After working as a stock broker, I came to the full realization of just how transparent corporations in America had to make their spending. After cases such as Enron, the laws became even more strict regarding this transparency.
I can’t help but wonder why we as a nation don’t require government spending to be as transparent as that of corporations? If we’re paying income taxes, shouldn’t we at least know where that taxes is going? And I mean down to the penny, not vague statistics and figures.
I remember a bill attempting to be passed a while ago regarding making government spending more transparent, but I’m sure it was shot down, as I haven’t really heard anything about it. What do you think?
Simple answer: accountability, both on the part of the citizenry and the elected officials. Neither have any. Citizens don’t want to take the time to be involved with overseeing the government, and elected officials have no desire to see us cutting the pork bill projects to their favorite campaign vendors.
One other note: I knew a Captain in the military. His entire position was to “create projects”, for things that were technologically impossible, or simply useless. The reason being, he would be allocated funds for these “projects”, which would then be unceremoniously siphoned to an actual ongoing, normally over budgeted project the military needed completed, (Think F22 ).
You sir, are quite the bright fellow, don’t ever short yourself.
I agree completely, especially about the government officials, but I wouldn’t put it past one out of the 300 million Americans to be ambitious and crazy enough to dedicate their lives to making sure every penny is accounted for. Some people are just that crazy.
That sounds just about right. Not sure if you’re familiar with the Bullshit show with Penn & Teller, but on the War on Drugs, they talk about just how much money goes to the “War on Drugs,” and how most of it is never accounted for. Tens of billions of dollars, going where? Doing what? Just kinda sucks to see our hard earned money going straight down the drain, or to support religious groups.
D.C. has a culture of its own, a subculture. If you aren’t “connected” or “networked”, especially as an individual decidedly attempting to ruffle feathers, you are going to be unceremoniously stone walled at every junction. 1 in 300 mil ain’t gonna get 'r done.
The laws concerning concealment under umbrella legislation for “national security” prevent all but either the most doggedly determined or politically linked from obtaining anything other than borderline useless or entirely erroneous numbers on the actual spending. D.C. doesn’t operate on actual dollars for tax income/expenditure ~ it’s all predicted and bent by fiscal flux, wars, GNP, GDP, International welfare, and yes, the big bad boy, “military budget”; which is nothing short of its own subculture pumping out lies faster than seconds in a minute.
Unless we bring the system to it’s knees, bleeding and near death, transparency is unfortunately not pragmatically realistic. Ball park estimates are about as close as we’ll get.
Surely you aren’t trying to posit that our “separation of church and state” Puritanical government disobeys the Constitution and actively funds religious organisations through the Executive branch, illegally?
You sir, are an irrepressible loon if that is your intention.
Does anyone know how big the black budget is? I’m sure nobody really does.
How do the people have the power when they are governed by politicians that funnel money into secret programs? I can understand military programs should be secret, but all the rest of 'em really shouldn’t be.
Under this new anti-terrorism paradigm, even the Dept of Agriculture’s budget is a secret. It is all a big scam to steal tax money and hide it so the people do not become outraged, as they would.
Evidently there is no law that states you have to pay an income tax.
Not knowing where our money goes is a horrible thing. It can only feed corruption. If only the founding fathers were alive today- I wonder what they would say about the abomination this country has become.
Government spending can be monitored. Spending bills go through three readings before receiving presidential assent or veto and are open for the public to read. What we need are watchdog organizations to monitor these bills and report to interested citizens on dubious amendments and pork barrel spending. There probably are such organizations if one set about to find them.
But it is less transparent once appropriation bills are passed and the various department exercise their authority to spend the funds appropriated. There’s the hitch.
We’re on a need to know basis, and we apparently don’t need to know.
This is an excellent question dorkydood, its something I’ve been wondering for a long time. In fact, I would really love to get my hands on how much it costs to run the whole alphabet soup. If you were to fire half the people wearing suits in Washington, I doubt we’d have any problems.