Another $18 million down the drain

Recently I have read stories where we are being told that the economy is once again sound, but not quite back to where we would really like to see it. In other words, “Everybody relax, but not too much.” And why should we relax but not too much? Mostly because there is more fund raising to do. Current the Congressional Budget Office took a look at the recent government plans for health care and announced that it will now add yet another $1 trillion to our national deficit. This is on top of the few other trillions of dollars scheduled to be added onto the deficit since the conclusion of the 2008 election. It was at this time that now in an unprecedented reach-out to influence the Congressional Budget Office, the White House has invited the leadership of the CBO over for a private meeting. Hmmmm? If I am a betting man I would guess that the meeting might have to do with the unfavorable review of the financial outlook of the plan.

Back to the fund raising. While we should relax, one reason we shouldn't relax is because if we don't and health care keeps treading forward as it is today, then we are being told that we could be buried under the expenses of medicare and medicaid costs in future years. On that point alone we are told we should quickly approve this current government health care makeover plan. But, then again, these were the same people who told us to “act now” on the near trillion dollar bailout so that we can save jobs only to completely blow away their worst case scenario on national unemployment anyway (despite the fact that congress “act(ed) now!”) These were the same folks that admitted not long ago that the economy was worse off than they anticipated and that “they were wrong” about their understanding of it. Now we should relax, but not so much that we don't feel this new pressure to solve something else that they are likely wrong about as well.

And the newest, well, not so new fiasco has everything thing to so with how they intend to share information about all of the recovery dollars being spent. Recently Elijah Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland said “If we can't show them that we are doing the right thing with their money, we're going to have problems.” So how will they show us?

Check out the website... http://www.recovery.gov

This is a new website, but apparently it is not new enough. I know, the web moves quickly and this site has been up for what... a couple months now. That is like a century in internet years, right? We'll that is what the White House thinks. So, they recently awarded what will turn out to be an $18 million contract to a company called Smartronix from Maryland (isn't that convenient) that will... redesign the site? That's right. I know of a multimillion dollar company that revamped their entire e-commerce / website by simply putting a single company on less than $1 million annual retainer! They are doing fine! And yet for some reason Recovery.gov needs $18 million to pull this off? That is pretty amazing.

And here is the killer. What are they going to do for recovery.gov again. They are going to redesign the site. Let's take a look at their website.

Go check out... http://www.smartronix.com

Is this a web 2.0 demonstration of social interactive web technology? Does this group even advertise “website redesign” tallent in their top skillset? No!!!

And buckle up for the final note: How will this $18 million pay out? Over the next five years! Said another way, the White House would have us believe that the economy is sound, but could be doing better, so shift your focus to spending $1 trillion in deficit on national healthcare, but well, understand that we feel it is important to set into motion a 5 year plan on phase 2 of a website that explains how we are still recovering from this slump we recently shouldn't feel too bad about, but well, don't get too comfortable?

Are you feeling schizophrenic yet? Well, you should be feeling crazy. Because this current batch of politicians seem to be willing to say whatever the heck they want in completely contrary directions so people will do what they want them to do. What kind of suckers are we? What kind do they take us for?

If you watched TV tonight then at the minimum maybe you got a small feeling of levity when President Obama cracked a few jokes. He can be a very endearing and personable seeming fellow. I can honor that in the man. But it is time to get real people. He may be personally likable, but we don't have to like what he is doing with the other face he seems to have.