Moron of the Week

While it would be relatively easy to simply blast away at the current administration for any number of idiotic moves, this week’s slightly narrower in focus. While the fish-in-a-barrel pot-shot would be the inability of the administration’s press dept. to spell the President’s name correctly, or the word ‘recovery,’ or ‘stimulus,’ etc., the real target is much more serious in its stupidity factor.

Word came down this week from the GSA (General Services Administration) that a contract had been awarded to a Hollywood, Maryland internet services firm to redesign the government’s Recovery.gov web site. The purpose of the site is to let taxpayers see where the porkulus, er, stimulus money is going and how it is being spent.

Unfortunately, in addition to the misspelling gaffe in the statement sent out via e-mail to the media, there’s the little issue of the redesign costing an eye-popping $18 *million* bucks. Think about that. $18 million dollars to redesign a web site, whose sole purpose is to tell folks where the deficit-ballooning recovery package money is going.

Frivolous? To say the least. Irresponsible? Unquestionably. Fiscally jaw-dropping? Without a doubt. But, for the GSA if not for the beloved-by-the-MSM administration, what’s even worse is that project insiders are critical of the contract, as well as the lack of information that’s been made available to the public. The press release issued Wednesday contained barely any information at all. The company (Smartronix), the company’s home base (mentioned above), and two hype quotes from administration officials concerning how spiffy the pricey new site will be. For the administration, which touted how transparent and open it would be, this is just the latest boondoggle in a series of say-nothing/release-no-information instances which has called into question the President’s promises on those two fronts. (But let’s face it. When even Helen Thomas calls your administration one of the most manipulative since Nixon for how much they’ve tried to control the media and the dissemination of information, you got problems.)

$18 million bucks for a redesigned web site. Doesn’t the government already have a number of web sites? Of course it does. So, why are they sending out $18 million contracts for work that should be done by folks on salary who are currently maintaining and updating other government information-repository sites? With all the government expansion begun since Jan. 20th, are we supposed to believe we really don’t have enough in-house folks to redesign a web site? The GSA certainly thinks so, which should give you a little insight into the kinds of people running the show at General Services.

Runner-up.
I usually don’t bother with the also-rans, but if it hadn’t been for the GSA jumping leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the pack, I might just have left last week’s MotW up and changed the date. It’s rather pathetic to see somebody froth like a dog in need of a bullet about their alleged internet stalkers, but watching web text so turn a person into a basket case—to the point they’re threatening to ruin the careers of well-known professionals, is truly like watching a human train wreck. There’s little that sounds more shrill and desperate than somebody making virtual threats. How somebody’s ‘messing with the wrong person.’ How somebody is going to get netkicked. How somebody is going to make your life miserable/ruin your life/etc. These folks always seem to have a bogeyman around every corner. But listening to somebody talking so frequently about being ‘driven to the brink’ by web traffic and ISP addresses that show up among their MySpace visitors really kinda makes you wonder. Definitely the kind of person you can picture wearing a very thick tin foil hat.

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Moron of the Week