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IRS Spent $60,000 Producing Star Trek Parody
An anonymous reader writes According to the AP, the IRS is being "scolded for spending $60,000 dollars on an elaborate parody video that played at a 2010 conference. 'The video features an elaborate set depicting the control room, or bridge, of the spaceship featured in the hit TV show. IRS workers portray the characters, including one who plays Mr. Spock, complete with fake hair and pointed ears. The production value is high even though the acting is what one might expect from a bunch of tax collectors. In the video, the spaceship is approaching the planet 'Notax,' where alien identity theft appears to be a problem.' You can find the hilarious and/or nausea-inducing video on YouTube."
Well, this is better than some of the things our government spends our tax dollars on...
They spent all that money, and they still couldn't get the right uniforms.
Unlike the AP, the IRS has a sense of humor!
It's that they created something so horrific, and unleashed it on the internet.
Yeah, have we seen the US's military contracts and cost overruns? Shit, I'm glad they only spent $60k on this!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
IRS Spent $60,000 Producing Star Trek Parody
Analysis shows it's best value for their (our) money they've gotten in years.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The IRS decided to produce videos in house instead of spending more money to hire outside contractors. Before they could start producing actual videos for use in training, public information, etc., they had to get up to speed with using their new video production facility. They had to make some dummy video during that checkout/internal training phase, so they chose to make parodies of Star Trek and Gilligan's Island. Big deal.
I'd love to know the name of the IRS manager that approved production of this.
Anyone who is willing to drop 60k on fluff like this should have the opportunity to address the fans of their work.
Just because there are bigger problems, doesn't mean you have to ignore the smaller problems.
First, like many have stated, this video could be done for ~ around $1,000 USD for the same production quality and add an additional $200 USD could have been better.... but what caught my mind is how they uploaded it upscaled at quality that would look crappy even on a 2" screen.
So basically a bridge full of vampires from Vulcan? Humorless, emotionless, greenblooded inhuman bloodsuckers?
A full bucket is full of drops.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
My girlfriend works at a library. A patron throw a hissy fit the other day because she thought they had used way to much salt on the sidewalk (this is snow country) and threatened to call the Mayor.
It costs about $1500 per day to run that library branch. Yet people freak out because they might use $1 more salt than necessary once a month to keep the City from being sued by somebody slipping and falling. This is how people think.
it's for training.. and training is big bucks. bottom line, does it teach anything? and would an effective alternative have been cheaper?
had a good screen presence. With a little training, he might be as good as William Shatner.
Look at the Star Trek cosplay, not the firearms we're stocking up on!
(not that it's much compared to the DHS)
My God, it's Full of Source!
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The captain is Black, the comm officer is Caucasian... but she's... still... Uhura??? I'm mostly finding this funny. Like WTF is the Enterprise? Is that some kind of book that IRS people would recognize?
There is a chance, however remote, that if we tweet this link enough the IRS will get enough views on YouTube the recoup costs and make a profit to help pay on the order 1*10e-10 percent of the debt. I'll get on it right away captain...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
They FAA is shutting down 149 control towers, supposedly as part of saving $637 million due to the sequester, at the same time Obama is asking for $500 million for the corrupt oligarchy running the Palestinian Authority.
But they still seem to be able to fund the TSA's security theater. But you know who won't have to go through the grope lines? People from Saudi Arabia. You know, the country that produced produced 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers.
And of course, there are the billions in green crony subsidies.
Your tax dollars at work...
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True. But when you have a pinhole leak and a gaping hole in the hull they're not equatable.
If even one of the production crew had been a real Trekkie with half a clue, they could have contacted James Cawley and the Phase II/New Voyages crew and rented their elaborate sets and maybe even their assistance for a fraction of what it cost them... AND it would've had dramatically better production values.
Actually, yes it does. We have limited resources to go after and fix problems, and sometimes the cost of oversight is higher than the amount recouped.
The cost of the video is so high because they haven't achieved a scale of production. We need them to produce entire series of Star Trek, then IRS Voyager, Next Generation Income Tax... then Star Wars, Mission Impossible, etc If enough auditors spend enough time producing enough of these videos, the cost per video will go down, which means the "rate of increase" of IRS spending on videos could go down.
At least until the auditing period for the 1040 I'm working on today is expired. Then pull the plug.
Gently reply
It was funny !!!!
AccountKiller
Assuming you have an unlimited amount of time, yes.
But in reality, making mountains out of molehills is a clever form of filibuster. It gives you a "tough" image even while you distract debate from the real mountains.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Wonder when they'll receive the DMCA take down notice? I know they called it "parody" but I don't think they where trying to be funny. Plus, I've seen better parody videos fall victim to dmca. Either way, I hate what this video implies, our tax code needs updated and the IRS needs to go away.
Since the production value of that parody equals that of a silly cat video, it would be more convincing if majority of that money was spent on Viacom copyright license. Instead of risking violation of copyright law by invoking "Fair Use", legal cost alone may have made it worth $60K.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
The US govt budget in 2012 is, roughly, 3.5 trillion dollars
That is 3.5 e12
And congress upset about 6e4 ???
simple math: assume there are 200 working days per year.
IF congress investigated the ever popular waste fraud and abuse every single day, how much would they have to save each day, to equal 1% of the budget ?
well, the answer is
step one 3.5e12/100 = 3.5e10
step two 3.5e10/200 = 1.75e8
That is, if congress found *one hundred and seventy five million dollars of waste, EVRY SINGLE DAY, it would be 1% of the us budget.
tell me again why we are even thinking about 60K ???????
Don't pay attention to that. Pay attention to the practice productions of their new in house training video program that will hopefully end up saving money instead of contracting it out.
There was also a Gilligan's Island video which so far the IRS has kept private.
This is the IRS we're talking about. I doubt Paramount is that brave to take on the IRS. There's decades of questionable accounting that suddenly could be scrutinized.
First, if you think $60,000. is just a little bit of money, you have been out of the real world for too long where ever you are.
Second, it's your attitude is part of the problem of why the deficit is so large and why so many people are in debt up to their eyes.
Oh, it's just 60k here, 80k there, 20k for this and that. Every department takes the same attitude in every office and when you add them all up you get millions and hundreds of millions wasted over the months and millions add up to billions over the years. Hows that for affecting the deficit?
Individuals have the same problems, it's only $2 for a coffee. It's only $15 to eat out. It's when you realize that your doing it several times a day, every day, those numbers add up and actually make a difference between paying rent or falling just a little further behind.
The film was made at an IRS studio in New Carrollton, Md., a suburb of Washington. The agency said it uses the studio to make training films and informational videos for taxpayers.
Why does the IRS even have a film studio?
From an agency that's not even culpable for the advise it gives to the taxpayers, why are they even producing videos for training that's not legally binding as far as the information it provides?
High time we abolish the current tax system and replace it with something like the Fair Tax that would allow us to destroy most, if not all, of the IRS.
that was taxing to watch.\]
Research is what I doing when I don't know what I am doing - Werner von Braun
The IRS employees almost 100,000 people. That works out to about .65 cents per employee. Not very much for a training budget. Nice troll from the subby though.
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Sorry, 60K really is a tiny amount of money for a government agency. Maybe the video was a bad idea. Maybe it was a morale booster. Maybe it distracted thousands of employees from their miserable pay checks. I don't care. The money wastage in the government is the multi-billion dollar unnecessary, or overdone projects (TSA, F35, etc), not a few tens of K spent here and there on entertainment for thousands of people.
If your income is low, then you are right, the $2 coffees add up. If you are making payments on a $20M house, and traveling by biz-jet, then coffee is not the place to try to save money.
Companies often spend money to entertain or motivate their employees. They do this because sometimes the morale boost is worth far more than what it costs.
It's all about the mindset. When you think of it as play money instead of money that people have sweated to earn and might otherwise be used for medical procedures, safer environments for children or otherwise improving quality of life, you get this kind of thing happening and it's symptomatic of a much bigger problem.
Do less.
Besides, people who are greatly outraged by this are probably the same sorts who think the government should be run like a business.
Since large (and even mid-sized) corporations drop $60,000+ on videos like this all the time (that's really not excessively expensive for this sort of thing) you'd think they'd be OK with this.
Somebody needs to work on their reading comprehension skills:
Q Why does the IRS even have a film studio? ...to make training films and informational videos for taxpayers.
A
If you'd even browsed you'd find out that they have one for training videos because they found out they could do them cheaper in house than farming them out. It's not too surprising if you have either (a) a large number of videos to produce or (b) in-house technical staff with surplus time. I suspect (a) is correct as the congress changes tax law - Every Fucking Year - and all of the agents need to be retrained. Sending in-person trainers is even more expensive.
You'd be surprised at how many large companies have their own film and sound studios for in-house work. It doesn't take too big an operation to justify having one over paying a contractor to do it every time you need something updated.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Right - what has the government done for us.... (insert monty python quote here)
education , sanitation, roads, police,
Seriously, try to imagine what the US would be like without a government, or if people had to pay specifically for the services they wanted. You may not like the police but would you prefer Blackwater hiring out as private security? No public education for the poor? Private roads closed to non-members? No water systems? It would be a hell on earth - a scaled up Somalia.
Sure, there is out of control government spending but its a lot better than no government at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJPqrVVtjNE
With actual Star Trek actors.
This $215 video production cost $60,000 because the guy playing Spock forgot to itemize his deductive reasoning.
The video is a public service reminder to itemize your deductions or get stuck paying the bill for stuff like this.
Hmm... Sounds like we don't need that department. Eliminating it will save all that paperwork.
Yeah, the US government just takes your money, the fact the US is the world's only superpower and has the largest economy on the planet is just a coincidence, and of course none of that directly benefits it's citizens anyway, right?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Incidentally,
You may not like the police but would you prefer Blackwater hiring out as private security?
My neighborhood - and this is a normal, non-gated, houses $150-$200k neighborhood - has a private security force that patrols part time, because the police won't do their job. It is far from the only one like it.
No public education for the poor?
Setting aside the larger question of whether or not they actually educate those poor people, are publicly owned and operated schools staffed with government employees the only way we can think of to provide education to the general public? All my education tax money goes down the drain - my city's schools are unusably bad; I never spent a day in them, and neither will my children. My wife did work in the administration of the local school system before we married, and it firmly convinced her that the entire operation was a complete waste.
Private roads closed to non-members?
You mean like the NY, NJ, PA, OH, IN, and IL turnpike systems? The Dulles toll road? There are plenty of roads you have to pay to use, and yes, they were often privately owned and maintained in the early days of the country.
No water systems?
I guess you've never seen rural areas where water is in fact often supplied by a cooperative owned by the people who receive it? Even here in a city, where the incredibly disruptive nature of water and sewer services mean that they're always going to be provided by government (too hard to get permission to tear up all the streets otherwise), we pay for our water just like we pay for natural gas or electricity - fee for service.
I'm not an anarchist, but acknowledging that we have to have some government is not carte blanche for said government to waste other people's money, and if you sometimes sound like the crazy old guy complaining over the cost of paperclips used by the city, that doesn't mean it's always a bad idea.
My mayor squandered most his time in office distracted by small problems - his enemies created small BS distractions and his OCD did him in. Plus side is some jerks were fed up and quit and he fired some people -- all needed it; but again, it was largely inconsequentially small.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Dear...God....
KHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNN you believe the taxpayer paid for this?
*head explodes*
The three largest expenses of the US Federal government are Social Security, Healthcare and the military. If defense was handled at the state level it would be difficult to prevent some states being free-riders, particularly land-locked states. Healthcare and social security could possibly be handled at the state level but the costs would still exist and would result in a great deal of duplication. Also, big business would love to be able to play individual states off against eachother for the best tax deal. It would be a very different country - in fact each state would operate much more like an individual country with all the potential for internal conflict that that entails.
This doesn't excuse waste, but it is extremely naive to think that large corporations are intrinsically any less wasteful and bureaucratic than government departments once they achieve a certain size.
All of those are local and state matters and should be paid for by local and state taxes. The IRS collects federal income tax.
I think the US would be a whole lot better off with a much smaller federal government, leaving more to state and local control and restricting the federal government to its enumerated powers, primarily interstate commerce and national defense.
That meme is both false and tired.
You can't use those observations to justify current levels of government spending. The US became the world's only superpower and got the largest economy on the planet when taxes were lower and the role of the federal government was much smaller. For a few decades, we have been entering a phase of decline, analogous to the decline of the formerly powerful European empires, and roughly for the same reasons.
For instance the 2009 Iraq war spending ($95.5B) was about $1.13 per tax paying household. On the other hand, the 2010 $521 billion cost of Medicare was funded by grabbing $6167.43 on average from each tax paying household.
Score -1 Major math fail.
95 billion is about 1/6th of 520 billion. Therefore Iraq costs 1/6th the Medicare budget based on your figures.
Your figures say that there are about 90 billion households in the u.s. based on your iraq figures of 95 billion / $1.1
I guess you have deliberately confused millions with billions to try to make a political point. Your figures should probably say iraq cost $1100 per household in one year.
"I wish they were dead, Jim"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They did paperwork for $60 000 of expenses.
No chance that that was what they spent.
Tax people are familiar with the difference.
I suppose it's not just about 'waste'. Morale is useful. Drop 65k on a video that jacks up moral and people work 1% harder. Let's say the average salary of those employees is 30k/yr (lowballing it, they're accouting ppl after all). 1% of that is 3 million a year. Not a bad return on investment. You could make 20 of those videos and still come out ahead if even 1 of them works.
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First, if you think $60,000. is just a little bit of money, you have been out of the real world for too long where ever you are.
I work in TV / Film production. In the real world.
I've also produced off-air promo reels before - which is basically what the IRS tried to do here. You have no idea how much this sort of thing costs.
Do any of the people criticizing the IRS know how much it costs to shoot anything? It takes cameras and lighting and wardrobe and actors and food for everyone involved and someone to edit the whole thing together, not to mention several other things. Commercials, TV shows, films, and music video are all commonly shot on much higher budgets than this, and judging from glimpses at the video in question it does look quite low budget. If anything they should be praised for trying to be interesting while keeping it inexpensive, assuming the $60,000 figure is accurate.
I disagree. The problem isn't government; it's government waste and corruption. Go too far and it becomes oppressive and tyrannical. If you have too little government, the people become oppressive and tyrannical. I'm a firm believer that a certain level of functional balance that must always be maintained.
Life is not for the lazy.
Despite the "C" designation it does not seem to be much of a cargo plane, that may be a secondary ad hoc role. It seems to be more of an executive transport aircraft. Although wiki does mention it is sometimes used to transport wounded rather than VIPs, liaisons, attaches, staff, etc. There also seems to be a reconnaissance version for signals/electronic intelligence.
Maybe it should get a "U" designation for utility like some Army helicopters.
Portraying it as an "all or nothing" proposition does a great disservice to all the people out there fighting for a small/lean and responsible government.
Any Libertarian or Constitution party supporter who has a clue what their allegedly preferred political affiliation means would tell you it's important to never lose sight of the fact that government is inherently evil -- yet quite probably a necessary evil.
When you create any kind of central authority, you give those people power -- and power corrupts. The founders of the USA pretty clearly tried to place as many checks and balances on the system as possible, to help prevent or slow the natural growth of this power and with it, corruption.
So no, I don't like many things about our current police system -- but that doesn't mean I'm supposed to blindly accept it, since "the alternative is no police force at all, or a corrupt privatized security force". Maybe it means we need to question how many officers we need in each city, and make some cutbacks? Maybe it means we need to allow the general public to have more input, by way of voting police chiefs in or out of their position on a regular basis?
And no, I don't want a country with "no water system", but maybe I'm open to the idea of regular review of public utilities, to determine if we've reached a point where it's feasible for private businesses to step in? For example, not THAT long ago, it was believed we had to have a govt. regulated monopoly on our nation's telephone system, since it wouldn't be feasible to have competitors all running their own copper wire on poles to the same homes and businesses everywhere. Then cellular came along and changed a lot of assumptions.
These "cost per household" figures always fail to take into account corporations paying tax. The burden per household is not $1100/year.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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Pray tell, where do these corporations get their money?
When the tax code is so complicated that you need to create Star Trek parodies to explain it to the people implementing it, it might be too complicated.
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I'm not questioning if the costs are real or not. I have no doubts that film production costs that much. What I am questioning is why the fuck did they go that route? There are probably a dozen different options they could have gone but they went with the most expensive option. They could have bought a camera and computer and filmed something them selves real cheaply. They could have hired amiture film editors to shoot and edit for a fraction of the cost. Youtube is full of people that make amazing videos with next to no budget. They could have just not done a video for all of the value they got out of it.
Basically to make a car analogy of it, the government had to send someone down the street to another building. They could have bought that person, roller blades, a skate board, a bike or even a scooter. No they wend out and bough a Lamborghini and now after the short trip the car is sitting in the garage doing nothing waiting to be thrown out.
Where in God's name does this idea that taxes used to be lower come from? Unless you're within sight of your 100th birthday, you've never worked during a time when taxes were appreciably lower than they are now.
Now, the fact that wages for about 90% of the population have been flat for decades while productivity (i.e. the amount of things created that you spend your money on) has nearly doubled in that frame may have to do with the perception of increasing tax rates, but to suggest that actual rates are higher now is absurd.
It depends on the purpose of the video. Was it a fun and engaging way for the employees involved to familiarize themselves with the process of making videos (before making regular training videos), if so it was money well spent.
Was it something to lighten up the mood and engage the participents at the start of the training conference? If so it was probably worth it.
Was it just play money for the involved employees? If so it was probably wasted, but I don't think that was the objective.
The fact they found a way to make part of their job enjoyable doesn't mean it was a waste.
I stole this Sig
This doesn't excuse waste, but it is extremely naive to think that large corporations are intrinsically any less wasteful and bureaucratic than government departments once they achieve a certain size.
I've worked for more than one 10 person shop, and the owner approved all expenditures over about $10,000. I've worked for more than one 10,000 person shop, and there were tight cost controls because of previous unreported fraud (someone spending what they shouldn't, even if not directly stealing).
Learn to love Alaska
If you remove all in-office fun, you'll lost your motivated workers. When you make office spartan and prison-like, you'll end up with only the worst employees. Is that who you want working for you in the government?
Learn to love Alaska
You really need to stop comparing the amount of money to the size of the agency. I'm well aware the 60k barley registers in the IRS's balance sheet but that is not the point. Spending $60,000 on a 6 minuet conference video to be shown once buy it self is fucking insane. There is no other business or group of people that would decide to do that. And the kicker is the video it self has very little training value making it nearly useless. There is zero reason that this video needed high end production values and that goes to show that there are no checks or justification on the money being spend.
Reckless spending like this just indicates that there is a larger problem yet to be uncovered. Are they sending 10 agents across the country, putting them up in nice hotels to do the work that 2 people could easily handle? Are they buying unnecessary equipment that gets used once then put in storage that also needs to be paid for? It's not just about the 60k thrown away, It's the question that if there isn't anyone with a brain that might say, this might not be a good idea, how do we know that any of the money being spent is being spent wisely?
If corporations get their money from households, and households get their money from working for corporations, then where does the money come from?
As is typical for left wing demagogues, you are shifting your claims and bringing in issues that are irrelevant to the original discussion. This is what TapeCutter said:
The fact is that taxes were considerably lower than they are today until after WWII was concluded and the US had become the sole superpower.
As to your second claim:
That "fact" is economically meaningless. What you need to ask is whether people are better off today than they were decades ago, and they clearly are much better off. The flatness of wages is an artifact of games people play with inflation adjustments, as well as simply how we measure "wages".
Any more economic b.s. you want to air out?
Did you use that same dismissal when they outlawed lead paint or gasoline?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
and wake-up about just how much President Obama's $800+Billion stimulus cost those same households. Add-in the auto bailout and the insane Bush bank bailout (whose costs are blamed on Bush and counted in the last Bush deficit, but whose benefits are claimed by Obama)
There's a major problem in America. Everything is either left or right, with us or against us.
I'm not making any judgement calls, I'm pointing out basic math. Unfortunatly the majority of the country lacks basic arithmetic skills ad just accepts what they're told.
Think for yourself occasionally before spouting talking points that collapse when someone in the 4th grade looks at the claim and realises its internally inconsistent.
So basically your wife was part of the problem and you are complaining here? Hypocrisy much?
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The government prints it.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I am glad someone points out the obvious. I work for a fortune 500 company and in our own small department management made a ridiculous parody video that probably cost well more than 60k. Not to mention the cost of showing to everyone (I mean forcing them to watch it, and in my case multiple times).
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
She worked there for about a year and a half. She managed an outside grant that (e.g.) paid for an all-expenses-except-transportation summer camp for poor kids. She left, the grant was still there, the camp didn't happen the next year. They didn't have to do any planning, they could have used the same plans, and the guy who actually ran the camp was still around. They just didn't give a shit. If "oh yeah, I worked there, it's a total clusterfuck" is hypocrisy to you, then file me under it.
Those are the domain of state governments.
The role of the state governments does not justify the federal government. What does the federal government do for you?
There are a few things. Enough to justify its bloated budget... I'm not sure.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
...instead of thinking "they spent $60,000 of our tax dollars on this?" You think, "Why are they using Next Generation uniforms on an Original Series set?"
Does this
First you admit taxes were raised considerably during WWII and remained far higher than they are today for decades, then agree that after the conclusion of WWII the US became a superpower. Guess how the government paid for becoming a superpower, and doing all the things a government does? Go ahead, guess.
Watching people who aren't 7-figure-income rich or richer defend GOP economic ideas is baffling.
The producer/director mixed up the TOS environment and TNG uniforms. How can I to take them seriously with such a flagrant oversight?
No sig for you! Come back one year!
So, in other words, you don't have any logical argument? It's cute that you claim to support rational thought but completely fail at being anywhere close to rational.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You don't understand the difference between "during WWII" and "until after WWII"? In any case, the US became a superpower because Europe, European empires, and European economies self-destructed, killing millions in the process; and they self-destructed mainly because they had adopted the kind of paternalistic governmental policies you seem to favor.
In different words, you are saying that you favor high taxes in order to finance a large military, which can then be used to US military and economic advantage. This would make you a high-tax GOP military hawk. Well, sorry, I don't agree. I think the US should scale back its military and the taxes that pay for it. The US should also require its "allies" in Europe to pay for their own defense.
It's baffling to you because you are apparently financially and economically illiterate. More taxes, on the rich or anybody else, doesn't help any of us, it makes all of us poorer. The problem isn't so much the taking from the rich, it's the giving to everybody else. If you insulate people from the unpleasant consequences of bad choices, our society ceases to function. That's true as much for bankers and car manufacturers as it is for people choosing to study art history in college or buying a home they can't afford.
It's not that large corporations are inherently less wasteful - they're not. It's that badly run corporations go out of business, and badly run governments don't. Defense of the nation is a perfectly legitimate function of the national government. I don't think that running a welfare state for the broad middle class is, and more relevantly I don't think it's sustainable. Obviously, YMMV.
Where, pray tell, did I assert that you were using emotional arguments? I didn't. You're not. You're dismissing what is potentially an emotional argument (for the children) out of hand without actually looking at its validity. In other words, you're not very bright, logical, or right. Calling you an idiot is an ad hominem fallacy only if you're not an idiot. An appeal to emotion (as the GGGP used) doesn't invalidate the remainder of the argument. You're correct though, I'll have an excellent day.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
he's imploded from dumb Jim.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why only "scolded"? This is just more government nonsense that encourages such fraud. What needs to happen is that each person involved in the video should have their pay docked to pay their fair share of the costs. The resulting $60K should be put back into the federal treasury and not back into the IRS budget. If we want real change in the government, both elected and unelected officials need to be held personally accountable.
Considering the amazing quality of some of the fan films I've seen on youtube, I'm amazed at how awful this was given the $60k budget.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle