Open the books

Here’s What Happened When Open the Books Tried to Get Details on Wyoming State Spending

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Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks, has written a interesting article at Forbes detailing what happened when the non-profit government transparency organization tried to get details about Wyoming state spending.

Here’s what we learned from the piece, Wyoming State Auditor Charged Us $8,000 And We’ll Finally Receive The State Checkbook By 2048:

On February 18, 2018, State Auditor Cynthia Cloud made us refile our open records request for the Wyoming state checkbook and then charged us $8,000 in fees. But production has been slow – and at this pace, we’ll receive all the records by 2048.

Why would it take 30 years to produce just five years of state spending?

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‘Draining the Swamp’ – Trump Admin Blows $11 Billion in the Last Week of Fiscal Year

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If you need further evidence regarding how wasteful and irresponsible Washington D.C. is when it comes to our tax dollars, look no further than the behavior of agencies under Donald “drain the swamp” Trump.

This year’s spending binge amounted to $11 billion in the last fiscal year week of 2017, and many of the excesses were detailed by Open the Books Founder and CEO, Adam Andrzejewski, in a recent Forbes article.

Here are some of the highlights from the piece, Use It Or Lose It — Trump’s Agencies Spent $11 Billion Last Week In Year-End Spending Spree:

Every September, the end of the fiscal year sparks a “use it or lose it” spending frenzy as federal agencies race to use up what’s left in their annual budgets. It’s a phenomenon that should drive taxpayers crazy. Agencies are afraid that if they spend less than their budget allows, Congress might send them less money in the next year. Agencies often try to spend everything that’s left instead of admitting they can operate on less.

Here are the top ten ways the government wasted taxpayer money in the last week of FY2017:

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Ivy League Inc. – How America’s Most Prestigious Universities Bilk the U.S. Taxpayer

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Open the Books is back in the spotlight today with another deep-dive report, this time looking into U.S. taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and federal payments into Ivy League colleges.

Below are a few key findings from the report, titled: Ivy League, Inc.

1. Ivy League payments and entitlements cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period (FY2010-FY2015). This is equivalent to $120,000 in government monies, subsidies, & special tax treatment per undergraduate student, or $6.93 billion per year.
 
2. The Ivy League was the recipient of $25.73 billion worth of federal payments during this period: contracts ($1.37 billion), grants ($23.9 billion) and direct payments – student assistance ($460 million).
 
3. In monetary terms, the ‘government contracting’ business of the Ivy League ($25.27 billion – federal contracts and grants) exceeded their educational mission ($22 billion in student tuition) FY2010-FY2015.

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Meet California’s 218,667 Public Employees Making Over $100,000/Year

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Open the Books is back with another important government transparency report. This time, the organization looked closely at California payrolls, and found that 218,667 public sector employees earn six-figure salaries (in many cases far above that threshold), at a cost of $35 billion.

If Californians are fine with this sort of thing, more power to them, but it’s important to be knowledgable about where and how tax dollars are spent.

Below are a few highlight’s from Adam Andrzejewski’s (founder of Open the Books) recent article published at Forbes titled, ‘$100K Minimum Wage’ For 220,000 Highly-Compensated California Public Employees Costs Taxpayers $35B:

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Open the Books Exposes the Sham That is the Illinois State Budget

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Open the Books, the world’s largest private database of government spending, recently released its latest expose examining the Illinois state budget using data garnered from its annual FOIA request.

Here’s some of what it found (read the entire article at Forbes):

It’s been two years since Illinois state government had a full-year budget. Now, more than 70,000 vendors are owed $8.2 billion. Yet, despite the legislative deadlock and seemingly fiscal insolvency, more than $50 billion in state payments flowed to providers and other entities in FY2016. 

So, who actually got paid and for how much while others waited in the long line of unpaid bills?

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VA Chief Compares Veteran Wait Times to Lines at Disneyland

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Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of the always excellent Open the Books, has published an excellent piece over at Forbes covering the ongoing Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal.

The article is titled, It’s Not Disney World–The VA Scandal Two Years Later, and here are a few excerpts:

Two years ago, Americans were horrified to learn that as many as 1,000 of our nation’s veterans had died while waiting for medical care at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities. Any hopes of reforming the dysfunctional VA culture were dashed two days ago when Secretary Robert McDonald made an appalling comparison to waiting in line at Disney parks.

McDonald said, “When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience.”

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New Study Shows How the U.S. Government is the “2nd Largest PR Firm in the World”

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Open the Books is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization focused on providing transparency in government. I’ve highlighted their work in the past, most recently related to how the EPA wasted $92.5 million of taxpayer money on high-end, luxury furniture over the past decade. Their latest report is even more disturbing.

It relates to the amount of money the U.S. government spends on PR, which in total amounts to nearly $4.5 billion over the past eight years. Open the Books split this spending up into two main categories. The first is $2.347 billion in salary and bonus payments to federal employees, and the other is $2.02 billion spent on outside contractors.

The organization released a 40 page report with their findings, which can be read in full here.

If you’re pressed for time, I’ve provided some highlights below.

Enjoy.

At OpenTheBooks.com we’re constantly pushing agencies at all levels of government – state, local and federal – to disclose their spending. Our motivation is clear, simple and straightforward. Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent.

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How the EPA Spent $92.5 Million of Taxpayer Funds on High-End Furniture

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Open the Books is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization laser focused on providing transparency in government. I’ve highlighted their work in the past, but their latest report on inexcusable EPA waste and abuse may be the most outrageous information yet. Specifically, we learn that the EPA spent $92.5 million of taxpayer money on high-end, luxury furniture over the past decade.

The Washington Times covered the story:

The federal agency that has the job of protecting the environment doesn’t seem to have too much concern for trees, at least the ones cut down to make furniture.

The Environmental Protection Agency over the past decade has spent a whopping $92.4 million to purchase, rent, install and store office furniture ranging from fancy hickory chairs and a hexagonal wooden table, worth thousands of dollars each, to a simple drawer to store pencils that cost $813.57. 

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Another Government Scam – Small Business Administration (SBA) is Exposed as Corporate Welfare to Big Businesses

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Screen Shot 2014-12-03 at 2.42.03 PMMany people have noted that the more insidious or corrupt a law or agency, the more positive sounding its name. The most egregious example during my lifetime, was naming legislation that stripped Americans of most of their civil liberties the “Patriot” Act.

In a similar vein, which red-blooded American could ever be opposed to something called the Small Business Administration (SBA). We all love small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit, and even those who abhor big government have a hard time siding against an agency that supports the little guy. As such, the SBA is the perfect vehicle for cronyism, corruption and corporate welfare, which indeed appears to be its primary reason for existence.

My friends at Open the Books have published a key study on the SBA, and the results are ugly. The full report can be found here, but what follows is some analysis of the report by Stephen Moore at Investors Business Daily:

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A First Look at a New Report on Crony Capitalism – Trillions in Corporate Welfare

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One of the primary topics on this website since it was launched has been the extremely destructive and explosive rise of crony capitalism throughout the USA. It is crony capitalism, as opposed to free markets, that has led to the gross inequality in American society we have today. Cronyism for the super wealthy starts at the very top with the Federal Reserve System, which consists of topdown economic central planners who manipulate the money supply and hence interest rates for the benefit of the financial oligarch class. It then trickles down through lobbyist money into the halls of Washington D.C., and ultimately filters down to local governments and then the average person on the street gaming welfare or disability.

As such, we now live in a culture of corruption and theft that is pervasive throughout society. One thing that bothers me to no end is when fake Republicans focus their criticism on struggling people who need welfare or food stamps to survive. They have this absurd notion that the whole welfare system doesn’t start with the multinational corporations and Central Banks at the top. In reality, it is at the top where the cancer starts, and that’s where we should focus in order to achieve real change.

That’s where a new report from Open the Books on corporate welfare comes in. In a preview of the publication, the organization notes:

If Republicans are going to get truly serious about cutting government spending, they are going to have to snip the umbilical cord from the Treasury to corporate America.  You can’t reform welfare programs for the poor until you’ve gotten Daddy Warbucks off the dole. Voters will insist on that — as well they should.

So why hasn’t it happened? Why hasn’t the GOP pledged to end corporate welfare as we know it?

Part of the explanation is that too many have gotten confused about the difference between free-market capitalism and crony capitalism.

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