Follow the Money

I promised a short time ago to stop commenting on my sleep habits. Doggone it but until tonight I’ve had the luxury of sleeping six or even seven hours three straight nights. My wife might say that this has let me make up a sleep deficit. Ironically, all this sleep has coincided with rather dull posts. Its almost as though I need to be sleep deprived to stay on edge. I’m tired of being on edge but I woke up at three when the BBC still rules Public Radio and went down to our laundry room to fold our old LDV t-shirts. These are left over from two years ago and never got sold. The popular large sizes are all gone but we have a bunch of them on either side of this size.

I discovered last Friday when I’d been asked to dig them out to sell at our Spaghetti Dinner that a dozen of them got coffee spilled on them. I had to douse them with stain remover and wash them but I started too late in the day to dry them out in time for the dinner. Even so we cleared a grand easy despite once again being terribly distracted by our exertions to get the bond. I’ve been told I was brilliant in the dunk tank and a video is promised of my hamming it up as a jaded JCI salesman. Apparently it was too big a file to send me in the email. The problem with movies is aways that once you hear a good review you’re inevitably disappointed when you finally see it.

NPR began at 4AM as I worked my way through the 2x’s with a story about TARP, President Bush’s federal program to get money to the banks to stimulate lending and business. This is the synopsis in NPR’s Morning Show webpage:

Linda Wertheimer talks to Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the spending of Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, money.

Barofsky talked about transparency and it stuck in my head as moved on to my email inbox. He said that the bank’s attempts to shroud their lending of the hundreds of billions they got in secrecy has made the public suspicious. No kidding. And then I opened up this cryptic email referring to my recent posts:

“Remember if the info can be obtained through the data practices act, it is public knowledge, period…:) What’s the big secret…hmmm… follow the money…”

Public data! If the taxpayers are denied the opportunity to reveal this information in court their next chance will take place once a new school board is seated. The current school board has no incentive to reveal Red Plan spending. The outlines are fleshed out for instance, their Red Plan bonding will require the District to take $4 million from operations annually for the next twenty years to pay off building bonds. This is far more than the District could hope to see in staffing efficiencies and future school boards will be obligated to the banks to keep pulling it out of the classroom. A new school board will have the authority to make the public data public so that we may not have to wait for the State Auditor to dig into it.

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