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Kamala Harris Introduces Bill To Send Millions To Local Governments For Tech Support (theverge.com)
Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has introduced legislation that would allocate millions of dollars for local government to create dedicated teams that could "update and rebuild" government systems. The Verge reports: The United States Digital Service, an office established in 2014 after the widespread failures of Healthcare.gov, provides IT support for the federal government, bringing technologists into the government to work on tools like federal websites. It's continued to operate under the Trump administration, and some states, Harris' office notes, have experimented with similar teams. Harris' bill, the Digital Service Act, would provide an annual $50 million to the federal service, but it also goes further, allocating $15 million per year to state and local governments to create similar teams.
Harris' bill, the Digital Service Act, would provide an annual $50 million to the federal service, but it also goes further, allocating $15 million per year to state and local governments to create similar teams. Under the plan, the national Digital Service would offer two-year grants, giving state and local governments between $200,000 and $2.5 million per year. Those governments would be required to take on 20 percent of costs and to spend at least half of the money on talent, rather than tech. The national Digital Service, under the proposal, would report bi-annually to Congress on the progress of the grantees. The bill would provide funding through 2027.
Harris' bill, the Digital Service Act, would provide an annual $50 million to the federal service, but it also goes further, allocating $15 million per year to state and local governments to create similar teams. Under the plan, the national Digital Service would offer two-year grants, giving state and local governments between $200,000 and $2.5 million per year. Those governments would be required to take on 20 percent of costs and to spend at least half of the money on talent, rather than tech. The national Digital Service, under the proposal, would report bi-annually to Congress on the progress of the grantees. The bill would provide funding through 2027.
technical support pork/subsidies for the tech industry! Little of which will actually be used for anything constructive.
;)
It is the government after all.
Just my 2 cents
Sounds like the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
If the state governments need this, then they can tax their own citizens.
I thought, why in the hell does the government want people calling them when a Windows 10 update kills everything?
Governments never seem to be able to attract good talent no matter how much money they are required to spend on it. Government simply does not attract the best and brightest most of the time. I'm also sure that there is nothing buried in here about "information sharing" between state and federal agencies.
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Two options when states need to do something:
A. Your state decides what is needed in your state. State taxpayers approve it via whatever mechanisms your state has. Taxpayers pay the cost for it.
B. Kamala Harris and the rest of the Washington politicians decide what your state needs. Washington politicians approve taxing you. Taxpayers send their money to Washington. Washington sends part of it back to your state. Tax payers pay the actual cost of program, plus the bureacracy cost of sending it back and forth, plus Washington's cut.
It's pretty plain why Kamala Harris wants to send your money through Washington and keep a portion of it. Why YOU would agree with that I have no idea. Unless you're just a superfan of politicians that play for team D. Superfans do non-sensical things.
Typical Californian graft, dressed up for the modern age.
New Zealand was a hoax!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHonH9AiCVI
The word for Kamala starts with "NI" and ends with "ER" . Fill in the blacks.
so tech savvy their biggest issue is,
;)
Is our internet up or do we have to use the free wifi across the street again to get to our Office 365 accounts and use our cloud apps and data?
Just my 2 cents
This is just standard, time-honored "pork belly politics." California companies are betting that this legislation will channel loads of federal money to California companies. She is just looking out for the interests of her past and future campaign donors. Very transparent what the intent is here. This is just how politics is done.
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Every on this board is so very negative. Every post it seems like. Lighten up a bit and grab a drink, smoke a joint, rub one out.... so much negativity
is so tiny in the scheme of thing's it's hardly news. I'm not sure what this is. It's embarrassingly small thinking from someone with designs on the presidency.
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I ALSO chose to spend money on shit I wanted instead of shit I needed.
When may I expect my big check from the Federal Government to cover my poor decision-making?
Volunteers from FAANG did the Federal sites. If this paltry amount goes to states, it will probably be down payment to second rate slave owners like IBM, Oracle, or InfoSys.
We have roads, water, bridges, dams that need massive work.
And she is worried about fucking around with software!!!!
She should have a backbone and push to increase gasoline/diesel tax slowly to pay for these other infrastructure, while getting an OSS going on gov systems.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If the idea that blue states were paying for other states was true, CA and NY whores wouldn't be whining about muh deeduckshinz. Truth is, the rest of the country is subsidizing your insanity - only, it now ends. Pay your fair share like the rest of us, shithead.
https://d.tube/#!/v/phusionphil/3kat85le
It's not even the state, it's a very small handful of industries that skim an absurd amount of wealth from the public with very few of them contributing anything of actual value to society. Banking and silicon valley, in particular.
Take these bloated, festering vampires out of the equation and the numbers change dramatically.
$65M here, $100M there. Soon it adds up to real money!
You should take your argument with this guy to email or something.
No one cares.
Let's say you are right, half the "Insightful" posts here are by lunatics screeding off on a pet topic so he would fit in perfectly if what you say is true.
The biggest reason Harris is DOA on the national stage is she's pushing reparations to atone the "original sin" of slavery in America. Since those dollars will be extracted from the donor class, she's toast, even on the democratic ticket.
This is the US government, so it's another opportunity for big corporations to receive pork-barreling.
While the purpose of her funding bill is creating employees, this phrase suggests she's making it difficult for a government department to throw all the money at a contractor and wait for results.
Which presumably can be spent entirely on bling, bringing the allowance for bling upto 60% of the total budget.
Wait, a government bill demanding results, or at least, shaming those that don't deliver benefits: She won't last in the swamp of US politics.
I understand this is a test-case for a short-term problem but it's also why pork-barreling is systemic: The cost of finding government-approved employees and promising they're out of work in 2 years, is high.
Do you actually believe half of the shit you spout? The top states by GDP closely correlate with the states based on population. The top 10 states by GDP have 56.29% of the country's GDP. Those states also have 53.25% of the population. If you look at the election results for 2016, 6 of those 10 states went for Trump.
Then you act like anyone who doesn't live in one of those blue states is some kind of simpleton that couldn't possibly manage without your superior knowledge of how they should live their lives. Could you be more sanctimonious? Go read Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed. Maybe you'll learn something and come to your senses.
Rather than running a high overhead federal government giveaway program the brain damaged broad should instead lobby for a tax reduction with the suggestion that local governments raise their taxes slightly to capture the money directly. Then more money goes to local IT needs and less goes to Federal government administrators in their lavish offices.
{^_^}
Probably, in the details of the bill, it will turn out that almost all of the 65 million is going to end up in the hands of one beneficiary company who made a substantial donation to Kamala Harris's election campaign.
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That lying is over-popular here and screeding morons designated "insightful" does not excuse direct, constant, unabashed, even-after-direct-fact-check-correction-to-his-fucking-fat-face-lying. There is no excuse.
If you don't want to see me noting this, you should tell him to stop lying and atone for the intentional misstatements he's made. I don't feel like stopping otherwise, sorry. Too many lying faggots in the world. No quarter.
Nah, even lying is better than troll-spamming.
Go home, Ivan.
"blue" ones
No more asinine federal property tax deductions for you. Wealth generation will follow the productive, and the productive are evacuating your blue people's republics as fast as they can.
Well, as he lies you get both, sorry. Package deal. You don't make the rules about this. Liars get the boot, if you don't like the boot, tell the liar to cut out the faggot shit. There's no other path I'm offering here. Sorry.
Windbourne, your faggoty whining doesn't fix roads, water, bridges or dams. Your advocacy is for the richest corporations not to pay their taxes to pay for those things. You're a moron. She has plans for infrastructure as well, sorry dipshit.
That's why she's the politician, and you're just the whiny faggot bitch who gets to watch : because you don't have the balls to challenge her, FAGGOT, and if you did you'd get your ass kicked off and fed to you, BITCH.
she's gone quiet because she's going around getting money from big donors. She can't make too much noise while she's doing that or she'll get called out for being bought and paid for. Biden's doing the same thing. He spent the last few weeks in the Caribbean wining and dining with elites.
If we had a proper functioning media they'd be calling them both out on this shit, but, well, we don't.
Meanwhile Warren, sadly, got destroyed by some dumb college chick things she did pretending to be an Indian Princess. Bernie's out there doing rallies and panels and ignoring the big money folks.
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He just wants his bosses to show him how he can blame China for it. /.
And then he can complain about it on
it just shows how truly awful a candidate Hilary was. We're talking about voting patterns overall, not one bad election with the most hated women in America.
I don't need to "believe" anything, it's pretty well documented that states that lean to the GOP depend heavily on the Feds. It's not hard to understand why. They don't invest in their people, and when you don't do that the people who can leave because the roads, schools, water supply and air quality suck rocks. This is the part where you point out folks leaving California and ignore the folks moving there....
Sowell's a hack, btw.
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Can we hobble established Internet providers when they try to shut down municipal Wi-Fi/fiber efforts? $15 million a year just to support those problems would probably make more of a difference than anything else techy that money would be put to.
No, she's not into the superficial stuff like wearing jack boots and an armband and she's not wearing a uniform designed by Hugo Boss, but she's right there on the substance. As California AG she advocated for jailing people who disagreed with her on Global Warming. She pretended to go after the bankers after the 2008 mortgage meltdown, but in reality she shook-down some big banks who in-turn got the money by raising rates on their customers (the bankers themselves were not hurt at all). All the top-down big government garbage the woman pushes just increases the power of the corporate-government "partnerships". Benitio Mussolini would be proud of her.
I'm old enough to remember when the political left in America feared federal prosecutors, federal spying agencies, and alliances between corporate America and government; they also used to champion free speech - particularly championing the most divisive and objectionable speech.
Today's political left is the complete opposite.
They will always want more money, like any government organization. But they will spend it all on diversity hiring and sexual harassment settlements and won't have any money for licenses. So they will start installing open source products. And Microsoft and Oracle will come down hard and put them out of business.
So just to a little math... I know its hard... 15m allocation year/50 states means 300,000 per state per year. That is basically 2 techies and some hardware in each state (oh yeah - this is for local gov. as well... so think about that). This is a joke. If there was a B instead of a M it might be worth arguing about.
We need less government. Far less. Not more. I expect nothing less from Democrats. They are a one trick pony.
To quote Reagan,
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Isn't it weird how leftists are all about taking from those who have and giving to those who have not, and deserving has nothing to do with it? Right up until the point that it's their own money that's being redistributed. Then suddenly they pull a 180 and become tightfisted fiscal conservatives. I'm baffled and don't have any explanation of why people would betray their sacred principles.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Who in thier right mind why saddle themselves with the liability of hardware? Cloud.
n/t
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
As a 1/1024 slave myself, I can take a DNA test to prove it, I look forward to these reparations.
Who made government that way.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Anyone who cares about security.
For those who create that which they then profess to hate, then make worse in the name of improvement and enslave in the name of freedom.
I have very little time for the right wing extremists that make up American politics, and less for those that support such gibberish.
The idea, whilst sound, is doomed to fail because voters want dysfunction and a corrupt government. They want things to fail. The Libertarians and Republicans especially, but I'd say 60% if Democrats as well.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The answer should be obvious... Irish need not apply for reparations.
Seriously. Our expanding government is a direct result of allowing public employees both to unionize, and then allowing such unions to donate to political campaigns.
Public-employee unions dominate the top political spenders in the US.
And what's in the interest of public employee unions? More government! Government by the government for the government.
All other political donors outside of public employee unions have a vested interest in the overall success of society - they can't just donate to politicians who'll use the powers of government to funnel more resources to them like public employee unions do.
And who are public employee unions organizing against anyway?
No less a progressive than Franklin D. Roosevelt said this:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government.
Public employee unions distort the policy-making of government.
Just look at the pensions retired government employees get in places like New York, Chicago, and many California cites - the places where public employee unions are strongest. Look at the tax rates in those places. Look at the numbers of people actively fleeing those locations.
FYI, the data you love masturbating to is 15 years out date. That's fine, though, I see that you are a superfan for team D, so facts don't matter.
I understand because I'm kinda the same way - I still have a John Elway jersey. I didn't publicly say "the Broncos are the best because in the Redskins game John Elway rushed for ...". I'd look silly citing a stat that old.
It's cool though, enjoy rooting for the team you picked.
Interesting priorities.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
The American left is not the opposite of what it was; the Republicans are. The American Left today is about there the Republicans used to be.
The actual Fascists are right between Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats have this impossibly hard time holding on to the real legit people like Bernie trying to pull them back "when they were great" and the Fascist wing that just thinks Republicans are a bit too extreme.
A real Republican with great ironically is called a RINO! They only have a home with the Democrats today but they have to tolerate pandering herd all the cats from their position all the way to classic real Democrats (called socialists.) Actual old school real socialists are just about extinct so people lack a defining contrast... only the old slanderous label remains.
Meanwhile most Republicans are so tribal they are literally mentally retarded by their cult-like loyalty to their tribal identity. This should be CLEAR to any level headed person watching Trump debase almost every single defining trait the Republican tribe.
> If you want to better understand how little they value security, just look at corporations because the same types of assholes are in charge of the budgets.
Fifteen years ago you would have had a good point.
Next week I'm starting a new job, at a new company. Both my current company and the new one each spend over a million dollars per year on information security. So if I look at what these companies budget for security, it shows they value it very highly.
Companies are starting to realize not only the value of security as they used to define the term, but also this important insight:
Security is Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.
Starting with availability, that means basically resistant to craahing or becoming unavailable - even when under attack. A DOS attack is an attack against availability. Here's the thing - can a program that crashes unintentionally, when not even under attack, be secure? No, the availability leg of security is all about having reliable systems. If your systems are secure, it means they must be reliable - they won't have downtime at the wrong time. "Reliably up and working all the time" is a subset of "secure".
How about integrity? Integrity means an attacker can't mess up the data, and no other threat can. The data will be correct even if someone is trying to make it incorrect. Can a system which produces bad results be secure? Nope, correct results are a subset of security.
Lastly, the part of security most laypersons most often think of - keeping secrets secret. A secure system won't let your secrets get out.
So a secure system is one you can depend on, it's always up and running, doesn't crash, and it's operation and outputs are dependable - the results are right, all the time. Does that sound like what you want for the systems your business depends on? That's absolutely what corporate officers want. And that's a subset of security. Combined, "dependably up and running, and producing correct results every time" gets you about 90% of the way to "secure". So secure practices are really good idea even if you didn't care about data leaks.
My sample of corporations is a bit biased toward those who spend heavily on security, because I'm an expensive security professional. You don't call me unless you want to spend a good chunk of money on security.
My experience suggests that people get serious about security after they've been bitten. Nobody is more ready to buy quality locks and alarms than someone who just got burglarized. Most of the companies that have been negligent over the last 20 years have now been bitten and learned their lesson.
California has tried twice to modernize its vehicle registration system from the sixties, and failed twice, and thrown away tens of millions of dollars in the process.
What's needed is competence, and you can't just buy that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When Californians want to support California orange growers, they each send $1.00 to Washington and ask Washington to send $0.60 back to California orange growers.
When Texans want to support pecan growers in Texas - well mostly they buy pecans and make a pecan pie, no government involved. But when they want to involve government, they have the state spend $1.00 each supporting pecan growers.
Californians then brag that until recently they sent a lot of money to Washington. This perplexes Texans because sending your money to Washington seems like a pretty stupid thing to do, in their opinion.
The Federal Government can't give away anything they have not first stolen from the people and states. We are long overdue to reduce the size and scope of the Federal Government.
My city councilman lives two blocks away. I can stop by any time. Most evenings he'll be out in his shop working on a hot rod. I've had a fifteen minute conversation with him, and a 15 minute conversation with his opponent in the last election.
My Texas state Senator (state laws) does a call-in program on the local radio station every week. I've called and pointed out where I thought he was looking at things the wrong way, had a 5 minute conversation with him.
My Washington senator - don't know where they live, and I doubt I'll ever have a conversation with them.
Let me guess, the bill does not require governments to hire American, opening the door for them to layoff American IT workers and replace them with Indian contractors?
The key is to teach the talented to code WELL. Hint: you don't do that in Javascript or on Windows.
Everyone can pile on now CB has shown WindBourne to be the idiot fraud that he is.
Why doesn't she drop everything and focus on my pet peeve?
--
WindBourne
ACAB
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan
Casteism
If this was a push to develop plug & play tools for small towns and municipalities to use, I'd be all for it. Instead of every town or even city needing to pay millions to develop city websites, phone apps, information portals, bill-pay sites, service request sites, etc., it would be a great cost reducer to have something already developed and free to use for these places to plug in their relevant data and get it up and running with less cost and time, and easier to maintain if bug & security patches were coming from the Fed. It should be open source, and modular so you can run city sites for towns of 50,000 to cities like L.A. and Chicago. Why have 50 different implementations of BMV (DMV) or welfare or Medicaid or Dept. of Revenue software with all that tax-payer cost of re-inventing the wheel just because you're in Texas or New Jersey? States and cities could be free to choose what they want and don't, and reduce our national digital overhead costs. I don't know if any of this is being thought of, but this is what I think could be a big benefit to lower local government IT expense.
If she had her way, all the tech bought would be license plate scanners, facial recognition cameras, wiretaps, weakening of cryptography, DNA databases.