Visualizations : 2005 Earmarks ($) by State Per Capita (Updated May 31, 2007)

Nice, but I wonder, the colors seem random. This is slightly distracting / unsteadying as it might make one wonder — do the colors mean something that I don’t get?

Why not use colors to depict another dimension, for example if you had a time series of this data you could calculate % growth / (shrinkage) over a given time span. Color-code to show the highest growth rates in (for example) solid black, low growers as gray, stagnant states as white, low shrinkers as pink, high shrinkers as solid red.

also would be interesting to see this data crossed against party breakdown of representatives/governors, or against competitiveness of recent elections. for example, i noticed PA and FL had decent portions of the pie.

Note that Ted Stevens of Alaska is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. If you want your pork, you must vote for his. Any wonder that Alaska had the largest bubble?

Very useful Site. A great public service. Your use of the bubbles is clever and succinct.

It is also a fact that in the case of federal R&D spending, for example, about 5 states like California, Virginia, New Mexico, Maryland, Massachusetts have already captured 85 percent of the program monies since years ago they were targeted for defense, aerospace and other “industrial policy” projects.

It’s true across many other categories of spending. So, the vast number of our citizens do expect their Members of Congress to redress the inequities of a bicoastal bias by bringing home directed spending to their own districts. Why were the mostly wasteland areas of California developed in the first place? No water, poor land, poor location, etc.?

Hmm. Can we have a version of this that shows earmarks-per-electoral-vote (instead of per-capita)?

This is a great help. I’m doing a report against earmarking and this is a great source. Thank you!