Want a little light reading to make the time go by on this dreary January Sunday? Well, how about spending a little time reading up on how President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress plan to give hundreds of billions of your tax dollars to their buddies? Thanks to the online penomenom known as “crowd-sourcing,” you can join with hundreds of other people all over the country doing the same thing and do something in the process to increase public understanding of what is actually being proposed.
You can now read the actual text of the $825 billion and growing Democratic economic stimulus package at a brand new web site called ReadtheStimulus.org, thanks to The Heritage Foundaiton, Kithbridge.com, Citizens Against Government Waste, the National Taxpayers Union, Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Americans For Prosperity and Lighthouse Strategies and Consulting. Kithbridge, by the way, is Rob Neppell, the conservative online wizard/activist who initiated the project.
The entire 334-page text is available in both text and pdf formats, and you can put your comments and observations on individual provisions of the proposal on the page in which it appears. Trackbacks are also enabled on the site. There’s also a widget on the site that lists the most commented upon provisions, the most read pages and other aspects of the project.
Perhaps most important, the site’s operators are looking for volunteers to help with adding additional features. You can imagine how much work is involved in extracting specific details about particular projects proposed in the bill. To enable faster research and analysis, ReadtheStimulus.org is also organizing an online spreadsheet.
This will readers to sort and filter by particular characteristics of the proposal and thereby provide deeper perspective on what is actually proposed and who will benefit by it. For more information on how you can help, the email address is: [email protected]
