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Edward Tufte Appointed To Help Track and Explain Stimulus Funds
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."
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.
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.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
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.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Right, because the best choice would be someone who seriously believes that replacing our arbitrarily valued currency with vaults full of arbitrarily valued metal will fix everything wrong with our economy.
Bottles.
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.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
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.
"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
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
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.
caritj.org