Interactive Map Showing Where $130 Billion in Earmarks Went, by State, District, and Politician

Inquiring minds are investigating where $130 billion in earmarks for 2011 went, state by state, district by district, and in some cases by politician. The following interactive map is courtesy of Ellie Fields and Ross Perez at Tableau Software.

Ross Perez writes ...

As you may know, the administration has made numerous promises to make earmark data available to the public and congress has basically blown it off. The folks at the Sunlight Foundation, with help from others, have taken the time to go through and actually enumerate and record every single earmark for FY 2011 and put it into a downloadable database.

I took that DB and made this viz of total earmarks by state, which you can also switch (using the select measure drop down) to see earmarks per capita. Those looking to email their reps can also click the tab at the very top and see earmarks by politician. The gist is that $130 billion is going to earmarks next year. A drop in the bucket some may say but as you know, that adds up alarmingly fast.

The video contains lots of data and it may take extra time to load. Please be patient. It takes an extra 3-5 seconds on my computer. Your results may vary. If you have an inadequate memory, the display may be slow or inoperable.

To see details such as the number of earmarks and the dollar total per district, click on "by district" then hover over one of the horizontal bars.

For additional information including the Sunlight Foundation report and data, and a discussion of the huge effort it took to compile that data, please see Leading by Example: Earmark Transparency

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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