Recovery.gov

This new website - Recovery.gov - is supposedly going to be the place where we, as citizens, can watch the government dole out all the stimulus money.

While I think this is a great idea - if they hold to it - all this talk about "transparency" reminds me of one quite large black hole in the U.S. government's budget - the CIA. The CIA's budget has been a "black budget" - meaning that we are not allowed to know how much money is going there or what the money is going for - for many, many years now. Far too long. This secrecy allows them (us?) to get away with sticking their (our?) fingers in everybody's business around the world.

Why do we still have over 800 military bases around the world? Is it really necessary to have all those bases in practically every single nation on earth? To what end? I suspect that responsibility for the military bases crosses more into the Pentagon's budget than the CIA's, but can you prove that? You don't know what the CIA is doing overseas. You don't know which governments they are meddling in at this very moment. What gives us the right to have a presence in every country? Gee, could all those bases perhaps foment a little bit of resentment?

Oh, yeah, here's Obama on the Recovery.gov website: