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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Just so you know the government set up a web site that contains all information about government spending. To quote from the web site,

"The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act) requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:

1. the name of the entity receiving the award;
2. the amount of the award;
3. information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc;
4. the location of the entity receiving the award;
5. a unique identifier of the entity receiving the award."

After that brilliant introduction this is the main graphic that is on the front page of the web site:
Thanks government bureaucracy! That makes it all better! (and clearer too!) Too bad they can't do math...

5 comments:

  1. Ryan, that's an interesting website. I didn't know it existed so I appreciate the link.

    You know, I actually view this as a good sign for this reason:

    The world is becoming transparent enough that it is increasingly easy to see mistakes and corruption.

    At least, unlike previous generations, there is a government website where you can actually see mistakes, corruption, and do fact checking, etc... For example, you can right now download the health care bill and read for yourself whether Obama is enlisting death squads or not.

    Then, when you find errors you can point them out to your congressman or senator or whoever.

    I actually have confidence that if you can find bona fide errors (such as math errors) on an official government websites, if you report it to the right people, it has a chance of getting fixed. (Unless the error is a dispute over interpretation. Those errors will always be a problem, but at least now you can see them.)

    Again, the error has to be real. Stating a rumor being spread by email or talk radio doesn't count if it is bogus. Like Obama not being an American citizen.

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  2. Ryan, Actually, upon further investigation you are right. There are a lot of mistakes with that site!

    Now we will see if the get fixed or not. :)

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  3. May be a daltonian or may be they need more scientific brains to do politics : some new Benjamin Franklin, may be some of you.

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  4. Even worse, I think the contract for building this site was in the millions of dollars. I'm a web developer by trade and I can tell you that I could have done something better for a cost that was orders of magnitude less.

    ReplyDelete

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