Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Transparent eh?

This is the funniest thing I've read about the stimulus plan.

To address the concerns of bailout-weary lawmakers and taxpayers, Biden and Summers stressed that the money spent on stimulus will be monitored closely. Summers noted the Internet may be used to ensure transparency and track projects' progress. "And there will be accountability for the success in carrying out those investments," he said.

As someone who has worked in IT for the past 10 years I can only laugh out loud at this idea. I've seen companies who spend millions of dollars on projects and they can barely figure out on any given day a) where the money was spent and b) the progress of a project. And these are people who work in IT full time and whose job it is to figure this out. And for companies with a few thousand workers and at most a few billion in sales all contained in one corporation.

Yet Obama thinks that the government will somehow manage to track $1 trillion worth of projects spread out over 50 states, with thousands of contractors, tens of thousands of subcontractors and - supposedly - 3 million workers. All that will be tracked on a website run by the government....the same government that runs such successful organizations as the DMV and the Post Office and public education system. The same government that had oversight of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The same government that produced the infamous $1000 hammers. The same government that runs the border patrol which allows 2 million people to sneak by every year. The same government that runs Amtrak which has never, in its 40 year history not lost money.

This bloated, unionized, inefficient, outdated, lazy, incompetent federal government is going to allow me to go online and see where my tax dollars are being spent?

Thank you Obama. That laugh I just had after reading the article was a great Christmas present.

RIP AMERICA
1776-2009

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