A five-year-old group, www.OpenTheBooks.com, released double page ads listing horrendous examples of wasteful, costly programs in the Federal Government.
They started out as a non-profit group to transcribe Federal budget details into an online database for analysis and now have over a $2-million budget.
I just heard of them from the Debbie Georgatos YouTube political vlog, where she talks about them HERE.
You can find the Wall St. Journal full ad here.
In a recent Forbes article HERE, they exposed excessive wages earned by some of the top paid employees in government agencies around the US (including state and local city governments). For instance, in Texas, 356 municipal employees made more than all governors ($190,000).
They have ALSO assembled a massive database of Federal, State and local government agency employees who earn over $100,000.
By entering zip code 32778 (Tavares, FL - the County Seat) in their database, we got a map with markers by City with one or more $100k employees. For Tavares, the home of the Lake County Government, Constitutional Officers, School District headquarters, and the City of Tavares, we found 60 employees who earned over $100k as of 2017. Right off, I don't think any of the salaries were excessive compared to results in the national study.
You can see that list of the 60 employees earning $100,000 in the Tavares area HERE!
And, HERE is the map of cities NEAR Tavares with one or more employees earning $100k or more in 2017. Click any of the markers to see who they are.
Many names in the Tavares list are well known, including the former and current Lake County Managers, Tavares City Manager, the new and old Superintendent of Schools, and Constitutional Officers where salaries are public, but others are not well known, but not hugely excessive. Compared to the ridiculous wages shown in the Forbes article investigation, there are no huge wage earners shown locally. For instance, there are no local, unionized Janitors earning $200k like in New York, but, what do you think?
As for the stupid, wasteful Federal programs reported by OpenTheBooks.org, here are some:
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION PAYS TO PUT RUNNING SHRIMP ON A TREADMILL
FY2012-FY2017 | NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION | National Science Foundation (NSF) funded an experiment that tested how sickness impaired shrimp mobility by putting the crustaceans on a treadmill made an uproar in the media and in Congress nearly five years ago. Yet the NSF has once again given tax dollars to the same researchers to put the would-be seafood on a cardiovascular workout regime. The investigators – Louis and Karen Burnett – measure the crustaceans’ responses to low oxygen and high carbon dioxide environments in a variety of ways and would also test their reactions "when performing energetically demanding activities," according to the award abstract. "The energetically demanding activities will be conducted with the aid of a treadmill, as the technique is effective and will help to make the data comparable to previous studies," Arriens said.
IVY LEAGUE COLLEGES – $42 BILLION
FY2010–2015 | FEDERAL PAYMENTS, SUBSIDIES, TAX–BREAKS | ALL FEDERAL AGENCIES | In March 2017, we published our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Ivy League, Inc. In this report, we quantified all federal payments, subsidies, and tax breaks for the eight Ivy League schools between FY2010-FY2015. The Ivy League schools have $120 billion in accumulated endowment funds. Our findings launched on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal in a column by James Piereson and Naomi Schaefer-Riley titled, Ivy League Doesn’t Need Taxpayer Help. Our findings were also cited in the Boston Globe as providing research to congress as they instituted a new ‘excessive endowments’ tax in December 2017.
COLLEGES OF BEAUTY & COSMETOLOGY – $677.4 MILLION
FY2017–2018 | DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION | Our upcoming OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Department of Education (expected release date: October 2018) quantifies all FY2017 Department of Education funding flowing to colleges of beauty, hair, and cosmetology. These payments are primarily comprised of student loans and Pell grants. Because of the federal money, we found that these beauty colleges are, many times, charging more tuition than Big Ten Universities.
Conclusion
If you care about wasteful government spending, I suggest you:
- Comment if you think the list of 60 local goverment employees earning $100+K is ok or not.
- visit OpenTheBooks.com and register (free), and
- find the "Petition" tab and sign the petition to encourage better transparency, plus
- review the site for more aggravating information.
The group's ad is focused on
- getting Congress to make all government spending transparent, and
- then use it to weed out wasteful programs like those on their list.
Vance Jochim
