Go to www.openthebooks.com or get the “app” using your phone by searching “open the books” in your App Store. You will have at your finger-tips a map of how your dollars are being wasted by the government. The app was created by Adam Andrzejewski who writes:
Here are just three tidbits I found out using the new app:
• The brother of a former state director of agriculture under former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has received nine federally guaranteed loans totaling $1.67 million since 2006. He has also received hundreds of thousands in direct payments and subsidies from the federal government, all based on his ownership of a single hog farm in Teutopolis, Ill.
• In Bradley, a small town 60 miles south of Chicago, a beauty school with 105 students and based in a shopping mall charges $20,000 for tuition and supplies. Yet the school has received over $8.2 million in federal Pell grants and federal student loans. Thanks to the taxpayer subsidy, the college of cosmetology has tuition that exceeds tuition payments at some Big Ten universities.
• In my upscale suburb of Hinsdale—where the average home sells for nearly $900,000 and the median household income is over $150,000 per year—a nonprofit called Community House received a million-dollar grant for children’s programming. In addition, taxpayers guaranteed a low-interest government loan for $1.5 million to the local Lamborghini dealership. That’s spreading the wealth to the wealthy.
