2008 Elections: Your Next President

Should be someone who has the energy, the dedication, the commitment, and the mental acuity to multitask. Because, face it people, this is what the 21st century is all about. Gone are the days when we could work on one thing at a time. These days, we have many irons in the fire and they require work all the time, all round.

Barack Obama makes his case once again.

In the middle of a hard-fought primary, while his opponent was flinging kitchen sinks and associated hardware at him, the man found the time and energy to begin moving the nation towards total transparency in the economy.

Reaching across the aisle, as he said he would, he convinced Congressional colleague and erstwhile (and current) ally Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to work with him to give us ALL information about how our government spends our tax dollars.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) today introduced the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008 (S.3077), which would expand the information available on USASpending.gov, as well as make the data more accessible and readable. USASpending.gov (aka "Google for Government"), created by the Coburn-Obama Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 and launched in December 2007, makes public information about nearly all Federal grants, contracts, loans and other financial assistance available in a regularly updated, user-friendly, and searchable format.

The morning after the final primaries of Montana and South Dakota, the man was in Congress introducing this bill.

What would you be doing the day after a year-long campaign had finally come to an end? Most of us would probably be lying in bed, or lounging on the couch, feet up, resting after one of the most exhausting, gruelling campaigns in the history of this nation.

Not Senator Obama. Here's a little more information on his bill:

"I'm pleased to have the opportunity to work once again with my Senate colleagues to improve the transparency of federal spending. This bill is a continuation of our efforts to give taxpayers the power to know exactly what their money is being spent on and to help us in our efforts to root out waste and fraud. This legislation makes it much easier to hold agencies, contractors and others who receive federal funding accountable for their activities and their performance," said Senator Carper.

In April 2006, Obama and Coburn introduced the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590), which would publicly disclose all recipients of federal funding and financial assistance through a website to be established and maintained by the Office of Management and Budget. The President signed this legislation into law in September 2006 and USASpending.gov was launched in December 2007.

La Casa de Los Gatos is socially progressive and fiscally conservative. Very conservative. We would much rather spend taxpayer dollars in healing the sick, helping the poor, educating the ignorant, giving working people jobs, comforting and caring for the elderly, disabled, and young people. But &mdash we do not support throwing money away.

Having worked hard for every penny since our earliest youth, we resent our money being spent on professional "poverty pimps," bloated bureaucracies, waste, poor management and mismanagement. We'd rather pay working people a decent wage that enables them to support their families than pay CEOs and directors and middle managers one hundred times what the average worker earns. The people who clean up our shit &mdash nurses, teachers, doctors, street sweepers, police, firefighters, food service workers, physical therapists, childcare providers &mdash they are what makes our society.

Not the businessmen who take huge risks with shareholders' money but the entrepreneurs who see a need and exercise their creative imagination to fill it and treat their employees well. We don't need the first type of person. We need lots more of the second type of person.

To that end, we want to know where every penny of our tax dollar goes. We don't want it going to make Halliburton's middle managers and bigshots obscenely rich. We would rather it went to soldiers who did their best to obey the orders they were given. We would rather see them get a decent wage instead of taking payday loans at between 200 and 900 per cent interest rates. We want them, and their families, to have decent health care &mdash the kind of health care that Dick Cheney and John McBush enjoy. We don't want them lying in pools of piss at broken-down military hospitals full of mold and rats.

Thus we are very grateful to Senator Barack Obama for making this process transparent. This is a start. It is now OUR duty as taxpayers to visit USASpending.gov regularly and keep an eye on what our government is doing with our money.

If this is how Senator Obama will govern as President Obama, then give him your vote if you believe in accountability, equity, transparency, fairness, and freedom.

There's a new sheriff in town and he's going to help us, the people, clean it up!


YES. HE. CAN! YES. WE. CAN!

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