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Showing posts from February 23, 2009

Recovery.gov a lame attempt at stimulus transparency

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Based on a campaign promise by Obama his administration is now utilizing technology to provide bleeding edge transparency to government in ways unseen before. Even before the stimulus bill found support in Congress, one of the very first provisions in the bill spoke about Recovery.gov as a means to provide transparency to the American public. Aim here is to let the people know where exactly our hard earned money is going and even give us a chance to participate, or in this case write about emotional stories of how someone else's money changed our lives. Given that a bill of this size passed through Congress in truly record speed, one would expect the website to be fully functioning and full of lip smacking goodness. Instead, the user is greeted with a bar chart that breaks down the money distribution in several sections. I was intrigued by the staggering figure of 288B for 'tax relief' considering $400 checks to those making less than 75k and an AMT patch cannot possibly a