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Spend 18 million to redesign the Recovery.gov website? That is what Obama will spend.

And it DOES make sense from Obama’s point of view. Obama wants to weaken the private sector and strengthen the public sector. The $18 million will create more government jobs. And the private sector is weakened because they have to pay for the re-design of this ONE website. It is all about power — shifting power from the private sector to Obama’s control.

See the following article posted also on Something To Say Today.

18M Being Spent to Redesign Recovery.gov Web Site
July 08, 2009

“For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site.

The new Web site promises to give taxpayers more information about where their money is going than the current version of the site.

“Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,” James A. Williams, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, says in a press release announcing the contract awarded to Maryland-based Smartronix Inc. “Armed with easy access to this information, taxpayers can make government more accountable for its decisions.”

The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.

“We are pleased that another major milestone has been achieved,” Earl E. Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, says in the press release. “We thank the GSA for its assistance and look forward to working with Smartronix.”

UPDATE: The RNC has released a new web ad mocking the Obama administration’s decision to allocate additional funds to the redesign of the Recovery.gov Web site.

July 8, 2009 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (115)

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Just hearing the word “transparency” ( as mentioned
by Earl E. Devaney, chairman of Recovery Accountability and Transparency) makes me feel ill.

How did we ever live without the “t” word for all
these years…. Did you have to look up the meaning of the word, since nobody is living by it since the
election?!

Posted by: 2smart4u | Jul 8, 2009 10:30:26 PM

This is just a smokescreen so we dont realize he wants to veto the intelligence bill that would force Obama’s legislation and the government to actually be transparent and have to answer for what they have done.

Posted by: guesswhaturwrong | Jul 8, 2009 10:48:16 PM

I could redesign a whole lotta “innovative and interactive” websites for $18 million.

If they were talking about how much the band-width cost to keep the site up and running, I MIGHT be able to see it. But just a redesign???

I think maybe the government is already “accountable” for this bone-headed idea.

Posted by: Jaylah | Jul 8, 2009 10:48:31 PM

Who ever heard of spending $18 million dollars on a website? Who is getting the money???

Posted by: guesswhaturwrong | Jul 8, 2009 10:49:20 PM

Once the numbers are posted what are we going to be able to do about it really anyway?

Posted by: guesswhaturwrong | Jul 8, 2009 10:50:27 PM

guesswhaturwrong, that intelligence bill dates back to 1947. If you’re going to whine about it, whine at Harry S Truman and every president since then. Not Obama.

Posted by: Jaylah | Jul 8, 2009 10:50:38 PM

Hmmm… 18 Million bucks to redesign a government website….riggghhht! That’s enough money for 18 responsible 40 somethings to live the rest of their lives in relative comfort. It’s far less money than was spent so our Socialist leader and his black-hearted wife to have “date night” in New York on our dime.

Posted by: Taxpaying victim | Jul 8, 2009 10:54:17 PM

Classic government…. Doesn’t know what anything costs, and spends 20 times what anyone else would (18 million for a web site is crazy!).

Posted by: Jen | Jul 8, 2009 10:59:09 PM

So it’s supposed to tell us what’s happening to our hard earned money? Unless the home page says “Here. Here is where your money is going,” then this is the most ridiculous thing ever ON TOP of being a waste of money in the first place.

Posted by: Pete | Jul 8, 2009 11:00:04 PM

Oxymoron of the day: Responsible Government Spending.
It ranks right up there with “Vacation bible school”.

Posted by: Taxpaying victim | Jul 8, 2009 11:04:18 PM

“Oxymoron of the day: Responsible Government Spending.
It ranks right up there with “Vacation bible school”

LOL Well said!

Posted by: Jaylah | Jul 8, 2009 11:12:21 PM

At this point even this foolishness does not surprise me. I have lost all faith in our government.

Posted by: CWG | Jul 8, 2009 11:15:21 PM

All the good intentions and idealism of Obama is being squandered by those who were entrusted with executing and enforcing his plan viz. his cabinet and his staff. The stimulus will be judged not by the 18 million dollar web site but by the reversal of the job loss trend, by the economic growth and by the recovery of 401k plans. That the stimulus monies were intercepted and swindled by the usual suspects is no surprise. A second stimulus would be a disaster of epic proportions when the first one was so grossly mismanaged that the states used it for pie in the sky projects even though the states are in dire straits. It would have been preferable to let the states pay the funds towards their deficit reduction instead of unwanted porky projects. Businesses small and large are cutting costs and reducing the payroll to try and balance their books. Why can the government not do the same instead of getting bloated and mounting the deficits, sky high. All the talk of the windmills and green energy was just blowing hot air during the campaign.

Posted by: gjkotw01 | Jul 8, 2009 11:16:01 PM

Is this administration completely nuts, or are the contracts for this redesign going the way of pork? Personally, I’d like to know the name and URL of the company that has been contracted. The dollar figure is patently absurd.

I repeat……Is this administration absolutely NUTS!?

Posted by: John Vacek | Jul 8, 2009 11:24:10 PM

OK kids..those that think 1.6 million a year to develop, staff and maintain a web site with a national presence, purpose and verifiable data set is a lot, please sit down. You obviously don’t know anything. That’s a site staffed and maintained by AT MOST eight FTEs. (full time employees) If you could do it for less, I suggest you bid the gig.

Posted by: vidtweeker | Jul 8, 2009 11:29:10 PM

You mean to tell me the government spent 18 million dollars to keep informed and answer the question of over 300 million people. Talking about your glass house! Finally a government that reports to the people!! I suppose next your going to tell me people actually have jobs to do this. Wow! straight forward and easy to understand! No economics of dung!! Go Obama Go!

Posted by: rightbehind | Jul 8, 2009 11:33:37 PM

18 million? I could have done it for 9 million!

Posted by: SamTyler1973 | Jul 8, 2009 11:37:41 PM

For God’s sake… a web design job pays only about 20k a year these days at best.

I run a multi section/topic political site and do it in my spare time and do all the graphics and imbed live feeds chat and statistics for nothing.

Maybe I should get out of the health care business and stop saving lives for a living and work for the government.

For more go to: Something To Say Today

I knew Obama was going to be true his word and cut the pork. I am guessing He meant instead of “fat” products (pork) he meant something more “Herbal”. You know, the kind one can smoke and lots of it. Because obviously someone in Washington is smoking something that kills brain cells.

Posted by: David Baron | Jul 8, 2009 11:43:14 PM

Interesting viewpoint by a first generation African American woman whose cultural roots are Igbo from Nigeria. The following article is from The American Thinker. She comments on President Obama’s post- colonial cultural (socialist/ Marxist) roots. The apple, Obama, did not fall far from the tree, i.e., his father’s values, she says.

My view: Given the 15 + Czars that President Obama has created so far (more coming) to run the government the way Obama wants it run – not what We the People want – Obama’s despotic, undemocratic values are readily apparent. Given that we really have a One Party government – the Democratic Party — currently Obama can push through his despotic appointments – his multitude of Czars. These people, his minions, answer only to Obama. They should answer to Congress and to We the People. Congress holds the power of the purse. But it is a Democratic Party controlled purse.

When will Our Representatives wake up? Well, since Our Representatives are mostly concerned with their own re-election, only when MORE people COMPLAIN vociferously …. then and only then will things change. So even if you live in a overwhelmingly Democratic district – make your voice known regularly.

Rationing of everything by the government is President Obama’s goal. Control of the private sector is President Obama’s goal. Reducing America to a third world power is President Obama’s goal. How? Destroy the power of the private sector. And that is what his policies seek to do.

What has Obama done in 6 months? He took over a couple of car companies. He seeks control of the financial institutions. Bank of America was forced by his administration to take over Merill Lynch. We are trillions of dollars in debt – which will be passed on for generations. Obama seeks Cap and Trade so that private companies have to pay to use energy. That will drive the cost of energy up. Look at Spain with 18 percent unemployment. Spain is the most visible example of a failed “green” economy.

Is this what Americans sought when they embraced HOPE and CHANGE?

Per the Wall Street Journal editorial page today, Obama wants rules so that a 100 year old mother will “learn” from her family and doctor that she should accept pain meds instead of cost ting society for the surgery of a pacemaker. That statement tells it all. This is a real story and the woman now age 105 is has spirit and doing OK with her pacemaker. Let “society”and “government” decide what is best for the elderly according to Obama. Obama waffled and did not answer when asked whether he would seek the best (i.e. most expensive) care for his own family…

President Obama is one cold, arrogant man who dislikes American democratic values. He wants the power to re-make America in his image of how society should run. That’s my view. cameronjacks@gmail.com

contact leikenga@gmail who writes the following article:

“Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama’s skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in post colonial Africa.

“Like many educated intellectuals in post colonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign “isms”, instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

“The tropes of America’s racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970’s from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from — also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to — but at the same time it does.

“My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself — those of us who know our history — have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:

“First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious.

Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.

Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa’s long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities — particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe’s complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC’s have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC’s use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama’s Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC’s strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It’s when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the “will of the people” becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father — an eloquent piece of political propaganda — Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father’s legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama’s African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book — from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of “progress”. (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an “ancient loyalties”.)

Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led — oftentimes to their own slaughter.

Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.

Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you:

Convince the people that “clinging” to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of “unity”. British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than the state. “Tribalism” made the imperialists have to work harder to get people to just fall in line. Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many “educated” Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.
Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to have a “fair shake”. Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They are interested in controlling all.
Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many of today’s Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and certificates-but what good are they if you can’t find a job?

“Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse. One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer “progress” (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!) would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60’s. What will a post-Obama America look like?

Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons. This speaks for itself.

“America, don’t be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.
L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.

For more go to: American Thinker