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Steve Ballmer's New Project: Find Out How the Government Spends Your Money (theverge.com)
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn't satisfied with owning the Los Angeles Clippers and teaching at Stanford and USC. On Tuesday, the billionaire announced USAFacts, his new startup that aims to improve political discourse by making government financial data easier to access. A small "army" of economists, professors and other professionals will be looking into and publishing data structured similarly to the 10-K filings companies issue each year -- expenses, revenues and key metrics pulled from dozens of government data sources and compiled into a single massive collection of tables. From a report on The Verge: The nonpartisan site traces $5.4 trillion in government spending under four categories derived from language in the US Constitution. Defense spending, for example, is categorized under the header "provide for the common defense," while education spending is under "secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity." Spending allocation and revenue sources are each mapped out in blue and pink graphics, with detailed breakdowns along federal, state and local lines. Users can also search for specific datasets, such as airport revenue or crime rates, and the site includes a report of "risk factors" that could inhibit economic growth. The New York Times has the story on how this startup came to be.
unless they have an agenda. We need to find out what Ballmer's is.
The number $X spent on defense obscures the fact about how each defense dollar is spent.
It may be that with an increase in efficiency, and reduction in labor force, you could reduce $X in defense by 75%, and still have just as effective a defense program, with no material sacrifice other than removing deadweight, or eliminating financial mismanagements or abuses by bureaucrats.
What the American people need is drill-down financial transparency down to the Per-Employee, Per-Contract, and Per-Product level.
We should literally know how much our government is spending on each tool, supply, or service being requisitioned, and what is included with each tool, supply, or service.
"...The nonpartisan site traces $5.4 trillion in government spending under four categories derived from language in the US Constitution...
Well, that's certainly one way to upgrade the status of the Constitution from ignored to illegal.
Can't imagine this kind of prodding into the spending habits of our not-so-transparent government will go over well...
Sorry, it's in German, but well researched and a couple of hard, cold numbers:
(Disclaimer: I didn't like the very slight "We EU vs. them USA" slant, because it's not about that. But the investigative job is outstanding)
Is startup really the right term? Its hard to see how this is a business.
"and our prosperity."
Really people, you couldn't even properly quote the constitution?
It's "secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," not 'prosperity.'
It's a single web page that returns "Golfing trip" to all queries.
DEFENSE! DEFENSE! DEFENSE! WELFARE! WELFARE! WELFARE! (throws chair)
Something like that, but now I have to compensate for all those caps (why yes, it is exactly like YELLING, how did you guess?) to make the lameness filter happy.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
lol go blank yourself
This is a really dangerous oversimplification. What they should be looking at is the overhead costs associated with government spending. Supposedly, Social Security is a "third rail" of politics. Usually, if a politician talks about reforming it or fixing it, they're toast because the voters have been lead to believe that every dollar that goes into Social Security comes back out. It simply can't work that way. There are too many people employed by the Social Security Administration. Every single one of them gets a salary and a pension. They all need a physical place to work. Ergo, that all costs money. A LOT of money. Same thing for Medicare. Both of these entitlement programs represent the bulk of government spending.
Also, whenever some pundit screams bloody murder about "cuts" to either of these programs, the are flat out lying to you. Nothing ever gets cut. That's how baseline budgeting works. What they're really talking about is reductions to proposed INCREASES in spending over and above previous baselines.
be all up in here.
As of now, people are more interested from whom taxes are taken. This is key issue of progressive taxes. It is good as far as it is not my money. Flat or fair income taxes will stop this interest and will make instead people to look where is money going. There is zero intensive for government to do so. They want keep spending part of radar. It means mr Ballmer project would be interested only for a very few...
That might work provided there were easy and well known ways to pool money for common purposes such as roads, education, military, etc. Otherwise you would never be able to accomplish large scale projects.
Just like Windows... Slow or not at all. Coincidence?
Yeah, right. Tell that to the police when we, the mob, come over to your house to plunder and pillage.
(Ohmygod. The type of idiots they allow on the Intertubes these days)
Accountants. Accountants! Accountants! Accountants!
That might work provided there were easy and well known ways to pool money for common purposes such as roads, education, military, etc. Otherwise you would never be able to accomplish large scale projects.
How ironic the one large scale project that we seem to excel at is collecting billions in taxes in order to waste the shit out of it due to greed and corruption.
The only government spending that really matters is Medicare/Medicaid, Defense, and Social Security. Those together account for about 3/4 of the federal budget. Any discussion of federal spending that doesn't involve those four programs is pointless and/or grandstanding. Stuff like NASA and education are almost rounding errors in comparison to those four programs.
That's also why anyone who talks about cutting taxes without also talking about cutting either Medicare or Defense is completely full of shit because we don't pay enough in taxes to cover those programs today. We certainly can't afford to cut taxes when last year we borrowed $600 billion to cover the $600 billion defense department budget. Cutting taxes without cutting Medicare or Defense is simply handing the bill to your children which makes the people doing it assholes. Believing that cutting taxes will magically increase government revenues through growth makes the people saying either idiots or charlatans or both.
Most of what people cite as worthwhile government services - roads, schools, police and fire, etc, are done by the STATE governments. Yet the feds take most your money. In some instances, such as transportation, Washington takes your money, takes a cut, then sends part back to your state to spend on roads or whatever. The state handles getting the road built, all the feds do is take a cut.
The preamble states, "secure the blessings of the liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Meaning our children.
The website has it correct. The summary does not, and apparently isn't thinking of the children.
Well, right now, dipshit, the police are on your side, and on the take, as you plunder 1/3 of what I earn. So it's not working now, either.
You'd lose your shit if the government forced you to do slave labor for an hour a day, but it's okay when you're taking that from the "rich".
Let me clarify: stop taxing us so much by reducing spending and having limited government like the founders wanted. The U.S. Treasury could start by creating money debt free and spending it into the economy, rather than borrowing money from the Fed at interest, and then having to pay the Fed hundreds of billions of dollars per year in interest.
Yes, let's discount our highway system, our military, our near universal literacy, and our low crime rates. All funded by tax monies.
Stop taxing us.
If you want to stop being taxed then explain to me how you plan to fund roads, bridges, education, police, firemen, defense, schools, medical care, etc. You planning to fund those things yourself voluntarily? How do you plan to get others to help out? I've never heard someone whining about taxes with a good answer for this but maybe you can be the first.
Let us be free to spend our money how we see fit, rather than forcibly confiscating it and wasting it.
First prove how society wouldn't fall apart by eliminating taxes.
It is very easy to waste other people's money. Governments excel at this.
If you think governments are so good at wasting your money go ahead and move somewhere where you won't be taxed. There are countries where this happens or where it happens very little. I assure you that you won't find living there to be very pleasant however. Taxes are the price you pay to live in a civilized society.
Well, sure, that would be nice. Keep 100% of your income - that's a 20% raise for most of us here. Don't pay any sales tax! That's cutting prices at all the stores another 5-10%, depending on where in the US you live.
Of course, you'll have a harder time getting to those stores, what with the roads falling apart. I hope you have a gun at home (and the grit to use it); the criminals who used to be kept in government-funded prisons will be out in force, ready to take those hard-earned dollars that the government quit stealing from you.
But hey, no more taxes! That's always nice.
The number $X spent on defense obscures the fact about how each defense dollar is spent.
It doesn't really matter how each defense dollar is spent. The problem isn't what specifically we are spending it on but the fact that we are spending too much of it on defense in total. We have a $600 billion defense department budget as of 2016. That is more than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, India, France and Japan combined. We could be getting amazing efficiency from our military spending and it would still be a pointless boondoggle. Our military is really just an inefficient jobs program. The money could be put to far better use as research dollars or to fixing our education system, or repairing/building our infrastructure. Instead we have the sort of military that a paranoid banana republic might build at vast cost. Are you aware that we borrowed almost exactly the ENTIRE defense department budget last year? We are like the guy who buys a Ferrari and then wonders why he's having trouble paying the rent.
We should literally know how much our government is spending on each tool, supply, or service being requisitioned, and what is included with each tool, supply, or service.
Let's stipulate that that was somehow magically possible. (it isn't) What exactly would you do with that information? Are you going to go argue that a secretary at NASA was being extravagant when she requisitioned a stapler? Beyond a certain point the cost of maintaining that information is greater than the value you get from maintaining it.
I'm an accountant and one of the principles of accounting is that you don't bother tracking something if the cost of tracking it is greater than the value gained from doing the tracking. Your proposal would waste an unbelievably vast amount of money on the overhead required to keep track of every paper clip. Far more money than you could possibly save by doing so. FAR more. For big ticket items, sure there should be reasonable transparency. But thinking that you can keep track of everything in fine grained detail and get actual positive value out of doing so is just naively unrealistic. It provably cannot be done.
"secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity."
I've had it wrong all this time. I learned it as posterity.
By OUR do they mean the 1%ers?
> I wonder what Ballmer's political affiliations are...
Ballmer has donated roughly equally to Republicans and Democrats - he doesn't seem to politically passionate either way. He's more of analyst than an advocate, a numbers guy. I don't follow Ballmer closely, but from what I've seen I'd posit he doesn't hate Obama or hate Bush, the opaqueness of the entire federal bureaucracy bugs him. I could be wrong though.
One can draw some conclusions from the nature of the project - though different readers will draw different conclusions. The project will compile thousands of pages of data - hard numbers compiled from government sources. It's compiling data, not bumper sticker slogans. If you think the data, reality, supports certain political positions, you can conclude that compiling the data and making it more readily available will support those positions.
Personally, it seems *to me* that some of the lofty ideals that liberals tend to focus on are best advocated in an inspirational medium such as music (ie "Imagine" by John Lennon), while the more pragmatic issues of costs etc that conservatives tend to focus on are seen more in the numbers. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, better or worse. Both are needed, I think - it's worthwhile to "Imagine there's no countries ... Imagine no possessions ... No need for greed or hunger". After imagining for a while, it is then time to look at how much we need to spend on which programs to reduce hunger in the US vs how much we should budget for international aid, etc.
The following socialist programs should be eliminated completely: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We need to roll the Federal government back to what it was prior to 1913.
There is a saying that you shouldn't tear down a wall until you completely understand why it was built in the first place. We have those programs because they address problems that were not being adequately handled before those programs were created. You seem to have some naive nostalgia that somehow things were better prior to 1913. They weren't.. You are demonstrating that you are either a troll or an idiot for suggesting otherwise. You are suggesting eliminating health care and financial security for millions of our most vulnerable citizens, mostly the elderly and poor.
I wonder if it will be any easier for Ballmer to figure out what the government spends, than it is for each of us to figure out what we actually owe in taxes? After weeks of filling out forms and finding receipts (and I use an accountant), I had to sign the form saying I agreed that the information was correct and complete. I am a programmer, but I honestly have no idea whatsoever if the check I wrote was the right amount. The only thing I am sure of is that the amount was much more than I thought it should be. I now have to pray that I didn't miss something and have the wrath of the IRS come down on me.
On one hand, I celebrate this activity. The more light you shed on government behavior, the better as far as I'm concern ( I think Snowden is a hero, for reference ). Trump and his administration need to be kept in check, to say nothing of the criminals in congress.
On the other...where the fuck was he during Obama's term? He's a hypocrite who only cares about this now that "His Guy" isn't in office, which means as soon as Trump's term ends, he'll go back to thinking the government can do no wrong.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Problem is Conservatives use the numbers to try to obscure the fact that their goal is to transfer all wealth to themselves ... they are the very definition of the word greed. They throw a bunch of numbers around in a way that makes things appear they are being fair, but without fail if the numbers are actually crunched, the wealthy wind up getting more and the poor wind up getting hosed.
You betcha. Let's let grandma come and live with you. Those meds of hers are expensive so it would be better if you fronted her the money. Come to think of it, let's get rid of NTSB, you can check those transportation vehicles you use by yourself before you get on...just to ascertain whether you'll still be alive at journey's end. Damn that government for keeping you safe! And where does the NiH get off doing all that research on diseases you'd love to have rather than the cures they are producing, the nerve of those people. You'll be perfectly safe drinking the water runoff from the chemical plants, damn that government for watching over it!
A little inflation never hurt anyone....just look at the Carter years. Them was high times!!!
These spending reports are needed to properly implement the peoples voice in their (the peoples) business of government. See http://3seas.org/pmwiki-gov/
Okay, so Balmer's wife explains to him what we all should have picked up on as we read "A Christmas Carol". Particularly Scrooge says to the ghost of Christmas Present and says "I'm taxed for them, isn't that enough?". It's kind of shameful that it takes being "bored" to actually get around being involved in our own government outside of lobbying. We all get busy, but if we aren't involved in our governments, well perhaps that is why the government spends part of its time (and our money) finding ways to negate or dilute our individual votes.And now of course we have Trump. It will be interesting to see what this organization comes up with.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
I find your response amusing. I would love to have my grandma come live with me. She is the sweetest lady I've ever known. My whole family is Mormon so we have few health problems because we are responsible and take good care of our bodies. The amount I'll pay in taxes over a lifetime could easily cover all the things you mentioned, and I would have a surplus.
Thanks to technological innovation, clean water is really easy to get almost anywhere on earth now if you have a little capital to spend. They have durable affordable solar powered devices that can extract water right out of the air even in the driest deserts.
We should get abolish the NTSB and the FDA. The free market would then be free to sort out all the issues that the "NTSB and FDA" supposedly solve. Any food, vehicle or service that was proven to be unsafe would be rejected and people would stop using it. Anyone negatively impacted could sue and seek recompense. Most of the advancements in medicine are done in the private sector, where funds are spent more efficiently than via some government program run by unqualified idiot(s). So yeah, we should abolish the NIH too.
Got some numbers to prove your theory?
We should get abolish the NTSB and the FDA. The free market would then be free to sort out all the issues that the "NTSB and FDA" supposedly solve. Any food, vehicle or service that was proven to be unsafe would be rejected and people would stop using it. Anyone negatively impacted could sue and seek recompense. Most of the advancements in medicine are done in the private sector, where funds are spent more efficiently than via some government program run by unqualified idiot(s). So yeah, we should abolish the NIH too.
Yep, you're completely full of shit and incredibly ignorant of the history of why those agencies were set up in the first place.
No wonder you beat your women and get kicked out of West African nations.
Thanks to technological innovation, clean water is really easy to get almost anywhere on earth now if you have a little capital to spend.
And you'd be surprised at how many people on this Earth outside your cozy little Mormon enclave don't have a little capital to spend. How long would it take to buy a $150 water purification system in Bangladesh on an income of $2 a day? Don't forget, you've got to keep a roof over your head and feed the family too! And naturally, you'll be wanting supplies for that system. Filters that can keep the arsenic out of the water don't last forever you know!
But at least the Bangladesh government isn't some purse-snatching nanny state where they force public water utilities on you! You can excercise choice! You can choose not to waste money keeping the toxins out of your water!
Problem is leftists use bullshit to try to obscure the fact that their goal is to transfer all wealth to themselves
FTFY
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Stop taxing us. Let us be free to spend our money how we see fit, rather than forcibly confiscating it and wasting it.
Says the guy who wants a police force, paved streets, regulated entrance to his country and food that doesn't glow in the dark, among other things.
So, will some private entity do that? paid by who? Following what party's interests?
State is necesary, taxes are necessary, unless until someone manages to find the genie in th bottle to make your wishes come true
I have worked with liberal organizations who are just as bad. They will lie and cheat to get their way. The problem isn't political but human. People don't want to be wrong and will cling on a hides right or wrong that fits their world view.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'd rather see a database that shows tax deductions and credits that subtract from Federal revenue. Let's see where potential revenue is being spent by business and individuals that might fund the public debt and might not be in the public interest to continue.
It's all nice and stuff that Steve Ballmer wants to do this. However, the government really should be doing this itself. Government accounting should meet the same standards as business accounting. Why? Because it is just as important, if not more so. Furthermore, all accounts should be fully public. Why? Because it's our money the government is spending.
For the poster who said that this is too much work: This is what every business in the country has to do. If it's too complicated, the government could consider simplifying things. But the government wants clarity in business accounts, for tax purposes. And we - the citizens - want clarity in seeing how the government spends our taxes. Sauce. Goose. Gander.
Won't happen, of course, because it would become much more difficult to hide pork. Ballmer's idea isn't going to work, because he will be unable to get the information that really counts.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
We pay 12.5% of our income to SS and Medicare. If those are pulling funds from income tax to pay for them then that's an issue.
What people what reduced is income tax.
You can't conflate SS, Medicare taxes with income tax.
There are very distinct things. And as such you have to talk about the programs they fund separately.
Work Safe Porn
The political bias is evident in the structure shown in Ballmer's chart. Problems include categories NOT specified by the Constitution, and the claims that certain goals fall under certain categories. People who think that federal funding (and thus control) of education promotes liberty, are sadly mistaken.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Forget replacing Obamacare with Trumpcare, you may just have a solution for US healthcare reform
As an aside, doesn't the mormon church impose a 10% tithe on all its members? And yet here you are, whining about taxes.
I don't think your generalizations are helpful. I can fire back that conservatives generally think all government social welfare spending is a giant fraud supporting lazy people while liberals dig into solid numbers about poverty, illnesses, crime rates, workplace injuries, and so forth.
The real problem there, if there is one core problem, is that "Conservative does detailed analysis of Iowa state Department of Human Services budget and makes the following 542 findings" and "Liberal does detailed analysis of Vermont state Department of Corrections and makes the following 384 findings" isn't going to attract attention ( much less improve advertising revenue ) like raging about lazy poor people or bleeding-heart liberals or raging about greedy business owners or racist conservatives.
The first thing I tried to find on Ballmer's usafacts.org was numbers on the H-1B visa program. Couldn't find a damn thing. I know the government tracks those numbers and I've seen some of them in news articles, so why aren't they within usafacts dataset?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
DNC starts civil war to keep slavery
DNC prevents civil rights for 30+ years
DNC top leaders filibuster, old school style, to delay vote on civil rights
48 of 51 Dixicrats (segregationists) return to the DNC for life
GOP ended slaver
GOP got women the right to vote
GOP got blacks equal rights.
Idiot AC blames GOP for everything they support that is wrong. Not sure why liberals can never be honest, actually its obvious they support repressing minorities and know that is unpopular.
> The real problem there, if there is one core problem, is that "Conservative does detailed analysis of Iowa state Department of Human Services budget and makes the following 542 findings" and "Liberal does detailed analysis of Vermont state Department of Corrections and makes the following 384 findings" isn't going to attract attention ( much less improve advertising revenue ) like raging about lazy poor people or bleeding-heart liberals or raging about greedy business owners or racist conservatives.
That's certainly true, and quite unfortunate. That's one thing I appreciated about Ross Perot - rather than run a shit ton of 15-second commercials, he did 30-minute presentations on TV with charts and graphs attempting to educate people on the issues he thought most important.
> I can fire back
You can of course fire back. You could even before listening to what I'm saying. Is that helpful? Does that advance us toward some mutually-agreeable solutions?
> conservatives generally think all government social welfare spending is a giant fraud supporting lazy people
I'm fairly sure you know that quite false, so yeah, firing back with lies would be not only "not helpful", but quite counter-productive. I'm glad you decided not to go down the road, at least not too far.
> liberals dig into solid numbers about poverty, illnesses, crime rates, workplace injuries, and so forth.
Come on now. I pointed to one example everyone knows - Lennon's "Imagine", every liberal knows it and sings along. Is there a famous song called "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" that conservatives know and love? Maybe that famous hit "Be cautious of unintended consequences"? They aren't called the liberal arts for nothing. ;) Pick just about any famous liberal speech and you can just about guarantee it'll heavily feature one of these three words: hope, dream, imagine. Match the caricature to the idealogy:
Hippy with a tambourine singing about love.
Accountant-type in a suit with glasses.
Which one is the liberal stereotype and which is the conservative caricature? There's a REASON it's that way and not the opposite. Nobody looks at an accountant and guesses they are probably liberal.
Look at the verbs in the campaign slogans for this election:
Donald Trump "Make America Great Again!" - MAKE
Bernie Sanders "A Future To Believe In" - BELIEVE
Hillary Clinton "I'm With HER" "Hillary For America" - No action at all ("her" is emphasized though)
The conservative action is "make", the liberal actions are "believe" and well, nothing. Though "I'm with HER" suggests dividing people into demographic groups. Is the action "divide"?
Well, given the wealth disparity, the scheme the rightists are using is definitely working much better.
Now the very wealthy own virtually everything and almost everyone from the far left to the far right are scrambling for crumbs.
Yay for the very poor right! Y'all won! *sigh*
Only I can judge you.
Which is obviously a very different goal from the Conservatives. Oh wait, that's not right.
A project like this could seriously make government spending more focused and more effective.
Where is the control with government spending today anyways?
Why does so many government projects fail?
Where does the money end up?
Well MS does get it's share no matter what.
But perhaps too much goes to wast in non-MS tech?
If MS can improve the overall spending I'm in.
I would love to see accountants, economists and other geeks tap into a public available datasources using Power BI and similar tools,
to create all kinds of reports and comparisons.
We also need to see who is conected to who, to get a picture of all the elegal bonds between the public and the private sector,
And also how family dominance, control this mashup of corrupt entaglements.
There are just as many wealthy lefties as there are wealthy righties.
Liberal organizations are generally working for the common good. Conservatives are generally working for destruction of the commons (water, air, environment) to the benefit of the very elite very few.
Only I can judge you.
It's not an actual economic philosophy. It's a pie-in-the-sky method of tricking democracies into destroying themselves so they can be raped by invaders like the Roman Empire. It's a devastatingly effective strategy.
You misread my post. I was never kicked out of any West African country. In fact I'm sure they'd love to have me back in Africa if New York didn't have such egregious family laws that trap people (prevent them from moving) like me who have kids and joint custody. I've never hit a woman in my life.
Unmask yourself you Anonymous Coward and I will be happy to debate with you the pros/cons of the FDA, NTSB, and NIH.
There are just as many mega rich people that classify themselves as Liberals. Hollywood is overflowing with actors that have more money than sense along with high visibility. Billionaires and multi-millionaires will fund and support any side that can help them grow their wealth. Self interest is the name of the game not endless political rhetoric.
The political process in the US could be fixed over night by making a few straight forward changes. Set an absolute limit on the amount anyone can contribute to any campaign and disallow all campaign contributions from any 501(c) organization. Corporate contributions will fall under the same rules as an individual. For Christ sakes when someone or some company donates $50 million dollars to a candidates campaign they will want a ROI. Had Clinton been elected President she would have never had to make a decision on anything important because those who funded her campaign had already given her the decisions. Trump some how managed to buy himself which is a novel approach and you have to hand it to the man he sure knows how to send people into screaming tizzy's over the most inane controversies. He serves as a wonderful distraction so the countries legislators can continue to destroy the country with their every action. The Legislative Branch has more power than the Executive Branch by far. They have the power to override almost every single decision coming from the Executive branch while maintaining their impunity. About the only absolute power of consequence that the executive has is the nuclear launch authority but if someone takes out the executive branch that authority transfers to the band of morons scratching their assess in the Capital building. One side would insist on firing off all the nukes just to be sure and the other half would be singing give peace a chance while swearing up and down that the incoming missile tracks are the result of a malfunctioning radar system because according to their world view they cannot conceive of somebody actually doing something so crazy as to launch nukes at the US. For all our sakes we can always hope DC gets taken out first while a dual session of Congress is in session while getting ready to hold hearings to find out if the President's second cousins (once removed) boyfriends daughter-in law visited Russia to tour the Kremlin 20 years ago during a high school field trip and how that might have effected the presidential election.
And lastly set hard term limits on every member of the Legislative branch. While not as flashy as standing in the street yelling obscenities at the "other side" these simple and straight forward changes will do the job. The current political rhetoric and non-ending recriminations from all sides will only create anarchy. And a state of anarchy guarantees the fight for control will always fall to the strongest and those willing commit any actions as long as they come out on top. This scenario has played out throughout history and starts by the existing government to co-op and turn the countries military forces on it's on citizens or the current military leadership appointing a head of state or ruling body with the understanding the military gets the last word on any decision the government makes.
Assad would not be in power if his military did not support him. That support is bought by enriching the military leadership while the rank and file have regular paying jobs and a little power of their own when out in public.
The Supreme Leader in Iran serves the military branch of the government. And the military rivals some of the largest international corporations on the planet. As long as the military hierarchy gets paid the Supreme Leader and other front men can act like they are actually running the country.
Ditto x100 NK.
The USSR dissolved because the military commandeers were paid off by the new government. Basically the new government outbid the old. The military leaders all became multi-millionaires when state owned assets were divided and sold off for huge paydays.
Candidates are bought off entirely in today's system and those who are bought off usually have the best chance of winning multiple consecutive terms.
Liberal organizations are generally working for the common good.
Liberal organizations generally have good intentions.
That is not the same as working for the common good.
Liberals are generally working for the good of liberals at the expense of conservatives. Conservatives are generally working for the good of conservatives at the expense of liberals.
Both statements are a reflection of a very large problem with society. *Both* liberals and conservatives should be trying to find common ground working for the good of *everyone*. The political polarization we see today (which you are continuing) is *part of the problem*.
We agree, they are working for the common good. Perhaps they don't achieve it but at least they have positive goals.
Only I can judge you.
Ahh, the old "if something is unsafe then maiming or killing a few hundred (or thousand) people is an acceptable cost for consumers to reject that thing" trope.
Newsflash: consumers can never have perfect information about a service or product. Did you get your lettuce from Hillbilly farms? Does it come with a side of salmonella this week, or was that Hullbully farms just down the road that had that last week? Just how much lithium in 7-UP or how much cocaine in Coca-Cola or how much nightshade in your homeopathic teething remedy does it take to kill someone? After all, I just used a few drops and my kid is fine! I don't know why yours died. Maybe he was just weak!
Economically it is *far, far* cheaper to have the NTSB, FDA, FCC, etc. than not having them. I don't know what you've been smoking, but a simple napkin analysis could tell you that.
That's all pretty much demonstrably false. Most medical advancements are done in a public university setting via NIH grants. Perhaps you should take the time to read the NIH-funded papers instead of stupidly prattling on about how it is useless?
I am also curious about the money the government never sees: Ballmer was tax dodger in chief Microsoft as it kept $120 billion off shore. http://www.seattletimes.com/bu... and https://crosscut.com/2014/08/w... I posted this story with more context about his tax dodging and Slashdot declined it.
So sicking the IRS on citizens that disagree with them is "common good"
Using the spy agencies to spy on political opponents is "common good"
Handing guns by the thousands to Mexican criminals and causing hundreds of Mexicans to be murdered is "common good"
I think you are mistaking what "common good" means. Oppression and murder is not "common good" even if it used against people you don't like, say like black people or Mexicans. You are either an idiot or a bigot, depending on which of the above done by a liberal government you agree with.
Oh no, they claim that they are achieving "a more fairer redistribution of wealth", by taking from the wealthy and redistributing to the poor. Of couse they are exempt.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Don't you want to drive a million dollar car? I know I do. Inflation is your friend.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The site is really weak tea. If one really want to follow the money, one has to trace it right back to which specific Corporate Officers, Corporate Lobbyists, Politicians, and Political Consultants, Law Firms and Foreign Leaders are actually putting the money into their pockets. The site simply doesn't take this essential step, but rather sets up yet another mechanism for the already fat cats to steer political dialog in their already posh direction.
Activists really need to scrape this site to the bone and then go about filling in all the details, particularly highlighting the exact wallets where most federal spending winds up.
One small addition who benefits from each government contract not the companies but the individual(s) who owns them
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
> Liberal organizations generally have good intentions.
> That is not the same as working for the common good.
Absolutely. Or at least 99.9% of liberals generally have good intentions. Once in a while, the leaders of advocacy organizations get so passionate about trying to beat the other team and such that they temporarily forget the good intentions.
For me, the #1 issue on which there is a huge difference between liberals' good intentions is their focus on race and generally dividing people into groups, which is then the basis for their condescending form of racism. They sincerely believe that they are doing my daughter a service by insisting that she be given extra points in any competitive situation college admission criteria, federal hiring preferences, SBA loans, etc because she's black and female. What my daughter hears when she looks at college admissions is "black people like you aren't smart enough to compete on your merits, so we have to give you some extra points". The SBA is effectively telling her "we know you black people aren't capable of preparing a solid business plan, so we'll give you done extra make-up points." Fuck you! My daughter's IQ and test scores are well above those of the people making those rules. She's smarter and more capable than the liberals who take pity on her. They mean well, but "taking pity on her", "giving her a little extra help" is nothing but a condescending form of racism. Because this condescending racism is endorsed by our country's schools, government, and other institutions, it has a certain amount of credibility. People take it seriously, as though my daughter's complexion really DOES indicate she's less intelligent or less capable. That makes it more damaging than those KKK idiots who at least ADMIT they are racist, and therefore their opinions should obviously be ignored.
Solution is simple. Put a lot of money in medical research and get rid of medical patents. This will save a lot of money in healthcare on long run. Only problem is that medical companies will lose their value.
You are jumping to a conclusion that may be false, however.
I'm not jumping to any conclusion. We spend WAY too much on our military relative to our actual needs. This is not even a point of debate. There is no rational justification for the US spending more money than the next 8 largest military budgets combined, especially given that most of them are allies.
$600 billion sounds like a lot, but we can't tell if it's actually going to the sort of expenses within defense that we think or not.
$600 billion IS a lot of money. We know perfectly well where most of it goes. The vast majority goes to operations, personnel, procurement, and R&D. Most of this is already a matter of public record if you can be bothered to actually look.
No, but I am going to argue if she spent $100 on that stapler, Or if she hired her nephew's high-priced stapler service company to come in and deliver 10 staplers for $500, because the federal government has a LOT of secretaries, and there's going to be a need for MANY staplers, so it is naturally important that when they get these staplers, the government has applied a procedure, so they're getting good deals on such things.
First of all, you are stepping over a dollar to pick up a nickel. We're spending a trillion dollars on something like the F35 and you're concerned someone might have overpaid for a stapler? That's idiotic and wasteful. You'll spend more tax dollars trying to track the stapler than the value of the stapler. Second, I've been through the government procurement process. It doesn't work at all like you seem to think it does. Third, there already are very well respected oversight agencies like the GAO who do a pretty good job keeping an eye on how government agencies spend their money.
No.... That is not a fundamental principle of accounting.
It most certainly is a fundamental principle of accounting. Talk to anyone who actually is an accountant if you don't believe me. Seriously, I'm a certified accountant and this is stuff they talk about in Accounting 101 classes. You really have no idea what you are talking about. Seriously, if you can show a way to track even the most minor spending details in an economically productive way there is a Nobel prize in it for you.
That is a lazy accountant's principle that only holds water before the event of data-driven companies.
It's adorable how you think data driven means tracking everything to a wasteful degree. Being data driven doesn't mean all data is economically worth tracking even when it is possible to track. It has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with being fiscally responsible. Only an idiot spends more money to track something than the value that will be received from tracking it. If there is economic value in tracking something then it will be tracked. If the economic value of tracking something (not required by law) is less than the cost that would be incurred to track it then it is a waste of money by definition. Every single company on the planet follows this principle. Stuff you sell to customers gets tracked. Large asset purchases get tracked. Minor expenses like office supplies generally are not and it would be a monumental waste of money and time to try. They are given a budget and if the budget gets exceeded then questions get asked about why. This is how it works in the real world for both companies and governments.
If you work for $Big_Retailer, and you buy a stapler from your office, you pay with a Company CC, and Accounting gets the invoice from you and posts the expense to the ledger, or you file a PO for your stapler, and accounting posts the expense to the ledger, Etc, and an Asset tag gets fixed to the stapler.
Nobody is going to put an asset tag on a
> Liberal "compassion" is just a nicer way of looking down their noses.
it it is, but let's also remember it's heartfelt and sincere. They really, truly believe that they are being good and helpful with all these "extra points for black people" schemes and such. They don't understand the damage of training a generation to believe that black people* aren't smart enough, aren't capable of competing on their merits. Liberals aren't evil, they're just wrong about race. Very, very wrong.
* A few colors in RGB notation:
Black: 0, 0, 0
White, 255, 255, 255
Middle gray: 128, 128, 128
Morgan Freeman's face: 183, 147, 111
Will Smith: 228, 134, 105
Americans of African descent are actually closer to white than to black. They are pinkish-brown. There are no black people.
> racism over the last 250 years
It's 2017. It's not 250 years ago. So let's ask about *today*. Today, which does more damage:
a) Some idiot hick dressing in a sheet in his buddy's backyard in rural Kentucky
b) State governments endorsing official policy that they recognize black students aren't as capable as white students, and therefore need some "bonus points", a "head start" in order to compete with whites.
In my family's experience (b) has been far more damaging. The opinions of some idiot shaving his head and wearing a sheet can be ignored and quite obviously should be. It really doesn't matter what Jeff Berry thinks. Nobody cares. Jeff Berry's racism matters not a bit, to anyone other than Jeff Berry. On the other hand, the government is actively teaching an entire generation that "blacks" are inferior, that you should feel sorry for them because they can't make it - and most kids today believe that bullshit.