The New PJM ‘Transparency Project’: Questions for Our Readers
As you no doubt know, transparency—openness in government, really—has become the new watchword in our political culture. Beneath the headline “Transparency and Open Government,” President Obama promised his administration would have an “unprecedented level of openness.”
How did that turn out?
In his role as the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is now preparing what might be called the Mother of All Transparency Investigations, having branded the Obama administration, with some justification, “one of the most corrupt.” (As I write, the Bloomberg news agency is reporting Treasury Secretary Geithner’s aides—who helped engineer the $700 billion bank rescue—reaped millions working for banks and hedge funds.Issa claims his investigation could save $200 billion for taxpayers. Who knows if that’s accurate? But more important even than the savings is the principle of transparency in government without which few, if any, savings are possible, ever. For that Issa must be applauded.
Toward this end, PJ Media has been working in the background on a small initiative of our own we refer to as “The Transparency Project.” The emphasis is on the small because a tiny company like ours cannot hope to examine more than a few areas in the vast and almost endless sea of our government.
Which is why I am writing this. I have some questions for our audience.
First, which areas of government would you like us to focus on?
We cannot promise we will follow exactly what you wish, but as a company that grew from the blogosphere, we can assure you we respect the wisdom of crowds. And in the case of government transparency, the wisdom of crowds is not only useful—it’s necessary. There is simply too much material for any company or group to handle. We need the expertise of our PJM readers and PJTV viewers.
Easy. Congressmen and Senators all become wealthy after just a few years in office. So do all their aides! They get all kinds of inside info, and it is completely legal; Not legal for us mind you, but for them.
Sharron Angle asked Reid this question. Public servant all his life. How did he become worth $12M?
They sell their votes. It is institutionalized bribery. Folks know they do it for campaign contributions, but most are not aware of the actual insider trading bribery.
A demand for their investments to be held in trust, the same way the President’s is, would generate great scandal.
I agree with Marc, this is not about serving your country, it is about becoming VERY wealthy once you are in office. How, Where and When? I would love money trail investigations on these fat cats.They are robbing the taxpayers and no one says anything. Thanks for the opportunity to speak out
Although in agreement, who could not be, with Marc, Cheri and the others who have said much the same thing my response is SO WHAT?
It’s not exactly news or hidden under a bushel. It’s been known for years and years AND YEARS. Again SO WHAT ? What we get from “clean-up” campaigns is blather. What the Congressmen, Senators, all members of the same exclusive gentlemens’ club are “gonna do”. All with their eyes on sound bites or photo opportunities. It’s show biz and show biz is highly paid and totally without ethical standards on the premise that all standards are relative anyway so what does it matter. AND the most important part of the job is to BE A STAR.
What we get are congressional “investigations” for the TV cameras. So members of the “investigating” committees can “show their muscles”,and have their day in the sun. Then “reports” that are archived . ALL at great cost, and with the work meted out to insiders / favourites who charge what they think their efforts are worth. The catchword of the moment is being “the best is good enough bcause I’m worth it”.Expecially if someone else, the US Treasury, is paying the bills.
WHEN have we seen ANY of these corrupt is too kind a description men or women go to prison, e.g. the more recent egregious examples Charles Rangel and Maxine Walters. Real prison not country clubs.
WE HAVE this now BECAUSE politics has become a paid profession with no rules no limits except how much the job can be bankrolled.
That being the case we get the kinds of people we get.Many of the favourites with histories of low standards of behaviour, debauched, disrespect even contempt for their electors,mis-use of public funds and manipulation of the Law to avoid the penalties meted out to “lesser” citizens in this Country of Law in which “each citizen is equal under the Law”.
And yet these kinds of persons are permanent fixtures in the agencies of government OUR government. In office year after year after year after year. How does that happen?
We do not care enough to CHANGE the set up for OUR government servants that we have accepted this for so long. Our primary effort to get onto that bandwagon any way we can.
Pete Seeger put it all to music : “Our leaders are the best of men and we elect them again and again.”
“We do not care enough to CHANGE the set up for OUR government servants that we have accepted this for so long. Our primary effort to get onto that bandwagon any way we can.”
You aren’t by any chance an “Eeyore” on Hillbuzz?
If you’re saying we should give up before we start, then I disagree. Better to try and (possibly) fail than to cede the government to the kleptocrats. Better still to try and succeed. Worst case, we heat the tar, grab the feather pillows, and find some rails.
We have the government we have because it’s been over 100 years since we’ve hanged a congresscritter for malfeasance in office. It’s not because we haven’t had scoundrels, but because we haven’t had the courage to hang them. Hang a half-dozen of the worst from lampposts in DC, and the rest will either bail or straighten out. WE THE PEOPLE must keep the pressure on, or there will be no pressure to change the current culture of corruption both sides enjoy wallowing in.
I think Marc is on the right track. To take on monitoring Government procurement or overall corruption is not only too great an undertaking for PJM it is too great an undertaking for the FBI. However a less daunting task is to follow the money and the money I refer to is the accumulating of wealth and the increases in income to the 535 members of congress and their staffs.
It is possible to assemble a list of the four to five thousand “Congressional Insiders” and have PJM enthusiasts follow their careers. How many and who take big jobs in banking, healthcare, defense and what roles did they play in the expansion of those areas of government power grabs.
The stealing from the American Citizen in the preferential treatment of specific organizations in specific sectors (GM in Auto, AARP in Health Insurance, Unions in Health Insurance, etc.) is, in my opinion, a byproduct of the members of Congress filling their pockets using the taxpayer’s money. The objective of the members of Congress is to get rich in office.
Find out just how many fleet sales from GM (and Chrysler) went to the gov’t.
Find out if those sales were bid on properly, or did the govt give preferential treatment to GM.
Since the govt owned part of them and the Prez and Dems were politically invested in them, find out if procurement of vehicles was on the up and up.
Put out nationwide requests for info from govt insiders who are involved in this, car dealers, etc..
Count me in on this! The people need to know how “politicians make money” — beginning at the local level, continuing to the state level, and most of all, the federal level.
I’ve often thought the “blind trust” concept should be the first requirement of candidates for office.
And any contact with the trustees by sitting politicians should be grounds for immediate fines and expulsion from their seats. The only contact should be made by the trustee to the “beneficiary” and then, no more often than quarterly just to share the current balance of the trust account. Otherwise, frequent contact would “telegraph” to the politician how his actions can manipulate the trustees decisions.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/008266.php
I believe we could have stopped at Mark@#1. With limited resources my suggestion would be to concentrate on a couple of the biggest fish and get to the truth of how they became so rich and powerful in office. Follow the money. All else follows that. An army of Woodward and Bernsteins could be a formidable thing.
A lot of this work has already been done. Michelle Malkin’s book, Culture of Corruption, cites chapter and verse on the corruption of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, and many other figures in this most corrupt Administration which is truly run Chicago-style. Those of us who want to help stop U. S. government corruption could do a lot worse than to read this book and talk about it.
There is ONLY one “force” working against Traditional America to destroy it….led by a single ideological group and following of socialist progressives. Their attack on Traditional America comes through only two avenues….social and economic re-engineering. Neither of these two areas of re-engineering can come about but through the federal governments abuse of the Constitutions Article I, Section 8 Commerce Clause.
99.999% of all the federal governments growth, overreaching power grab and government CORRUPTION is born from the federal government abuses of unconstitutional authority regulating commerce. The two-prong special interests representing social and economic re-engineering brings 100% of the political corruption upon the government through the commerce clause!
When will the people wake up and begin dealing with the underlying CAUSATIONS of America’s governmental problems rather than all the superficial populist dialog long propagated by the intellectuals and media types?
If the federal government was returned to its original constitutionally intended size and authority this whole superficial dialog of transparency and honesty would not exist….except possibly in terms of foreign relations and war.
RE: #2 Reply by T. Thomas
The central cause of the growth of government is due to the insidious evil of the Orwellianly-named private bank known as the Federal Reserve.
The socialist-progressives are just useful idiots to promote government growth so the Fed can loan money to the government, and collect interest bourne by taxpayers. If government is small, then they don’t have to lend as much money, and they cannot make as much money. Good to know that Rep. Ron Paul will head up the committee to oversee the Fed. *Lots* of transparency needed there! TARP, financial oversight, etc.
I have a separate orange-crate for the Fed. I feel there is usefulness in the Fed but certainly not in its historical and current structure. Short of a lengthy dissertation, I feed that the fed should be limited to domestic commerce and commerce should be the stablizing factor of the economy, currency and the markets. This of course, predicated upon a small constitutional government with very limited and restricted commerce authority. In other words, the Fed should be limited as the financial sector’s “insurer” of commerce through an independent network of directors in six national regions, each with a central two-prong commercial investment banking system.
This would remove the Fed from its central government structure and function as well as decentralize the financial sector and national economy. Far to complex to cover in a short conversation.
Excellent point! I concur.
What Sharron Angle didn’t bother to ask or know is that Harry Reid worked as a lawyer for years before entering politics, which is how he grew wealthy. She shamefully implied that he was corrupt, which was not only wrong, but reckless. And she did it because she didn’t care about the truth, because she’s a stupid bitch who has no place in politics.
By your yardstick, Dick Jones, the current president should have been impeached long ago. Truth? What of Obama’s sealed records, the historical documents relating to who he is. Shine your searchlight there, if you truly are a seeker of truth. The 30-plus unaccountable czars in the White House? The behind-the-doors deals with stakeholders who helped foist O’care on us? Not to mention the blatant bribery of Landrieu and Nelson. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones.
“However, some of Sen. Reid’s real estate earnings have questionable ties. For example, a $1.1 million profit was earned on a complicated transfer that involved a seller who stood to benefit from Sen. Reid’s support of a land swap. And there are less direct deals, such as his support for an Arizona-Nevada bridge that made his 160 acres in Arizona much more valuable.”
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/there-s-a-little-more-to-harry-reid-s-wealth-95492359.html
Was Sharron Angle so wrong, after all?
I have long thought every congressional staff should be required to include an independent prosecutor hired by the opposing party and provided a commission on funds recovered.
I think the only way we’re going to get a handle on our overspending is if people get angry. The difficulty is that the proponents of the overspending have gotten very good at getting “innocent victims” in front of a camera whenever there’s an issue with the spending of the government’s various arms. If we can change the subject, so that the point of discussion becomes the various officials who are stuffing their pockets at public expense, with generous pensions, benefits, and good pay, then we might get a hold on this.
Here in California, everyone in the state has been rather quiet about government overspending–until the Bell salary scandal came to light. No one seriously argues that the salaries of Bell city officials, or those of nearby Vernon, are justified. Get the Federal equivalent–and trust me, they exist–and ask the public if they want their *children’s* taxes going to pay this guy or that one…and see where things lead.
If I remember right, the last time we were going through the government oversight and reform thing seriously was during the Clinton years. My memory is that the Dems wound up looking pretty silly defending the FDA’s tea taster, who was supposedly tasked with “public safety” issues, but who in fact was there to certify that the Darjeeling was really Darjeeling–something that you’d think the public would be able to judge for themselves. That situation, writ large, is what we need. The public needs to understand that a bunch of these people make way too much money doing way too little, and that the taxes of the rest of us will have to increase, exponentially, if we continue.
Double dipping needs to be addressed too. If you collect a government pension, at a minimum you shouldn’t be allowed to collect a government paycheck too. I’d like to see the restriction extended to the private sector, but at a *minimum* once you collect a government pension, you should be ineligible for a government paycheck. Collect the paycheck, you forfeit the pension…it’s that simple, or it ought to be.
How about instead of getting angry, the people take a role in monitoring spending? Every taxpaying citizen who could pass a basic accounting / economics examination (say 10 million) would band together with 99 others and manage $35 million dollars of the budget carved out of one particular department. These citizen oversight committees would be able challenge Congress and would be given the incentive of sharing in 20% of every dollar cut from the budget they oversee. Think of the incentive that would provide to the uneducated out there to learn enough to be certified overseers?
At the risk of beating a dead horse AND concocting an impossible mission, I’d like to look back — to Obama’s past. Really, where has he been and what has he done? Where has he traveled, under what name and nationality?
Can one Chicagoan be found who got off welfare and became gainfully employed because of his community organizing efforts? Can one legal scholar explain why his days at the Harvard Law Review have produced zero citations of his work? Didn’t I also read somewhere that one of his autobiographies contradicts other accounts of where he met his wife (sorry, I haven’t read his biographies)? Can someone get to the bottom of that? The Holy Grail would be his college records. If he won’t unseal them, make him answer why not.
I’d like to force these facts out because voters took so much on faith, and the MSM did so little to find out who this presidential candidate was. One benefit of a transparency project would be to slap indifferent voters in the face with the dead fish of Obama. They need to see a sort of before-and-after, as in before they knew anything about Obama and he looked so good, and after they learn about him and he’s a lazy, weird, narcissistic, lying, power-hungry, anti-American POS.
I altogether agree: “Will the real Obama please stand up.”
Once that’s revealed, a lot of the other questions will be answered—and the voters will know what a fraud Obama is and the danger he poses to his country (if it is his). Then, hopefully, Americans will be really angry at this con man’s audacity and make a presidential change in 2012.
One can hope . . .
P.S. It’s Obama’s credibility that’s allowed him and his cronies to get away with so much truly astonishing cr*p.
Destroy Obama’s credibility and the whole house of cards collapses.
Obama’s past was properly the job of our ‘news’ media. No better illustration of the partisan corruption of that media exists, than its deafening silence on Obama’s life, education and ‘community organizing’ activities – and on the hasty purging of Obama’s websites of his service records with the far-left New Party, and ACORN, once his Presidential quest was launched.
So cheers to such organizations as Pajamas Media for their efforts to fill the gaping, dishonest hole of information embargoed by the MSM.
Meanwhile, Stanley Kurtz’s well-researched book ‘Radical-In-Chief‘ is a good place to start. Never heard of it? Since its release in October 2010, the big review sites have gone mum with reviews, hoping for it to fetch up in the same vacuum that the MSM’s due diligence on candidate Obama occupies.
Another insightful book to understand Obama is “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”
by Dinesh D’Souza. It summarizes what little is known about this charlatan
and packages it into a neat anti-colonialism framework. High recommended.
Two areas: First, who is setting the quotas for legal immigration? Where is this imperative coming from? Who are these people who allow tens of thousands in this country every year with no mandate from the people, no referendum. What are their goals? From exactly whom does this agency derive it orders, mandate and authority and in what sense are we helpless to stop it? Considering the fact that the vast majority are minorities from Third World countries, this has to come out.
Second: Understanding how gov’t spending works and how it is compartmentalized. Why do we have the money, for example, to give 5 billion to Israel and almost 3 billion to Egypt, 25 million dollars to a Kenyan election or 10 million to bribe the Maldives gov’t on global warming but come up short in the public sector. Is this money from a specific discretionary fund? When the Fed gov’t comes up short with money for specific programs, why can’t that money be taken from Israel, Egypt, Kenya and the Maldives who should be last in priority compared to even to most trivial bridge building project in the states. I have never understood how that works. If we need money here in the U.S. then such discretionary spending needs to be outed and made illegal.
Good point. Also look hard at the burgeoning influence of political activists embedded in the Justice Department and driving its agenda, and doing the same at the Department of Education. From the ADL to the SPLC to La Raza and the SCLC, to gay activists and now even homeless activists — these groups are being empowered to enforce a regime of unequal legal outcomes based on identity politics in the courts while imposing parallel re-education agendas in every American classroom. From so-called hate crime “crises” to bullying “emergencies” to diversity militancy disguised as emotional-based curricula, our kids are being taught that “American” is synonymous with “hate.”. And we’re paying for it.
Read the Healthcare bill and learn what taxes are coming. Nancy Pelosi said if we knew what was in it we would love it, and there are a couple of provisions about children and pre-existing conditions that the left are promoting. We need to see all the snakes in this bill, especially as the repeal effort is now underway. Your investigation could have a real impact in current legislation.
As my old kung-fu master put it, “If you’re going to kick somebody, aim at something.”
The big question is “cui bono?”. Who benefits? Where do bills originate?
One of my pets has always been our very own nomenclatura, the Hill Rats. Those hundreds of legislative aides who tell the bozos we elect what to say and do. I followed the Legistorm link provided and it seems to me that they can provide some valuable info on the origin, creation and growth of any bill, and most important, the cui bono. Finding the true intent of any particular piece of legislation should certainly be illuminating.
The Hill Rats are what keep the Democrat and Republican establishments in place, the money hose on and the people in debt.
Any effort into transparency deserves investigation from that aspect. What staffers worked on a bill? Who has lobbied them? Any former staffers or elected officials’ calls and conversations relate to the bill? Etc…
I agree. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary includes this definition of transparent: having the property of transmitting light without appreciable scattering so that bodies lying beyond are seen clear. Who are the people behind Representatives, Senators, Party leaders, who actually write legislation? Where do they come from? What is their history? What social networks do they belong to, who are their contacts, their influences? What are their financial interests? One of the more interesting discussions I’ve seen lately is about the ties that certain people running for RNC Chairman have (e.g., to law firms supporting ObamaCare, contractors who benefit from the RNC). I appreciate that other people have the time and resources to ferret out this info.
Yes – the 15,000 entrenched aides who move through the revolving door from Capital Hill to K Street lobby firms their whole carreers are the source of much mischief – including bottlenecking to prevent real reform. Shine the spotlight on them all, and on their practices. Ask WHY the elected people are not doing the actual work. Here’s more about this problem, especially highlighting the younger aides: Who is Running Congress Anyway? The People We Elected or Their “younger than you think” Aides?
It’s my belief that the single greatest internal threat to our democratic republic comes from the confluence of government and special interests, which in the early 21st century means the corporate sector and unions as much as anything else. My observation over a lifetime is that lobbying has progressively elbowed its way into the line of influences on elected officials ahead of the voters, who’re now an afterthought to our increasingly elitist ‘leadership’. I’d like to see the bright light of “transparency” cast onto the incestuous and devious relationships between each of our elected representatives and the approximately 6 registered lobbyists who assail them at every turn. Hmmm – maybe there’s a “Six Degrees of Harry Reid” game in there.
Perhaps this could start with a listing of the names and affiliations of all registered lobbyists and a summation of the top dollar amounts they’ve spent on influencing our elected officials. Maybe a parallel listing of meetings of our elected officials with registered lobbyists, complete with a tabulation of special interest-funded junkets, parties, receptions, dinners, etc. provided to them by the lobbyists.
Fair warning that such a project would drop your writers knee-deep into the lardy Land o’ Pork!
A list of registered lobbyists is printed each quarter in the House section of the Congressional Record. Of course, this is a list of those who are “registered” and who bothered to comply with the law.
“A list of registered lobbyists is printed each quarter in the House section of the Congressional Record. Of course, this is a list of those who are “registered” and who bothered to comply with the law.”
Yeah, I know that, but I’d like to see someone go beyond that complied list and tie it to dollar amounts spent in pursuit of legislative objectives and correlate that information with whom it was spent with. Plus, as you say, who’s keeping track of all the “off the books” lobbying which goes on in DC?
First I applaud you for taking on this project. The only way to eliminate corruption is to expose it.
There are two distinct types of government corruption. The first is Institutional and it exists primarily because of all the rules and procedures that must be followed which sets up many avenues for corruption to occur. It is systemic to any large organization where the leadership does not have regular contact with all arms of the organization. There is little that can be done to eliminate this type of corruption unless we eliminate thousands of govt. positions.
The second type of corruption, the one I am most interested in, is Opportunistic. Some Govt. employees are guilty but most of the guilty are from the elected. The elected are in positions where thier infuence or vote can be bought and sold. When a politician makes a deal for his vote that benifits the people he represents then he is said to be a savy legislator. It is only a half step from there to benifitting individuals and that is a half step too far.
I would suggest that PJM and PJTV look into the Opportunistic types of corruption. As one of the citizens of this republic I would like to think we can root out corruption and design systems that will eliminate it. The reality is any time people are in power to make decisions where money or power is on the line corruption will exist. The only way to get a handle on it is to make any instance uncovered made an example of.
There does not seem to be the political will to do that. Charlie Rangle should have been removed from the house and not just censored. This goes for any instance of corruption discovered in the elected. If the elected are not willing to take the measures necessary to clean thier own house then there is no hope of ever getting control and eliminating both Institutional and Opportunistic types of corruption.
Is Obama a Communist?
I love this concept: Someone wants to know what we want and intends to act on it, within reason, of course.
I want to know how much money is spent by various Muslim organizations to influence our government’s policies. That would include campaign contributions, obviously. Clearly, a decision has been made at the highest levels of government to craft policies throughout government, including the Pentagon, to adopt an Islam-friendly posture. Thus we see unconscionable actions by the military, for example, such as the final report of the Fort Hood massacre that attributes the terrorist act to “work-place violence,” and is clearly meant to DENY reality.
The American people do NOT like being lied to. And I want to know who takes orders from Mecca.
Blanche, YES.
I think the whole TARP/Stimulus mess would be the best place to focus. It would be nice to know how the money was spent, who benefited and was it worth it. I don’t think the public has yet to have a true accounting of it yet and my bet is that it is a real cesspool of corruption and there are Republicans involved as well as Democrats.
I would like to see a study made of the necessity of all the various departments and agencies and action taken to eliminate the duplicates. Why have 19 different security agencies? Why do more and more departments have theie swat tems ready to bust down the doors and invade the homes of Americans without a warrant. If I had the power I could cut the size of government by two thirds and still have the services necessary!
Two areas of imminent mortal threat which are already somewhat a focus of PJM, and a big reason I read the site:
1. Illegal immigration. Who supports it and who is paying them to support it? Why, when the majority of Americans clearly are against it, do so many pols continue to go along with the storming of our borders… Why hasn’t legislation long ago been implemented to crush the reconquista? What are the Spanish radio and television stations saying to their growing cadre of illegal viewership? I hear from local sources that it’s typical for Spanish radio and television commenters in America to openly speak about American territory as already belonging to the Mexicans. I also hear that broadcasts are openly anti-white, and deeply anti-American. So glad that Ruben Navarette is on the PJM team exposing all of this…! Oh, wait…
Which brings me to
2. Islamic Jihad. Who receives funds. How much Saudi and other dirty Muslim money is pouring into Washington to curry favor and buy influence? How much did bush1 get from the Arab in honoraria etc.? Clinton for his library and other perks? Bush2? He kissed and held hands with The King of al Qaida, for God’s sake! The Ground Zero mosque seems like a perfect example of how the Muslims are waging a successful war by corrupting from the top down, and why not? It’s how their entire stinking Islamic system is set up.
Thanks for the invitation! You’ve been doing a great job of enlightening your readers, and I appreciate it.
Where DO WE START? There are so many issues…
Two top unanswered questions for me are:
1. On every bill there are lobbyists, yet I haven’t found a place to connect the lobbyists to legislation…It seems to me the lobbyists have been determining our fate for many years. This includes industry and environmental organizations.
2. Legislators’ income reported on tax returns would be a great source of info on corruption. One pol who ran for governor in my state in 2010 (and lost) refused to release his income statements for the time he was part of the Clinton admin, despite his opponent’s making his public knowledge. If these guys knew they would be asked to expose their income to the public, would it make them more honest? This might be too large a project, but just knowing they had refused would be enlightening in itself.
We need to take a hard look at government funded non profits. Often the primary recipient of the funds then redistributes to other non profits. Think ACORN, La Raza, weatherization entities, and others promoting social justice under an “education” moniker. These entities have morphed into pseudo government agencies without FOIA oversight. IMO, the probability for corruption is high and may escape the watchful eye of congress.
Very good moonfish, I wish I thought of that. Now. there’s a couple of rotting fish…
Yup, a little more transparency on NGOs would be a good thing. Most who receive federal funds are run by progressives. Taxpayers are funding a comfortable lifestyle for those that want to transform our country.
In my own banging of my fist on the dashboard and worry at losing heart, I always seem to come back to the hijacking of our electoral system and the abandon with which the weasels and gangsters of the left take it for their own. I would like to see the the Justice Department and enforcement divisions aired out. I know there are larger and seemingly more immediate issues, but if this one is not addressed, and fear and prison awarded to the transgressors, all the others are moot.
Oh I dunno. Maybe a sports section? PJM style.
Two things that I would be in favor of reviewing is the Supreme Courts’ use of the commerce clause in all things pending, especially back to 1942,
As to the legislature, we can go back to 1774.
When Joseph Galloway was proclaiming a Supreme lesilature, which John Jay, among others was perfect solution. However, a statement made by Patrick Henry stated,’by adoption of the Galloway plan we shall liberate our constituents from a corrupt House of Commons and throw them into the arms of an American legislature that may be bribed by that nation which avows in the face of the world, that bribery is part of her system of government’
Please look at the private non-profit foundations that are pouring billions into creating policy and laws with little scrutiny by media and the public. The politically appointed, non-elected and largely unknown persons on the foundation boards make decisions that affect all our lives. As an example, the Packard Foundation money that has bought its way (feeding the beast of academia) to control and placing off-limits 17 percent of California’s coastline to fishing and other activities. Small fishing boats already are tracked with devices attached to the boats and a huge amount of taxpayer money goes and will go to enforcement, including placing government observers on one-man commercial fishing boats as small as 24 feet (for which the fisherman pays $300 a day).A few weeks ago, Three of the five on the appointed government panel making the ocean policy bou
ght what amounts to twisted science. Two on the panel were sane but spitting into the wind when it came time for final vote on the MPAs (Marine Protected Areas). Now children
can be arrested f
or spearfishing. The fisheries have been well managed and are thriving but facts don’t seem to intrude. These people don’t care that cute little sea otters are an invasive species that have destroyed the abalone stock. It’s the humans who are evil. Those who wrote the California constitution included a sentence saying that the ocean belongs to the people and cannot be closed off. That was because the railroads were claiming huge chunks and keeping people out. Who is to protect us from wealthy foundations that have
decided that a Mexican immigrant cannot fish to take home protein for his family, or that a 12-year-old cannot learn to hunt and respect the ocean?
Great Job PJM!
My suggestions are:
1. Foriegn influence on government officials, such as bribes, donations, and lobbying; not just from other goverments, but religious and NGO organizations as well.
2. Entitlements/budgetary influences and corruption on local, state and federal levels.
3. Judicial overwatch, especially federal courts and judges.
4. The good things that our government does and haas done to successfully influence other governments and agencies in assisting to spread democracy, human rights and advancement of heathcare.
More specifically, almost everyone seems to be concerned with government spending and the bidding, payments, etc. that flows through that. We have heard recommendations that all government transaction should be available online in real time.
Be careful here. Speaking as an employee for a government contractor, there is quite a bit here that does not need to be public. Our competition does not need to know the exact details of our contracts with the Army and Navy; anything that the public does need to know is already available through the normal government information sites, the FOI Act, and the normal contracting mechanisms.
I have always enjoyed PJM. For my two-cents worth:
1. Please report the positive effects of American influence in global areas, such as economic development in the third world
2. Influence, pressure and corruption from foriegn governments and organizations on our political and judiciary officials.
As always, keep up the good work!
Secondarily, what should be the actual limits on government transparency in general? Do we need to know everything? Most of us pay lip service to not jeopardizing national security, but what does that mean in this instance?
“The levels used in official classification are defined as follows:
(32 CFR 2400.60)
(1)Top Secret shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.
2) Secret shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.
3) Confidential shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security.
Read more: http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/2400-6-classification-levels-19754187#ixzz1A4riitoM”
note that the only difference is in the level of damage caused by the disclosure. For the most part, government workers and contractors take this stuff very seriously. Classification levels are not arbitrarily assigned at some bureaucrat’s whim – or should not be, and assigning them in an attempt to cover up malfeasance is a crime.
I would love to see a detailed discovery of which non-profits get funding from our tax dollars. Obviously, lots goes to entities such as Universities, but who else gets it? Thinking here of groups like ACORN. My concern is that the Government should not be funding these groups (and quite possibly should not be funding universities either!). If we think they are worthy of our support, we should donate to them. But our tax dollars? No.
There was a study on spending for national security
which concluded that most classified data did not
need to be, and some things ought to be buried so
deep that nobody would even think to dig for them.
The usual abuse of classification is to hide govt.
errors or bad behavior, and the occasional case of
favoritism; In our current situation, there is a
new choice to be made on some of the technological
secrets; Is the national _economic_ security more
important than having a secret Hi-Tech weapon ?
When layers legislation affect millions of people, paradoxical outcomes are inevitable. Alternatives to incandescent light bulbs contain toxic mercury. (And give rotten quality light). My “environmentally friendly” state of the art front loading clothes washer grows mold on the rubber seal and is generally inferior to any top loading washer I have ever used. It takes much longer to do loads of laundry, so clothes washing takes for ever, and I assume, uses a lot more electricity than my “environmentally unfriendly” top loading machine did.
California is at the forefront of this sort of legislation.
As the old saying goes: “It isn’t what you know but who you know that counts.” If facts were persuasive, the crisis would have been resolved by now. What needs to happen now is unrelenting personal pressure on those responsible.
Taking inspiration from your blogger Chris Salcedo who suggested in “The Spaghetti Strategy: Advice to Republicans” that the focus be on those who implement the regulations, develop a list of the people writing the regulations for the most egregious programs. Post the list. Ask for help from readers. Refine the list. Then ask readers to start collecting data on the impact of these regulations (costs, delays, opportunity costs etc.). Publicize this data so that the Tea Parties and Congressional committees can access it. Keep private anything sensitive but make it clear it exists for those who are qualified to deal with it. Help the Congressional committees by forwarding their requests for clarifying data to your readers.
In short, put your readership to work in the way that that readers of blogs have flushed out other scandals. Not only would all those people pounding their dashboards have some outlet for their frustration, they can become the Paul and Paulette Reveres that Mark Levin urges his listeners to be.
BHO: ” A democratic government fully accountable to the people must be as transparent as possible and must NOT withhold information for selfserving purposes or simply to avoid enbarrassment”. Sure whatever Barry!
The Dept. of Education. In over 30 years in New York City high schools, I didn’t see one one thing the Fed. Dept. of Ed. did to enhance teaching. If you say that it funneled money into local school districts, you don’t need a HUGE bureaucracy to do do that. This department has become a sacred cow.
I absolutely agree. Since the Dept of Educ was founded in the 70′s, the SAT scores in the public schools have gone down, and our world ranking in math and science has plummeted. They need to be disbanded NOW!
Start with the Justice Department and the Treasury. Plenty of appearances of corruption there.
Not sure as to what all should be transparent. I know that all legislative manuevering should be. No secret votes. No passing by “deeming” legislation to have passed. No exclusions from committee meetings, etc.
Good project.
Hoorah!! Great project!!
I suggest looking into what privileges are available to Congress/staff that are not given to the public. I would allow benefits that are suitable for a high official, corporate or otherwise; IOW, similar in size and scope to the private sector.
These should not be secret or embarrassing for the official or his office. But what about little secret deals? Deals under the table?
I’ve long said I’d vote for any retirement/medical/benefit plan for me that applies equally to congress.
A bit OT, but how about guaranteeing each of them $1 million annually for life as their complete and total package as long as there’s no hint of corruption? Then they could always vote their conscience.
We spend trillions on social welfare programs at the state, federal and local level. Though most of these payments are not taxable to the recipient, perhaps the recipient should at least get a type of 1099- maybe call it a “1099 – Govt Transfer Payment” so we could begin to track the total amts paid to individuals and our statisticians can begin to include the money in their calculations of average American’s income.
For instance, a food stamp recipient would get a 1099 [non-taxable} for the amount of food stamps they received in a year. And a Section 8 housing tenant would get a 1099 [non-taxable] reflecting the amount of rent subsidies paid by the govt on their behalf to their landlord.
Holy COW! At last! I took a resolution to the Republican Party of Texas this last election proposing a 1099-GOV. Unanimous support at the precinct, 99% support at the county convention but… I know you’ll find it hard to believe that the State Republican Executive Committee members somehow decided that it wasn’t worth discussing and just did NOT schedule it for debate in any subcommittee. If I hadn’t been there it would have stayed laying on the floor. Normal delegates: 100% approval. Republican leaders: non-commital. I showed it to Senator Cornyn (“out of the box” but no followup). A Texas Supreme Court Justice said it could violate privacy laws (but your income is no problem requiring a report, right?).
If you don’t track it you can’t manage it.
No problem, really. If you don’t want people to know you are on the dole, don’t accept the dole. The public has a right to know who is getting their money.
Everyone would need a social security number to report 1099-GOV benefits. I like it… No SSN, no benefits.
Easy, straight forward way to expose double and triple dipping.
What an easy way to identify fraud!!!!
Keep at it Mark…maybe we all sould innundate our Senators and Congressman who should be listening to us with our demands… clyde formby
I was made aware of SenatorMark4′s 1099-GOV when he campaigned for this in Texas. I have presented this idea to the Liberterian Party in California, and it is my plan to bring 1099-GOV to the Liberterian State Convention in 2011. I know, a little counter intuitive, increase Government activity to reduce Government activity. But, accurately tracking expenses is how successful businesses are run and it is the only proposal I have heard of that will succinctly corral fraud in social programs, while making it very clear how much some people actually take home on social programs. If a recipient does not file a tax return then they are cut off from receiving benefits. The marginal cost to government is minimal because they already to this for contractors and employees. It’s a big first step.
Alongside 1099-GOV is moving to a flat tax so politicians can’t use the tax code to deliver special favors to their donors. You know, what is bribery to the rest of the world and results in a prison sentence, but a path to great wealth for our Congress.
A Young man in our area has suggested that the Government issue a 1099.gov for each government check received, just like any other income. Some of these people receive all kinds of Gov. funds, and they should be tracked and accounted for. Then they should be reported and taxed just like my Social Security benefits! Come on people! Let’s get a handle on this government giving away our money.
I also agree with AJ and SenatorMark4, everyone should have a SSN and everyone should have to report income. If you do not have a SSN number you do not get any benefits. Whether your income is $0 or $100K, you should have to report it. It is hard to balance a budget, or know what you are spending if you have no idea where and to whom it is going to. Also, you do not know if the funds are going to American Citizens or illegal immigrants. It should be pushed to the State Level, and onward to a National level. This is the only way to clearly show the cashflow within the government and help Washington become more transparent. This is exactly how it is done in churches across america today. The Government mandates that every single cent is accounted for and reported. If they make legally started churches do this, why not have legal American citizens do the same thing.
Next suggestion (as in W/25)–when you see the Center for Blah-blah pronouncing on some public issue, where do they get their money? Revealing that should be automatic.
I agree that NGOs and their experts should receive more scrutiny.
I think that what you would want to concentrate on are the areas where members of the Federal Government – any of the three branches – are attempting to hide evidence of socialist efforts or personal enrichment. What I would appreciate are:
1) investigation into efforts by Congress-critters to buy votes and enrich themselves through earmarks or other legislative efforts. That “bridge to nowhere” may, in fact, be legitimate and the earmark a tactic to get a needed service, or it may just be vote buying.
2) Exploration of legislation. What are the “gotcha’s” hidden in those 2000 pages of legalese? What does it mean in English?
3) Exploration of side-effects. It is not immediately obvious to the casual bystander that Obamacare will cause physicians to leave the field, it takes some analysis. Most proposed laws have side-effects ignored or not seen by the lawmakers.
4) Who’s buying the votes. Everybody knows about the “big business” that lobbies Congress; how about the environmental activists and other activist groups? It appears that the EPA is owned lock-stock-and-barrel by the radical environmentalists.
I’ll second ‘Anglo-Saxon’ above: Focus on the most egregious of the regulatory agencies and executive regulations, in terms of both economic damage and constitutional overreach. (And, as he and Alinsky suggest, personalize it.)
We’ve had decades of cession of power by Congress to executive regulators, arguably past Constitutional limits. The Obama administration has skated the edge of rule by regulatory decree for the past two years; what will happen now that its path to greater control over the citizenry is cut off in Congress? This has the makings of the first Constitutional Crisis of the 21st century, when Congress begins to take back these powers – perhaps via control of the purse – or when states begin to protect their citizens by outright defying executive regulations. If PJM has already framed the story at that time, you’ll be many long miles ahead of the MSM.
I love the idea of the project, but the graphic you’ve got there is just a wee bit goatse-esque, innit?
Domestic NGOs, such as TIDES and ACORN spin-offs need the harsh light of day, especially their use of tax monies and tax exemptions to subvert our principles and ideals.
I’m also sure that funds such as the Pew Trust skirt tax laws by engaging in political actions outside the obvious.
There is no such thing as a non-profit… they just make sure all the money goes out as salaries. Dig into the NGOs and non-profits to see who is ending up with the money.
Publish the names and addresses.
I would like to see full disclosure of every elected officials background, including criminal records, schooling, and job history; in addition to complete financial disclosure.
Then I would like to see full disclosure of voting records in a digestible format. 90% of their votes are for trivial items. For the other 10%, I would like to see a brief explanation of the purpose of the legislation, and their interim votes as well as the final votes. This probably would need to be unpacked because omnimus bills are designed to disquise what they are really doing.
Than I would like to their rating (i.e., liberal vs conservative) by ALL of the raters, including a description of the bias of the raters.
As some others have said, I would also like to see a digestible map of the bureaucracy and the budgets and staffing of the departments.
For legislation, I would like to see a brief, plain English description of what the bill does.
This is only a first step. It should be organized into a single hierarchical web-site.
I think if people could really grasp the extent of the massive waste, corruption and abuse by this government that there might well be an armed rebellion against it.
I have written many letters to my Senators and Congressman. Almost always the replies are lame or weak. Also I am sure that their responses are not consistent for an issue, but vary for each constituant. Excellent examples are the reponses I received on the monster health bill.
Would it be possible to set up a clearing house where PJM followers post the letter they wrote and the response they received?
It would be nice to watch the Senators and Congressman wiggle and squirm in their responses.
A few specific things to investigate and publicize.
1. I wonder if voters know that Congress has basically exempted itself from being subject to all of the wage and hour, equal opportunity, anti-discrimination, and working condition laws and regulations that apply to every other “business” in America? Members of Congress can hire and fire at will, pay a staff member whatever they want to pay, and work staff members like dogs, and get away with it.
2. Doing some research, I stumbled on the information that members of Congress have set things us so that when they retire, their Federal retirement calculation uses a different and higher basic multiplier than is used when calculating retirement payouts for the great mass of Federal workers and, instead, uses the higher multiplier reserved for Federal employees—as, for instance, CIA agents–who do the most dangerous and stressful jobs. I wonder if other Federal employees or the general public knows this?
3. I have never seen a list of all the Czars, their bios, pay (pray, tell, what account does their pay come from), duties, staffs, and what they are doing and have done, which I expect is their quietly going about sapping and undermining every aspect of our present governmental and policy structure. Shedding some light on this would be very helpful.
4. The recess appointment process needs to be subject to some form of Congressional control.
5. Congress must be able to compel the appearance and testimony of executive branch witnesses.
6. It is obvious that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and probably other government statistical sources as well, are cooking the books by selectively focusing on, giving prominence to, and reporting certain more favorable statistics rather than other, less favorable statistics, and by manipulating various definitions to give the impression that our economic situation is far better than it is. Things like saying that inflation is not occurring—if you don’t take the increases in the costs of food or energy into the calculation–or the focus on short term unemployment, the Table A-1 percentage i.e. 9.8%, rather than also adding in those who have been unemployed for more than six months, those who have just entirely given up looking for work, and those who are part-time, “underemployed workers”—for if you counted them too, i.e. “alternate measures of unemployment” chart A-15, the broader unemployment rate would be more like 17.0% (see, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm) This needs to be investigated.
7. Many of the lengthy bills and the reports on them churned out by Congress are not indexed, I believe deliberately, making finding and understanding what is in them very much harder than it should be. Comprehensive indexes should be required.
8. A few days ago I saw a news story about the latest implantation of a Muslim colony in Nashville, Tennessee, in which hundreds of illiterate, primitive and very, very conservative Muslim “refugees” from Darfur are to be imported into the U.S. through the efforts of some do-gooder church group or other and the State Department. There have been many such colonies planted under the auspices of various do-gooder church groups aided by the State Department, resulting in our growing colonization by hostile, dangerous, inassimilable Muslims—militant Shi’ite Palestinian Hezbollah supporters in and around Dearborn, Michigan, troublesome Muslim Somalis in Minnesota, groups of Somalis located near various Tyson chicken processing plants in Tennessee and elsewhere, etc. etc. My impression is that the locals are not really given much notice or a say in whether or not such a colony is to be plunked down among them, nor any choice about the burden that illiterate Muslims in need of welfare, social services, education, health care, etc. will place on them and their infrastructure, services, and budgets. What legal authority and budget is there for this policy, who is in charge of this program and who makes decisions, and how, what notice is given to residents of target areas and how far in advance, what mechanism is there for them to object, and can they actually derail such an implantation? This form of “stealth Jihad” must be publicized and stopped.
9. On the issue of Muslim “stealth Jihad” and the infiltration of our government, intelligence and military establishments, the case of DOD Muslim civilian “aid” Hesham Islam, advisor to Assistant Secretary of Defense Gordon England, who England calls his “interlocutor,” “close personal confidant” and “advisor,” and his role in getting Major. Stephen Coughlin–the only expert that DOD had on the Jihad and Islamic Jurisprudence (see his report here http://www.carlisle.army.mil/DIME/documents/20080107_Coughlin_ExtremistJihad.pdf) –pushed out of the Pentagon because of his supposed “Islamophobia” needs to be very thoroughly examined, as does Mr. Islam’s very fishy biography. The DOD and England’s office have given Islam an OK on this issue and his bio, but I think any objective investigator would have a whole boat load of questions that needed better answers to them.
It was in the movie Dr. Zhivago: “God Damn all good men.” I help feed the poor in my city. But importing colonies of Mohammedans is inviting vipers into our bed.
The term “colony” and “colonization” are very appropriate. I will use those terms from now on, because colonization denotes the true objective of conquering, while immigration denotes assimilation.
Lots of good ideas above. I’ll amplify one (tip of the hat to Morton Doodslag) and suggest another, both of which involve matters where the current administration has charted a course diametrically opposed to the wishes of a significant majority of American citizens.
1. Where exactly is the policy/paper trail that sustains the legally and morally irrational failure to enforce immigration law and secure the border(s)? Who is articulating such policy, who is sustaining it, and under what legal authority? How is uncontrolled immigration reconciled with national security and the threat of terrorist infiltration? Where is the paper trail directing that existing federal law not be enforced? Who has decided that sovereign American territory be cordoned off and surrendered to alien criminal activity, and upon what bases? Is this a permanent ceding of sovereign territory and, if not, what plan exists to reassert American control? Does this mean that the border we are failing to secure is, de facto, being pushed north? Are there planned limits to how far the government will permit it to be moved or are circumstances merely dictating a serendipitous reactive policy? Will someone hold the administration’s feet to the fire to explain why Arizona should be sued for enacting laws supporting those of the Federal government, and California should not be sued for enacting (sanctuary) laws in direct contravention of Federal immigration law?
It seems to me that if we allow the Federal government to ignore established law and fail in its most essential obligations, we are constructing the gallows of our own demise.
2. At last report 222 unions and business entities had been exempted from certain of the more onerous (costly) features of Obamacare. Why? How and to whom does one apply for an exemption and what standards control? Who is deciding these exemptions, upon what bases, and with what oversight and accountability? What is the public interest rationale for such exemptions? Have other organizations been denied such exemptions and, if so, why and by whom? Is there an appeals process? What is the comparative history of political contributions and affiliations between those who are exempted and those who are not?
Shifting cost responsibilities is at the heart of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party and something that needs to be subject to unremitting scrutiny.
What is the Federal government doing to close down the terrorist training camps that are flourishing on U.S. soil and imprison those who are running them?
http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=185279&page=1
I would like to see us focus on constitutional issues. Every bill, regulation or executitive order should be fully vetted as to its likely constitutionality.
When there is doubt we should be highlighting it and letting our voices be heard in Washington.
Please focus on the hidden legislative agendas. The laws they are passing under the radar. Those to me are the scariest.
The areas that most impact the nation and that PJM has already done a magnificent job at the forefront, is a convergence that makes sense.
1)The DOJ: It is imperative as a nation that our Department of Justice act in a manner that is consistent with race neutral and “common good” principles. The lack of transparency in protecting this land of ours from ACORN-style tricks, deceit, fraud and corruption, the New Black Panthers intimidation tactics, treating terrorists as petty criminals and the wholesale adoption of an attitude that is very aggressively “retribution” against a class of Americans.
2)Border Security/Homeland Security/Airport Security/Port Authority security
This administration is so hell bent on creating “voting Democrats” that it is willing to absorb terrorist attacks in order to “trade off” the potential loss of thousands of lives. In fact, if the attacks took out a certain segment of Middle America, this administration gives off the air that it would be a positive outcome. It turns states into the U.N. for wanting to secure their own borders.
3)Effective Redistribution: The stimulus is not the beast, it is the vomitus of the beast. How are the stealth socialists hiding all the ways that they intend to take money and “redistribute” it, through hidden, fraudulent and deceitful means? The Global Warming hoax was one way. Obamacare is another. Stanley Kurtz has outlined how ALL of these plans germinated more than two decades ago.
4)The Housing Crash: We won’t get fiscally healthy until this is fixed, we won’t fix this until we openly address it, we won’t openly address this because the Democrats would take a beating for causing it. Darell Issa is going to probe, but he will get stonewalled. He needs help digging this one out of the dirt.
I would look at the George Soros’ connected organizations and then look for their connections to lobbying efforts. And also his link to politicans donations and their votes.
Just take a look at the “food safety bill”. George Soros is supposed to have a large stake in the company. Then Voila! several GOP RINO’s vote for it. Why? This gives the government an enormous influence over your food. This makes me really nervous as in starving the population into submission.
We know that Bill Clinton took off most of the financial controls put into place after the great depression. Why were there controls lifted and who paid for it?
What is the connection between the communist party and the legislation proposed, especially by the “progressives”. We already know that Mark Ritchie took money from the CPUSA. Who else is taking their money?
What foreign money is comming into the USA to fund elections. Is foreign money keeping our oil and gas off the market?
Who is funding the envionmental movement? Does foreign money and/or George Soros funds support policies that keep us from drilling?
New Application Allows Scientists Easy Access to Important Government Data
Be sure to look at the available databases listed on this page:
http://data-gov.tw.rpi.edu/wiki/Demos
one of which is: White House Visitor Search
http://data-gov.tw.rpi.edu/wiki/Demo:_White_House_Visitor_Search
Following the money trail for entitlement programs is a worthy target. Look at any government program, and you will see blatant examples of fraud, waste, and abuse, and the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries are left with the crumbs.
I like the idea of going after waste and fraud, too. Not too long ago a BILLION dollars was a lot of money. I learned in my tenure as our office’s coordinator for an inner city Christmas present project that often when government bennies run out, recipients declare to the State that they are unable to care for their children, turn them over to grandparents for fostercare, then the State pays the grandparents between $800-1100 per month, per child.
Obviously, the Federal Reserve–its roster of key personnel, all of its policies and actions, and its books–must all be opened up to full scrutiny.
YES. The Federal Reserve is a rabbit hole of secrecy and unaccountability. “Digital funny money” magically ‘created’ and exchanged out of thin air and who is minding the books????
“Brevity is the soul of wit”. Get to the point. Assume your readers can get it without a long dissertation. Imitate Marc Malone in Comment #1.
“Brevity is the soul of wit”.
A prime example of what has failed this nation over time! The failure to develop and appreciate attention spans beyond *brevity & wit* is what has made us a nation of educated morons. Great nations and intelligence don’t come from *wit* nor do great educations come from purchasing text books with 20 + chapters and only teaching about half of them.
To those who write with dissertation style…I read them all in hopes that after living for 81 years now, I might learn something I didn’t know…or forgot.
Now we know why legislation is written in long form.
Once it is clear, concise and to the point, everyone would understand the intention.
A generic sort of suggestion (and I apologize if it’s already been mentioned):
Leverage Glenn Reynolds’ “Army of Davids”. That is, whenever possible, start the ball rolling, and get us the readers to do some local digging. You can be the clearinghouse of the information we find.
For example, if you wanted background financial checks on 13 suspicious Senators and 47 suspicious Congresscritters (where does their money come from? Do they really bring home the bacon, or does the money go to cronies?), that would require a lot of manpower. But we the constituents could do some of it for you, just for our local people, and send it in. You would need to make sure our sources are up to snuff before publishing, of course.
- – - – -
In re national security issues: there’s no getting around the fact that governments will need to keep secrets, and sometimes the need to keep something secret only makes sense when you know what the secret is. Therefore, the government will sometimes keep something secret — legitimately! — in a fashion that makes no sense to people not in on the secret. That stinks, but that’s the way it works.
In the end, I don’t think there’s any substitute for having insiders with integrity — who have clearance to see the secret stuff, are willing to keep their mouths shut when necessary, and will blow the whistle when it’s needed. (Think “Truman Committee”.) Identifying such people in Congress now is an important priority, as is giving them stuff to look into.
Many thanks for all the good work you do!
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Excellent, brilliant idea. Count me in for whatever you need.
My opinion: take one small Government project and analyze it FULLY. Every cent — who got the money, why them, and how much. This would be easier on a state/local level, but there should be some Federal projects to look at as well.
If you do this, I suspect you will find common themes of waste and abuse that exist on all projects, and extrapolate to very serious numbers. The forced use of Union workers who get benefits no one else does; required extra overtime pay; very few bidders because the Feds make it hard to qualify; tons of extra people to deal with red tape; extra time required to deal with bureaucratic hurdles; ridiculous certification needs; etc.
If you could show that a library restoration took 2 years and cost $800K, but could have been done in 8 months for half that price if not for Government retardation, you’d really have something useful.
While the Constitution requires that all candidates for the Presidency be “natural born citizens,” it does not specifically define such–although there is some commentary by the Founding Fathers on this issue, some case law and, thanks to Obama & Co., some recent legislative history, too, (curious, isn’t it, how Obama, not known at all for his attention to his duties as a U.S. Senator, was so interested in this issue that he, along with Senators Leahy, Webb, Coburn, and Clinton, cosponsored the bill concerning Senator McCain’s status as a “natural born citizen,” sponsored by Senator McCaskill, S.Res.511, in the 110th Congress)–or specify who should be the government official or body to examine the evidence and decide whether a candidate has met this requirement.
Right now, it appears that a system has grow up in which the heads of the national political parties, each state’s party officials, plus the Speaker of the House shares in this certifying/checking responsibility, and interesting questions have been raised about the two differing versions of the certification paperwork–certifying that Obama had met this Constitutional requirement– apparently that Nancy Pilosi, as both the head of the Democratic National Convention, and the Speaker of the House, signed and had sent to each one of the States (http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=109363).
Hearings to explore and clarify this issue should be held, and a Constitutional amendment to set up standards and certifying officers should be drafted and submitted to the States.
Folks, not all of us have three hours to read your long posts.
Please post your ideas in a few lines so we can all read and discuss the proposals.
If I understand you, you seek the “best” place to shine the light of public scrutiny. I have read most of the comments and they are, for the most part, good solid suggestions or commentary. I offer you a secondary criteria for deciding where and what to investigate. I think you should consider where you can have the greatest impact on the elections that we face in 2012.
In that spirit I suggest that the first place you focus is voter fraud (in all its forms including abuses of the GOTV process) in 2010, if the objective of prodding the newly elected state legislatures to clean up their election process before the 2012 primaries.
Because true voting reform always stirs up cries of racism and bigotry. Phony appeals to fairness. The notion that the voter has no responsibility to properly execute a vote for it to be legitimate. Voter reform is a tar pit into which few elected officials really wish to go. We must force them to do so. As an independent voice that can speak directly to their voters you are well placed to under take this task. Further your readers and subscribers form a vast pool observers of the recent election and can feed you data from which you can sift common reports and determine where to focus.
If the people of this nation are ever going to make the government again their servant we MUST restore the sanctity of the vote.
Seems to me that the best long term investment is to look at judges at the state and federal court level. These people are the farm team for the federal appeals circuit courts and the supreme court. In many places the state supreme court judges are elected officials. If one wants to influence the culture of the society in the long term, this is a good place to begin.
Where to start?
Audit the IRS – full down to the dollar release of what they spend on everything – I don’t think there would be a single dime that they spend that shouldn’t be completely open. Plus it would make a great news bit around April 15th.
Dept of Ag example – I think the name release of who got paid to not farm had some good impact. Similar things elsewhere. So I wouldn’t look at this dept – not good enough media draw. But use that as a model. Full release of all medicare reimbursements – any going directly to an individual would get a blind number instead of a name.
Every penny spent by the NEA (Arts).
Every penny spent by the Dept of Education.
Cant’ they produce for just a big data dump of the accounting system for all of the departments? or at least for a check writing level. Say for the Office of Job Corps each location at a minimum but surly? there is a audit group inside that would have the check registers for the group?
What about all of the home retrofits? Seems to me that was a financial mess.
I’m sure all of this money gets to independent landlords that do a good job housing low income people.
Tenant-based Rental Assistance
Project-based Rental Assistance
Public Housing Operating Fund
Public Housing Capital Fund
In Commerce:
Economic Development Assistance Programs
SBA – if the gov has to pay for a bad loan they subsidized shouldn’t the people know who lost the money? both the bank and the borrower.
Since we now ‘own’ Freddie and Fannie – full register level release of payments.
FCC?
Some of the Dept of State details here: http://www.foreignassistance.gov, a good start at making it easyt to see with the maps. $586mil to South Africa, $69mil to Russia, $20mil to Cuba and 100k for Iceland?
More valuable would be a wikileaks version of all of the emails of dept x. (EPA, Treas, FDA, IRS, NEA etc)
Of course a usable interface would be good too. The map for foreign assistance is good but comparing that to the average taxpayers annual bill would be better. $586 mil for south Africa – full fed tax bill for 100,000 US families every year – over ten years give 1million US taxpayers a tax free year!!
Good luck.
One more thing I would add to my list:
Public Unions: The deleterious impact, how the real costs are hidden, all the underhanded ways in which they are given (redistributed) goodies and the manner in which they become beholden to the “nanny” state and then become the army for recruitment of more…as part of the overall scheme.
Well stated, Anglo.
Clear away the mystery and the obfuscation and go to the source. Policy makers have been working under cover of darkness and a lazy lazy media (which has made itself irrelevant).
We need to see real data, like how many able-bodied, healthy young people collect public aid. Why are we sending money to people who have no interest in being productive? (Follow the money) Why? Why do we pay women to have babies? (follow the money). Why do we make it so easy for men to take no responsibility? (Follow the money). Turn off the spigot. People will find their way. We need data from which to work. I would like to know how much the woman in front of me at the supermarket using her EBT card paid for the same groceries I bought. (obviously enough to pay for booze and cigarettes paid separately with cash). True incident of a few days ago.
To foreman: I would not say lazy media but rather complicit media. I would also state that the PC media is highly relevant as a weapon of obfuscation, lies, and distortions for leftists of every stripe who seek to undermine American exceptionalism and usher in a one-world Marxist utopia.
Why are our representatives self-selected? Think what would happen if we had a “professional” class of people for jury duty.
The choices for elected officials should be done the same way for the same reasons. Remember that it is supposed to be government by the PEOPLE, not by insufferably condescending elites.
I agree with uncleFred at #56 that investigations into the voter fraud issue might have the greatest impact on elections in 2012 and, therefore, the greatest helpful and long term impact on the ability of Conservatives to get elected to Congress, to stay in Congress, and to carry out and continue vitally necessary reforms.
The following list is the Democratic senate seats (+1 ind) that are up in 2012 that are in tossup or leans-D. Set up a separate site for each one, so that folks can track where earmarks and other steered money has gone to, and connect the dots to campaign contributions.
There are 16 listed here. If we assume that all the R’s hold, winning these would get to a filibuster-proof Senate. Aim big, aim high, and start now.
Michigan
Minnesota
Montana
New Jersey
North Dakota
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Washington
Wisconsin
Florida
Massachusetts
Missouri
Nebraska
Virginia
West Virginia
Connecticut
Re:Seth @41, #8
A lot of good ideas by the commenters. This particular one got me thinking of all the unfunded mandates the Federal government puts on the states. What if the dollar amount of unfunded mandates and other various cost shifting schemes by the Federal government were isolated and identified in the state and local budgets and perhaps quantified to a per capita basis?
This is somewhat of an ancillary area, but how is it that we have allowed Obama to drive up the cost oil products, the inexpensiveness of which is crucial to our economy and personal wealth? Why and how is it that he has taken this power to himself without an outcry from the Congress, the media, and the public?
http://www.americansolutions.com/drill/2011/01/top-five-things-obama-has-done-to-raise-gasoline-prices.php
The biggest threat to the citizenry is being on the wrong side of information control. Much if not all of the generational damage that came out of the last two years would have never gotten legs if lawmakers had been grilled by their constituents using open source accurate information. We saw some of that in the town hall meetings held during the lead up to Obamacare, but the story was folded and distorted into fodder for the MSM war on the Tea Party.
The press, or MSM, has certain privileges that come with being the 4th estate. The price of those privileges is the explicit responsibility to report accurate and unbiased information to the citizenry. That reporting must be independent of political patronage, influence, or the personal political beliefs of the 4th estate members. (The exception is clearly identified editorializing – they do not give up their right to personal opinions after all). Once that trust is violated, the MSM becomes an organ of the 2nd/3rd estates – the government.
There was a statement quoted around the time of the 2004 elections that was attributed to a media mogul. I forget who, but it could be looked up. It should have been a story as momentous as 9/11 or the war in Iraq. This guy essentailly claimed, or rather bragged, that the MSM could deliver 15% or so to the democrats by how they reported and manipulated the election year narratives presented to the citizenry. I believe that the 2008 election far exceeded that 15%.
The point of all this is that any relationship between members of the 4th estate and any elected or appointed government official MUST be transparent and any proven collusion intended to influence any election have consequences.
I think that this a he!! of a lot more important than even connections between the financial sector and elected or appointed officials. Without a truly free press responsible to the citizens rather than the politicians, no society can stay free of government control.
The government should provide the public an annual report of all unclassified contracts by agency that exceed one million dollars. The report should include the Statement of Work, the period of performance, and the official company names of the prime and all subcontractors. With regards to Paul of Alexandria’s comments in #’s 22, 24, and 35 above, these contracts are paid for with public money, are unclassified, and should thus be public information without the need for FOIA requests.
1 Look into and expose everything about the Public Pension fiascos. Pick one state or a few states (and/or one city or a few cities) and really dig into what is happening, what led us to this mess and who specifically was involved and when they were involved.
2 Also, look into the TARP/stimulus mess. Where it all went and who it went to.
We need transparency in the quid pro quos which have linked contributions to contracts,
bail outs and tax code favors. Look into the obvious example of Goldman Sachs and some
of our wealthiest families, their contributions and their beneficial tax treatment.
The government should make public an annual report of all UNCLASSIFIED authorized government civilian positions (spaces, not faces) by agency. The report should include a hierarchy chart for all positions, the pay grade(s) authorized for each position, and a job description for all management positions (e.g., GS-12 and above).
Transparency—openness is only a “problem” when the government becomes unconstitutionally to large and powerful and the American people and States surrender their constitutional rights to a central government.
The American people and their States FIRST surrendered their constitutional rights creating the mess America’s government is in today. Do they now have the GRITS to upright and reverse the shipwreck they created? I doubt it…though many do speak and write the talk so long as they don’t have to suffer the consequences of their decades of surrender.
A single Constitutional Amendment to Article I, Section 8, Commerce Clause would allow for approximately three decades of transition back to a constitutional size and authority government with the least amount of suffering. Anything less, is simply a futile drill in huffing and puffing in the wind.
Let the new Congress focus on legislative transparency and let’s measure them by what they accomplish in that regard. I suggest PJM focus on the Executive Branch: Obama’s Czars. It now appears likely they’ll try to institute by fiat that which they know can’t be done legislatively. Suggested focii: EPA, “Justice”, DHS.
Audit the FED!
What to focus on?
Anything for which the official in question could be (and should be) indicted.
Anything for which a private citizen could be indicted that is not a legitimate function of the office.
Any provable lie, act of racism, or specific dereliction of the official’s oath of office, if any.
Roger, this is an admirable pursuit and I encourage PJM to do so. Many of the suggestions made here would be my choice(s).
But what I would like seen done is a citizen financed, third party, no federal link or affiliation whatsoever of a wide and all encompassing federal audit – with the reporting of results to be reviewed by a one time elected body representing each MSA made up of average Joe and Josephine, who would then construct an executive summary available to every American citizen. No transactions made by any federal agency or ruling body would be off limits.
Every non elected federal employee, appointed or otherwise, will be interviewed and made to justify his position, decisions and salary.
They used to call these intensive business reviews in corporate America. It’s way overdue for the employees to start answering to their employers – the taxpayers.
More disclosure is needed about board members at NGOs, universities, and publicly traded corporations? Many ex-pols, wives and relatives of current and ex-pols, and political operatives, current and past, sit on these boards. Many are known and disclosed by the institution, organization, or company – many are not. And, here I will offer a heresy – we need FEWER, not more, FEWER independent directors on boards. Independent directorships have become a lucrative career path for politicians, political hangers-on, academics, and other unproductive career thinkers. The old corporate interlocking directorship problem has been replaced with a government-corporation, government-NGO interlocking directorship problem, a problem of institutional incest that reaches out from the private sector into the government sector and affects us all, directly.
I woudl like some one to investigate the money turn-style between the Drug companies, the FDA, Doctors (AMA) and the legal industry.
The Pharmecutical companies come up with a new drug, the FDA amkes them jump through hoops to get it approved (if approved – the Drug companies can reap billions from Government Subsidized medical programs at National and State levels because the drug is then paid for by tax payer dollars whenever doctors prescribe it). This makes a lot of money for the Pharmucutical Companies, but they inturn put a lot of money into a fund to protect agaisnt lawsuits – inevitably some percentage of people who take the new drug develops complications – in swoops the legal industry (Lawyers, judges and support staff)with a Class Action Law Suit. there is routinely a huge payout – a large portion of which goes to the legal industry, some to the victims. All funded by tax payer purchaces (Through Government Programs or Insurance) of the Pharmecuitical Companie’s drugs cleared by the FDA.
I occasionally see reportage about the “border fence” down Mexico way, but I have no solid picture of what has been done so far. I know a lot of hot air has been expended and money has been appropriated, but what has actually been constructed and is up and running?
My impression (funny how the MSM can focus endlessly on the most minute aspect of Sarah Palin’s life and family but cannot be bothered to do solid, comprehensive, in-depth reportage on a whole host of what one would think were critical matters, including the border fence with a Mexico that is rapidly descending–if not already–into failed state status, into anarchic, super violent, narco-state Hell, thus presenting a major threat to our national security if there ever was one)—is that there is a patchwork of mismatched, incomplete, and not continuously connected sections; some actual fences–none of them very robust or effective–plus a lot of “electronic fence” i.e. surveillance and intrusion detectors-–again not very functional or effective (my impression here is that there is a while baleful shitload of contractor sweetheart deals, payoffs, fraud, waste, incompetence, and graft involved in these programs)—plus a scattering of Border Patrol agents and not much else.
Taken together, not a comprehensive or effective “fence” at all, which is exactly how Obama & Co. and our Democratic members of Congress want it; they’ve speechified about it and voted money for it, so they can tell voters they are doing something about the problem, but they don’t want it to and made it so that it really doesn’t and won’t work.
So, is my impression correct?
It seems to me that Congress should haul our favorite clown, DHS Secretary Nepolitano, before a Committee or two and press her for something like responsive and comprehensible answers.
1. Investigate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
I have a personal grudge here. My investment adviser Stanley Morgan had me invest 200k in proffered stocks in April of 2008–all lost– and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. I thought surely, like ENRON, this would be looked into…showing again what a rube I am. And this is only the surface of the corruption of these institutions, I’m sure.
2.Voter fraud. Acorn, Unions, tax exempt foundations,Illegal aliens at the polls–if citizenship means nothing–what’s the point?
Great thread.
Let me be today’s picker-of-nit: who the hell is “The Ad Council”
and why must I listen to their nanny-state PSAs all over the radio? Who pays for this drivel? Is it an NGO or just another beneficiary of government stimulus largess, created out of thin air to reward actors and govt- favored producers?
OK. Back to my man cave
I would like to see more of what it would take to:
1) Get a Flat Tax and Abolishing the IRS.
2) End the Fed and tossing the controllers in the street.
3) Simplifying the government and Removing layers and combining departments that overlap.
4) How to force all bills to be on or about only one subject.
5) How to restore the Constitutional operation of all the branches of the government.
That is the top 5 for now.
Jobs. Particularly, this administration’s attitude towards Union Jobs and American competitiveness.
How much money is changing hands? Donations from the unions to Democrats, conversely how are Democrats scratching back with jobs steered towards unionized workers and their bosses, most importantly public union workers? i.e. shouldn’t all public workers be non-union by definition? If the public pays their salary, the public should have more authority over pay, benefits and performance.
America is far more competitive when the labor is non-unionized. So why does the Øbama administration handicap us with ever more union baggage.
Is Andy Sterns having undocumented, unaccountable, undo influence in the Whitehouse? Given he is by-far the most frequent visitor there? And his long association with the Community-Organizer-In-Chief?
We not only need transparency of information, but also an effective structure for saving, searching and researching information. How about creating a non partisan reference structure as a relational database that might allow some connections e.g. donations, and Senator X and earmarks to be easily discovered. If implemented, journalists and researchers and ordinary patriots would have one well-structured place to go to find concise well documented info. In time, it would help greatly in disputing fuzzy progressive arguments, and leftist historical revisionism.
A post today mentioned attorneys working pro bono in hopes of keeping their resumes fresh. This project would seem a natural for aspiring politically oriented lawyers to get a leg up looking for congressional staff jobs, or other government jobs. Put volunteers in charge of Justice, Treasury Dept, Obamacare info, for example, and they could suggest promising areas for inquiry for other volunteers. As time passed and the number of volunteers following their areas of interest increased, an extremely valuable tool covering the suspect activities of all three branches of government would come into being and a unique crew of experts capable of effectively conveying that information would develop.
Transparency for goverenment begins with Congress.
Every Congresscritter, in both Houses, should have their daily public calendar made public: who they meet with, where and when. Then for each of those meetings there are topics that are discussed, which should be public and open as these are public officials working in our name we do need to see who they talk to and what they talk about.
As transparency begins at home, so does thrift, and just why do Representatives need a staff? The committees having a staff I can see, but each Representative? I do not elect a Representative so that I can be flacked by staff members, but to represent me and be held accountable to me and all the other citizens in the district. They are not corporate directors nor even running a shop for a small business: they are representatives of their constituency. A staff for a campaign I can see, but a staff to run the office? Is this not the age of electronics able to help in that regard? And if they can’t handle it alone this points to there not being enough representatives to have a manageable enough district so they CAN do without staff. Add up the staff allowed (full and part time) plus representatives and you get near 10,000 people. If you need that many people to run the House then we need 10,000 Representatives as we are not electing a mere chief of staff for our district.
After that comes the waste, fraud and abuse of government programs. Porkbusters hit on a great idea but never fully accounted for the full cost of pork. When pork is inserted into a budget, it gets no overhead funds with it (by and large, very few do). Yet that money requires individuals to track it, run projects for it, make sure it is spent, travel on projects… not one single dime of which is in the pork spending and comes out of the budget to run an agencies regular programs and projects. When you see a $1.2 billion biathlon course inserted into the DoD budget, that requires a number of layers of control and oversight which then takes away from their normal jobs which didn’t include the pork job. Per item that may not be much overhead, but each item shifts resources and requires time that no one put into their staff sizing estimates… put in a few dozen or hundred pork projects, and you see oversight on regular projects declining and money being ill-spent. And if it is Black Budget pork, then it requires security overhead on top of all the rest of the overhead… so that $1.2 billion project will cost the agency running it a minimum of 20% of cost, or $240 million being removed from other projects to run the pork project. That is not just waste, but it is abuse of the federal system for projects that do not get regular vetting, and when pointed at a sole source to provide it, that is usually not the most economical way to spend the money and that is fraud.
Tell you what, Congress has a nice law that all financial officers need to be accountable for what they spend. Congress is the start of finances in the government so they should, each and every one of them, be held accountable for the spending problems they cause. Not just ‘investigated’ but brought up on charges when they vote YES for a budget that causes problems and be on the hook to make good out of their personal accounts for their ill oversight.
That doesn’t even begin to get to the antiquated Federal Acquisition Regulations and most of the other regulatory code that just needs sunsetting… that would be a great start to clearing up DC: clean out the code by having it sunset out on the last digit of the year it was passed. Let the public review such things, give input on what is good and bad, and get Congress to re-sign legislation that enacts regulations and agencies. Make these things hold themselves accountable on a decade by decade basis to see if we even need or want some of these functions.
I would like some one to investigate the money turn-style between the Drug companies, the FDA, Doctors (AMA) and the legal industry.
The Pharmecutical companies come up with a new drug, the FDA amkes them jump through hoops to get it approved (if approved – the Drug companies can reap billions from Government Subsidized medical programs at National and State levels because the drug is then paid for by tax payer dollars whenever doctors prescribe it). This makes a lot of money for the Pharmucutical Companies, but they inturn put a lot of money into a fund to protect agaisnt lawsuits – inevitably some percentage of people who take the new drug develops complications – in swoops the legal industry (Lawyers, judges and support staff)with a Class Action Law Suit. there is routinely a huge payout – a large portion of which goes to the legal industry, some to the victims. All funded by tax payer purchaces (Through Government Programs or Insurance) of the Pharmecuitical Companie’s drugs cleared by the FDA.
Why are we still funding PBS, NEA, DOE, ACORN, LaRosa and the Palestinians (and every third-world rat-hole that hates America?)
Since we’re facing a budget crisis, first, follow the money. Then, help us put the information into context, so it translates into meaningful action.
1. Start at the Cabinet level. For each agency: Identify the stated mission. Show the current budget and increase/decrease in last year(s). List key programs, along with budget and increase/decrease. Show top level salaries. Show numbers of people employed and percent of budget dedicated to salaries. Highlight duplicative missions/people/programs, such as the multiple programs dealing with Welfare, Homeland security, etc., scattered across mutliple agencies.
This info would provide real meat and pinpoint cabinet positions and programs to abolish, consolidate, restructure, sunset, etc.
2. Tackle Cabinet-level operations and Czars next. (Rinse and repeat list above.)
3. Capture and show Presidential budgets with category breakouts, so we can make side-by-side comparisons of Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. Yes, include personnel counts, salaries and increase/decrease by category.
4. Provide an excruciatingly detailed summary of every dollar the IRS spends, current and past budgets, along with actual and proposed increases in salaries, personnel, etc. (See list above.)
5. Summarize the real numbers from all the recent stimulus-job creation bills and show the costs for each job “saved or created.” (My informal calculations show its about $80,000-$100,000 per job.)
6. Provide a detailed list with name, title and dollar amounts of the KNOWN tax frauds and cheats, both elected and appointed.
7. Capture Discretionary spending totals and show how these funds have been spent over the past five years. (In 2010, the administration proposed $18 billion in discretionary cuts and increased spending by $600 billion or more.) This loophole needs to be closed.
8. Document the value and costs associated with Federally controlled land and mineral rights (Return these rights to the states.)
9. Summarize CAIR and Saudi funded donations to US universities and non-profits. Show source, dollar amounts and purpose (buildings, chairs and professorships, outreach, etc.).
10. Summarize the real cost of illegal immigration, failed policies and inadequate border security through rising costs for schools, healthcare, police protection, etc.
Then tackle … well, the list is endless, isn’t it? I’m looking forward to learning more as this venture unfolds.
Awesome idea!! An Army of Davids!
I’d like to see a full and transparent accounting of Obama’s 2008 campaign.
Isn’t this what the DOJ is supposed to do? (Guess we’ve got to investigate them, too.)
I would suggest that looking at the ideas of growth in government – what are the reasons behind the size in 2011 vs 2000. We certainly have a need for new transportation security, but are there no agencies that could be smaller?
There are probably more than a few hints as to how senators got rich in their public reports, but what about their relatives – how many are getting money for work that they are not qualified to do. I recall that Sen. Dodd’s wife seemed to earn way more than her history would have suggested was reasonable.
Ask congress why thy don’t have to live by the laws they pass. Running a story once a week about rules they break and that their staff breaks which equal insider trading for us working folks, would be a way to get some attention.
Finally look at some regulations that are not being enforced – for example traders who can buy more gasoline than they can “take delivery” that is a rule, but hedge folks ignore it as they run up the prices – even as we have less useage and more in stock piles…see Ed Wallace stories in Business Week or Ft. Worth Star Telegram.
So all you pudknockers think you are going to change a system that has been in place for a hundred years?
The FED (Federal Reserve Bank) is neither federal, nor do they harbor any reserves. It is a private corporation that “lends” money to our government at an interest rate. Which is where all your income tax money goes…to service the INTEREST on the national debt. Nowhere else. Not for roads or bridges or anything that would benefit We The People. GET IT? Oh. you don’t?
The value of the dollar has declined by over 90 percent since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Did the Fed really cause this loss of savings, insurance policies, retirement funds, and purchasing power? The answer, emphatically, is that with the cooperation of government, the Fed has indeed destroyed the dollar’s value.
In January 1993, National Geographic magazine published an article entitled “The Power of Money.” Written by Associated Editor Peter T. White, it presented a very clear explanation of how the Fed operates. White asked a Fed official where the organization had obtained $100 million it had just used to purchase some securities. “We created it,” said the Fed employee. “It’s money that didn’t exist before.” He matter-of-factly admitted that no limit existed on the Fed’s ability to create money out of nothing. In 2006, China and Hong Kong accounted for more than 50 percent of the increase in the amount of Treasury debt sold to the public. In 2008, their share had fallen to 22 percent as the U.S. government increased its public debt by a record $1.2 trillion. In the first half of 2009, China and Hong Kong acquired only 9 percent of the more than $800 billion worth of Treasury bonds that were sold.And in June 2009, China became a net SELLER of U.S. Treasury notes and bonds! Today, China won’t buy anymore of our Treasury notes and bonds. That’s why we have to.
The fixes for our economy? Spending didn’t work, printing money will?
The Federal Reserve Board Open Markets Committee announced a second round of “quantitative easig.” Another term for what the Fed is expected to do is “monetize the debt.” The Fed will buy government debt—primarily Treasury bonds, but possibly also mortgage-backed securities owned by the government—with new money it simply “prints.” There are two major effects of printing more money: Banks now have cash on their books instead of debt instruments, which allows them to loan more money out.
By printing more money, the Fed lowers the value of the U.S. dollar, causing prices to rise, i.e. inflation.
My suggestion: It’s too late too buy gold. Buy ammo, toilet paper, and beef jerky. Why? Call me psychic.
You pudknockers don’t actually believe that the richest people in the world who own everyone and everything are going to let “you” take away their power, do you?
Congressmen and their folks get wealthy, very wealthy in office and right after they leave. But, they don’t “sell” their votes, they sell access or influence. They build deniability into every bribe by building intermediaries. Thus, if you want to let Biden know how you feel about an issue your trade association is hot about, you “hire” Biden’s son and he’ll pass along an info package (and campaign contribution) or arrange a meeting, formal or informal. You don’t really think Biden took a train home to Wilmington every night, do you?
That’s why Boehner has canceled former Congressman’s access to the Congressional gym, the former guy’s were using it to “sell” access to their clients.
A “transparent” Congress would involve daily, verifiable logs of all meetings between Congressmen and any member of the Congressman’s staff who is of a certain rank, and the people the meet with. Issues like rank, and details of log content would be developed. Log failures would go directly to some oversight and be subject to some sort of sanction.
You’ll never catch everything. You’ll always have the coffee shop near the White House where deals are made and influence sold.
And yet Biden had one of the smallest net worths in Congress. I wondered how a man could be in the Senate for all those years and be worth so little. Stupidity? Off-shore bank accounts? What? Perhaps when you marry as well as he did, accumulating personal wealth becomes less important. I wouldn’t know, but maybe we could ask John Kerry.
Investigate the Bureau of Prisons, the most unresponsive, arrogant part of our government. Under Harley Lapin it responds to no one, claiming it would breach “security” to do so. It is a self-fulfilling bureaucracy, run for it’s own sake, not for the sake of its ostensible mission. It does little to rehabilitate prisoners, expands in secret and deflects, or failsmto respond to, all inquiries..
The investigation will disclose the number of people who are needlessly incarcerated for drug-related “conspiracy” offenses. Ther bis little sympathy for prisoners, so the BoP operates without oversight or co trolls by anyone.
Investigate anything that deserves investigations, even if it’s just “small potatoes” stuff. It doesn’t have to target Obama to make it worthwhile.
Name and shame.
I don’t mean the obvious targets, like the Barney Franks of the world. I mean the second line, the support people. Ken Feinberg, Jamie Gorelick. They’re never in the front lines, but they flit around: One day they’re a staffer in a congressional office, the next they’re in a think tank or activist group, then suddenly they’re a regulator, and then the next they’re in academia doing “research”.
It’s a shell game. It’s easy to track one person who catches the public eye, but impossible to watch how the drama plays out with dozens of people over a period of years.
Can we create a Who’s Who in Liberalism? Start with the (publicly disclosed) databases of senior staffers and consultants. Then start tracing their careers backwards and forwards in time.
When President Obama appoints some faceless, nameless member of the nomenclatura as the assistant undersecretary of whatever, we should be able to track who they are, where they’ve been and what it means. As it stands, we’re having to backfill years after the scandal comes to light (if it does at all).
Witness Rahm Emanuel’s time with Freddie and Fanny, and the statute of limitations that saved him.
This is a massive undertaking, to be sure, but has enormous potential to do good, and lends itself to the “army of davids” approach that PJM uses.
I like this. Very much.
Pretty simple if you’re going for the spending/oversight side, from my perspective. You could start with A Plan To End Failed Federal Programs by Rep. Darrell Issa 10/13/2010 http://www.saveyourrights.com/government-control/a-plan-to-effectively-address-failed-federal-government-programs/ or you could simply ask Senator Tom Coburn for his ‘list’. I think he’d be willing to part with a copy.
1) Take Coburn’s list of redundant programs spanning many agencies and start there – lots of unnecessary spending and ineffective programs in discretionary spending to be shown as irrelevant.
2) Then, trace that back to who inserted what in what bill, whether the House or the Senate – they all had to come from somewhere, after all.
3) Then compare those results to the legislator’s election rhetoric and sound byte history.
That, my friends, would afford you a level of transparency we’ve never seen before.
But, gird your loins, it’ll be quite ugly as you see just how widespread and longstanding it’s become since the eras of FDR and LBJ.
IMO this is asking for a people’s database driven web application to track the money. Think wikileaks but with nodes created and connected by users to follow the money. Use the crowd. Scream for transparency in the dark areas.
Any and all areas which relate to possible voter fraud should take precedence over all else. The next election will be stolen by non-existent voters (i.e. Democrats) if we don’t make preventing it our top priority. All our intelligent and informed opionions and decisions will mean nothing.
Amnesty, illegal immigrants voting, ACORN and any of its relatives getting away with their devilment, SEIU servicing the voting machines, conservative poll watchers keeping an eye on election officials, the earlier idea about watchdogging Congressional reps in the 16 states mentioned in comment #63 above. The list of their dirty tricks is endless and so must be our diligence.
Secondly and thirdly, Obama’s mysterious past and George Soros’s murky doings.
I would like to suggest doing some analysis of the various Executive Branch Departments:
Their annual budget and actual expenditures,
Their number of total employess and the number that are members of a public employee union, their averge and median pay and benefits,
Their original purpose and how they have grown and drifted,
The total of all the Executive Depts. spending in 2010 as a percentage of the 2010 actual spending,
A thorough breakdown of each Depts. spending (where the h*ll does all the money spent in the Dept. of Eduction go).
This analysis would be nice to get an idea of what non-defense discretionary spending we can and should cut as part of a new GOP President’s goals. A ton of money can be saved here ignoring the needed reforms in SS and Medicare/Medicaid.
Apologies, just read comments and looks like #83 Grapeguy beat me to it.
An online relational database resource for tracking $ is an effort I think would be highly leveraged and inexpensive to build.
Great idea. How about a state-by-state program to follow block grants? Money given in blocks to states has some Federal oversight, but that probably needs more oversight. Once we find one funny thing in one state, we would find it in another.
Wisconsin has a program to subsidize child care for single poor moms. There have been numerous reports of moms scamming the system, bilking the state out of millions. I’m sure some of the state money came from the Feds. Now Wisconsin is going to spend over a million dollars for digital scanners, to scan the palm prints of children, to make sure they are in day care when they are supposed to be.
NPR gets a lot of money indirectly: the Feds give it to states, states dole it out and local stations gets some money, and they kick it back to NPR for programming fees.
I’d like to know how much money Barack Obama has spent on his own expenses. He flies every other day at the cost of $181k an hour. He has limos and helicopters and everything else at his disposal, so how much has Barack Obama cost us since he was elected?
A gentleman in Texas has proposed federal government transparency under his moniker “SenatorMark4″ for about three years now. One of his main policy positions was that all that was needed was to have IRS reporting for all government “income, redistributed” just like citizens have for the income we EARN. The Texan has been calling it the IRS 1099-GOV for a while now and it represents true transparency which could be inplemented nearly everywhere. Common Sense as policy is a start; see where it will stop.
Lots of great ideas here for transparency in government and cost saving. Funny, not one suggestion about the vast military budget. No possible transparency here? Billions and billions for bloated and obsolete systems. Nobody wants to challenge this waste?
On the non discretionary side — check out the abuses of funds poured out by USAID before you ever come close to the military budget. We’d scream to high heavens on that one. LOL
On that front, all you have to do is start with Gates’ suggestion for cuts in defense spending. That will start the ball rolling.
But, none of what I’ve seen proffered will give us transparency as transparency is designed to hold people accountable for that which they have done, or have caused to be done, by direct, or indirect, intervention in the process of governance.
Agree, lots of waste in the military. I have a colonel in the reserves that is fighting the waste on a daily basis. Spending money on building projects that will not be financially supportive in the future. So lets look at reserve and guard redundancy.
So many great suggestions! Whatever you choose consider the impact of policy, waste and corruption on an individual liberty. Try to relate our governments waste and abuses to our loss of liberty and freedoms. Following a money trail is interesting and worth knowing, but abstract to the average person. Reducing the impact of corruption and waste to the individual level is easier for the average person to understand.
We can’t even buy a damn incandescent lamp, in a country with more energy reserves than any other on the planet no less! Too say nothing about $5/gal gasoline resulting from corrupt policy decisions.
A gentleman from Texas known as “SenatorMark4″ for about three years now has proposed government transparency. One of his main policy positions was that we needed to have IRS reporting for all government “income, redistributed” just like we have for the income we EARN. Senator Mark has been calling it the IRS 1099-GOV for a while now. All transactions to be placed on line, what a concept like all police with camera/badges in every person to person interaction or DNA for every criminal row prisoner. I don’t trust the government 100% nor police 100% nor the criminal system 100% yet I am a voting American citizen a veteran and a tax payer for common sense. Time to improve/fix the system. Gov. Moonbeam in California should be a state version for the case study. TBD.
In the Obamacare rush last Spring, I recall that there is/was a state in the Northeast, I believe, that had a similar program. Their costs were going out of sight. It would be very interesting to see a real world application of the President’s program.
Mass. via Mitt Romney years ago (although he says it’s not ‘exactly’ the same.) What happened – massive state debt, rationing of care, etc., etc.
In other words – not so good either for the state or the people.
Yes it was and still is Massachusetts.
I live here and find it funny that the ObamaCare plan mirrored an already known to be a failure system, but yet the people who supported it said there was no problems.?
Right now several large hospitals are suing the state for non payment. And a lot of people are already complaining that since they got on Mass health after being laid off, they cant find a doctor as fast as they used to.
But lets put the whole country on the same path…..no problems here….Nothing to see….move along.
Since Massachusetts is an example of Obamacare, is there a state that is mostly free market driven? How are the uninsured cared for? What are the costs? Benefits?
I ask these questions because I do not know the answers, with no preconceived objective.
Lets look into the Department of Labor and how their funds are used to inhibit business growth. Enforcement/Development of rules that are redundant and overreaching making it hard for small businesses to operate. IE MSHA/OSHA. Also how is the money used to support unions and stupidity at the NLRB.
To the old Patriot from an old Patriot.
Wish I had the direct quote: shall paraphrase.
G.K. Chesterton 1912: “Terrible we haven’t hanged more politicians”
On ocassion I will go to Youtube and call up ‘Mussalini’s
demise’ and often wonder- what if? It’s backbone that we lack
as a nation
I think congressmen should be on the record all the time, not just on the floor of the house or during committee meetings. It seems that much congressional business goes on in the backrooms, on the phone, during meals, on the golf courses. So, if you want to be in congress, you need to wear a microphone all the time, or have a stenographer follow you everywhere.
The area I would most like to see looked into would be Federal(& State) agencies that are cooking the “legal” books to get rulings and decisions that they want to perpetuate and extend their own power. Or are actually hiding the real info for the same purpose. A good example of that is CARB in California. Why these agencies are allowed to roll all over us with they know are falsehoods is beyond amazing,
Another example of this here in California would be the Delta Smelt, with EPA, USFG using faulty data to arrive at the conclusions they wanted. Pacific Legal and others have been on this case for the better part of 3 years.
How we get more transparency on government agencies deliberately causing harm to America for the sole purpose of gaining more control to themselves,and how to stop them however, I haven’t a clue.
There isn’t a corner of the government I don’t want the transparency spotlight to shine. But if I have to choose…
While it’s my favorite department, Defense also is a money pit of the first order. Surely there can be no more lucrative alliance than Ike’s military industrial complex. And this would tie in nicely with the scrutiny of all that wealth gamed through insider information.
I would also like to see a spotlight on how incredibly expensive it is to bypass the federalist system. I read a paper once that described the journey taken by a dollar going from a federal taxpayer’s pocket in California to a welfare recipient’s pocket in, let’s say (I don’t remember), Minnesota. The author claimed it cost $18 to make that particular trip. I don’t know how accurate that was, but I do know how expensive layer after layer of bureaucracy becomes. The beauty of the federalist system is that services are provided and people are taxed at the most local level possible. Not only is that usually the most efficient method, it’s also the most responsive to the needs/desires of us citizens. Any more, our lives and businesses are ruled and regulated by faceless, nameless, unaccountable federal bureaucrats (and with ObamaCare, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet). This is not liberty, this is tyranny.
Sorry if I repeat anyone, didn’t read the WHOLE list.
This is not an agree/disagree on what to target. If it stops spending then I agree wholeheartedly, but drill down a bit. Every new panel, committee, agency, ‘office of’ etc has to have more people on the public dole.
So it’s name the stupid stuff going on, put a title on it, number of employees, salaries then cut it off, at the shoulder.
ex. 100 employees at 100k average/year is 10 million. Do the math on 1k less employees.
Cut the employees and other things stop happening. Office space (which may mean new buildings), computers, phones, expenses, health care, pensions, trips. savings escalate.
Start with the EPA, move to the BLM, then the Park Service, then NEA, Teachers, IRS… pick your favorite. Just don’t do it like YouCut (http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/). Great Idea but the selection were made by them in Cantor’s circle and showed he had no sand to go after the fraud miesters.
then there are the CZARS:
Ed Montgomery Auto recovery Czar
Black radical anti business activist. Affirmative Action and Job Preference for blacks. Univ of Maryland Business School Dean teaches US business has caused world poverty. ACORN board member. Communist DuBois Club member.
Jeffrey Crowley AIDS Czar
Radical Homosexual.. A Gay Rights activist. Believes in Gay Marriage and especially, a Special Status for homosexuals only, including complete free health care for gays.
Alan Bersin Border Czar
The former failed superintendent of San Diego . Ultra Liberal friend of Hilary Clinton. Served as Border Czar under Janet Reno – to keep borders open to illegal’s without interference from US
David J. Hayes California Water Czar
Sr. Fellow of radical environmentalist group, “Progress Policy”. No training or experience in water management whatsoever.
Ron Bloom Car Czar
Auto Union worker. Anti business & anti nuclear. Has worked hard to force US auto makers out of business. Sits on the Board of Chrysler which is now Auto Union owned. How did this happen?
Dennis Ross Central Region Czar
Believes US policy has caused Mid East wars. Obama apologist to theworld. Anti gun and completely proabprtion.
Lynn Rosenthal Domestic Violence Czar
Director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence. Vicious anti male feminist. Supported male castration. Imagine?
Gil Kerlikowske Drug Czar
Devoted lobbyist for every restrictive gun law proposal, Former Chief of Police in Liberal Seattle. Believes no American should own a firearm. Supports legalization of all drugs
Paul Volcker Economic Czar
Head of Fed Reserve under Jimmy Carter when US economy nearly failed. Obama appointed head of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board which engineered the Obama economic disaster to US economy. Member of anti business “Progressive Policy” organization
Carol Brower Energy and Environment Czar
Political Radical Former head of EPA – known for anti-business activism. Strong anti-gun ownership.
Joshua DuBois Faith Based Czar
Political Black activist-Degree in Black Nationalism. Anti gun ownership lobbyist. WHAT THE HELL DOES A FAITH BASED CZAR DO??
Cameron Davis Great LakesCzar
Chicago radical anti business environmentalist. Blames George Bush for “Poisoning the water that minorities have to drink.” No experience or training in water management. Former ACORN Board member (what does that tell us?)
Daniel Fried Guantanamo Closure Czar
Human Rights activist for Foreign Terrorists. Believes America has caused the war on terrorism. Believes terrorists have rights above and beyond Americans.
Nancy-Ann DeParle Health Czar
Former head of Medicare / Medicaid. Strong Health Care Rationing proponent. She is married to a reporter for The New York Times.
Vivek Kundra Information Czar
Born in New Delhi , India . Controls all public information, including labels and news releases. Monitors all private Internet emails. (hello?)
Todd Stern International Climate Czar
Anti business former White House chief of Staff- Strong supporter of the Kyoto Accord. Pushing hard for Cap and Trade (Cap and Tax). Blames US business for Global warming. Anti- US business prosperity.
Dennis Blair Intelligence Czar
Ret. Navy. Stopped US guided missile program as “provocative”. Chair of ultra liberal “Council on Foreign Relations” which blames American organizations for regional wars.
George Mitchell MideastPeace Czar
Fmr. Sen from Maine Left wing radical. Has said Israel should be split up into “2 or 3 ” smaller more manageable plots”. (God forbid) A true Anti-nuclear anti-gun & pro homosexual “special rights” advocate.
Kenneth Feinberg Pay Czar
Chief of Staff to TED KENNEDY. Lawyer who got rich off the 911 victims payoffs. (horribly true).
Cass Sunstein Regulatory Czar
Liberal activist judge believes free speech needs to be limited for the “common good”. Essentially against 1st amendment. Rules against personal freedoms many times -like private gun ownership and right to free speech. This guy has to be run out of Washington!!
John Holdren Science Czar
Fierce ideological environmentalist, Sierra Club, Anti business activist. Claims US business has caused world poverty. No Science training.
Earl Devaney Stimulus Accountability Czar
Spent career trying to take guns away from American citizens. Believes in Open Borders to Mexico . Author of statement blaming US gun stores for drug war in Mexico .
J. Scott Gration Sudan Czar
Native of Democratic Republic of Congo . Believes US does little to help Third World countries. Council of foreign relations, asking for higher US taxes to support United Nations.
Herb Allison TARP Czar
Fannie Mae CEO responsible for the US recession by using real estate mortgages to back up the US stock market. Caused millions of people to lose their life savings.
John Brennan Terrorism (man caused disaster-sorry)Czar
Anti CIA activist. No training in diplomatic or gov. affairs. Believes Open Borders to Mexico and a dialog with terrorists and has suggested Obama disband US moron. A TOTAL MORON!!!!
Aneesh Chopra Technology Czar
No Technology training. Worked for the Advisory Board Company, a health care think tank for hospitals. Anti doctor activist. Supports Obama Health care Rationing and salaried doctors working exclusively for the Gov. health care plan.
Adolfo Carrion Jr. Urban Affairs Czar
Puerto Rican born Anti American activist and leftist group member in Latin America . Millionaire “slum lord” of the Bronx , NY. Owns many lavish homes and condos which he got from “sweetheart” deals with labor unions. Wants higher taxes on middle class to pay for minority housing and health care.
Ashton Carter Weapons Czar
Leftist. Wants all private weapons in US destroyed. Supports UN ban on firearms ownership in America .. No Other “policy”
Gary Samore WMD Policy Czar
Former US Communist. Wants US to destroy all WMD unilaterally as a show of good faith. Has no other “policy”.
So, Congress appropriates money. Severely restrict the money given to the Executive branch to finance all these czars. Let them share one office and one secretary. They can sit on those plastic stacking chairs, unstacked of course.
Thanks Texas Vet – nice list of America’s high-level domestic enemies. Sunstein should be at the very top.
This is a great idea! I agree with previous commenters’ suggestion to investigate how all of our public servants become so wealthy during their tenure. I have another suggestion that might be a side door into looking at this issue.
One of the things that has always stuck in my craw was learning that Linda Tripp (Monica Lewinsky’s confidante) was being paid somewhere around $120,000 as a glorified administrative assistant (read secretary) at the pentagon job she transferred to after the big scandal. Compared to the private sector, that salary is unconscionable!
I have always wondered just how many federal employees are on the taxpayers’ payroll. I did a quick look at the Dept of Education and Dept of Agriculture on Wikipedia. There are approximately 5,000 employees at Ed and almost 106,000 at Ag (2007 figures)!!! WTF do all of these people do? How much are these people getting paid? I would love to see a flow chart reflecting the number departments within each cabinet level agency with corresponding employee counts and salaries.
I would guess that we could fire 50% of all federal employees and nothing would change in the real world. Considering their salaries, healthcare costs, and other perks, I’ll bet we could save a bundle while at the same time forcing those agencies to streamline procedures, work smarter and more efficiently.
On federal prisons…I would like to know how many illegal alien murderers there are in federal state and local prisons.
It has long been a contention of mine that more americans have been killed by illegal aliens than have been killed in the middle east wars. but you can’t get exact data on this.
You can infer it from the data–but there is enough fuzziness to give some wiggle room for those who want to argue otherwise.
Return to States Rights: central government is no longer manageable.
1. All 1040′s are to be submitted to the individual state, who then allocates for National Defense, Interstate highways, commerce, etc. by proportional representation of each state.
I’d like to know exactly who is writing the enormous bills that no one bothers to read before voting on. I’ve read that everyone from legislative aides to lobbyists have a literal hand in writing bills. Out of the 2,000-plus-page Obamacare mess, how many actual lawmakers wrote the actual words?
You do not just slap together a 2,000 page bill over a weekend. It takes many months of intensive work to produce such a massive text, and perhaps years of cumulative work to produce all of the major bills that have passed or been proposed by Obama & Co.
In practice, parts or all of the text of complex legislation like this are often written by the large legal departments of the organizations that are prominent in the field to be effected and familiar with its intricacies, or by organizations/think tanks that have a strong interest in/a stake in the issue.
If new legislation is directed at the Petroleum industry, then it might be the Petroleum Institute, if directed at Pharmaceuticals, the industry trade organization or a major drug company, if it primarily effects GE than it might be GE that crafts very complex and technical major legislation, and then hands the draft to a friendly Congressman, who takes part or all of it, who perhaps tweaks it a little, and introduces it as “his bill.”
In the case of the massive, transformative bills we are talking about, I suspect that the ideologues and legal staffs at various thinks tanks on the far Left—almost universally bankrolled in one way or the other by George Soros–have been working to craft and compile these major pieces of legislation for several years, and that these bills were stacked up and ready to go even before their man Obama won the Presidency.
If you believe Glenn Beck, and I do, these various major bills–thousands of pages of complex and comprehensive legislation—like the Stimulus bill, the Health Care Reform bill, the Financial regulation bill, Cap and Trade—were all written by a coalition of some of the companies to be effected—GE comes immediately to mind–and various far Left think tanks and organizations which saw them as vehicles to further their own particular interests, for the companies to survive, profit and prosper, for the far Left ideologues as a golden, once in several generations opportunity to use their control of the Presidency, and their majority control of both the House and the Senate, in a “Emergency” that they and their allies in the MSM hyped as far worse than it was, to bypass the usual Congressional scrutiny of hearings, debate, and deliberation, and to frog march us toward their dreamed for “Utopia,” in reality toward some American form of Socialism/Fascism/Communism.
First of all, we need to determine the belief of each man we hire as a government servant, before we hire him. You do not want to hire an enemy for servant.
Each man’s belief is what drives him, not the constitution of a country. It was collective belief in God that gave us the Constitution of the United States. It is a growing belief in Mohammed that is trying to tear that Constitution down.
Let’s work with that as our priority until it is established.
Joe Smith
Like to know the sweetheart deals the Obama administration cut with drug companies and AARP to get them onboard Obamacare.
I would like to see all funding of the czars stopped. Every funding bill should prohibit spending its funds for the czars, their staffs or their successors by whatever name that might be used,
1. A full accounting of Freddie and Fannie and the millions reaped by Gaines and Gorelick, et al.
2. An investigation of the CRA, including finding out WHY IN HELL the FDIC is now hiring a slew of investigators to make sure banks are still loaning to people who can’t afford it.
Otherwise, I think Issa is on track with his 7 subcommittees. I tell you, I saw him on Hannity and Issa took my breath away with his war plan. The Repubs wasted an opportunity years ago by screaming about Monica Lewinsky. Issa is going for the jugular. I can’t wait.
Just wanted to let you know that the Sunlight Foundation offers a ton of tools for looking into lobbying, money in politics, federal contracting and other issues. I wrote up a post about it here:
http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2011/some-suggestions-pajamas-medias-transparency-project/
Also pointed to some data sources on federal employee salaries, congressional financial disclosure information, lobbying by foreign interests and a few other assorted topics.
Roger, I think education is the most important aspect of government that needs to be reviewed and corrected. In particular the curriculum.
in particular we must teach the children to be self-governing. for that they must all understand that Freedom is derived from the application of the law to government by the people.
this is not an easy concept to master but our Founding Fathers addressed it as well as any. As soon as a person understands that The People are to control their government the mechanics of our original system becomes clear.
But children will need to work through the concepts and principles of this incrementally, each year as they go through school.
Which is why, of course, that those on the Left, on the advice of Marxist theoreticians like pre-WWII Italian Communist Party member Antonio Gramsci, made it a priority on their “long march through the culture/institutions” to seize control of the U.S. educational establishment, so as to make sure that our schools no longer teach the Constitution, American government, and other inconvenient subjects that used to produce an educated, informed, patriotic and aware citizenry, which would trow a monkey wrench into their plans–with Obama & Co. in charge now particularly well advanced–to gain control over this country.
Before 1966 there was NO U.S. Department of Education! Before the new U.S. DOE, America educated the generations that raised America to its highest pinnacles.
Post 1966 America’s education under the control of the U.S. DOE has done nothing but systemically decline to the dastardly point of today. It has, for 44 years now, been a part of the New Great Society’s social re-engineering project.
It is high time America’s education be returned to the States and local communities, handing the U.S. DOE a pink slip! Most of your point, which is a valid point, would be taken care of if we got the federal government out of the K-12 and higher education business.
In 2009 only 200 + high schools represented 50% of the nations dropouts. That of course, is primarily those schools in the nations cancer cities and a small portion of very small poor rural schools. In typical federal government fashion, they want to declare the problems of those schools upon all the nations schools and formulate a central one-size-fits-all solution and control.
Terminate the U.S. DOE!
The slow, full scale, multi-generational campaign of propaganda and subversion that Gramsci advocated, in which each and every key building block of the bourgeois societies of the West—the family, the church, the school, civic organizations, government, law, business, culture–were to be attacked, subverted and destroyed, or taken over by members of the Left, each working independently in his own locality and line of work, in what has been called “a conspiracy of shared values,” was very broad based indeed.
In the case of the Constitution, this encompassed not only education, but before that was attacked, the Law, with Harvard’s (so much of what is harmful to our society has originated at Harvard) Roscoe Pound, Dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936, successfully changing the study of Law from one thoroughly informed by and based, first and foremost, on a detailed study and knowledge of the Constitution, to the study of case law dealing with Constitutional issues, which has allowed lawyers and judges to stray ever farther from the Constitution. In my one unlamented year of Law school, I was puzzled and appalled that our “Constitutional Law” classes very rarely actually referred to or explored the Constitution in any depth or detail. Now I know why.
Seth….you are precisely right! Don’t get me started on the law schools of Harvard and other Ivy League institutions. They are the dregs of America along with their communist, socialist, progressive evolved counterparts!
My good friend has suggested that we make people that receive money from the government such as welfare payments be issued a 1099 that is public as a way to show who is bought by the current administration.
The Congressional Black Caucus! Heh. ZZZZZZZAAAP!
Most of all I would like to see PJM follow the George Soros money connections to this so-called “transparent” White House and the Democrat/Progressive/Socialist house and senate “leaders.” I strongly believe this is behind 99% of the destructive-to-the-USA laws/policies/edicts we have witnessed flooding from D.C for the last four years (and longer). Follow the money…
PMJ…it is great that you have an interest and wish to do something constructive. However, I think the congress has allowed for the executive to become far to large, to complex and to overreaching in authorities, to consider a “short-list” of areas to evaluate.
Certainly the congress has plenty of room for more transparency and honesty in it constitutional mandate of legislating and appropriating in addition to its oversight authority.
That said….
1. I would suggest maybe looking at all the many “agencies and corporations” within the Executive Branch that have no direct constitutional authority and fly under the radar of daily life. The average citizen has not a clue of who they are, what they do, what they can and do “regulate” and how much they are appropriated for…..not to mention many of their duplicity in regulating authorities and appropriations expenditures.
2. I would look at the more recent trend and growth of the White House, Department and Agency “staffer’s” being appointed by the President as domestic governmental “policy makers” circumventing congressional approval. There is a far more DANGEROUS transparency and honesty problem in the White House and Executive than in Congress.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac/Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and all the buddy pukes associated with those corrupt pigs.
The strongest argument against big government is the guaranteed hyper politicalization and corruption that accompany high taxes and oppressive regulation. It’s critical that Republicans begin a fierce and sustained offensive to repeal Obamacare. This includes investigating, publicizing, and holding hearings on the sleazy deals that greased the passage of Obamacare (Pharma, AARP, Amer. Med. Assoc., etc) and continue presently (see Karl Rove’s article in WSJ today http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704405704576063892468779556.html )
The same applies to Cap & Trade deals – stimulus funds subsidizing a green industry that extreme leftists are attempting to invent out of whole cloth, corrupt or wimpy legislators on both sides who support ethanol subsidies, the total devastation in Lousiana from Obama’s policies. Who stands to gain, who’s lobbying, who’s getting the tax or regulatory breaks? John Stossel does a great job exposing the consequences of regulatory nightmares. Why can’t Congress do so? Heavy exposure in the face of the public’s current indignation could have a huge impact. The Right’s blogosphere and punditry needs to pressure mainstream media to cover the facts as Breitbart has been doing, exactly the opposite of the Journolisters’ mission.
It has taken us two generations to reach the edge of the crevasse and it will take at least a decade to remake our politics, culminating I hope in a constitutional convention that will refashion our politics. Victory in WW2 and the arrival of nuclear weapons led to a transformation which has taken us to the brink of ruin. We have squandered the rewards of victory but the nukes remain. These must be managed and this can only be done by the Executive Branch. We need to refashion power completely. BUT in the short run you can help us
1. develop a debate about national security and defense. We need a completely new national security doctrine with a force configured to support it. First, close all 895 foreign bases and reopen only a few. Bring all of our troops out of Asia and Europe, end NATO and develop bilateral treaty and basing rights in conformity with our national security doctrine. I estimate we can reduce our defense budget by at least one=third.
2. End all farm price supports and subsidies. Get the government out of the agriculture business, out of the school lunch business. These supports are the bipartisan foundation of the one party national treasury party we have created that rules us corruptly and completely. END ALL PRICE SUPPORTS NOW. ENCOURAGE ORGANIC FARMING IN A VARIETY OF RESEARCH INITIATIVES but most important
3. Promote a new homesteading act to encourage a return to local and regional farming by organic methods. Compel the government to sell off its huge real estate holdings, an important way to reduce our national debt!
4. Tomorrow morning close down, liquidate the Departments of Education and Labor. Get the government out of this racketeering and return education to local communities responsible for their own children.
5. Create a national infrastructure commission to develop an inventory of necessary and valuable projects that need to be funded and implemented over 18 months from the time a Final Report is issued and debated.
6. Establish a goal to reduce the federal government by 25% of personnel within four years and another 25% in 10 years.
7. A Energy Independence Commission to review all possible alternatives and how they can be developed. Gas and oil are not going away soon, nor is coal but we can develop alternatives such as nuclear NOW.
8. In connection with this, all superfund sites need to be reviewed by independent groups, assessed, prioritized and dealt with.
9. Social Security and Medicare as well as Obamacare are forms of State Socialism that are not sustainable. Open debate on how we can liquidate them and be replaced by sustainable systems that require voluntary participation of all. There is one simple rule: Every American has to have coverage for medical care which requires an annual visit with a Primary Care person, a doctor, physician’s assistant or nurse practicioner. In connection with this we should legalize ALL drugs, decriminalize their use and regulate the widespread abuse of pharmaceuticals.
Since a lot of Federal tax money has gone into NPR, and the CPB, and into all the stations that pay NPR dues (not to mention the personnel and real estate and facilities of hundreds of college campuses who ‘host’ its true-believing broadcasts), it’s time to shine some disinfecting light on NPR’s internal culture.
Start with Juan Williams’s Fox interview, on hearing the news that NPR has canned Ellen Weiss, and docked Vivian Schiller’s bonus, over their ideological purge of Williams.
It’s time to follow up on that interview and penetrate the ingrown, cultlike culture that converts our taxes into monocultural propaganda, to the detriment of the half of the population whose desires and opinions are neither well covered nor well represented by the priesthood that controls NPR.
How much money is paid out by the Federal Government to settle law suits? Think Pigford and Pigford II settlements. I read an article a while back about a “green” eco non profit filing suit on average of once a week with an average pay out of $125K per settlement. I believe the article was entitled, “litigation as a source of non profit funding”… Or something like that. Would be interesting to see how much wealth is redistributed via this approach.
One other important note… Whatever topic you decide to focus on, please allow your readers to participate with research, local feet on the street, or other things you may need. You have a huge base of normal everyday folks willing to help.
Very educational to read these great suggestions. PJM and readers alike, we have much work ahead of us.
Mea culpa. I already shared my 2 cents @ #87-GDI, but I’ve done some more thinking …
Is there a way to create a small handful of relatively simple standardized 1-2 page scorecards for key legislation, budget categories, critical appointments, etc? It would be incredibly powerful to be able to quickly and consistently grasp the “essence” in a way that allows intelligent, informed comparisons. This may already exist somewhere, but I haven’t seen it.
For legislation, for example:
- Title
- Purpose
- Sponsor
- Constitutional Connection
- 10-Year Cost
- Annual Cost
- Primary Beneficiaries
- Responsible Agency
- Relationship to Agency Mission
- Funding Source & Duration
- % Increase in Agency Budget
- Increase in Personnel (year 1, year 2, etc.)
- Funding Sunset Date
- Mimimal Acceptable Outcomes: End of 1st Year, 2nd Year, etc.
- Mandatory Review Date
and so on …
I use a similar (but simpler) strategy with clients to capture central points for major projects or programs. Our 1-2 page Snapshot becomes the litmus test for ensuring decisions and actions relate to and actually advance the original goals.
The Transparency Project is a superb idea.
How about US contributions to the world bank and IMF?
When do we start the FOIA requests?
HERE’S AN ITEM THAT NEEDS INVESTIGATING.
Government gives ineligible homeowners billions in stimulus loans:
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/01/government_gives_ineligible_ho.html
Issue: Unelected bureaucrats with unaccountable power — start with highest ranking BHO appointees and shine a light on progressive, unconstitutional positions and aspirations from video speeches they’ve given…I note the power of the ACORN and Van Jones videos as evidence too hard to ignore (at least by the voters) — it works !
Issue: Government employee unions — educate on why they used to be forbidden and how they came to be. Plant the seeds to dismantle these unions by showing the distortions they introduce into the democratic process…disproportionate influence on laws and lawmakers, exemptions and accommodations to progressive laws and regulations that private sector citizens are subject to. Again, a continuous stream video evidence (e.g., speeches) are powerful and simple catalysts.
Thanks for caring enough to do something !
One other thought …
How about an assessment of the number of departments and employees just in government alone (never mind academia and corporate-related) that depend on the continued existence of racial injustice, discrimination against (fill in the blank), etc.
If cancer was wiped out we would need far fewer oncologists, right ? I think it would be very insightful to fully reveal how large and vast is the organization and vested interests in making sure that these remain permanent issues requiring government intervention. No matter how many rules and regulations are enacted we will always be told the issue is not “cured” or eliminated– hence the need for the bureaucracy to “fight” it.
We don’t know even a fraction of what we SHOULD know as a properly informed People in a Democracy. This is by design of the professional political class of middlemen who want us dependent on their intervention.
It is only by the efforts of “ordinary” Americans operating outside that system and Washington Ruling Class culture that we have any hope of retrieving our control over government. No political party or professional candidate will honestly do this work; our political system serves Them, not us. That needs to be fixed as priority #1.
The more the Public can know about every aspect of government, the more power we have to understand, challenge, and control it. Bureaucracy is particularly deadly in hiding its tracks. Knowing where every penny is spent makes it difficult for government to act without our knowledge.
Exposing skeins of personal and business relationships is another important way to make the system transparent, but a single-term limit on any government service, then prohibition from any further professional or service connection to government is a better control. Serve once and go home.
Criminal penalties applied to individuals are a key, too. I fought city hall once and still have a federal official on tape (lawfully in my state) baldly lying to me to deny due process. She just didn’t fear prosecution and jail for it.
The key element is to make sure that nothing, not one thing, can be kept secret, except within a very few legitimate National Security vaults that have regularly-changing, non-professional advocates for the People monitoring everything within, and draconian penalties for evading them.
Size, complexity, unseen relationships, and secrecy of government are the main enemies to address here. Right now, it’s a hand-is-quicker-than-the-eye operation in which they are the hand and we are the eye.
Local level sending. salaries, pensions, contracts, line item budgets. I’d love access to all of these.