Edward Tufte Appointed To Help Track and Explain Stimulus Funds 186
President Obama recently announced several appointments to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, including data visualization expert Edward Tufte, author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The purpose of the panel is to advise the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose aim is "To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information." Tufte said on his website, "I'm doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I'll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary."
Blech. (Score:3, Insightful)
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'" -Bill Hicks
Background anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Background anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite simply, he will be helpful because when he puts together a report, there will be one or two incredibly informative graphs that explain where the money went and how that money changed things.
By having this information in such a concise, digestible form, it will help bring transparency and accountability to the government.
One of the major issues we're having in the U.S. is that one side is saying one thing and claiming absolutely that they are right while the other side is making contradictory claims just a vocally. Getting some real, solid, hard numbers and easily understand representations of these numbers will make these kinds of useless back and forth arguments less possible.
At least that's the theory. We'll see if he can make any difference in practice.
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Quite simply, he will be helpful because when he puts together a report, there will be one or two incredibly informative graphs that explain where the money went and how that money changed things.
Heck, I could paste a picture of a black hole and a type a 200 point "0" onto a Powerpoint slide as well as this guy, and I'd charge a lot less.
By having this information in such a concise, digestible form, it will help bring transparency and accountability to the government.
Yeah, sure it will, kiddo. Sure it will.
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Re:Background anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
At least that's the theory. We'll see if he can make any difference in practice.
In practice, political operatives will maneuver behind the scenes to ensure that whatever information the commission receives is carefully selected, filtered and sanitized so that the "right" conclusions are reached. The stakes are so high in this case that it is incredibly naïve to think that there won't be skullduggery.
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Re:Blech. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality.
"They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens.
"This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.
"If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'" —George Carlin
link [youtube.com]
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Sounds like what I was saying in early 2007, but no one wanted to listen. Now a foreign observer, much more impartial than our own media, is saying exactly the same thing. Gee, I thought Obama was going to usher in a new era of global peace and prosperity. What happened? I would venture to guess that it has something to do with the fact that he has never run even so much as a convenience store, and now his naivete and inexperience are catching up to his vacuous rhetoric.
In Obama's defense, none of the other options were any better. McCain bends to the will of his party far too easily (we already had one puppet president for 8 years with GWB, we certainly didn't need 4 more with McCain), Ron Paul (like many third party candidates) is convinced that only his way is the right way, and everyone else was too polarizing.
Unfortunately, the extremes of the parties are the ones in control...this makes electing someone truly worthy of being president nearly impossible. You can't g
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think we all know how the November elections will turn out. However, there is no way in hell we can foresee who the next president will be. Our political system as we know it, is fucked. I reckon this is a good thing. Perhaps now we can get people more involved with how politics happen in DC and start voting based on someones voting record, and not based purely on party. At least, I hope so.
This isn't an ageism thing, but I honestly feel that anyone in the house or senate over the age of 45 should not be allowed to be reelected, at least not for the next few cycles. Part of the problem is that so many people running this country are stuck in the past without an eye for the future. This worked fine in the 80's and 90's, but nowadays that just doesn't cut it.
Term limits in general would be a great thing...
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Sorry, I should have been more specific...if over the age of 45 you wouldn't be able to be reelected for the next few cycles...but if you have never served and are over the age of 45 you can still run for election into the senate or the house.
I just meant getting the old-timey regulars outta there, not preventing old-timers in general from getting a seat.
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my .02
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That would be great. Then we could recycle all the failed policies that we've already slogged through.
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Step one for the GOP is to toss out the evangelicals. Even Nixon warned about mixing politcis and religion. When freaking *Nixon* finds your plans lacking, you might want to run a reassessment. Most who have analyzed the situation feel they'd gain far more than they lost.
Our political system as we know it, is fucked.
It acts, in combination with the media, to filter out anyone but complete sociopaths. You have to be utterly without care about other people- what they think of you, how your decisions affect their daily lives, etc.- to run for office these
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Step one for the GOP is to toss out the evangelicals. Even Nixon warned about mixing politcis and religion. When freaking *Nixon* finds your plans lacking, you might want to run a reassessment. Most who have analyzed the situation feel they'd gain far more than they lost.
Absolutely. If your belief in some mystical imaginary higher power is the most important thing in your life, you are unqualified for public office. Quite frankly, I'm amazed that evangelicals remember to breathe.
Re:The whole world loves us now! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not surprised.
The Republican party lost it's spine a long time ago and have splintered into many factions. Effectively, the party was dead even before the 2000 elections and since then has been without leadership.
True, it's splintered into factions (Teabaggers vs business conservatives vs religious wackos) but in the current Congress it has been remarkably unified. It says "No!" to everything. Of course, it's easy to be the minority opposition. You don't have to have any ideas on how to solve problems and move the country forward. (As an example of what happens when Republicans are fully in power, look to Arizona. Here the Republicans remain unified and committed to "No!" Our state is on beyond fucked.)
The Democratic party however, has been very unified but has been rotting from the core since the days of JFK. Now, it too is crumbling apart with rampant thuggery and corruption.
What Democratic party are you talking about? In what bizarro world is it unified? Asshats like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln seem to want to be all "mavericky" like that idiot McCain and his boyfriend Joe Lieberman, so any notion of party unity is a pipe dream. As for "rotting at the core," this happens as the Blue Dogs triangulate and try to have it all ways instead of having any principles.
You've got to be kidding me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless by "extremes of the parties" you mean the rightmost extremes of both parties, I think you've gone round the bend. If the extreme left wing of the Democrats had been in control, Dennis Kucinich would have been the nominee. That guy really is far to the left. Obama? There are few Democrats more centrist. Just a quick example: health care. The current plan in play in Congress is almost exactly the same as the one Mitt freakin' Romney signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts. Until recently, this would have been a Republican health care plan - the mainstream opinion among Democrats is that single-payer is the way to go.
Regardless of your personal preferences on issues like health care, it's an absolute fact that the Democratic party is controlled by highly centrist types, and the Republican party is being run by, not to put too fine a point on it, whackjobs.
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Unfortunately, the extremes of the parties are the ones in control...
Really? The last election was a close fought battle between Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich? I must have missed that .... Perhaps you should check out what the extremes of the parties actually are?
Re:The whole world loves us now! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The whole world loves us now! (Score:5, Informative)
he has never run even so much as a convenience store
I realize this is really only intended as empty rhetoric but, come on. Here are a few things Obama has run, for everyone's information:
The Harvard law Review
Chicago's Developing Communities Project (DCP)
Illinois's Project Vote
Chicago Annenberg Challenge
Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services
U.S. Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs
Now, I realize that it is at least arguable that none of these provide the leadership experience required to be an effective president. You probably would like to have seen a former governor/mayor/head of a large agency. I don't think that sort of experience is strictly necessary, but I see how reasonable people could disagree. (Though, if I may ask, what leadership experience does John McCain have that qualifies him in your eyes? Is it just length of service in the Senate?)
But to say that Obama has not run so much as a convenience store is just totally false and it smacks of an either mean spirited (or, at best, willfully ignorant) parroting of the popular right-wing line that Obama is somehow a lightweight.
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In sum, while we kno
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he has never run even so much as a convenience store
I realize this is really only intended as empty rhetoric but, come on. Here are a few things Obama has run, for everyone's information:
The Harvard law Review Chicago's Developing Communities Project (DCP) Illinois's Project Vote Chicago Annenberg Challenge Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services U.S. Senate's subcommittee on European Affairs
Now, I realize that it is at least arguable that none of these provide the leadership experience required to be an effective president. You probably would like to have seen a former governor/mayor/head of a large agency. I don't think that sort of experience is strictly necessary, but I see how reasonable people could disagree. (Though, if I may ask, what leadership experience does John McCain have that qualifies him in your eyes? Is it just length of service in the Senate?)
But to say that Obama has not run so much as a convenience store is just totally false and it smacks of an either mean spirited (or, at best, willfully ignorant) parroting of the popular right-wing line that Obama is somehow a lightweight.
And let's remember that this experience was a LOT more relevant than George W Bush's term as Governor of Texas. Texas has a constitutionally weak governor.
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Perhaps. I was disappointed too in the things he has done since gaining office. But can you imagine what the other lizard er McCain would have done if he got elected? Man you people had no choice.
Had McCain been elected we would be fighting "insurgents" in Iran as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Basically? Fuck you. Lame cynicism is fine for wannabe goths in their black paint coated crypt/bedroom in their parent's basement. But, here we have evidence of bringing in one of the finest minds in data visualization to open up the complicated workings of government. This is a good thing.
And where did I say it was a bad thing?
It's makes sense that you got first post (you obviously have a lot of time on your hands)
Early Monday morning, before I get any requests in for something that needs fixing (I'm a mail merge programmer)? You're right, I do have some time on my hands.
but it's really sad that your throw-away cynicism was confused with insight by your fellow high-school students.
I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to attack me personally, yet do nothing to respond to the quote I referenced.
Interesting... just like a modern politician...which, funny enough, falls under the quote in my OP.
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No one needs to respond to a quote as stupid as that. Republicans are opposed to Democrats on almost every possible area. They're deadlocked in everything, if for no other reason than that the Republicans simply don't want to compromise with a man who is disappointingly centrist.
Obama is no radical liberal. He's so corporatist it's been shocking to his own voter base. The fact that he hired Timothy Geithner, Bush's old top financial adviser, to write the bill to reform banks, speaks of how centrist he
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The quote doesn't meant they are the same, it means they are slaves to the same master...greed.
Academics (Score:3, Insightful)
Just another feel good appointment of an academic to a position where they can't really do anything. Meanwhile Obama staffs his cabinet with wall street insiders. If Obama really wants transparency and accountability, he should fire Geithner and replace him with Elizabeth Warren. But no, he won't do that.
Re:Academics (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also inexcusable that billions upon billions of dollars were given out without anything in place to track where that money was ending up. It's only after the fact that they consider such accounting?
A mere $10,000 student loan has greater financial controls in place than the stimulus funding.
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You're confusing TARP and the Stimulus.
Re:Academics (Score:4, Insightful)
You're confusing TARP and the Stimulus.
Maybe he's confusing them with Cash for Clunkers. I can't remember which program was the one without accountability. They all look so much alike in that regard.
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While we're at it we could add defense contracts... cost-plus "burn pits" anyone? I'll bring the marshmallows. Don't mind the CN.
Re:Academics (Score:5, Interesting)
he should fire Geithner and replace him with Elizabeth Warren. But no, he won't do that.
Warren? Well, anyone would be an improvement. Wouldn't Ron Paul be better? As treasury secretary, his peculiar opinions about abortion would be about as important as Tom Cruise's insights about foreign policy, i.e. quaintly irrelevant to the task at hand. Would be a nice last job for a smart old man (I mean RP not Cruise)
Re:Academics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Academics (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think he ever once said it would fix everything. It would seriously help though to have it based on something that the supply isn't as easily gained as hitting a print button.
Re:Academics (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think Ron Paul expects to end paper currency. Nor does he think that's the problem. He knows that only a tiny fraction of the money will ever be in the form of paper.
The problem, he believes, is that the currency is ultimately backed by nothing more than a government's promise to limit its availability. Printing the actual paper bills is chump change. Inventing more money is even easier than that: they just enter a number in a computer.
It's not the computers themselves he sees as the problem, but rather that the accounting rules make the total arbitrary under certain circumstances. He wants to make that impossible by fixing it to a quantity which is relatively fixed: a rare metal.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really solve the problem. For one thing, as long as there is paper currency, checks, and bank payments, rather than actual bits of gold, there's no way to enforce it. The government can set the exchange rate any way it likes. You can limit that by law, but then, you could do the same for the numbers entered into the computers.
And truly fixing the value of the currency slows the economy drastically. Fractional-reserve banking puts more money in circulation than there is backing for, but as long as that money is invested in things that turn a profit (in sum), it gets paid back and you have real economic improvements to show for it. Without it, those improvements happen far more slowly, and other countries out-compete us.
It leads to booms and busts, but those happen anyway. We saw that even when we were on a gold standard. We were on the gold standard going into the Great Depression. Breaking off the gold standard allows the big banks the flexibility to try to solve such crises, using the tools I just mentioned: fractional-reserve banking multiplying money until the crisis of confidence ends and productivity returns to pre-bust levels.
And what institution managed that? The Federal Reserve, another institution Paul despises. Paul is not a stupid man, but if he imagines that the economy was free of the boom-bust cycle before the invention of the Federal Reserve, he's simply missing history.
We may need a new solution, but the old solutions have already been disproven. That's why the Fed was created in the first place.
Stiglitz says the Fed is corrupt (Score:2)
The issue isn't that we have an imperfect solution to the problem, it's that the imperfect solution has been degraded by co
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Right now, they (unelected) are effectively controlling government (elected) when it should be the other way around.
The Board of Governors is appointed in precisely the way the Supreme Court is appointed.
The member banks are privately owned. I thought that private ownership was precisely what Paul would want. But as private institutions they're even less accountable than government ones.
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for one thing the biggest argument for fiat currency was so the government could regulate the boom/bust business cycle. It has shown not only to worsen it by making the booms and busts bigger but has also been shown to be abused horribly.
Re:Academics (Score:5, Informative)
1. he is not stupid - he is a strict constitutionalist.
Oreaaaaly? What's the Constitutional basis for Paul's Sanctity of Life Act [wikipedia.org], which defines human life as beginning at conception?
Founding fathers knew the opression from the almighty government first hand and were reluctant to give federal government more power than necessary.
Right, which is why all the "strict constitutionalists" also rant and rave about the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the USAF, spy satellites and NORAD. Because the Constitution only allows Congress to fund an Army and a Navy. Oh wait, they don't - which means the entire lot are political hacks.
They chose gold and silver to be a legal tender so nobody has a print button - fiat currencies were tried in their times already and failed.
Nevermind that we actually had more financial collapses under a backed currency than under a fiat currency. It's like gold bugs have excised the 19th century from their minds.
When people start to gamble and overinvest (prosperity) they compete for loanable funds. These funds shrink rapidly and IR raises to match high demand.
Nevermind that the current crisis was banks making insanely risky investments at 60:1 asset ratios. What would the gold standard done to prevent this? Nothing whatsoever. And of course we were on the gold standard when the economy crashed in 1929, for much the same reasons as it did in 2008.
There was a recession of 1920 (caused by retooling to peace time production and returning soldiers sharply increasing workforce numbers), more severe than the Great Depression - it ended in 1,5 years because government did nothing to fight it. Great depression was enlarged and stretched out by failed policies meant to end it.
Wow. You should have stopped digging a hole in your credibility when you passed Baghdad Bob. When there's a total economic collapse, the only entity that can stimulate demand is the government. Know when FDR actually made the depression worse? When he listened to fiscal conservatives and slashed spending in 1937 to cut the deficit.
Have to be able to make more buckets (Score:3, Insightful)
Dollars are just buckets for wealth. When people sell off stocks en masse, you need more buckets (dollars) to catch all the wealth they pump out of them.
Imagine if buckets were made of gold. They wouldn't be much help in a flood because people would hoard them instead of using them. When that happens to dollars it's called deflation and it has a nasty effect on an economy.
But anyway, I believe we were talking about Treasury Secretary not Fed chairman. Ron Paul as Sec. Treasury would probably have a differen
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Because requiring some discipline on spending by not allowing the printing of arbitrary amounts of money would be such a bad thing...
And of course that isn't the only thing he has suggested and certainly wasn't proclaimed as an instant fix
Finally, the "arbitrary value" of the metal is completely irrelevant. It doesn't have to be worth anything - it just has to of limited supply. Clearly people don't care if there's nothing backing their currency so the value part is irrelevant. All that matters is the "can'
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We don't know now because it is irrelevant because it isn't backed by anything.
And yes it does enforce some spending discipline, if you can't print the money you have to tax it or borrow it. Raising taxes can result in not being elected next round. Borrowing it without being able to print up the repayments stops soon enough since you can't afford those payments.
We'll see how the next US currency does, this one is getting awfully close to the end of its lifespan. It's been almost 40 years, which is pretty lo
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Making the rest of your statement pointless.
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The intrinsic value of gold is inflated by the arbitrary value that goldbugs like to place on it.
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Actually, if you look at the bills he introduces, you could most accurately say that he beleives:
If you want to conduct your affairs in something other than Federal Reserve Notes, you shouldn't be raided by the Secret Service and have all of your assets confiscated.
[i.e. "allow competing currencies"].
He advocates free-market money; let people decide what they want to use as a medium of exchange and a store of value. And history shows that gold or other precious metals are the most common market-derived sol
Re:Academics (Score:5, Insightful)
I think someone in favor of more regulation and not less would be best for the job.
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Just another feel good appointment of an academic to a position where they can't really do anything.
Bruce Schneier newly appointed as Secretary of the US department of Homeland (in)Security? That would be change I could believe in. Maybe in the second term, if he somehow gets 51% of the votes.
Re:Academics (Score:5, Interesting)
I took a grad school seminar with him at Yale. The man is loopy, but he has a truly powerful brain. He comes up with ways of looking at problems that are like time bombs. First you think he's a crackpot - how could anyone propose something so ridiculous? Then a few days later, it's been stewing in the back of your head, and your mindly slowly blows as you realise just how much cleverer it is than anything you've heard before. Simply putting him near anything involving information is almost guaranteed to make it better somehow.
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If that were the case, wouldn't you expect that I would have the same reaction to large numbers of Yale professors and therefore not find my assessment of Tufte noteworthy enough to report? I suppose it's possible that I'm so dimwitted I didn't even make that connection.
Re:Academics (Score:4, Interesting)
Just another feel good appointment of an academic to a position where they can't really do anything
Yeah, I just don't see what good it would be to have someone who's known for being able to deal with large amounts of complex information and present it in easy-to-understand ways... especially an academic. I mean, just look at what horrible failure it was to have that academic Richard Feynman on the committee studying the Challenger explosion. Those ivory tower types just have no grasp on how things really work.
So, clearly you don't like Obama or Tufte... who do YOU recommend be put on this committee? And if you don't think the committee should exist, what do you suggest for better tracking and visibility of the stimulus funds?
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Oh you misunderstand me. I wish more (many more) academics were appointed to positions of power. I just don't think this is a position of power. You can say that you're for openness, transparency, etc. and get the political benefits without really changing anything by appointing these guys to commissions that have no real power.
Look at what Elizabeth Warren has been doing. She has been blowing the whistle constantly for the past couple years. She's been entirely ignored. What reason do i have to beli
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The modesty of academics aside, it's an even worse idea to appoint industry insiders to such a role. The fox guarding the hen house and all.
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The right guy for the wrong job? (Score:3, Insightful)
tufte has it easy (Score:4, Interesting)
just take one of the most famous graphs from his book, and reproduce it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Napoleon's_Invasion_of_Russia [wikipedia.org]
relabel the advancing french soldiers "good intentions for accountable government"
relabel the retreating french soldiers "obfuscation by entrenched special interests"
job done
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just take one of the most famous graphs from his book, and reproduce it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Napoleon's_Invasion_of_Russia [wikipedia.org]
relabel the advancing french soldiers "good intentions for accountable government"
relabel the retreating french soldiers "obfuscation by entrenched special interests"
job done
Brilliant
You know that graph is over 100 years old, right? (Score:3, Informative)
Tufte may have used that graph, but Charles Joseph Minard [wikipedia.org] made it, way back in 1869. Minard was an early pioneer in data visualization, and Tufte says that particular graph "may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn."
"Grow a thicker skin, man, this is the Internet." (Score:2)
"Get off your fucking high horse you anti social misfit. If I want to be pedantic I'm going to be pedantic and whiny little bitches like you sure aren't going to stop me."
LOL
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Those are just terms of endearment, like your initial use of the word jackass.
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mommy daddy stop fighting
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Not even close. Did you read the graph ? The US has never suffered these kinds of losses, in any war (by proportion of the size of its army). It IS similar to Hitler's failed attempt though, both in terms of losses, strategy, and consequences for the would-be invader : complete defeat some years later.
Re:tufte has it easy (Score:4, Funny)
That's not scary. Try retitling it from "Napoleons invasion of Russia" to "Bushes invasion of Iraq". That sounds possible enough to be terrifying.
Well, yeah, if you take a person and surgically remove all their knowledge of history, awareness of current events and their critical thinking center, I can see how that person might confuse the two events. Or just drop them on their head a bunch of times. That'd work, too.
Mercy me... (Score:5, Interesting)
This should be - v e r y - interesting indeed.
I have enormous respect for Tufte and his integrity. I can;t wait to see what happens.
Remember, this is the guy who put Stalin on the cover of his pamphlet on "The Cognitive Style Of Powerpoint" [edwardtufte.com]
I'm reminded of Feynman on the Columbia commission.
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I'm reminded of Feynman on the Columbia commission.
Always assume Isaac Newton-level political ability until proven otherwise.
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No mercy! (Score:2)
This should be - v e r y - interesting indeed. [snicker snack] Remember, this is the guy who put Stalin on the cover of his pamphlet
Wow. Is that what teh kids consider - e d g y - these days?
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He's playing right into their strategy - demand compromise, bring everything to a halt and complain about being shut out, then label Obama as weak and ineffectual.
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It's not the incompetent job they did registering voters,,, (Note, incompetent does not mean "criminal")
It's not the money laundering charges... (Although they probably had a legal obligation to report someone planning to commit a crime, BIANAL)
What it is, is their financial structure, they way the bring in money from the federal government to, say, help lower-income folks secure affordable housing, but the federal funds wind up disappearing into the corporate structu
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Have any of these claims actually been established and/or verified?
The money laundering thing occurred after a team of undercover reporters virtually coaxed it out of the volunteers (and had tried to do so several dozen times before one fell for the bait), while I've never seen any sort of verification of the other claims from a reputable (ie. non-pundit) source.
To be perfectly honest, it smells a lot like the swiftboat "scandal"
Its mis-named so it will feel better. (Score:5, Funny)
Tufte scandal (Score:5, Interesting)
I own his books and recommend them but it seems Tufte is difficult to deal with in person. He charged credit cards for pre-orders before shipping his not-yet-published book and then called someone who politely objected to that a "whiny sanctimonious asshole."
See Flip Philips' blog entry about the scandal here [skidmore.edu]
Re:Tufte scandal (Score:5, Insightful)
Err... so? He could be the biggest asshole in the world for all I care, so long as he does a good job and injects some accountability and transparency into the process.
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I'm betting him being a big asshole is essential to the success of the project. Because things he's going to reveal are not nice at all, and a nice guy might try to obscure, whitewash and soften them. Only a real asshole will show them in all drastic gory glory they deserve...
Re:Tufte scandal (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cover ugly things up and make everything seem fine and nice? Instead of flinging real dirt all around, given the opportunity?
GIGO (Score:2)
Tufte isn't being hired to inject accountability and transparency into the process, he's being hired because he's somewhat of a media darling. All he can do is produce very pretty guaranteed-to-be-popular (among certain demographics) visual representation of whatever data he is given. If the data is garbage, then his graphs will be pretty, clear, and convey the data in an understandable fashion but will be utte
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Really, a scandal? From your description it could just as easily be that Flip Philips acted like a "whiny sanctimonious asshole" on the phone when asking about charging his CC before shipping the book. I wonder if Flip made a point of reporting on this grave injustice since using Tufte's name would likely drive traffic from google and other search engines to his little blog at Skidmore...
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So, no Power Point presentation? (Score:4, Funny)
Stimulus is a dead issue. (Score:3, Interesting)
The stimulus is a dead issue. GOP won the round. Considering Bush essentially ran .5 stimuluses a year in deficits for 6 years and then capped it off with a stimuluses worth of bailouts for banks, its rather remarkable that the GOP could do so, but they did.
Trying to keep refighting the stimulus battle is just bad politics...
Obama ought to be a good enough fighter to know that and move on. His best hope for 2010 is to get the troops out of Iraq and declare an epic victory, then use the mantle of victory to take his case before the people.
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The stimulus is a dead issue. GOP won the round.
How, by taking credit [youtube.com] for stimulus money after having voted/opposed it, like Republican Governors and Congressmen and Senators? Like Bobby Jindal, who trashed stimulus spending in his response to Obama's SOTU speech...only to make a big show [photobucket.com] of handing out giant sized, Jindal-signed checks to programs funded with stimulus money?
Obama ought to be a good enough fighter to know that and move on.
One of the memes floated by the Obama fanboys [dailykos.com] is that he throws "rop
At least we know... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:At least we know... (Score:4, Informative)
I'd reccomend both his books and his seminar to anyone, by the way. You'll never look at another graph or powerpoint wihtout critiqeing it.
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Dumb question (Score:5, Interesting)
Shouldn't this post have been created first, *before* the gov't let loose billions of our taxpayer dollars, seems once in the wild, tracking that cash is going to be difficult.
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If only we could radio-label bailout cash. It would assist in tracking, and act as a self-interest disincentive for it to be stockpiled in executive bonuses.
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It was the previous administration that started giving out the money. Since they had nothing but contempt for any kind of tracking or accountability (see : e-mail fiasco), there's no surprise there.
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It was the previous administration that started giving out the money.
Bush did it first so it must be correct and proper?
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"Shouldn't this post have been created first, *before* the gov't let loose billions of our taxpayer dollars, seems once in the wild, tracking that cash is going to be difficult."
That would imply the stimulus wasn't *designed* to work like a giant slush fund.
Efficiency (Score:2, Informative)
Wouldn't it be more efficient to keep up with where the money goes AS IT GOES OUT THE DOOR? The way this panel is doing it now is just a waste of even more resources, and it provides a little time for the recipients to come up with some more BS to explain why all their execs needed multi-million dollar bonuses for running their companies into the ground.
Not for long! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I trust Tufte will do an admirable job of rendering such information clear and concise. The truth will be unassailable.
At which point the Obama will realize that the waste and futility of the "stimulus package[s]" will be crystal-clear to voters, the graphs & explanations will be suppressed, and Tufte quietly shown the door.
Wrong guy for the job. Tufte and Chicago-way politics is like oil and water.
This is easy (Score:2)
Expose the obivous? (Score:2)
I'm sure if he did that, that the lines would all go "downward"--which is something we already know.
Remember Metcalf...
simple task (Score:3, Funny)
I don't see why they need to hire such an illustrious researcher for such a simple task. I've prepared an accurate IMO data visualization of the results of the Federal stimulus spending. It can be viewed at:
http://shambala.net/stimulusvisualization.jpg [shambala.net]
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US windturbine firms are just late to the party, and they'll catch up.
even so : the grants go back into the US economy, largely because transporting turbine parts is a [VERY] large part of the cost of a turbine, so producing them locally is important.