility if they don't technically own the car I was driving? If not, then it's further evidence that responsibility doesn't go to the owner of an object, but rather it's the responsibility of those people who were negligent or reckless. So we're done there.

If you are in an accident while on the job in any car owned by any person or company and you were at fault or partially responsible for the accident, then the Company can be liable for any of your actions while on the job. This liability can come from two different concepts, Vicarious liability and direct liability. Vicarious liability is when they failed to do something that could have prevented an act for any reason. Direct liability would be if they knew you were tired and coerced you to do something resulting in the accident. Often direct liability comes after being ordered to do something illegal. It's pretty easy to point out where a company failed in their responsibilities in supervision or observance of laws or whatever.

No, no, no, no. The point is businesses don't have a "right" to be profitable. Your claim as to why businesses needed to be granted the right to free speech was that otherwise some particular business might not be as profitable. As they have no right to be profitable, I don't see why the need to be profitable demands that they be granted special additional rights.

Yes they do. Businesses are nothing more then collections of people and they have very much the same rights as those people. I, you, the guy next door, and any other citizen or legal residence has the right to comment on and effect change in laws and policies that effect their ability to profit. This is a fundamental right the country was founded with.

Nowhere does it say that special rights should be granted to non-persons for the sake of profit. Doesn't even imply such a thing.

That's absurd. The constitution DOES NOT GRANT RIGHTS. It restricts governments from taking rights away. You would never find anything in the constitution granting any right to anyone except where it give the government powers to do something.

You've held throughout this argument that a business are inherently the same sort of thing as cars, but we need to grant them "personhood" merely because it's beneficial to those businesses. Should we establish that it would be in the best interest of a car to be considered a "person", is it necessary that we also give cars the freedom of speech? Why not, since the Constitution is silent on the subject? Nowhere does it say, "cars aren't people".

Yes, they are object of property. IF they

Re:cash4cronies

[Alakaboo]

Okay, I'll play.

When a Republican changes his mind, he's always believed the way he believes now.
When a Democrat changes his mind, he's a flip-flopper with no loyalty or conviction.

When a Republican raises taxes, it's only temporary. Republicans are the champions of small government, lest we forget.
When a Democrat raises taxes, he's a tax-and-spend liberal, a chronic symptom of an overgrown government.

It appears that you are no slouch at linguistic gymnastics yourself.

Re:cash4cronies

[Golias]

the unlawful detentions without trial, the wire-taps, the cronyism, the pointless foreign warmongering & gunboat diplomacy, the war on drugs, the denial of gay rights, the staged Q&A sessions, etc. etc. etc. ... all chug along with as much momentum as ever.

That's the funny thing about "momentum"...it takes quite a while to overcome. Or did you really expect that he would change each and every thing you're complaining about overnight.

No, but most of those who voted for him clearly did. Massive, abrupt, radical (unspecified) change was the overwhelming central message of his entire campaign.

He could get rid of "don't ask don't tell" overnight by executive fiat, just like how the troops were once racially integrated. He could likewise shut down the wiretaps, schedule the detainee tribunals, etc. with a mere wave of his pen. He's done NONE of it. Instead, he's running around buying shitty car companies. Pathetic.

HOLY CRAP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a little TOO MUCH MONEY.

Who does the estimates on that? Peoplesoft?

Re:HOLY CRAP!!!

[wstrucke]

wow, totally did not expect to see a reference to Peoplesoft here. but seriously, peoplesoft sucks. not flaming, I can provide specific examples if the community deems it necessary. i expect, however, that most people who have been forced to use it will agree.

Finally we get our bailout

[religious freak]

Well, I've heard several web folks bitch about where their bailout was... and here it is!

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Rei]

Just so I know how to direct my rage properly: am I supposed to be mad that the government is going to launch a site to add sunshine to the recovery bill grant process, or that they couldn't make it appear online for free?

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[ColdWetDog]

Just so I know how to direct my rage properly: am I supposed to be mad that the government is going to launch a site to add sunshine to the recovery bill grant process, or that they couldn't make it appear online for free?

I don't know about you, but I'm going to be a little pissed off at a web site that cost eighteen million dollars and doesn't have blackjack and hookers (which I'm presuming is the case).

If you're gonna spend money, fine. But spend it on useful things.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[CorporateSuit]

I don't know about you, but I'm going to be a little pissed off at a web site that cost eighteen million dollars and doesn't have blackjack and hookers (which I'm presuming is the case).

It doesn't have blackjack and hookers, but it will have their receipts.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[EraserMouseMan]

Yea, I feel so stimulated! How long will it take to finish? When will we be able to find out where all the trillions have gone? What are the chances the new Recover.gov will be available during Obama's first term?

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[pigwiggle]

This has been on the net for free, for quite some time. There are several organizations that have been compiling this information in a nice interactive format, and making it available - no tax money involved. I've looked over a few of these sites, and the feds as well. The federal site doesn't have much in the way of extra information, other than feel good descriptions (read advertising) of the way the money *will* be spent.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Compholio]

To paraphrase Bender:

Fine, I'll go build my own website! With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the website and the blackjack! Ah, screw the whole thing.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[cayenne8]

"This has been on the net for free, for quite some time. There are several organizations that have been compiling this information in a nice interactive format, and making it available - no tax money involved. I've looked over a few of these sites, and the feds as well. The federal site doesn't have much in the way of extra information, other than feel good descriptions (read advertising) of the way the money *will* be spent."

Hell, if that's true, then the govt. could have just screen scraped, and deep-linked into these sites to provide the information, and done the whole shebang for like $32.50!!!

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[bwalling]

Just so I know how to direct my rage properly: am I supposed to be mad that the government is going to launch a site to add sunshine to the recovery bill grant process, or that they couldn't make it appear online for free?

Many Slashdot readers (myself included) write software and/or websites for a living, so we have some perspective on the costs of such a project. If you're not familiar with that subject, let me be one of many to tell you that $18 million is so far beyond reasonable as to make people want to cry.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[jenn_13]

FTA:

The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.

This doesn't say it outright, but I'm assuming from past experience that the site is probably supposed to go live around January, with the 9.5 million being for the site creation, and then the rest of that money being potentially spent on maintenance, change requests after the fact, etc.
Now, in addition to that speculation, what are the chances that it goes into production when scheduled...

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[oldhack]

Maybe this is why we can't have nice things?

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[jdevore]

If you look at the site you will also see that the top half is an add for the company WE PAID to do the work. So they are getting millions of our money to promote themselves.

Wonderful isn't it.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[digitalgiblet]

Started to make a joke and decided not to. This isn't funny.

My guess is that on slashdot a really large percentage of the readers are capable of producing a website. A smaller percentage could make a good website and a really small percentage could make a website that will be every bit as good as the upcoming $18 million website from the govt 2.0.

Being good slashdotters, many of them would know of the concept of FOSS.

So the existence of FOSS means that it is possible to achieve this website for the cost of 1) servers, 2) bandwidth, 3) electricity, 4) infrastructure (building, etc), and 5) people to make/run/maintain the site.

Let's say we just take about $1 million and buy a really nice building somewhere. That may not get you much in DC, but all we need is a connection to the internet, right? I seem to heard something in the news recently about real estate and how some people are having trouble selling theirs. Maybe for $1 million dollars we could pick up a really nice building in the mid-west somewhere?

That leaves us $17 million to work with.

If we take the Google approach of buying cheap PC grade hardware and making a big distributed system, we could build a pretty nice farm for another $1 million. Right? Now we are down to $16 million.

If we run more than $100,000 a year for combined bandwidth and electricity, I'd be kind of surprised, so we're good for ten years on $1 million. That leaves $15 million.

That leaves people. So we have $15 million dollars to hire people to make and run a website. Let's spread that over ten years as well. That gives us $1.5 million per year. We'll pay every single one of them $100,000 a year. That means we can have 15 people. Realistically we only need the bulk of those people during the initial redesign, but why quibble? It's only money, right?

So laying it out that way, wouldn't you agree that we should be seeing one heck of a great website? Innovative and interactive indeed!

OMG! Just RTFA! The $18 million tag is not for 10 years, but only 5 years. Wow.

As for your sense of rage, that's up to you. You could feel rage that the government is spending more money for this than is necessary. You could equally feel a sense of irony that they are spending a large sum of money on a site meant to show you how well they are managing your money and not spending it frivolously.

How you react to the story is really up to you.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[mehemiah]

Which is why I call BS, there is something we aren't being told here. They need to itemize that budget. Theres a website for that. gao.gov, I may come back with my findings

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Hurricane78]

Hey, for that price, I expect a space station too!

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd take $18M to develop what will almost certainly be an underused piece of shit. i never heard of recovery.gov before this and since the gov't is to required to truthfully inform us about anything this site will be little more that peace-of-mice inducing propaganda for the retarded masses. They could have, on the other hand, bought double cheeseburgers for 18 million people!

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[ckaminski]

My guess is that on slashdot a really large percentage of the readers are capable of producing a website. A smaller percentage could make a good website and a really small percentage could make a website that will be every bit as good as the upcoming $18 million website from the govt 2.0.
</quote>

With you so far.

<quote>
Let's say we just take about $1 million and buy a really nice building somewhere. That may not get you much in DC, but all we need is a connection to the internet, right? I seem to heard something in the news recently about real estate and how some people are having trouble selling theirs. Maybe for $1 million dollars we could pick up a really nice building in the mid-west somewhere?
</quote>

For $1million dollars I can rent, wait for it (1and1.com:

  $100/month dual-core 2x2.4Ghz, 2GB of memory, 2TB of traffic

So for $1 million I can rent 833 servers, and 1600 TB of traffic per month. That's a shitload, let me tell you. And it's only for a short life-span, there's NO need to buy or build infrastructure. This is in fact the sort of application that should be pushed to hosting facilities.

I would expect them to start at $100,000, with some off-the-shelf drupal, and work up from there.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[digitalgiblet]

One more comment on this one... I'm definitely NOT opposed to the existence of the site, in fact I wholeheartedly welcome it. I want all the transparency in government I can get, but I don't want to pay for lots of bells and whistles.

My only objection is that it could be done for far less.

For example, lets say it costs $75,000 a year to run a really good website (just sayin). For $18 mil you could run that site for 240 years.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Rei]

Many Slashdot readers (myself included) write software and/or websites for a living ... so... your impression is that the cost is for writing HTML and Javascript, rather than the much more likely case of most of the money being used to compile the vast amount of information from 50 different states + the federal government, each with their own way of handling it?

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[digitalgiblet]

I totally agree with you. I was just trying to show that for that amount of money you should get a palace with your website...

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[EvanTaylor]

Except that the scope of this project is to interface with all aspects of the recovery funds that are doled out. That means tracking thousands upon thousands of projects.

When I was evaluating web-based project tracking software for a quarter billion dollar project using a mildly customized product, we were looking at over 140,000 USD per year.

Given the shear size of the, lets call it "Recovery Project" 3.6 million a year for a customized system with thousands of concurrent viewers that can view and track thousands of different subprojects, yeah I can see 18million.

And here is the fun part: Any of you who say they could do it for cheaper, probably couldn't do it at all, let alone near that price.

Those who have actually done something similar don't see this as being an outrageous price tag.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Rei]

Did it not occur to you that the lion's share of the budget is most likely for *collecting and assembling the information*? There are a huge number of entities involved here, including all 50 states and thousands of individual counties, each with their own data handing mechanisms.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[MrMarket]

The bulk of the cost is not for hardware and software. It's probably for standardizing spending data from 50 byzantine state bureaucracies. Each state probably needs to build some infrastructure and systems to aggregate and feed the spending data to a central warehouse to drive the web site.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Lemmy Caution]

You're talking to a roomful of programmers. For them, the data is just there, like ether. No one actually creates it or anything!

Seriously, if this project is about an interface to all public expenditure in the US, 18 mil is a low-ball.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[multimed]

Did it not occur to you that the lion's share of the budget is most likely for *collecting and assembling the information*? There are a huge number of entities involved here, including all 50 states and thousands of individual counties, each with their own data handing mechanisms.

All of which are bound by open records laws, no? And most certainly, reporting back to daddy on the actual expenditures of his money damn well better be part of the deal, right? If they ain't saying, "accepting this money means you report back to us every X days/months with info on X, Y, and Z. If reporting requirements aren't a condition of the funding in the first place, then the whole premise of transparency is worthless from the very start.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Rei]

All of which are bound by open records laws, no?

Yes. But there is no "common location and format" laws. All of this data is already available on each state's government's website (or at least should be), but is scattered all over, in completely different formats even within a given state.

If you want to experience this for yourself, use the current recovery.gov site and follow the links for different states and then start scouring them for, say, what roads are getting repaired near a given city. You'll find it's typically doable, but a real mess. It took me about twenty minutes for my state, Iowa. And that was just for roads.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[tyrione]

You have to be brain dead if you think an Executive Branch project is going to contact 1on1.com and rent space.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Anonymous Coward]

"Did it not occur to you that the lion's share of the budget is most likely for *collecting and assembling the information*?"

Which should be collection and assembled PRIOR to the funds being sent out or in concurrence with their spending. Or, should be done anyways whether or not a web site was deemed necessary.

It has shit to do with a web site. Or are you saying uploading that data is worth around $10 million?

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Rei]

"Worth" is a debatable term. But whether gathering it will *cost* around ten million? Yeah, I'd say at least that much. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of contracts granted by thousands of separate entities.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[ckaminski]

The hosting provider is irrelevant. I could have just picked godaddy or network solutions, both of which have comparable hosting pricing (though I have yet to find anyone with as generous a bandwidth policy as 1and1).

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[ckaminski]

Perhaps shame on me for not RTFAing the project scope, but I was under the impression this was a simple push to the masses about projects and funding levels, and not an end-all-be-all project tracking system (which I find almost ludicrous to think they'd try and implement).

If it's the former, $18 million for 5 years is ludicrous. And if it's the latter, $18/million over 5 years, as you say, probably won't be enough. But it's ludicrous to even attempt, because it'll probably ultimately fail.

I like the word ludicrous today. Forgive me.

Re:Finally we get our bailout

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought so too. But then I read the last line of this article: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=42866&dcn=todaysnews

Where's the Money Going?

[virtigex]

Will we be able to see where the money is going to redesign this web site? Will this amount of money be sufficient to ensure that it doesn't get hacked for, say, 24 hours, or do we have to pay extra for that?

Re:Where's the Money Going?

[DragonMantis]

That will be another 9 or 10 million.

Re:Where's the Money Going?

[mehemiah]

gao.org

Re:Where's the Money Going?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad link.

Re:Where's the Money Going?

[Chelloveck]

"Click here to see how your tax dollars are spent."

* click *

"See? $18 million! Wanna see it again?"

Re:Where's the Money Going?

[mehemiah]

gao.gov sorry

The correct question

[alexborges]

Who will get the contracts for the reconstruction?

Ah, thats where we will see what all this is about.

First Item on list...

[Anonymous Coward]

$500 million: compiling a report on how much we are spending to report on what we spend...

Re:First Item on list...

[Ogive17]

There needs to be a "sad but true" moderation option.

Re:First Item on list...

[Anonymous Coward]

$500 million: compiling a report on how much we are spending to report on what we spend...

Shouldn't it be infinite? First you report the costs. Then you have to report the costs of reporting. Then you have to report the costs of reporting the costs of reporting...

You could outsource the thing to a recursive shell script, but this would destroy typist jobs.

To see where there tax money is going...

[santax]

I had to laugh a bit... Maybe they should also decorate a big hall, with all kinds of ferrari's and bugatti's... So the people see where their money is going. 18 million dollar to see where your money is going. Lol. Kudos to the guy who got the contract.

WTF?

[Guspaz]

$18 million to redesign a website? WTF are they doing with it?

From TFA, they're going to spend $9.5 million over the next 6 months or so. Assuming $75k salaries for the web developers/DBAs/etc (generous), they'd be hiring 250 people to design a website.

And Americans wonder why they have such a big deficit.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think you can hire anything but very junior developers for $75k in DC you're sadly mistaken.

Re:WTF?

[Nerdposeur]

If you think you have to hire web developers in the city where you live, you don't understand the web.

Re:WTF?

[aengblom]

$18 million to redesign a website? WTF are they doing with it?

From TFA, they're going to spend $9.5 million over the next 6 months or so. Assuming $75k salaries for the web developers/DBAs/etc (generous), they'd be hiring 250 people to design a website.

And Americans wonder why they have such a big deficit.

I'm guessing this isn't just build the web site, it's to build and run it through January 2014 (See the GSA press release). Remember, they have to buy equipment and bandwidth too, although I'm betting the biggest issue is collecting, entering and sorting the massive amounts of data related to all the projects. Still sounds like a lot of money.

Re:WTF?

[sucati]

sorry, you can outsource gov't contracts

Re:WTF?

[t0rkm3]

Sure you could... to a company in Oklahoma... Like another gov't agency does... FAA/DOT anyone?

Re:WTF?

[CannonballHead]

$75k is a little low.

Let's go for $750k. Multiply by 10. Divide number of people by 10, 25. You could hire 25 developers at $750k each for 6 months.

Ridiculous...

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut your number of people in 1/2. The total cost of employing someone (benefits, facilities, management, HR, ...) is about 2X his or her salary.

OTH mabey we should look at this as stimulus spending for programmers.

Re:WTF?

[TooMuchToDo]

The cost of an employee is not just their pay, but the employer's portion of taxes, health insurance, 401(k)s, etc. A 75K/yr worker can easily cost an employer $125K/yr.

Disclaimer: Small business owner, I am.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost is in the content, not the design.

Re:WTF?

[locallyunscene]

So the headline, and summary are misleading? It's not "18 Million for Website", but "18 Million for Design, Build, and Maintain a Publicly Accessible National Repository of All Gov't Spending for the next 5 Years"? Man, that's just not catchy enough to make a good headline.

Headline's good for a laugh, but it's a bit of a troll.

Re:WTF?

[IRWolfie-]

That sounds like something companies like to say to people to justify pay decreases.

Re:WTF?

[deadkennedy]

Our design team is a fraction of that size and can easily handle a project of half that size, including all the back-end logic. If our team were twice the size, we could realistically take on a project like this for half alloted grant amount.

Re:WTF?

[fishbowl]

>$18 million to redesign a website? WTF are they doing with it?

Connecting it to the most complex accounting system ever created.

How is your ERP experience? How about your familiarity with financial systems used by the Federal Government? Are you in a credible position to make a competing bid, or are you just complaining because you've got some idea that the price is too high? Are you saying you'd bid lower, without knowing the actual scope of the project?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer to spend my money locally when I want something custom

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe my employer (DC Metro) uses an estimate of about $200K for developers when doing budget planning. When I was leading a small R&D project with 3 people, that is what I had to use, even though I know the employees were between $62 - 96K.

Re:WTF?

[RenderSeven]

> A 75K/yr worker can easily cost an employer $125K/y

If you think small business pays 125k for a 75k worker, no small business owner are you. Small business owners know to three decimal places what their employees cost in actual dollars, even if there are 47 different ways to calculate it, and they still stay up until 3am thinking of a 48th way. None of those ways cost 66% of gross pay, not even close. Unless your leasing them a new Mercedes every year.

Re:WTF?

[georgenh16]

If it really was for all spending, people actually used it, and then got mad enough to vote in people with common sense it might be worth it.

But the Death&Taxes poster doesn't cost $18 million...

Re:WTF?

[GodfatherofSoul]

You must crunch numbers for Bill O'Reilly's anti-government rants. Firstly, there are a ton of government agencies generating relevant stats. It's going to take a large number of people to coordinate and validate figures for these agencies. Maybe you've never worked in the real world, but not every software project can be built by one person and run on the Linux box you have in your closet.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I lol'd. But you're so right.

Re:WTF?

[TooMuchToDo]

A $75K/yr employee takes home $6250 monthly (pre-tax). Putting that in my surepayroll account nets me this:

Monthly Gross pay: $6,250.00
Direct Deposit Total $4,971.24
Employee Taxes $1,278.76
Employer Taxes $721.88
Processing Fees $46.80
Amount Electronically Transmitted $7,018.68

This doesn't include the $1200/month in health insurance costs I pay on single workers, or up to $2500-$3000/month I pay for married workers with a family. Throw in our 401k fees (all that the business shoulders) as well as the 401k match, and it gets pretty close to the number I specd pretty fast. Try to not come off as such a tool next time.

Re:WTF?

[bartwol]

OTH mabey we should look at this as stimulus spending for programmers.

Yeah. So???

Re:WTF?

[HeavyDevelopment]

Well considering the $170 million the government spent on FBI software that didn't work (The FBI Software Upgrade That Wasn't), $18 million is par for the course. I'll be surprised if this recovery.gov get completed for $18 million. The FBI fiasco is an example of how government tech contractors reap millions in overruns. The contractors let the government clients run amok with their requests allowing huge scope creep, and when the project doesn't get completed within budget or on time, the contractor points to the client and blames them--knowing all the while the project was headed for disaster. It's a good paying gig if you can get it. The contractor for the FBI, Science Applications International Corp., had $7 BILLION in annual gross revenues as of 2006 when the Washington Post article was published. And you thought AIG had a good racket ;)

Re:WTF?

[Hurricane78]

Nope. The building, maintaining, and all will be extra posts, costing another 100 million dollars*.

* per month.

Re:WTF?

[Guspaz]

OK, so they could hire 1000 developers in India. That doesn't change my point; how can they possibly spend $18 million redesigning a website?

Re:WTF?

[RingDev]

IANASBO, but..

1 employee
------------
Base Pay: $75,000
Family Health Care 80/20: ~$10,000
SS Contribution: $4,650
MC Contribution: $1,088
Unemployment Insurance (.8%-7.2%): $3,000 (at 4%)
401K 50% matching to 8%: $3,000
3 year PC replacement: $266
work area lease (8x8 cube @ $18/sq ft): $1,152

Which adds up to just shy of $100,000. I would take a guess that if you include other support factors (electric, HR, IT, vacation, etc...) into the picture, it wouldn't be hard to make a solid claim of a $75,000 employee costing $125,000.

Even then, assuming 1/2 of the $18 million is for labor and the other half is for equipment, bandwidth, and the server room... $9 mil over 5 years is $1.8 mil per year for the life of the project. At roughly $100,000 cost per employee that is only 18 employees.

Also, given the location and company, $75,000 isn't realistic (IMO). A decade ago I was in the Marine Corps working side by side with consultants pulling $125,000/year bill rates, and I can't imagine the price tag has dropped recently. Not to mention that the $125 covered an experienced code monkey, not a project manager, DBA, or management. So that $9 mil over 5 years is probably going to be closer to a 10-man shop of 4 developers, 1 DBA, 1 PM, 1 middle manager, 1 senior manager, 1 PR/Marketing manager, and 1 liaison for the government. Although I would bet that 2 of the developers would get laid off before the project is half completed.

-Rick

Re:WTF?

[ovu]

god, that was satisfying.

Re:WTF?

[TooMuchToDo]

Something else I wanted to point out. It would be *cheaper* for me to lease a Mercedes for each of my employees compared to health insurance costs. But the Benz wouldn't keep them healthy.

Re:WTF?

[RenderSeven]

Health care is closer to $1500 for a family and far less for HMO, and you'd be the only one generous enough to shoulder 100% of that. $3000/mo is insane. So is your payroll processing fee BTW - go find another payroll service. Or is that for your whole payroll and you forgot to divide by # of employees? Still too much. Anyway. My SEP/IRA fees are tiny, as is workman's comp, direct deposit fees, $2 million of general liability per employee, all just a drop in the sea. Your list double-counts taxes; your half is only matching federal funds on $75k, so $6k / yr. Aside from your asinine insurance figure of $36k/yr you're at $81,000. Go ahead and amortize out your floor space, hvac F&F and other fixed costs, and I might believe you own a business, but claiming taxes and insurance are your 66% overhead is a lie or idiocy or both.

Re:WTF?

[TooMuchToDo]

Well, I'll get right on justifying my math to you *after I just did so above*. You don't like my costs? Take some off my hands. That's what health insurance costs when you're not a healthy 20 year old. So I'll go back to running my small business and you can go back to running your little single man operation.

Re:WTF?

[TooMuchToDo]

I'll even give you real numbers. My own healthcare costs me $300 out of my paycheck every month, and $1280 from the company. That's for a married 26 year old. And the insurance is a PPO, not an HMO (what's the point of having insurance if you're giving people an HMO. Might as well give them a box of bandaids).

Re:WTF?

[RenderSeven]

A much better argument than previous poster, but your price is half his. $100k? Sure, I'll buy that, and $125 for a big business or mid-size startup with no existing assets? Yes. $150 to $225 per hour for a fully-burdened employee is a number I hear a lot for big business, and those are the numbers I assume Im bidding against when Im bidding subcontracts to big business. I win those contracts precisely because my costs are lower than that because of small business efficiencies. A company with 10 people should be able to do better than 66% gross overhead before markup and fixed costs. While we can rationalize why it *might* cost $18m, I dont think that changes that if it were put to serious bid it could be done for a fraction of that. Or if it should be done at all.

BTW 401k matching isnt a simple cost issue... companies match not out of generosity but deferral of payments and taxes. Its arguably -3000 instead of +3000.

Excellent breakdown considering 'IANASBO'! :)

Re:WTF?

[RenderSeven]

Yes, true. Mercedes SL500 on 3yr corporate lease is $976/mo. Family health insurance, middle-of-the-road plan PPO, is $991/mo. So you are correct that insurance cost more than a Mercedes. Though I downgraded to GL450's at $765 or E-class sedans for even less.

And you'd be surprised how many fewer sick days I get from people with free Benz's.

Re:WTF?

[antdude]

Does that costs also include securing the Web sites/servers since recent news showed cyberattacks?

Re:WTF?

[RingDev]

Different companies have different costs. For example, the current medium sized business (500 local employees, ~6500 world wide) I'm with is much larger with a rather young employee base. My health insurance premium is right around $13,0000 a year (employee + employer contributions).

With the last small business I worked for (~15 employees) the average employee age was right around 50. My health insurance premium was about $20,000 a year.

Like wise, payroll taxes, SID, and other program deductions vary wildly from state to state and even by municipality. I can't even begin to make a fair assessment of how much those deductions add up to.

As for the 66% for small businesses, I think it's probably fair. If you think of a small/medium business that develops software. Developers, project managers, DBAs, BRMs, even Management can all be cited as revenue generators. They are the ones required for your company to turn a profit. But what about accounting and HR? If you are a 10 person company, you probably just have a manager handle the HR work. But what about a 25 person company? When the HR work starts becoming more time demanding and you need to hire a person just to handle it. That person doesn't generate any revenue for the company, they wont add more sales or improve the product. So their salary can be view as an opportune cost that can be dirstributed across all revenue generating employees.

So if it costs you $100,000/yr to keep an HR specialist on staff for your team of 25, you could argue that each employee is effectively costing you an additional $4,000 a year. That 1 HR specialist though can actually support closer to 100-200 employees. So a larger company is only looking at an additional $500 per employee per year.

Ideally for $9mil over 5 years they had better have a kick plan and a rock solid team. Realistically, they'll go over budget in the 3rd year as the scrap everything they've done so far and bring in consultants to redesign and manage the site for the remaining 2 years.

-Rick

Re:WTF?

[Lemmy Caution]

I wonder: how much money has been spent on Duke Nuke'm Forever?

Re:WTF?

[RenderSeven]

Maybe a little Karma whacking me in the head, but I just got my quotes for 2010 contract period, and they were ugly. Competitive quotes against other major carriers was even worse. For family, Cigna up by 50% and around $1500 like you, though most $1200-ish. Some new hires brought my average age below 40 though and I'll stay below $1k thankfully. My best price on couple (I assume thats you?) was $782. If 1580's your best option in whatever state (country?) you're in, I'm really sorry, that stinks.

Re:WTF?

[Lemmy Caution]

I've just found out: over $20 million.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox News says it's $18M to designe a "web page".

Re:WTF?

[tyrione]

$18 million to redesign a website? WTF are they doing with it?

From TFA, they're going to spend $9.5 million over the next 6 months or so. Assuming $75k salaries for the web developers/DBAs/etc (generous), they'd be hiring 250 people to design a website.

And Americans wonder why they have such a big deficit.

I'm guessing this isn't just build the web site, it's to build and run it through January 2014 (See the GSA press release). Remember, they have to buy equipment and bandwidth too, although I'm betting the biggest issue is collecting, entering and sorting the massive amounts of data related to all the projects. Still sounds like a lot of money.

Add to the fact it's going to be a distributed center app that will pull information from various databases, utilize CRM and will most certainly go through a series of sign-off tiers before updates are published in an automated fashion.

Re:WTF?

[Afty0r]

If you think you have to hire web developers in the city where you live, you don't understand the web.

If you think you can just hire web developers in some random remote city/country and have your project run just fine, you don't understand how to manage web development projects.

Re:WTF?

[Nerdposeur]

If you think you can just hire web developers in some random remote city/country and have your project run just fine, you don't understand how to manage web development projects.

Who said random? I'm suggesting hiring a reputable web design company who understands standards. They wouldn't exist if they couldn't do great work for people who aren't in their city.

WTF? We're doomed

[mcgrew]

And I was so hopeful this administration wasn't going to be full of idiots like the last one was. Jesus, I could probably code their whole damned site in a day, I'm sure I could do it in a week (and it would be standards-compliant and work on your phone, too). Can I get millions?

I'm starting to understand the teabaggers.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[east coast]

What? Were you really fooled into thinking that one administration was going to be heads and tails above another? If you were let me be the first to say I'm sorry.

Why is it that in a nation where we swing between two parties in power every decade or so that people really think that one has that much on the ball and the other is full of gimps and morons? The fact is that they're roughly the same entity and every couple voting cycles people get sick of hearing what one has to say and goes to the other to hear the same thing they were hearing from them the last time they got voted out of office. The difference is that most voters have an easier time remembering Terry Bradshaw's pass completion percentage from the 1975 season than the hollow promises made to them by politicians in the same time frame.

We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party. And even then it's a long shot.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Em Emalb]

57.7%. He was actually a highly over-rated QB. In today's game, he'd be kicked off the team or relegated to a 3rd string backup role before he ever had a chance to start that HOF career.

Look at his first three years worth of stats:

1970: 218 attempts 83 completions completion percentage of 38.1 TDs: 6 INTs: 24
1971: 373 attempts 203 completions completion percentage of 54.4 TDs: 13 INTs: 22
1972: 308 attempts 147 completions completion percentage of 47.7 TDs: 12 INTs: 12

He'd be out of the league by the time his third year started these days.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[cyn1c77]

What? Were you really fooled into thinking that one administration was going to be heads and tails above another? If you were let me be the first to say I'm sorry. We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party. And even then it's a long shot.

I don't think we will see a truly progressive politician until we (the people) elect one. But instead we continue to be shepherded by mass media and corporations.

I used to get upset about it, but I have now decided that we actually have the government we deserve. The majority of voters devote minimal time to researching our candidates and mostly select them by party affiliation, by their standing on hot button issues like abortion and gay marriage, and by who our friends are voting for. No one votes for the independent candidates because they "want their vote to count." So in the end, we make our vote count by voting for someone we aren't really happy with, but hate less than the other guy.

The truly progressive candidates never make it out of the local or state governments, because they aren't supported by corporations or the media. Also, their nonstandard opinions on basic issues confuse people. And when I say "people," I don't mean some arbitrary retarded scapegoat in some backwoods state, I mean you and me.

If we could focus a little harder on the candidates and the local level, things would eventuall... OOOOH LOOK! SHINEY!!!...

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[mcgrew]

"Parties" had nothing to do with it. I never thought I'd see a worse President than Carter, but Bush proved me wrong. When things are the worst you've ever seen in over a half century of living, why wouldn't you expect change to be for the better?

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[winomonkey]

I was hoping that your "Jesus, I could probably code their whole damned site in a day" was sarcasm, but you are getting modded as insightful so I am thinking that perhaps you were being serious. I have met a depressingly low number of developers who don't think that they can do something "in a day" without thinking about how large the actual problem is. You could write an application that is a) highly accessible, b) useable, c) clean (talking about the data here ... lots of numbers and whatnot that are coming from various sources), d) secure, e) stable, with the ability to handle a high number of simultaneous connections (including folks who will likely be using automation to mine the datasets) and an uptime in the upper 99th percentile while dealing with the requirements shifting in a largely bureaucratic environment? In one day?

Atwood wrote a blog about this same thing the other day ... you should check it out. I could be wrong, and you could be a total ninja programmer, but I have a strange feeling that the hyperbole is strong in this one. Everything is trivial to those who don't have to do the work.

All that being said, $9.5 million in six months does seem to be a lot of cash. I am curious how much of it will be spent on hardware / connectivity / data-cleansing, etc, and how much of it is going to programmers and dba folks, and how much is going to project managers (is everyone in their company's management stack getting billed out as a "consultant" or PM?) ...

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[autocracy]

Fine, we have the government we deserve. I don't have the government that I deserve, though.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[mcgrew]

I don't think we will see a truly progressive politician until we (the people) elect one.

We (the people) are powerless; we each only have one vote, and can only vote for candidates who are on our home ballot; I can't vote Fred Thompson out of office no matter how corrupt and stupid I think he is. The corporations, on the other hand, can give money to both major party candidates so no matter which loses, they win, in any race in the country. Meanwhile since they own the MSM you're not going to have any electable third party country-wide candidates, because the corporate media convinces everyone that a vote for a third party candidate is wasted.

That doesn't stop me from voting third party (a vote for someone who wants to see you in prison is worse than wasted), but I only have one vote per office, and except for the President I can only vote for one representative from my state plus two Senators. The corporation can "vote" for all 400 representatives and a hundred senators.

I don't have a chance against those odds.

we actually have the government we deserve

By the same logic, so does North Korea.

The truly progressive candidates never make it out of the local or state governments, because they aren't supported by corporations or the [corporate] media.

BINGO!

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Ephemeriis]

What? Were you really fooled into thinking that one administration was going to be heads and tails above another? If you were let me be the first to say I'm sorry.

Why is it that in a nation where we swing between two parties in power every decade or so that people really think that one has that much on the ball and the other is full of gimps and morons? The fact is that they're roughly the same entity and every couple voting cycles people get sick of hearing what one has to say and goes to the other to hear the same thing they were hearing from them the last time they got voted out of office. The difference is that most voters have an easier time remembering Terry Bradshaw's pass completion percentage from the 1975 season than the hollow promises made to them by politicians in the same time frame.

QFT.

We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party. And even then it's a long shot.

I don't think this will help much. The problem isn't that we've only got two parties to choose from, the problem is that we don't remember what was promised and don't hold people accountable.

If we would actually vote out the representatives who don't accomplish what we want them to... If we'd actually pressure our representatives to vote accordingly... Then maybe we'd see some real changes.

We honestly do get the government we deserve. And with how apathetic most of the United States is, it's no wonder we've had the same crap in office for decades.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

The way out of this debuckle is to get away from the two-party system all-together, by switching to Parliamentary style democracy.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't want no kings.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[mcgrew]

I was hoping that your "Jesus, I could probably code their whole damned site in a day" was sarcasm

It was, but a sarcastic camment can still shed insight. Keep in mind that I'm not the mods, or I wouldn't be able to comment in this thread.

and you could be a total ninja programmer

Well, I used to be way back in the day*, but that's besides the point - HTML isn't programming. They already have .gov servers with (presumably) security experts keeping it secure, hardware and security shouldn't enter into the price at all.

*Once one of my former bosses worked on a project for six months and couldn't get it done, her boss gave it to me with a two day dealine and I hacked it out in the allotted time. But I was a lot smarter and a whole lot less lazy back then.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

With that zeal spend few more days, hire few more guys and build a new web browser or OS.
Theoretically it is all possible. No one does it. There are shit load of other stuff and people you have to deal with. Otherwise we will not be living with only three OSes, about five browsers and two web servers in 2009.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[4D6963]

God damn Slashdot, seeing doom, gloom and whatever else you want to see in the badly spun Slashdot summaries. As other commenters noted, it's $18 million to make the whole site and run it for 5 years.

Guess what, the administration is actually not full of idiots, people who write Slashdot summaries are, and people like you who've been there for so long should know that by now.

Here's how Slashdot works :

1. Summary misrepresents what TFA says by giving its claims a sensationalist spin
2. Slashdotters read the summary and go "OMG WE'RE DOOOOOMED"
3. Someone actually reads the article and goes "no wait actually that's not what the article says at all"
4. Most don't get to hear that and just keep on predicting the fascist Armageddon.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[4D6963]

Am I the only one who's tired of seeing the same old libertarian talking points being modded up just because Slashdot is full of libertarians? I swear, you guys are so full of shit. If you can't see the difference between an Obama and a George W. Bush, you're a fucktard. In the real world what these guys decide makes a real difference to a lot of people, such as the difference between becoming a hobo and keeping a job and a home, getting an education or ending up a factory worker, or even getting an healthcare or living a shitty life/dying. But I've noticed that around here people's grasp on other people's reality tends to be very tenuous.

We will not see a truely progressive politician make it to the presidency until we get a viable third party.

Yeah right, because having more than two parties just is the silver bullet that will fix democracy and civilisation. How about you guys actually look at countries with more than two large parties, realise that it doesn't make them any better and STFU?

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Sheik Yerbouti]

57.7% by the way

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[east coast]

Yeah right, because having more than two parties just is the silver bullet that will fix democracy and civilisation. How about you guys actually look at countries with more than two large parties, realise that it doesn't make them any better and STFU?

How about you don't misrepresent me? Would it have killed you to include the "And even then it's a long shot." at the end? Oh, that's right, it would have invalidated your entire rant. Can't have that happening.

I'd bother to discuss this further with you but I see you're just like the politicians you support.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[east coast]

"Parties" had nothing to do with it.

I guess you didn't see the last election turn outs. Parties had everything to do with it. And it certainly wasn't the first time in American politics that that has happened.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[MindlessAutomata]

Not all of us want a "progressive politician"--I don't want a politician making my own life decisions and choices for me, whether it's a corrupt one or one that honestly believes that nonsense.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[alphakappa]

It's easy to overlook costs - the main cost will not be for actually making the website, but for maintaining it. By maintaining it, I mean, actually having useful data in the website. The whole trillion dollar stimulus will generate humongous amounts of data which will have to be processed so that we can make sense of it. Collecting it from all the various agencies around the country, processing it and then putting it up on the website will require a lot of employees and that's where the $18 million tag for 5 years comes from. Don't underestimate the cost of data collection.

I could code up a website that looks like Google Maps pretty easily, but it would take a lot of money and time to get all the data that actually makes it useful.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a total idiot proving the GP absolutely correct if you believe HTML has much of anything to do with the pricing of the website they're building.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[anaesthetica]

Seriously, Wolfram|Alpha crunches the numbers and it's pretty revealing. Pass completion from 1970–present was a team low in 1973, Bradshaw's fourth year on the job. Don't even get me started on his highly inconsistent touchdown pass rate before the late-1970s...

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[mcgrew]

If "progressive" means "nanny state", the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[ksheff]

that's why all of them need to be kicked out and replaced with ones that want to eliminate the nanny state.

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[Tablizer]

and it would be standards-compliant and work on your phone, too

That's the excuse Slashdot used for their notorious CSS-based mess. Please, God, noooooooo...

Re:WTF? We're doomed

[mcgrew]

Slashdot won't work on my phone; it runs out of memory and won't load the whole page. I don't think my phone even recognises style sheets.

$18 million for a website

[frovingslosh]

Well, they can certainly say "come and see where you tax money is being wasted", one needs look no farther than the website.

Re:$18 million for a website

[mcgrew]

I'm reminded of a sig I saw at slashdot: "Oh look, my tax dollars at work coming to arrest me". At least this money isn't going to people who want to jail all the dopers, now THAT'S even worst waste of tax dollars, and evil to boot.

I wonder how much they waste on their "partnership dor a drug-free Amerikkka web site?

Re:$18 million for a website

[cthulhuology]

I can't wait until the website is complete and consists of a single JPEG with the CEO grabbing his nut sack to a caption of, "Come and see where you tax money is being wasted! I gots it right here bitches!"

Re:$18 million for a website

[JiffyPop]

It reminds me of a road sign (that a friend subsequently stole, and which still resides in his garage). Around ten years ago the Michigan government had just finished spending money to fix up a pretty rural road. When they were done they put up the round, brown sign featuring a dollar bill in a hard hat with a shovel. It read "Your tax dollars at work".

Re:$18 million for a website

[swaq]

I'm reminded of a sig I saw at slashdot: "Oh look, my tax dollars at work coming to arrest me".

That quote is from National Treasure: Book of Secrets, spoken by Riley Poole (Justin Bartha).

Re:$18 million for a website

[RenderSeven]

Jailing dopers may be wasteful but its not evil. "Partnership For A Drug Free America" may have been ineffective (or maybe not) but I dont think educating school kids on the dangers of drug use is inherently 'evil' either. Both may be naive and represent unrealistic goals, but no more so than, say, renewable energy and world peace.

I dont see how either compare in any way to spending $18m on a website meant to espouse the joys of spending money on things like itself. Its voyeurism, masturbation, and an MLM all in one. And now that we're seeing the pre-sales chatter of a second trillion package, its a Ponzi scheme too, except with an $18m advertising budget.

Re:$18 million for a website

[mcgrew]

Jailing dopers may be wasteful but its not evil.

You don't think imprisoning someone for something that harms nobody except perheps themselves isn't evil?

I dont think educating school kids on the dangers of drug use is inherently 'evil' either.

No, but lying about those dangers is very evil. They find out they've been lied to about mariijuana's dangers and they're not going to believe the truths about cocaine and heroin. That's evil.

I dont see how either compare in any way to spending $18m on a website meant to espouse the joys of spending money on things like itself.

It cost the taxpayers forty thousand dollars a year for each incarcerated doper. As we have the world's highest incarceration rate, this website costs nothing compared to the costs of imprisoning dopers, and the site itself is harmless but putting people in prison who don't belong in prison isn't harmless in the least.

Re:$18 million for a website

[ksheff]

Instead of putting druggies in prison, let's just flog or cane them.

Re:$18 million for a website

[mcgrew]

Why do you people want to punish someone for an activity that has no effect on your life at all? Why are you so supportive of the nanny state?

Re:$18 million for a website

[ksheff]

I have no problem with substance abusing hermits. Eliminating taxpayer funded housing, food, health care, etc for self made retards that fail to behave like mature, responsible adults is not supporting a nanny state.

Re:$18 million for a website

[mcgrew]

We have very little taxpayer funded housing; most of the "taxpayer funded housing" is Section 8 housing that first, there is a long waiting list for, and second, doesn't help the poor a bit and actually hurts them. The landlord gets the windfall and it drives up rents for the rest of the poor who can't get into them, while the ones that can get into them are paying almost as much rent as they would for similar, non-section 8 housing.

And since the middle '90s you don't get any of these benefits unless you're employed, actively looking for work, or performing community service. The benefits you speak of don't help the drug abuser who can't get or keep a job, they only help the working poor. That means they aren't benefiting the poor, but the rich who hire them (like Wal Mart and McDonalds) who should be paying a living wage instead of starvation wages. In the US, almost all welfare goes to the rich in one form or another, and none of it goes to junkies.

The welfare that grieves me is corporate welfare to companies like IBM, who pay no federal taxes but get government grants (not to mention Bush's and Obama's "stimulus" money that went to pay million dollar performance bonuses to millionaires who ran the businesses into the ground). The working poor (which is most of our poor) and the middle class are paying welfare for the rich.

I know a lot of construction workers, who usually don't make bad money (none of them are eligible for any government benefits), and most of them are potheads; they choose construction so they don't have to be drug tested. I know a few construction workers who are flat-out alcoholics and abuse hard drugs as well.

I know a few people who are hard core alcoholics who can't work because of their alcoholism, but no pot smokers who can't work because of their potsmoking. Yet you saw how alcohol prohibition turned out. Prohibition doesn't work; it doesn't keep anybody from abusing anything. If crack were legalized tomorrow I wouldn't smoke it, would you? Yet I've had people walk up to me in the street when I walk to my neighborhood bar trying to sell me hard drugs, it's not like it's hard to get any of that stuff. Thiose who would do it already are, the law is no deterrant whatever.

Even if the junkies did get the benefits you describe it would still be far cheaper than incarcerating them; it costs somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand dollars per inmate.

Re:$18 million for a website

[ksheff]

They get those benefits when the are incarcerated you bloody idiot!

Re:$18 million for a website

[mcgrew]

Incarceration is a lot more expensive than feeding and housing someone.

How they should do it...

[Guillermito]

"will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent"

My advise? Set up a page with an animated GIF showing an odometer counting up with blurry numbers, and just take the $18 million.

Re:How they should do it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an innovative way to show where I am spending my money. My wife calls it a checkbook, but I call it a "speadsheet"

This is idiotic

[alexborges]

Whomever is purchasing this is a plain idiot: there is NO WAY a site costs that much.

I mean, guys, the horrid system for paying taxes in Mexico is only two million more expensive than what they are attempting here and hey, the mexican system sort-of works (it has to: gov only takes taxes through the site nowdays).

That one is also hugely overpriced, but also my country has very poor transparency in government spending: we expect this kind of things to happen here in thirdworldland: are you guys heading this way?

If so, as a fellow citizen of the world, I bid you: TURN AROUND NOW.

Demand, regardless of partisanship, to know exactly how and in what is all that and all other money being spent.

Demos did it very well with halliburton (and now THATS money: 20 mil is chump change for those guys), reps should drive this one to the last consequences accordingly: without a vigilant opposition, democratic governments cannot be called that anymore.

Re:This is idiotic

[Anonymous Coward]

but also my country has very poor transparency in government spending: we expect this kind of things to happen here in thirdworldland: are you guys heading this way?

Heading?!? Man, where have you been for the past decade or so? It's arrived, made camp, and opened a chain of restaurants already!

Already exists

[Anonymous Coward]

There's already a website that clearly illustrates where the tax dollars towards stimulus are going, in innovative and exciting ways!

I think it's called goatse.cx, or something like that.

Re:Already exists

[db32]

You sir have given me a brilliant political activism idea. Take the goatse picture, blow it up, put it on a poster, and put the tag line "Pull Your Head Out Of Your Ass!". It would be the perfect sign, and it would work for almost any protest!

Irony

[kevinNCSU]

You have to wonder if these people have either a wonderful sense of irony or no understanding of the word at all. To pay 18 million to create a website that will show where our money is going is so ludicrous I thought I had clicked the bookmark to go to The Onion instead.

Re:Irony

[Bigby]

It is worthless unless you can see that they spent $18 million on the site itself

"Interactive"

[Nerdposeur]

I don't like that word "interactive." All web sites are interactive - this ain't TV. Usually "interactive" means "uses fancy animations via Flash and/or Silverlight." Which means "is slow and not very accessible."

If they went with someone like Happy Cog they would have a standards-based design that would be fast and accessible and look shiny too. I guess we'll see what they come up with.

(Of course, I haven't discussed the server side, which no doubt will be the heavy lifting.)

Re:"Interactive"

[dbcad7]

Perhaps they will give people a way to voice concerns or feedback on individual projects ? .. This would be nice as opposed to the "write your congressman" method. If individual projects got a lot of negative feedback, perhaps it would be reevaluated, or different people run it.. might keep em honest.

We have a project here in Reno, NV that is building a new "Transportation Center" (A place to catch the bus).. To me it is totally unnecessary as there is nothing wrong with the center they have.. they are basically moving it about a block and a half away, and actually a further walk from the town center.. The whole project is spending money because it's available, and they couldn't think of a different way to use it (in my opinion).. Yes doing this will give people jobs for awhile.. and that's nice.. but still they could have thought a little harder and come up with some other project (has to be public transport) that wasn't just doing something to be doing something..

Drupal

[Eddy Luten]

I wonder if they're going to replace Drupal or if they are cashing out $18 million for an interface/theme overhaul.

Re:Drupal

[k33l0r]

Maybe they'll spend the $18 million on fixing Drupal?

Re:Drupal

[daemonc]

That's funny, after using Drupal to build dozens successful of websites, I wasn't aware it was "broken".

However, if by "fix" you mean "further improve", then yes please.

Re:Drupal

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess .Net based on other projects that Smatronix has worked on. Scary stuff.

Re:Drupal

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good question. I was looking at the recovery website this morning, and it was giving the default Drupal error page when you hit the copyright information link.

So let me get this straight..

[HerculesMO]

They are spending money to show where they are spending money, and still keeping the Fed and the way it handles monetary policy under wraps?

If they aren't showing us how they are creating inflation, they aren't showing us anything important.

The Definition of "Design"

[waldoj]

Those of us who are website developers will recognize the misuse of "design" committed by ABC News here. To a layperson, "design" means "make" when it comes to websites. They're not spending $18M to redesign the website (presumably), but presumably on a total overhaul of the thing.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

At $100,000 per employee, you could hire 10 developers, buy all the best equipment and development tools and spend 10 years on the project and still have money left over.

Remember, this is the kind of process they would bring to health care.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

I forgot to add, they could start from scratch and build it from the ground up.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[H0p313ss]

At $100,000 per employee, you could hire 10 developers, buy all the best equipment and development tools and spend 10 years on the project and still have money left over.

Remember, this is the kind of process they would bring to health care.

Someone in the government makes a bad IT contracting decision and that somehow reflects on how a health system will be run? Whatever you're smoking I want some.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[notarockstar1979]

I don't think that was the point. I think the point is that everything the government touches becomes this bloated waste of taxpayer money rather than whatever the original intent of the project was.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[basementman]

$18 million to overhaul the whole thing is still a ripoff. Unless they are burning money to power their webserver it's incredibly overpriced.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Sir_Lewk]

I love how comments with good points that make mods feel uncomfortable receive "flamebait" moderations.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[maxume]

$100,000 is cheap when you start thinking about overhead. And 10 employees probably isn't enough to do all of the work plumbing the data into the system.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Anonymous Coward]

EXACTLY, I posted a similar message, 18 million doesn't go to the developers like people are saying. 18 million goes towards, infrastructure - servers, licensing, databases, employees. Licensing alone can hit well into the millions, easily. An internal IBM license can cost a business over 10 million without thinking twice.

People that aren't web developers probably have no idea what it takes to build a site.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[swillden]

Someone in the government makes a bad IT contracting decision and that somehow reflects on how a health system will be run?

If this were an isolated incident you'd have a point. But it's not.

If we're going to go to a government-run health care system, at least we should do it at the state level. Some of the states will screw it up badly, of course, but others will do it well, and (with one or two notable exceptions) the states have proven to be much more fiscally responsible.

Plus there's also the fact that the federal government has absolutely no constitutional authority to get involved in health care, not that we pay any attention to that old piece of paper these days.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[CorporateSuit]

He's saying that the government spends a dollar to buy a dime. That site would cost $100,000 to put up and maybe $100,000 a year to maintain - less than 3% of the cost they're proposing. They keep at this pace and they are going to get 3 billion dollars worth for spending a trillion.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you get your panties in a knot over the alleged misuse of the word "hacker" too.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[ryanvm]

Do you think a health care system would be immune from the same frustratingly inefficient bureaucracy that plagues all other government programs? Why?

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[jenn_13]

Actually, I can visualize the new health care system from my experience with the VA.... Not looking forward to it.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Abuzar]

At $100,000 per employee, you could hire 10 developers, buy all the best equipment and development tools and spend 10 years on the project and still have money left over.

Remember, this is the kind of process they would bring to health care.

Yes, happened here in Canada already. Government spent $560 million on an e-health website, and almost nothing was produced in the end. The lead consultant has been made to quit, but they're still debating whether to pour more $$ into it.
And you thought $18 million was a lot?
In Toronto, the government spends upwards of $40K for every homeless person. Seriously, you could just rent out a very nice apartment for them at that price.
This sort of thing gives me pause to reflect, it seems that our society is very very incompetent.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

Maybe they didn't like my sig.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Anonymous Coward]

Figure $1mil a year in operating costs alone (bandwidth+maintenance), add another $1mil for startup equipment and costs, that still leaves... about $10 million dollars to build the system (which is probably that $9.5 million permitted for the next 6 months).

So yea, even taking all aspects of building and maintainin a site into account, it still seems way too expensive.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

I bet I could find ten individuals with the talent, pay them $100k for for two years plus $400k incentive to get it done right and on time. The job would get done and there would still be money left over.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[radtea]

Remember, this is the kind of process they would bring to health care.

This is not flamebait, but a perfectly reasonable opinion on the ability of the American government to deliver the goods on any given program.

I am a citizen of a country where we have a reasonably cheap and good universal public health care system, and I've lived in the States and seen up-close-and-personal the appalling mess that is your current health care system, and how badly you need a universal system of the kind found in Germany, France, Australia, Canada, or elsewhere.

But the reality is that the American government has shown itself repeatedly unable to manage much of anything very well. There is a systemic dysfunctional culture that is the result of Party members focusing on Party priorities rather than anything that is good for the American people.

If the core problem of Partisan capture of the American government is not fixed, the odds of it being able to create anything other than a bigger mess with universal health care are depressingly high.

This is not a problem with universal health care, which everywhere has a lower cost and better outcomes than the American system: in Canada we pay less for our universal public system than Americans pay for their limited and inadequate Medicare and Medicaid systems, and we live long, more healthy lives. But if an organization as fundamentally broken as the American federal government tried to run such a system it would almost certainly screw it up entirely, based on recent experience in everything from Iraq reconstruction to the Yucca Mountain fiasco.

It's a pity that the nation that once was able to organize and execute the first human landing on the moon forty years ago is no longer able to do much of anything effectively, but until that problem is solved there is a legitimate argument to be made that a universal public health care system in the US should be the least of your priorities, because Americans just aren't up to the problem of running such a system effectively.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[H0p313ss]

Do you think a health care system would be immune from the same frustratingly inefficient bureaucracy that plagues all other government programs? Why?

Perhaps my faith in the system comes from living in a country where the politicians behave more like professional lawmakers and administrators than like Jerry Springer.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

Don't hold your breath waiting for them to start behaving like that here. Jerry Springer has nothing on these guys.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Guspaz]

For those of us who are professional web developers, $18M is still a large amount of money to spend on a web app.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[value_added]

They're not spending $18M to redesign the website (presumably), but presumably on a total overhaul of the thing.

It's probably even more complicated than that.

To use a car analogy, you can hire unemployed Mexican labourers in California to pave a mile of road for a few thousand dollars. But if you want a freeway, expect the cost to be tens of millions for each and every mile.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[mcgrew]

Remember, this is the kind of process they would bring to health care.

Ok, this is oftopic but I'll respond anyway, just because I've lost friends because they had no health care. You may be right and they may fuck it up royally, but just because government does something doesn't always mean they do it badly. They only do it badly if the people they hire to do it are incompetent.

My city's government (Springfield) owns our power company, CWLP (whose manager, Todd Renfrow, is a dead ringer for Mr. Burns; do a google image search). We have the cheapest and most reliable electricity in the state. The problem isn't bad government, the prpoblem is bad PEOPLE in government. It took five days to get water to the Superdome because Bush hired an incompetent crony to run FEMA. Had we a competent President who appointed people for skillsets rather than good old buddies, Katrina wouldn't have been the clusterfuck it was.

But when you elect people to government who think that government is always the problem and never the solution, you're not going to have very good government.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[mcgrew]

It's not a good comparison. Our country has never treated veterans well (yes, I'm one too). Rather than look at the VA, look at Medicare. My 77 year old dad's perfectly happy with his health care. But then again, he's got sense enough to stay the hell away from a VA hospital - he's a veteran too, and knows how little our country values veterans.

I'm looking forward to being old enough to get Medicare. MedicAID, now, that's a clusterfuck worse than the VA, but that's because we have even less respect and compasssion for the working poor than we do for veterans.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[mcgrew]

18 million goes towards infrastructure - servers

They have servers

licensing

They don't HAVE to use closed source software

databases

Um, didn't you already say "licensing" and "servers"?

employees.

Yes, they'll need a few more, but only a handful.

Licensing alone can hit well into the millions, easily. An internal IBM license can cost a business over 10 million without thinking twice.

You don't HAVE to use IBM, and they most likely already have the licenses. To use a phrase that's turned into a cliche, they should think outside the box like the rest of us are having to do in these bare times. They should spend money, but they should stop wasting it.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

Ahem,
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/05/katrina_what_the_media_missed.html

Summary:
No water Shortage.
No food Shortage.
No murders, rapes, etc.

It was all media bullshit that made for dramatic stories.

It may make you feel better to blame Bush for imaginary problems, but to the extend there were problems, Nagel and Blanco were the primary fuck ups. The most you can blame FEMA and Bush for is not telling the dipsticks in LA government to get the hell out of the way and then do what needed to be done.

Nagel should have evacuated the fucking city like he was asked to do.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[radtea]

just because government does something doesn't always mean they do it badly.

The track record of the US federal government in the past 20 years is appallingly bad, and pointing fingers at specific members of the Party is misleading and distracting from the central issue, which is that the US federal government is systemically broken.

The Yucca Mountain debacle is iconic in this regard: members of both wings of the Party failed over multiple administrations and changes in congressional control to effectively implement a solution for disposing of nuclear waste. This cannot be blamed on particular individuals, but on the system of government itself.

Until you guys figure out how to free your federal government from Party control, you're going to continue to see messes like Katrina. Not because you just happen to elect crappy people, but because the Party ensures that the people you elect will always be answerable to the Party, and not the people.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[MindlessAutomata]

Oh, so you want to wave your own nation's flag and claim your lawmakers have integrity and work for the people! What a quaint little delusions! Why not reveal what country you live in so we can disrobe you of this nonsense?

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/

Really? You're going to use that to support yourself?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/09/why_im_thankful_for_george_w_bush_97369.html

One of his reasons for being thankful for George W. Bush is for BRINGING AL QUAEDA TO IRAQ.

Seriously.

Bill asked him if George W Bush was right about the surge and defeating al Qaeda in Iraq. Remember what Obama said?

"Before Bush invaded, there was no al Qaeda in Iraq."

You got it Sun Tzu, er, I mean Mr. President. The strategery worked as planned, just like Tommy Franks said it would "at a time and place of OUR choosing."

I mean seriously. You're using that website?

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[Anonymous Coward]

#1 RCP is a partisan publication in favor of Republican politics.

#2 RTFA you cite as even it admits FEMA failed....so you actually just supported the comment you were trying to debunk.

#3 I find most of the article hard to believe as I saw quite a bit of early superdome footage. One would think with "hundreds" of National Guard folks stationed at the dome, we would have seen at least one on camera.

#4 No one has ever short changed the LA National Guard on their response. Additional response from a Federal Government that has military forces "capable of being anywhere on the planet with humanitarian aid in 72 hours".....a bit late is an understatement.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[0x7E7]

I had friends in the Superdome during Katrina. There was no water or food. A young girl was raped and killed in a bathroom; her neck was snapped. My friends, who were from England and New Zealand, had to get together with other white people to form a small circle where they could huddle without being harassed. There was a lot of anger against whites in that place, which is understandable considering that the wealthier (presumably white) parts of the city had left these people behind without the consideration you would show a dog.

Thousands of people were huddled together in the Superdome like animals for days with no food, water or law enforcement. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

Well, read the link. The Nation Guard was stationed there. If it is contest between what you and your friend says and the National Guard, I'll go with the Guard.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[sycodon]

"considering that the wealthier (presumably white) parts of the city had left these people behind without the consideration you would show a dog."

They were left in NOLA by the Black mayor, the black police chief, and the Democrat State government. The feds said get out, they didn't.

You clearly are getting your info from the lying bastards in the press. They clearly had no idea what they were talking about.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[0x7E7]

I'll concede that point. After doing some research (avoiding MSM sites, thanks), it's pretty clear that the people in charge of the city and state failed in their duties. Perhaps they were skeptical of "whitey" from the federal government, or perhaps they just didn't care as long as their own families and friends were OK.

As for the death of the girl in the SuperDome, and the conditions there generally, I can only trust the eyewitness account of a good friend.

That doesn't negate the responsibility of people to take care of themselves, however.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[ksheff]

#4 No one has ever short changed the LA National Guard on their response. Additional response from a Federal Government that has military forces "capable of being anywhere on the planet with humanitarian aid in 72 hours".....a bit late is an understatement.

Much of this is due to Blanco being slow to authorize help from outside of Louisiana. Once that was done, things started to move. A friend in the Ohio National Guard was on his way to NOLA 2-3 hours after the appropriate paperwork was faxed in. Mississippi had more damage, but was actually on the ball, so they were helped sooner. There are laws in place to prevent the Federal Govt from just stepping in and taking over. Blanco did file for Federal financial aid the Saturday before the hurricane hit, so like a typical Louisiana politician, she was quick to put the hand out for $$$ but really slow on actually doing something.

Re:The Definition of "Design"

[recharged95]

If it's a overhaul, remember the:

• IRS overhaul?
• USPS overhaul?
• NSA (on going!!!) overhaul?
• Census overhaul?

Now look at the importance of those agencies and this. This is just recovery.gov. This is not the GAO (which it should be). I doubt this 18M will be well spent and yes, more will be 'needed'. If this effort is really a EAI, DataMining, or modernization exercise, it's not going to be cheap and 18M is chump change.

Heaven's Gate folks could have done it cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

They may be crazy, but not crazy enough to take dollars on the mothership.

We could save them about 17.9 million

[xednieht]

row_id , capital_account, account_name, date_paid, amount_paid, scum_sucking_leech_getting_my_tax_dollars, address

That's about all taxpayers really need. The other 17.9 million is pretty expensive lipstick for that pig.

A better funding scheme

[Palestrina]

Give them $1 now and then 1% of any savings the taxpayers receive from identifying wasteful spending using this new innovative and interactive web site.

Re:A better funding scheme

[santax]

But then they have to pay to get the contract :O

Death and Taxes Poster

[WillAdams]

For that kind of money they could put a copy of the ``Death and Taxes'' poster:

http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

in almost every schoolroom and courtroom and courthouse in the country.

William

Re:Death and Taxes Poster

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

Too bad it only covers about a third of the federal budget... $1182 billion out of $3998 billion. They'd rather you not look where the other 70% of the budget goes and instead focus mostly on military spending. That's not to mention the additional trillions in various bailouts and stimulus spending over the last 18 months.

Re:Death and Taxes Poster

[georgenh16]

Yeah that always frustrated me too that the entitlements are over 2/3 the budget and they just mention it briefly in the corner.

Imagine if they fixed the poster and put it in every schoolroom, and teachers actually taught how much a trillion dollars really is.

Re:Death and Taxes Poster

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if teachers actually taught how much a trillion dollars really is.

Many people like to remind us that a trillion is a thousand billions, but I've found that even that makes it too abstract to really be boggleworthy.

My own preferred method is to work with one million as the base number. Our concept of even that number is fuzzy, but we've heard of enough millionaires (indeed, many of us in our twenties are probably acquainted with at least one) that we have a grasp on it.

Now imagine a million millionaires.

Re:Death and Taxes Poster

[thomasdn]

Wow! That is a great idea. I would like such an overview over my country's (Denmark) spendings.

Counterexample

[oldhack]

They've better not "improve" it like they are doing it to slashdot.

Worth it??

[SpacePenguin98]

Does anyone know how the government entities that are spending our money are required to report and how that will figure into our new Recovery Internet Portal Official Funds Finder?

Twitter?: $5MIL for bulldzng forest - make way for prgrss! 90\/3r|\|/\/\3|\|7 rUL3$
Facebook?: Transportation Dept has a fat pocket book thanks to the stimulus.

I'm sure someone will say it's far too much work and too much optimism to expect a referencing system with unique job numbers for each project eligible for stimulus funds that could then be tracked by those taxpayers that actually care about where their money is going and not just vague promises about more jobs to battle unemployment (although, the jobs have to end sometime, which will put us back to square-one). If I could track exactly where my money is going, I wouldn't be so upset about $18MIL to update a website with whatever buzzwords/Web 2.0 BS that the government is trying to throw at us to appease the masses that are addicted to it.

Wait, what?!?!!

[revjtanton]

So they're spending $18mil on a site to tell you they spent $18mil on a site to tell you they spent $18mil on a site to tell you they spent $18mil...on and on. Seriously...WTF?!

I can hardly wait

[jimmydevice]

to see how their "innovative and interactive technologies" plays on dialup.

Still waiting for *ANY* high speed services that isn't satellite in my rural area.
Didn't *WE* (USGOV) pay the telecoms to provide this to rural areas?
Oh Right, If anyone in the county can get broadband, you have it in the eyes of the telecoms.

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that its not 18 million on just developing the site. To get that high of a numer they are probably redoing their entire infrastructure. You're talking licensing which in a corporate envioronment can hit 10 million easy.

Then you're also talking paying developers to create custom applications, build databases, etc..

If you've ever worked in a corporate environment dropping 10 million on an infrastructure is nothing. Not saying its right or ok, just saying most people probably have no idea the cost of things.

Re:well...

[david.emery]

This is a valid point, and I'd be interested to hear from Slashdotters with experience on what they think it would take to start from Ground Zero to produce a "production quality" (including IA/North Korea DDOS attack-proof) infrastructure & content, including hosting facility costs for, let's say, 5 years.

Re:well...

[Sheik Yerbouti]

I am betting this site does not get a lot of traffic as it is and they are talking about spending 9.5 million through this January .

two flash developers for the interactive stuff for one year 250K total
one web developer 125K
one DBA 125K
one sys admin 125K
one accountant type 125K
4 kick ass servers with firewall and SAN and load balancer 1MM

Roughly 1.75 million through July of next year and this is a high estimate in my opinion for a site that I bet does not even get 10k hits a day.

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not how it works...

You bid low enough to get the contract. After 50% of the time is up, say that you need more money. At this point the buyer has already sunk into the project that they can't back out. In case of government or municipal work it's even easier. The politician who sponsored or voted on the project in the first place won't let it die. Those who opposed it will gripe and snicker, but won't kill it because of politics (it's ok to complain, just don't actually do anything about it. If you did, other politicians would do the same to you.)

  By the time the project is up, it will invariably cost much more than the original quote.

I wish I was joking or even halfway facetious.

Not knowing anything about the requirements, my company will bid $64.75M for a 4 year contract. This will put the renewal in place at just the right time...

Re:well...

[xednieht]

Under $2 million.

It's an informational site, does not need marketing or any significant SEO per se, just cross-links from other .gov sites would be more than enough. Should not require intense graphics or multimedia.

Typically a rough estimate is about 10 man-hours per database field for dynamic sites start to finish. At $100/man-hour using that metric it would indicate there are 18,000 fields in the database that drives the site - utterly ridiculous. More likely there are 180 db fields and taxpayers are paying $10,000/man hour.

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a valid point, and I'd be interested to hear from Slashdotters with experience on what they think it would take to start from Ground Zero to produce a "production quality" (including IA/North Korea DDOS attack-proof) infrastructure & content, including hosting facility costs for, let's say, 5 years.

Why would North Korea DDOS attack the Stimulus website? They can cause far more havoc in the US by leaving it up and letting Americans find out where their money is being spent =)

Re:well...

[Anonymous Coward]

"You're talking licensing which in a corporate envioronment can hit 10 million easy."

No. Or rather not in any infrastructure meant to run a single web stack. No need for:
- Microsoft
- Office
- Adobe
- Oracle
etc, etc, etc

Hell, this is the perfect thing to put on a cloud service like Google's App Engine - the information is supposed to be public anyway right ? The bulk of the costs here should fall into:
- Hardware (cheap throw away 1U's, decent storage and security devices)
- Bandwidth
- Technical People

Assume you need 84 servers (you dont) at 10k each = 1.3m
Assume you need Storage thats worth a damn = 1.5m
Assume you need Security and Network kit thats worth a damn = 2.0m
(the above assumes 5 year service plans)
Bandwidth is relative, the government already has tons of it so something around 100k/mo = 6m
Thats 10.8m in infrastructure leaving 7.2 for staffing .... which comes out to around 13-20 solid people for 5-7 years.

So yeah this ain't cheap. Granted the hardware budgets above are drastic overkill but this stuff aint going on a hosted VM with html frames circa GeoCities. Of course it wont get any real traffic either so what we have above is overkill.

Of course this will likely have a 50 person team that has 5 technical people on it, resulting in 20m in proprietary software that doesnt work for shit.

First pass

[evil_aar0n]

Don't forget: this is only the first pass. I'm sure there will be overruns, missed deadlines, re-designs, etc. This $18 mil is just the start.

Well, for free...

[tjstork]

You can go here: http://www.treatyist.com/issue1/mystimulus.aspx

It's a cheesy ASP.NET app that lets you build your own stimulus package. You can pick out all sorts of cool stuff like windmill farms, nuclear power plants, fiestaware for everybody, camaros and the country of iceland.

It's not much more than a day's labor... but, if you want to imagine what could have been done with 800 billion dollars of stimulus money, it's kinda fun. It's my own stupid page but its relevant to the discussion and besides, its almost amusing to see how hopelessly confused Google is at it serving ads when trying to match text with iceland, fiestaware, and assault rifles...

smartronix is obviously the right choice

[Fanolex]

for the implementation of innovative technologies and up to date standards on the web, what with their own homepage's use of a table-based design, inline javascript, and .NET with an utter lack of validation.

Re:smartronix is obviously the right choice

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, that validation links points out some of the bugs in W3's validator pretty well:

Line 3, Column 10: Attribute "ID" is not a valid attribute. Did you mean "id"?
<head id="Head"><meta id="MetaDescription" name="DESCRIPTION" content="Smartroni

There are still some valid errors, but it's not as many as there appear to be.

Read the RFP

[gorbachev]

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=9745fb34e48a36a32b4fc589c3e371cb&tab=core&_cview=1&cck=1&au=&ck=

The Federal Business Opportunities website listed this opportunity a few weeks ago (could've been up longer than that, who knows).

It's not "just a website". It's a bit of a cluster**** in terms of number of data sources, what they expect to do with the data, etc.

I've done my time (never again!) with sorting through data from various data sources and while the actual programming part is *usually* not that difficult (assuming the data is not too badly malformed), but there are so many problems with processes, dealing with crap data, exceptions, etc. that if I were bidding for this work, I'd inflate my estimates quite a bit, too.

Re:Read the RFP

[krees1]

Some people live for this type of challenge (i.e. me). Parsing, normalizing, and cleaning up data is fun and I wish I could do it all day instead of be a manager like I am now.

Re:Read the RFP

[NeoSkandranon]

That's exactly what i do at work. Trade you?

Re:Read the RFP

[layer3switch]

From the website; Recovery.gov version 1.0 is currently hosted on a Linux server and Drupal is used for the content management system (CMS) and a MySQL database. RATB is open to recommendations for technology improvements for version 2.0 and beyond, including the hosting platform, database technology, CMS, programming languages, etc. that facilitate satisfaction of the requirements described in this SOO.

Yeah, because everyone in Slashdot all here have single handedly managed, built and hosted a system that gathers/collects and tracks information that is worth 400 billion dollars under 20 bucks an hour within a week, drinking 6 packs of Mountain Dew.
18 million is really nothing even in this economy which needs to serve up the expected number of traffic.

Re:Read the RFP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep from reading the details I don't think that there's a snowball's chance in hell of getting this done.

The current recovery.gov site sucks, it needs it..

[2obvious4u]

I just went to the site. It is hard to navigate and I couldn't find anything I was looking for. I don't know if 18 million is enough to fix it...

We are f***ed

[gogowater]

Spending 18 millions on the Recovery site is one of the reason our economy will never recover! -- God please help us.

Re:We are f***ed

[strikeleader]

God please help us

I thought that was what Obama is portrayed as

Same old crap.

[MaWeiTao]

Holy crap, is my company seriously undercharging for the work we do. What in the hell is it with companies that take government contracts that get away with charging such an absurd amount of money for work?

This is what we get when idiots in government don't ever shop around like any sensible person at any company would. Although what reason do they have to care what these projects cost when it's not their own money? They'll just raise taxes on us. And then I'm supposed to feel good about the taxes I pay.

Like being assessed a full year of taxes on a car I sold barely one month into this tax period. I look forward to seeing my tax money spent having snow plows running all night to clear a dusting of snow. Or having the city overpay for a crappy website that looks unprofessional and barely functions properly.

Transparency ain't free

[psychicninja]

I'm not saying $18M is cheap, but if you really want transparency about where tax dollars go it'll cost you. It costs even more if you want something that is simple and straightforward enough for "average" Americans to use and understand...

Re:Transparency ain't free

[mcgrew]

It costs even more if you want something that is simple and straightforward enough for "average" Americans to use and understand...

I don't think so - it would cost LESS, because it would be trying to impart information (easy) rather than trying to impress people with your 133t coding sk1llz (hard).

Innovative and Interactive...

[nickruiz]

"Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,"

Sounds pretty vague. Perhaps they're looking to design their site like Zombo.com. A most innovative way to spend $18 million.

The type contract is important.

[ashenkin]

Just-as or more important than the stated cost is whether this will be a cost-plus contract, where the contractor can spend willy-nilly and be assured of compensation and profit whilst over-running the budget wildly? Or will they be held, like all other businesses, to deliver the product within the quoted budget?

The bureaucracy is expanding..

[jayme0227]

to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

Better than most recovery spending

[one2wonder]

Still - its not billions flushed down the toilet on something that the taxpayers will see NO return on (coughGMcough). At least now our DC leaders will have many more people criticizing this spending. However - the truly corrupt spending will still be well hidden. Like by how 2014 this will be a 100 mil project.

It's Working Already!

[penguin_dance]

They haven't even started and already we know where $18,000,000 of our tax dollars is going!

Re:It's Working Already!

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

That is just the accepted bid... Of course it will go over budget.

and it will likely be .Net

[Anonymous Coward]

no wonder it's time and materials and they need $18 million

Oracle anyone?

[JLavezzo]

Web 2.0 implies that it's more than just showing some web pages on a domain. They have to design the way the data they display gets into and is stored in their database.

Like most government contracts, it's probably going to use Oracle instead of MySQL or PostgreSQL. That means several mandatory over-paid Oracle consultants to keep Oracle running and navigate the labyrinthine system for setting up Oracle. They'll probably use other Oracle middleware for "security" reasons, though security in this case means job security for Oracle.

"use innovative and interactive technologies"

[a2wflc]

If they want "innovative and interactive technologies" they should make publicly available web services with the data, and let anyone make sites using "innovative and interactive technologies". Whatever UI technologies they use will not appeal to some people and will be outdated soon (and require another $18mil). Letting any of us make any site we want will really provide "innovative and interactive technologies".

Re:"use innovative and interactive technologies"

[mcgrew]

I absolutely HATE sites that use "innovative and interactive technologies". Look at idle, for example. Slashdot use to be far better than it is now (and it needs far more coding than this new government site will, as you have user journals, commenting, moderation, etc). Give me white pages with black text and sparse graphics and easy navigation. Make it work on my phone!

Leave out the flash and silverlight and animations and other useless cruft. To quote number two from The Prisoner, "WE WANT INFORMATION!"

That's all I want from a site that promises information.

Re:"use innovative and interactive technologies"

[nottoogeeky]

And I like nice interactive charts to represent the information and a nice layout that lets me find what I want easily. I don't want to be trailing through pages of text, that would just suck!

Re:"use innovative and interactive technologies"

[mcgrew]

Pages of text would suck even more on a phone. But charts and a useable layout aren't "innovative and interactive technologies". We've had charts for hundreds of years, and computer generated charts for decades.

A "nice layout that lets me find what I want easily" is a simple layout. "Innovative and interactive technologies" usually means "needs Adobe Flash" or (more likely knowing the US Government) "Needs Microsoft Silverlight"

Re:"use innovative and interactive technologies"

[nottoogeeky]

Could be nice use of ajax to load everything on the fly - and not have to wait for flash or silverlight crap.

Advertising

[mr.bri]

I would not be surprised to find that a sizable chunk of the money goes to buying TV spots to remind people the website is there. Marketing marketing marketing!

Under Construction

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a large portion of the budget is for the Website Under Construction image that uses the "Putting America to Work" and "Funded by the ARRA" verbiage

18 million$ website redesign

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Wow, my WTF meter just went right off the top of the scale.

Outsource it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Sirs,

We are interested a

What site costs $18 million exactly?

[Hurricane78]

I mean, even if I do a really big site project, I can't imagine going over $100,000 for programming, *ever*. (But more likely something like $10,000.) Including designing the database layer, backend, template system, business logic, structure, content and design!

Can anyone enlighten me on the possible server costs for such a project?

How much would be a realistic price range for such a project?

These guys are worth $18 million??????

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody take a look at the source for the Smartronix careers page and tell me why we're giving these people $18 million for anything. They use fucking tables for layout for God's sake! http://www.smartronix.com/CAREERS/CurrentOpenings/tabid/78/Default.aspx

oh lord...

[that IT girl]

"Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,"

Yeah, to see where they are being spent... ON THIS WEBSITE.
-head asplode-

Transparency?

[Anoo]

They've got a social media connection, they get it. http://twitter.com/Smartronix Oh, wait.

Perfect example..

[Guru80]

..of where I DO NOT want my tax dollars going. Seriously, I don't care how innovative and sophisticated the site is going to be I just do not see how they can justify $18 million being spent to tell us where our money is being spent...maybe they are showing by example lol, see this shiny new 2.0 (isn't that term a little dated these days) version of our website! It does all kinds of cool things, you can even SEARCH and get GRAPHS of where the money went! lol. This is just another example, on a larger scale, of the whole $1000 hammer that can be bought at Home Depot for $1.89. Please....I will take a cool Million and save you $17 million to put in another politicians coffers. Hire me!

Well...

[marco.antonio.costa]

They're boosting aggregate demand! Government must make up for the money the people aren't spending to speed US to recovery.

That's nothing...

[tool462]

According to their Q1 earnings report, Google spent $1.52 BILLION in just one quarter and their website is just a logo, text box, and a couple of buttons, right?

They're not spending the $18 million on a CSS template and a Ruby script to access a MySQL database. There're going to be costs associated with the servers and bandwidth necessary to both search and serve up the information. There're going to be huge costs just in getting all of the data together into some kind of format that is parseable. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the data isn't even in any electronic form yet. Then there're the costs to maintain and support the whole thing over the next 5+ years. $18 million may still be a rip-off, I don't know, but this is not a small project by any means.

I am in the wrong business

[Efialtis]

If it really takes that much money to redesign a web site, I'LL TAKE IT! I have a small group of people who could have this done in phases throughout a year, for a heck of a lot less (we do it all the time) so this would be an incredible UPGRADE!

10 Workers

[Elwar123]

As a defense contractor I can see how something can go for $18 million over 5 years, I've had similar projects along those lines. Figure an average salary of $75k over 5 years gives you 240...but a rule of thumb in the industry is that the salary is actually about a third of what it costs per person...you figure in the equipment cost per person plus overhead, that gives you 80...spread that over 5 years, you have 16 workers for the website. Take about 6 of those workers out and replace them with server cost/network cost/software licenses and that leaves you with a small office of 10 people working on the site from hardware guys keeping the server running to developers and system admins to managers, Human Resources and marketing guys. So in the end...probably 2 web developers, 1 database guy, 1 hardware guy, 1 system admin, 1 HR person, 1 project lead, 1 manager, 1 secretary and one big boss that got the contract and is working on others.

I Spent $18 Million

[Anonymous Coward]

And all I got was a clone of Fark.com with a Red, White & Blue color scheme that requires Silverlight and IE8 to function.

I can do it

[jDeepbeep]

I can do it, at a paltry 14 million.

The effect

[anonymousNR]

..of using proprietary products is that you can convince anybody that it will take that much cost to build a software product.

I called Smartronix's PR department...

[Anonymous Coward]

They wouldn't give many details (of course), other than they are planning on hiring *a lot* of subcontractors for this, and that they will be releasing a public statement supposedly justifying the cost in a week or so.

So while it's an insane price for any site, maybe this is more like a "web development industry stimulus package".

OT- your sig

[mcgrew]

"A world without walls"
"A world without walls? I know people who have lived in a world without walls. If you have no walls, you're homeless!"

Re:OT- your sig

[frovingslosh]

Well, the way that I head it was Life without Walls, from the same advertisement. And a Google search of both terms will seem to confirm that the tag line that I'm using is the one that M$ has been hyping in their promotions. Although I haven't heard it lately, and I expect that the lack of a need for Windows in a Life without walls was pointed out to them and they dropped it nearly as fast as they dropped those non-funny advertisements with Jerry Steinfield and Bill Gates. Also, I noted the date on your blog article, I had been using this tag line for a considerable time before you posted that.

Re:OT- your sig

[mcgrew]

No, I assumed you were making fun of the same slogan I was. I didn't assume you'd seen the journal or I wouldn't have linked it.

Recovery.org

[Miros]

What's sad about this is how much of a waste it clearly already is. Recovery.org, which is run by a private company, already has a lot more up to date and useful information about how the stimulus money is being spent than Recovery.gov does. Somehow I doubt their site cost 18M to develop. Furthermore, what use is an oversight website that is entirely controlled by the POTUS? The GAO should run it not the white house.

of course that point is moot already, as the final version of the act did not actually include the provisions necessary to actually establish any guidelines at all for recovery.gov, they were all struck from the final version (http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c111:8:./temp/~c111J3zW8Z:e39246:). I suppose that someone out there realized that the whitehouse had the power to setup a website, and indeed, find 18M to redesign a website, without having to involve anyone else. it's really a very cleaver system.

Re:Recovery.org

[Miros]

One other comment; the whitehouse has committed more money to redesigning this website than the stimulus bill allocates to the state of NJ for technology projects.

wake up call

[token_username]

In case those of you who are a fan of increased government spending missed it, here's an excellent picture of the efficiency of the federal government. $18 million for a single website. Wow.

Low Expectations

[circj]

The current Recovery.gov site is running Drupal on Apache/Linux, and the site designers made at least a token effort to support current Web standards in the markup (while it is XHTML with a tableless layout, the W3C's validator did flag many problems when I checked it so it isn't perfect). :

• http://buytaert.net/obama-using-drupal
• http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.recovery.gov

On the other hand, the new prime contractor's Web site www.smartronix.com is running on Microsoft-IIS/6.0. They do not appear to be making much of an effort to support current Web standards (fixed, table based layout).

• http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.smartronix.com/

So who knows, maybe they will build a beautiful new site for that $18m, but I like the old site and will be sad to see it go.

Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

18 million dollars for a website. Looks like Zimbwaean economics finally hit the US

Put it in perspective.

[copponex]

I get tired of these stories. You could claim it's a waste of money to spend 18 million for setting up a transparency website and then running it for a few years. But put these stories into perspective by visiting DefenseLink every day to view how much of your tax dollars are being "invested."

http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/contract.aspx?contractid=4067

Yesterday alone we awarded over 120 million dollars. The day before that we awarded over 500 million dollars in contracts - I got too disgusted to continue adding the numbers.

So, would I rather not waste 18 million dollars? Sure. But I'd rather spend it on something constructive than destructive. A website about government spending is way more valuable to me than another novel way to hunt and kill humans.

Its already available

[yishai]

You can get all the info on recovery.org for free. You would think the government could redirect their DNS name for a lot less $18 million. I'd do it for $18 for them.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

18 million for a bunch of point n click peon developers?

WTF

[OrangeMonkey11]

I can't clearly see how spending $18 millions on a website really would help people understand where the tax dollar are being spent. Wait I just got it, this is where part of it is going; to a fucking website

$9 Million...

[Drone69]

...and I'll do it. Got a copy of Dreamweaver & Photoshop ready to go!

.. and they want a 2nd stimulus?

[Billly Gates]

They can't even run a simple website without spending tens of millions of dollars and this is the same government that bankrupted social security. How many people would someone need to hire for $18,000,000 to run a simple website?

Now they want to put our great grandchildren further in debt by a second stimulus?

I admitted I voted for Obama because I assumed he would balance the budget like Clinton. In addition, I figured anyone could be more fiscally responsible than Bush and Hannity and Rush's fanatic complaints about him being a big spending liberal would be way off. I was proven wrong. Instead I have another idea if you want to help the economy. Cut government spending. After we have lower interest rates from less panicy government bond holders we will have a revenue increase and once books are balanced the need to hire again will return. If no one wants something a big check wont help the economy. The market needs to fix it and the government needs to help the market rather than prohibit it by making them pay for socialistic recovery schemes.

Re:.. and they want a 2nd stimulus?

[strikeleader]

Let me be the first to say I told you so.

Re:.. and they want a 2nd stimulus?

[pyrothebouncer]

"I figured anyone could be more fiscally responsible than Bush and Hannity and Rush's fanatic complaints about him being a big spending liberal would be way off. I was proven wrong. Instead I have another idea if you want to help the economy. Cut government spending. After we have lower interest rates from less panicy government bond holders we will have a revenue increase and once books are balanced the need to hire again will return. If no one wants something a big check wont help the economy. The market needs to fix it and the government needs to help the market rather than prohibit it by making them pay for socialistic recovery schemes." Does this mean that you have adopted the RIght's conservative ideas of less government, less government spending, fewer "elites" who know what is right for you and will govern you accoringly by spending all YOUR MONEY and telling you they are just "SPREADING THE WEALTH"?

Re:.. and they want a 2nd stimulus?

[Billly Gates]

Well I hate inequality as the next guy.

However, the private sector hires and when the ink is red and the profit/loss spreadsheets the accountants first knee jerk reaction is to implement a hiring freeze and lay off workers. This then amplifies.

If the cost to hire, low interest rates, and tax cuts go down then the profits will increase. When this happens the HR and accoutants lift hte hiring freeze and people have jobs again.

I guess I have to agree wiht the republicans on this. We outsource jobs because of tax breaks, no health insurance, and head taxes are much much lower. Its not salary. If we keep taxes high then the bean counters will want to outsource our jobs to more business friendly countries.

Wait a minute....

[dwiget001]

The U.S. government is spending $18 MILLION DOLLARS to redesign a website for U.S. citizens to track how the TARP, Stimulus, Etc-us money is being spent.

Oh, that's just swell.

I wonder if the first item on the list is going to be:

$18 Million spent on re-designing the web site you are currently viewing. Money well spent, huh? SUCKERS!

Re:Wait a minute....

[hey!]

No. The U.S. government is spending $18 million dollars or something, but we don't have a ghost of a chance of figuring out what that might be after it's been filtered through some non-technical political reporter's blog, then the Slashdot editorial slice-and-dice.

Makes no sense

[snowwrestler]

The purpose of a government is to make and enforce laws, thus any government will have the power to impact the future earnings of a business. It's impossible to imagine a government so small that no business would ever feel threatened by its decisions.

Let me add some pure 100% flamebait

[snowwrestler]

Yeah, obviously the U.S. government is incapable of running any large complex program successfully. That's why we in the U.S. live under the umbrella of global deterrence provided by Canada's large and complex military, and not vice versa.

Thanks, Canada! ;-)

Re:Let me add some pure 100% flamebait

[radtea]

You're welcome

This is insightful?

[snowwrestler]

Are you one of those guys who looks at the Google homepage and say "pffff, I could that easy"?

Re:This is insightful?

[mcgrew]

No, with Google the backend is what counts, and I admire its elegant front end. More sites need to be like that.

Re:cash4cro

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians as a Disservice

What does 18 million buy?

[specific_pacific]

I run a webshop, and im wondering what the 18 million includes? What would they write this in? Is there 17 million in testing and contracts and 1 million in production? Maintenance agreements? SLA's? Just curious.. 18 million is more than most webs hops earn in a year doing hundreds of jobs probably much bigger than this.

Collecting and assembling the information

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The money for the redesign doesn't include collecting and assembling the information.

They are given a hookup to the database.

How much did it cost to cybersquat recovery.org

[MWDrexel]

for six months?

The Government Knows Very Well

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Armed with easy access to this information, taxpayers can make government more accountable for its decisions.

The gov't knows very well that taxpayers CANNOT make them accountable for anything. Proof? Will anyone make them accountable for THIS decision? No. Never. Nadda.

It's also no surprise their web site SUCKS: http://www.smartronix.com/

They might as well spit in our face.

Re:The Government Knows Very Well

[nottoogeeky]

That does indeed suck. I wonder why they would choose a company with bad design and accessibility skills to "design" the new site. Table based layout and Microsoft technologies? Awful! Maybe they're Microsoft "certified" and some idiot thinks that's a good thing.

We're from the government and we're here to help..

[technomom]

If this isn't a facepalm of a story, I don't know what is.

$18million + gov't orgs + contractors

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez. Craigslist was built with a few hundred bucks and it catches criminals...

Imagine, if craigslists was built that way, we would all be using yahoo! classifieds...

FAIL!

18 Million?? Wish I was that company

[pyrothebouncer]

I have a lot of things I could do with 18 mil. I surely hope that this company was chosen because they reviewed several bids from several companies and found that this company was able to offer what they wanted for the least amount of cost compared to the other companies that put in a bid. Not because they contribute to the Majority Party. I hope, but am afraid as most politics go that this is not the case.

Waste of cash

[recharged95]

For 18million, I would have a 3rd party independent (i.e. watchdog) group audit what is being posted on recovery.gov for what? the next 10yrs!

As for recovery.gov. Just show me who is spending what and how much. Not innovative ways to slice and dice taxpayer money. Not everyone has hours in the day and an accounting degree to go investigate why agency X is spending an extra 1K on parking meters.

This is gov't following the FOX NEWS model: "We report our data in the way we want it, and you decided" vs "here's the important information, now lets start a discussion about it".

.

Waste, waste, waste.

Re:Waste of cash

[recharged95]

Also, sure this is similar to a Google Analytics approach, but with GA tools, firms and companies analyze the results and change rapidly from that analysis, where as gov't cannot. For example: let's say you can get a cool recovery.gov report of money spent from agency X per contract. If you see misspending, how soon can you act on that analysis? In a company, usually very quickly. In gov't, maybe by next congressional session at best (as the misspending continues). It's because lawmarkers use time as an exploit-- all the time.

So in the end, 'innovative ways' is a good idea, but in this case, it's being used in the wrong content. It's a solution looking for a problem.

What Kind of Website Does This Get You?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nabber.org/mytake/index.php?entry=entry090713-194931

RE: Obama and the assination of US representatives

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dir. of CIA cancelled a top securet program.

The media are reporting that the program was an assination prorgram aimed at Al Quada.

The Assination Program was aimed at US Congressman, Governers, Mayors and Civic Leaders, not sympithetic to the Chief Executive of the United States of America.

Mr. Barak Hussien Obama was briefed on the program in late-January 2009.

Mr Leon Penate was briefed in late-June 2009, and at-once orderd the program halted.

He then informed representatives of Congress of the program.

Why did Mr. Obama choose to remain silent of the program to assinate US Congressmen, Governers, Mayors and Civic Leaders?