I was just talking with Pietro Poggi-Corradini about how we might keep tabs on what actually happens rather than on what is supposed to happen when the government spends $825 billion quickly. Wouldn't it be great to keep track of how long it takes the money to get spent, what actually happens on the ground and so on? There's no way a reporter can follow it. Or an economist. So let's use the wisdom of crowds, the many-eyeball approach.
So how should we execute the monitoring strategy? A blog with each spending line a category that people can comment on? A wiki? Suggestions welcome and Pietro and I will try to implement. Assuming it passes. I haven't given up hope yet, but preparing for the worst.
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I think this is a great idea. It would seem a wiki would be well suited for it.
I agree with Marcus. If you're going for a many eyeball approach, it's difficult to top a wiki.
I second the wiki motion. If you can get the attention of the big Porkbusters like Glenn Reynolds, you'd dramatically increase the chances of this thing being a success.
I also have to share a link I think you'll find amusing:
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/01/selflessness-vs.html
Beckoning us to spend the stimulus with our conscience rather than with our greedy motivations.
Interesting, Adam. I wonder if that nice venture capitalist would finance a "selfless" startup?
Here's a USA Today article from 2006 describing a law passed requiring a federal website to track gov't spending over a certain threshold. Does anyone know what became of this? It seems that this website(the subject of that article) might be a good start for tracking here.
Count my vote in for a wiki as well.
You're the man, Russell Roberts (Pietro Poggi-Corradini too).
If you do put together a wiki or something, how could you make sure that nothing gets double counted, or not counted at all?
Only problem with a wiki is that it will have to be closely monitored, or it will be sabotaged for whatever political interest.
I think Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW) wouldn't mind lending a hand:
http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_pigbook2008
"The 1,188 projects, totaling $2.8 billion, in this year’s Congressional Pig Book Summary symbolize the most egregious and blatant examples of pork. As in previous years, all of the items in the Congressional Pig Book Summary meet at least one of CAGW’s seven criteria, but most satisfy at least two:
# Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
# Not specifically authorized;
# Not competitively awarded;
# Not requested by the President;
# Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
# Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
# Serves only a local or special interest."
Those look like they can be made into categories, or tags, for the wiki. Although most of the stimulus bill's projects will fit all of them. But you could track all of government spending that way.
PBwiki, Wikia, or Zoho would all be good places for this.
Do a google maps mash up. As it stands, the federal spending/bailout money/pork levels are too abstractly-defined for the common American to grasp. However-many billions of dollars to Detroit is just a number to most people. If people can look at a bridge or something and say "That cost the government $10 billion to build?" it might send a resonating signal to them.
This might not be practical, however, because none of the data sources I have seen on federal spending (http://usaspending.gov) have any geographic reference to them, other than state. So if this isn't workable, do a blog…and DEFINITELY make open the comments section!
I thought the stimulus package was supposed to be spent relatively quickly. In fact, time is always of the essence. Keynes said that in the long run we are all dead. The implication that you make is that the money will be misspent due to the rush, rush nature of the thing. Yes, that is a "reason" for time in the first place: so things don't happen all at once. Time can be your friend or enemy; it depends if it's on your side or not. Let's not get into the time value of money: A dollar spent today is worth more than a dollar spent tomorrow. I always say that time is the great equalizer – both paupers and princes will meet the same fate of oblivion, in due time. Isn't that an argument for some kind of redistribution of wealth? Perhaps the coming stimulus package will be a start in the right direction if the money is spent carefully. I don't trust billionaires with their money; they can create a lot of mischief with their money, like getting George Bush elected twice. That wasn't time (8 long years) well spent. Don't waste your time following the "pork." Time is too precious a commodity to fritter away. The time it took me to write this post could have been put to better use. It's time for me to go. My time is up, so to speak.
About the effectiveness of the stimulus package: only time will tell. I forgot that one.
Quickly? Am I the only one expecting a drawn-out fight between Obama and Congress over this?
Great idea, I would volunteer sometime to contribute to the implementation of this idea.
Hey everyone, I've taken the liberty of starting a wikia on this subject titled "Chasing the Pork". It will be at pork.wikia.com
I thought it would be a bit more catchy than "Keeping tabs on the pork". This is all as long as its alright with Russ (since this post was the inspiration for the project).
Please let me know of anyone and everyone who will want to contribute to this project! (Like Dan just mentioned)
The request form is processing within Wikia's internal systems and being reviewed by their admins, if all goes well it should be approved soon so we can start creating articles and posting. I can let everyone know whats going on with it and keep everyone updated
Jeremy, I like your idea and have some relevant resources. I started a "self-organizing" Google maps mashup a while back, but it died on the vine before I made anything of it. The code is Javascript on the client and ASP.Net (VB) on the server using a SQL server database. I could set it up again in little time, and it's not a bad start for this concept. Users log in and record locations and routes linked to html descriptions in the database. Other users browse by following routes between locations. Email me if you'd like to pursue.
Dan, You too.
Hmm, I posted this a second ago but it seems to have disappeared.
I've taken the liberty (If its alright with you Russ) of starting a wikia based on this idea under the title of "Chasing the Pork" (I thought this was more catchy than Keeping tabs on the pork).
Please let me know of anyone or any group who may be interested in contributing (such as commenter Dan).
The request form in wikia's system is being reviewed by their admins and processed through, if all is well it should be approved soon and we can begin posting and creating content on pork.wikia.com
Hmm, I guess there was just a weird delay in the post showing up, feel free to delete one of those double-posts (and this one).
Russ, I sent you an email on this one.
Wiki is not the way to go… too much babysitting, and it won't scale as the information starts really rolling in. Plus, if you decide to re-order the fields or add something, you have to manually do it across the board.
I'm thinking we develop a standard Microformat to encode the type of information we're looking for, then publish instructions to the legions of bloggers on how they can encode their info.
Let's say I find a link in USA Today that mentions 21-million to Starkist Tuna. I could write a short blogpost about it, and include in the link the following metatags:
#BOrecipient = "Starkist"
#BOamount = "21000000"
#BOdate = "20090120" (year month date for sorting)
#BOsource = (link to article)
#BOid = (whatever universal line-item identifier Congress might tack on)
#BOsnitch = "IkePigott" (so we can track the sources of the info coming into the database.
The beauty of this system is we can scour the internet for the Microformats, and pluck them straight into a blog or RSS feed for easy consumption. It would make it easy to collate and merge duplicate information, and would make for easier data-dumps into programs you could use for analysis and comparison.
There might be a couple of technical details that need firming up, AND might be a field or two of information you would want included, but I think this is the way to go to prevent headaches down the road.
I vote to call it the Tricklepedia – in honor of the Democrats' version of trickle-down economics.
I myself am more partial to "Tullockpedia", the wiki of rent-seeking.
sounds like a huge project but worth the effort. I would suggest a combination of federated and central approach. Maybe something like seekingalpha.com
pork.wikia.org
Has been approved!
Great idea, Russ!
How about using the google docs survey feature? People would take this "survey" filling in things like dollar value, who, what, when and a source link.
Then have the spreadsheet that contains the details shared as a read-only public document. People could look at it and clean a "forked" version.
The only tricky part (and this is always the tricky part) is getting those few individuals with the time to then put it all together and keep the master document clean. Still, not impossible.
Just registered tricklepedia.org, .net & .com. Someone post where to point it to when something is up.
I second Ike's notion of a common data format, and some sort of parser. It would be lovely, eventually, to data mine the posts — this sort of stuff would run well with media… "$300 billion in proposals and feasibility studies: check!"
The obvious thing to recognize here is that there a lot of merging interests in not only the idea but of course for the publicizing it.
Furthermore, it is not only the pork (money being spent) it is also by doing so we will recoginize and be able to draw attention to that portion that isn't spent or else has been spent (graft) in secret.
Therefore,I suggest that whatever is chosen by Russ and Pietro as the format for keeping track of the pork, that Russ, Pietro, and Don et. al., contact Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others in the conservative talk radio medium and enlist their aid in the publicizing the information by running a daily update.
Getting the information out in such a way that the public notice of the squandering is actually noticed by the public is paramount to accomplishing any thing at all.
vidyohs,
thanks, but not thanks. Where were Limbaugh and Hannity while the Republicans were busy opening the pandora's box of trillion-dollar budget deficits?
Pietro,
They were busy bitching about the Republicans spending money like drunken Massachusetts Democrats (redundancy alert).
Both were quite vocal in asserting that the Republicans can't spend their way to reelection because they will alienate the conservative base – and no matter how much they spend, the Mierducks of the world are always going to hate them because of that 'R' in their title.
It's not Limbaugh's fault that elected Republicans ignored that advice. Perhaps if Vidyohs' advice is followed the Republicans will have a tougher time behaving like Democrats.
Pietro,
You're in a war and you want to quibble about using the people who can help you carry and shoot your guns? People who have more in common with you than with anyone in congress or government?
Now that's smart.
The rare few times I listened to Rush he seemed to be castigating the Republicans for their spend thrift ways and their wandering from the base of small government. I remember him castigating the Republicans for their gutlessness in facing down democrats. In other words, Pietro, you might be a tad off in your judgment of both Rush and his utility to your cause.
I personally think he would be delighted to broadcast your message, just as avidily as he does his envirowhacko updates.
Hannity is just a name to me because the rare few times I found myself on a station that carried him I couldn't stand to listen to him anymore than I can stand to read muirduck's crap.
On the other hand, if he is willing to be your billboard; again, is your mission to inform people or sit on your infomation and see to it that it is seen by the least amount of people possible?
All I am suggesting to you, sir, is use the tools that are the most effective to get your job done, or see the job not done in the eyes of but a few.
The way I see it and the motivation to make the suggestion I did is that you don't have one whole hell of a lot of options in choice of where and how to expose your pork list. MSM will ignore you, do you have your own nationally syndicated radio show, perhaps your own TV show?
The internet, blogs like this? Oh yeah, maybe a couple thousand of us will see it and care. I am a 20 year subscriber to Reason magazine, they would print your message and their readership (maybe what, 20 or 30 thousand) will see it. Big time exposure, eh?
Maybe sometimes too many of the good guys are just too clever by half.
Good night, Pietro.
Brotio, Vidyohs,
look, you don't convince people by declaring war, or engaging in name-calling. No matter how upset you might be. And by the way, this is an academic blog and non-partisan at that.
Please, help keep it that way.
Pietro,
You asked a question ("Where were Limbaugh and Hannity while the Republicans were busy opening the pandora's box of trillion-dollar budget deficits?"). I answered it.
If you don't want people to answer your questions, then please don't ask questions.
I don't have a problem with questions being answered, and I know Vidyohs doesn't either, so I'll repeat his question and hope you'll answer it this time:
Is your mission to inform people, or sit on your information and see to it that it is seen by the least amount of people possible?
BTW: Virtually everybody participating in this forum is partisan. They're just not always Democrats or Republicans.
Brotio,
I was disturbed by your use of the phrase "the Mierducks of the world". Thank you for your answer.
I think the information should be collected first, hopefully by harnessing the dispersed knowledge in society. Once it's out there, it would be, first of all, a historical record. People can do what they want with it. My view is that the system needs more checks-and-balances. Institutional checks-and-balances seemed to have failed. We need to grow new ones. I see this as planting a small seed.
By the way, a student today told me that Obama wants to set up an "information tzar" in charge of doing a similar thing. I don't know anything about it, but in any case, I'd prefer an independent bottom-up approach.
Pietro,
I apologize for reacting harshly to your post.
I do not apologize for referring to Muirgeo as Muirduck, Mierduck, Torquemierduck, Murthaduck, or any of the other duckling names he has earned while trolling this bridge the last three years (Methinks and Mesa have some fabulous names for him). He is not here for knowledge, and does not engage in debate except versus straw men. I show him the same respect he's shown me.
P.S.
Sam Grove has been almost saintly in his ability to refrain from calling Mierduck names, even in the face of some pretty nasty epithets hurled at him from our dear, socialist Duck. If you can be as stoic as Sam against such disrespect, then God bless you.
I'm not as charitable.
Pietro,
You have your fields of specialty and I have mine.
You might be a really nice guy, certainly seem to be, but you are making the same fundamental mistake most who oppose socialism do.
Sir, I do not and have not declared war, I am simply experienced and honest enough to have recognized that the left has declared war on me and all that I believe in. War came to me before I was even born, so I guess I can say that I see that I was born to the battle, it just took me some years to understand the war and the nature of how it is being fought.
That having been said, I can tell you that you are losing because you neither recognize that you are being attacked and therefore you have no clue as to what tactics you need to employ to fight back, nor do you have any idea of how to formulate tactics. Libertarian thought has spread to maybe 4% or 5% of the nation's people and is stuck there. There may be a higher percentage that give lip service to the principles but they don't vote them.
Get it clear, Pietro, you are at war, you are conquered and they want that defeat to be so solidified in the next four years that your children and your grandchildren grow up even more clueless than you about their chains and the ones who put them there.
One final piece of advice, sir. When at war and attacked you had beter respond using equal or better weapons if you hope to survive and win.
If at your age and degree of intellectual development you haven't seen and understood what the weapons of the left are, then you aren't any good to the freedom of Americans because you aren't contributing any concrete to the battle.
What are the weapons that the left uses, Pietro? You've seen them used, surely by now.
It begins with disagreement, then proceeds to emotional disagreement; and when they find they can't defeat you on intellectual grounds, it then proceeds to ridicule of you personally, then to a derogatory label, then to protests (frequently violent), then to lawsuits in court to prevent you from acheiving a thing, personal physical threats aren't unknown, criminal acts against you aren't unknown.
Okay, so what. The what comes in knowing that the MSM supports them every step of the way and gleefully so. You are left out and unable to reach the people you need to reach and so become a fringe kook that they can shove to the side of the stage when important debates are held.
This is why we are losing, Pietro. The socialist are locked arm to arm and in perfect step, all advancing at you hurling insults and you retreat asking, "why can't we just all be civil?"
I would think that to an intelligent person just the example of how the left has conditioned the young to react (think college campuses) to conservative speakers who come to their colleges to speak would have taught you how they fight the war. Ask Ann Coulter about it.
They don't give a shit about civil, Pietro, they give a shit about winning. Once you wear their collar then they can treat you nice.
You want to be free, you have to learn to fight their fight better than they do, or be satisfied with being the loser.
Nothing has changed in all of human history to make the art of war any different at its core.
Pietro,
Had to take a break but I wanted answer your other notion.
It's all politics, Pietro, you may wish it wasn't but it is.
The presence of worker ants like muirduck, STrUmPiT, et. al., make it politics whether you like it or not. You might wish to keep it all just economics, but it appears to me that there are some competing ideas of what is good economics and what is failed economics.
Now those that believe devotedly in the failed policies seem to be very vocal and persistent in trying those failed ideas again. Oh yes, I am sorry, they are trying them again in fact in congress as we speak; and this blog is trolled by socialist evangelicals trying to sell those ideas as being the "right" thing to do. Politics, my friend, and you aren't going to keep it pure.
muirduck understands politics and charity, just submit to him and his ilk, and they will give you ice cream and as their pet they will make sure you get free visits to the vet.
I prefer not to be the pet or slave of anyone, so I am not nice.
Vidyohs,
a person on the left would be saying the exact same things about the right. How is this back and forth useful at all? Have you any hope of winning your war? I don't think so. In the meantime you poison the environment for the people who want progress.
What would be the point of working for Republicans to swing back in power once more?
One reason to stay apolitical is because politics itself is the problem.
brotio: "Virtually everybody participating in this forum is partisan. They're just not always Democrats or Republicans."
The common definition of partisan I've read is:
a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person
I definitely agree that everyone who comments here is either a firm adherent to liberty or else a firm adherent to tyranny. Yes, we are partisans, and we are engaged in the battle of our lives.
vidyohs: "It's all politics, Pietro, you may wish it wasn't but it is."
I agree completely.
This is my last comment because I have a busy day. I don't think advancing knowledge can be labeled as political. I'll give you an example: even though my salary is only partially supported by tax-payer money, the main newspaper in the little mid-western town where I live finds it is its duty to publish it once a year. That's fine with me. But why shouldn't we also publish the much bigger sums that go to the various bureaucrats and vested interests? And believe me, the vested interests are bipartisan. I want to be apartisan.
"What would be the point of working for Republicans to swing back in power once more?
One reason to stay apolitical is because politics itself is the problem.
Posted by: Pietro Poggi-Corradini | Jan 21, 2009 8:58:40 AM"
Pietro,
I had assumed that I was talking to someone a cut above, but here we are back in the same rut.
Where in all that I have said did yo0u get the idea or come to the conclusion that I wanted Republicans back in power? My God man, that is assumption worthy of STrUmPiT or muirduck. I said use the ones that can help you, not be one.
You see, I had thought that you and I were basically on the same side though I am far more to the right than you; far more to the right than any Republican or Libertarian could ever claim to be. But, I thought we shared the same basically beliefs in free markets and free minds (tks Reason), as well as personal liberty. It is disappointing that you have missed this in all my comments to this blog, including those most recent just above this one.
Perciles said it best some 600 years BC, "You may ignore politics, but politics will not ignore you."
To put that into today's language, Pietro, what he was saying is that "Politics will come looking for you and will demand action/reaction, you can't avoid it."
Pietro, you're dreaming if you think you can be a fence sitter all your life and never suffer the anal punctures of politics.
The Soviet Gulag was just chock full of people who, like you, thought they could be nuetral. And, most of them died in that Gulag. You chose which you wish to support in this world, or else others make the choice for you and enforce it.
You ignore or miss the most important point about my comments on the war with the left.
I did not declare it, nor did I chose it. I simply responded to Winston Churchill's rule (If at 20 you aren't a liberal, you have no heart. If at 40 you aren't a conservative, you have no brain.) naturally by growing up and seeing the war that was being waged on me.
Did you get that, Pietro. The war is being waged on me, you, and every single individual on Earth that disagrees with and impedes the great socialist march to domination. I chose not to hoist the white flag in defeat or nuetrality, I chose to fight them with words here, with guns elsewhere if it comes to that.
Do I hope to win? As long as I am alive and resisting I am winning with a chance of ultimate defeat of the socialists. However, if I sit on the fence, Pietro, and try to claim apartisanship or make nice to the thugs of socialism then I have suffered defeat for sure.
Pietro, by being a rock in the middle of the stream, you impede the flow no matter which way it comes from.
Pietro,
"In the meantime you poison the environment for the people who want progress."
Man, I can't believe I didn't address this but I did miss it, so here is my reply:
This is like saying I am creating a hostile environment by sassing the thug in the alley who is robbing me of my weeks wages.
Socialism is founded on, based on, has a foundation that theft is perfectly natural and good if two people vote to take from even one other. Theft, Pietro, and you want to keep the conversations with the theives nice nice and not tell it like it is?
Anytime, anywhere, you let a socialist proseltyze his scriptures even to known believers of the socialist church, you are doing a cruel disservice to your fellow man. That evil religion must be confronted and defeated in words, deeds, and in no uncertain terms every single time it presents itself.
Politics is not the problem, Pietro, ignorance and stupidity are the problem because they allow evil people to use politics to dominate and rape the ignorant and stupid. In short government is the problem because even ours has succumbed to the ignorance and stupidity of the people.
Intelligent and informed people produce intelligent politics and we can all live with that.
"I definitely agree that everyone who comments here is either a firm adherent to liberty or else a firm adherent to tyranny. Yes, we are partisans, and we are engaged in the battle of our lives." – John Dewey
Well said, sir. Well said.
Vidyohs,
This is off-topic, but I wanted to post this link in case you're unaware of it.
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/
Betcha thought I'd given up on my studies, eh?
Brotio,
Thanks my friend. As a matter of fact it was my brother sending me a hard copy of Spooner's "No Treason" that put me on my present path of thinking that has evolved to my entire position today. He and Howard Freeman (The UCC Connection). I refined my position with the help of a gentleman in North Carolina and a friend locally that is a high powered CPA.
That link is on my favorites list and has been for years. It is good that you are exploring it, Lysander makes more sense than anyone you've ever read.
No, I didn't think you'd given up, there is this thing I firmly believe in and that is that no one can "unlearnt" a thing. Once spurred to think and see things that one has never been exposed to before one can never go back to the old positions.
Here is a link back atcha that I think you'll find interesting. My question to you would be to answer, after viewing, which of the two is the fool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg
Answer me off link and direct to my tag.
For the past few weeks, a few volunteer developers and I have been building just such a site. Its aim is to gather local knowledge about the hundreds of shovel-ready projects proposed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. More info is available here: http://jerrybrito.org/post/71220058/stimuluswatch