This is Change = see Baracks Bills alr

\"USAspending.gov Barack Obama\'s New Gov Site + His reform track record + Best Of Obama\'s Transparent Gov Bills\" http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/danielleclarke/CB44 
 
 
Today Dec 13th 2007 witnessed the launch of USAspending.gov,= http://www.usaspending.gov/ 
 
which was created by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act 
 
by Tom Coburn and Barack Obama. The site enables tracking of $1 trillion in federal spending on contracts, grants, earmarks, and loans. The bill faced serious opposition, including anonymous holds by some of the biggest porkbarrel spenders (including Ted Stevens), but in the end, Coburn and Obama prevailed.  
 
So what kind of data does this site give us? Well, how about the top 100 recipients of federal money, = http://www.usaspending.gov/fpds/tables.php?tabtype=t2&subtype=t&year=2007 
 
or say which congresspeople rake in the most pork. = http://www.usaspending.gov/fpds/tables.php?tabtype=t1&subtype=at&rowtype=d 
And that\'s just scratching the surface.  
And, to my surprise (especially for a government site), an API is available = http://www.usaspending.gov/apidoc.php 
to make it easy to extract data.  
 
Read on for more examples and some implications.  
USAspending.gov and Obama\'s reform track record = http://www.onemillionstrong.us/showDiary.do?diaryId=431  
The site is clearly a treasure trove of data and is a huge step forward towards government accountability. What\'s also nice is how user friendly it is.  
 
Let\'s look at a few examples of what we can dig up.  
 
Example 1: The list of transactions with KBR, Inc. (formerly part of Halliburton) in 2007 = http://tinyurl.com/27xroh . This came out to a paltry sum of $2.7 billion dollars (so far this year), which is nothing compared to previous years as the bar graph on the summary page = http://tinyurl.com/yq39cq shows 
 
Example 2: No bid contracts are among the darkest corners of federal spending - the lack of competition in these contracts is in large part what leads to overcharging by contractors and waste of taxpayer dollars. Well, there was $30 billion in no-bid contracts in 2007 = http://tinyurl.com/2x2225 , including money to some companies I had never heard of, including $1.2 billion to Armor Holdings, Inc. = http://tinyurl.com/248loz and, strangely, $163 million to the government of Canada. = http://tinyurl.com/28amw3 
 
There are a million more examples, and I\'m really looking forward to seeing them in the coming weeks and months.  
 
I\'m very happy to see another positive step towards government transparency, something that Sen. Obama has been a leader in.  
 
I have one challenge to everyone - find one interesting, strange, or otherwise noteworthy pieces of spending using the site.

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