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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.
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.
> 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.