If they can't even do a web site...
...why do people still think they'd be able to run the government?
The Republican National Committee shelled out $1.4 million dollars over the last six months for Web sites and services, much of which was spent on GOP.com, the party’s major Web presence that was unveiled this month, new Federal Election Commission expense reports show.
The figure is far higher than what experts estimate it should have cost, and five times the amount its Democratic counterpart spent to host and maintain Democrats.org.
The biggest disparity seems to be bandwidth costs–the RNC paid Smartech Corp., a Republican-focused hosting firm, more than a million dollars, plus $22,000 to Eloqua, compared to the DNC’s $203,000 to Sprint, Switch and Data and Servint Corp.–despite the fact that the two sites’ traffic, which determines bandwidth usage and, largely, hosting costs, was the same.
But the design of the site itself was costly, too. In the months prior to the October 13 launch of GOP.com, the committee paid $328,000 to 11 firms for Web development. (The Democrats, which did not completely overhaul their site during that time period, spent $45,000 on Web development.)
And when the GOP’s graphics-laden product was unveiled, many of the main sections appeared missing or broken, including one advertised as listing future party leaders, which showed up blank.
This looks like crony capitalism gone really wrong - my guess is that someone on the Republican side of the aisle did a favor for a rapacious, inept design firm who couldn't deliver a working site.
When I look at the numbers (a million bucks for hosting?) my head spins. Here's hoping the investigative wing of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy is hard at work finding out which member of Congress or which high-ranking member of the RNC gave away a million bucks for freakin' hosting and got a web site that they could have built with free software like we use at B3.
One more thing - don't developers test their damn links any more?