Paul Van Slembrouck » politic

Letters to the President: Process Improvement

admin — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:43:19 +0000

In response to the recent NYTimes piece about the process by which the White House sorts through thousands of letters addressed to Obama, I was thinking about the process that they use.

This is the CURRENT PROCESS:

This is what they COULD DO:

To what extent are they running the email, snail mail, and faxes through recognition software and statistics & charting software to summarize the contents of incoming correspondence? I hope that Mr. Kelleher is providing some additional info in addition to hand-selecting a few letters.

PresidentialWatch08: Political Blogosphere Visualization

admin — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:41:16 +0000

Via visualcomplexity, this is a visualization that I often find myself returning to in my thoughts. It shows the relative leanings of and links among political blogs, with a lot of options for filtering and summarizing the display.

Launch the application here.

Do Something About the U.S. National Debt Disaster!

admin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:11:14 +0000

A nice 30-minute version of the I.O.U.S.A film is available here.

And a “Citizen’s Guide” resource about our national debt is available here.

McCain and Obama, Personal Finances

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:28:07 +0000

This table presents the net worth (midpoint) and income provided in the senators’ personal financial disclosures.

Data Source: Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org)

Obama’s Personal Income

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:01:39 +0000

These donut charts present Obama’s personal income disclosed for the years 2004 to 2007. If text labels are outside the viewing area, right click in each chart and select “Enable Rotation”, and then drag the donuts to rotate them. The total annual figures include only Barack’s income. Spousal (Michelle’s) income is entered as values ending with 9,999; the actual values are undisclosed.

Data source: Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org)