-By Warner Todd Huston
The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is starting a new effort to spotlight wasteful government spending in the Aloha State and one of the central parts of this program is a new website that the group promises will, “revolutionize government accountability in Hawaii by revealing waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars at the state and local level.”
The new site can be seen at hawaiisunshine.org.
The site, that was unveiled to the public Nov. 30th, exposes line item details for more than $12 billion in state spending and transfers since 2008. GRIH filed hundreds of open records requests to procure spending data from nearly every state agency, and has placed it online in an easily searchable database, for free use by interested citizens.
Not only will taxpayers be able to investigate how their tax dollars are being spent, but they will also be able to report questionable spending using “Pork Alerts” and strategize with other users in the site’s discussion forum. The site exposes spending such as the following:
- $2,675 in dry cleaning bills
- $780 for limousine services
- Hundreds of thousands to Waikiki hotels
- Nearly $60,000 to one company for office leasing
- $120,000 to an individual artist
- $218 to a home video store
The Grassroot Institute also released its 2010 Pork Report in March. The Pork Report revealed $300 million in was, abuse, and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars in Hawaii.
The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is an independent, non-partisan think tank based in Honolulu. The Institute’s mission is to achieve a freer and more prosperous Hawaii through the principles of free markets, individual liberty and limited, more accountable government. Follow Grasroot Institute on Twitter and Facebook. http://www.grassrootinstitute.org/
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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