Brought to you by Sunlight Foundation, a Google Earth map of all the earmark recipients. And while you're at it be sure to check out their visualization charts for earmarks categorized by state, government agency, etc.

Two of my favorites are the Earmark Tagcloud, and the Earmark per Capita by State.

Let's start with the latter. California, for example, is ranked first in population with roughly 34 million persons. Florida, is ranked fourth with almost 16 million. West Virginia, 37th in rank at 1.8 million people. And Alaska is 48th with 627,000 people.

Thus it only reasonable that...

California - $45.50 per capita
Florida - $41.30 per capita
West Virginia - $262.80
Alaska - $1,053.70 per capita

Yep, you read that right. Ted Stephens, our favorite R.I.N.O.

The Earmark Tagcloud is just comical. A tagcloud, if you don't know, is (Wikipedia) "a visual depiction of content tags used on a website...typically listed alphabetically, and tag frequency is shown with font size or color."

My old buddy Jim, aka Cynical J, years ago prophesied the downfall of Hollywood revenues due to their lack of creativity (See: sequels, remakes, etc.). He used to joke that movie producers would pick their movie titles by randomly choosing sexed up "action" words from a pair of bowls and then insert implied prepositions. So you'd get "Sleeping (with the) Enemy," or "Marked (for) Death," or "12 Monkeys," or "True Romance," and you get the... ahem... picture.

Well, the Earmark Tagcloud proves our Congressional leaders to be just as unoriginal in their justifications for wasting your money.

Labels: Congress, corruption, earmarks, Spending

Here's the rub: So far this year the blue dogs have been almost all bark when it comes to fiscal restraint and debt reduction. Thirty of the 48 have voted for every one of the non-defense spending bills their committee chairman have sent them. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is enforcing party discipline, and as a result 28 of the 48 blue dogs voted "no" on each of the 27 amendments that Republicans proposed to cut the costs of these bills. The 13 freshman Democrats who represent conservative districts -- such as Heath Shuler ( N.C.), Baron Hill (Ind.), Zack Space (Ohio), Nick Lampson (Texas) -- have been a particular disappointment; back home these same blue dogs trumpet their "independent streak."
-- WSJ

Labels: Congress, democrats, Spending, taxes